Kyle Gallner is king 👑, Marcus Dunstan slashes with #AMFAD 🔪, #100HorrorMoviesIn92Days begins 🎞️, & more!

The Burning. Sleepaway Camp II. Fear Street 1978. Friday the 13th Part 2. In a Violent Nature.

These are just a few of my all-time favorite camping films. A group of youths venture out into the wilderness only to be slaughtered in increasingly grisly ways. Body parts flying, blood splattering the screen - there's nothing like the visceral, physical response to a murderous rampage. From our favorite hockey-masked-wearing Jason Voorhees to the leisurely stroller Johnny, nature horror has a certain charm to it. When you're out in the woods, you're at your most vulnerable. Even cabins can't ward off the beast.

When this newsletter drops, I'll be well on my way out into the woods for a solo camping trip. Yes, you read that correctly... solo. You'd think I'd seen enough horror films to know this could go sideways really quickly. But there's nothing quite like the smell of melted marshmallows over a raging campfire, the gurgle of a nearby stream, and the gentle breeze tickling the leafy canopy overhead. Since I was a kid, my family took frequent trips into the woods, an escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday living. In nature, there's only peace, and the chirping birds and cicadas.

With this excursion, I hope to find Zen, rediscover myself, and reconnect with the Earth. Maybe I'll get to dodge a few psychotic killers while I'm at it. Who knows what adventure awaits!

In other news: Today also marks 92 days until the sacred holiday, Halloween, which brings us to our friend Spooky Sarah Says and her annual #100HorrorMoviesIn92Days. The film challenge encourages participants to watch 100 horror films that they've never seen in just 92 days. It's a tall order (I somehow managed to barely vault over the finish line last year), but it gives horror fiends a chance to expand their horizons and seek out films that have long been on their watchlist. Lord knows my list keeps expanding with each passing day; now's the time I can trim a little fat. You can learn more about this challenge in the Events section below.

As I trek deep into the woods surrounding the Greenbrier River, I hope this newsletter brings you a little joy and a whole lotta terror. We could all use a bit of both in our lives right now.

Yours Cruelly,

Bee

Issue 009’s Letterboxd list can be found here

Bee Delores founded B-Sides & Badlands in 2017. Initially a music blog, they expanded to cover all things horror in 2018 and has since reviewed everything from ultra-indie gems like Death Trip to such breakout hits as In a Violent Nature. Check out all the fresh and rotten reviews.

Summer is heating up here in the UK, so naturally we’ll be downing beers and starting BBQs (‘cos that’s how us Brits do it). But before nipping out to grab some juicy sausages & steaks, just consider if they’d taste as good if they were made of human meat…

This week’s recommendation is “Tender Is the Flesh” by Agustina Bazterrica, and it’s definitely going to turn carnivores into vegetarians. When the flesh of animals becomes tainted and contaminated, society starts breeding human clones for slaughtering. But one man who works in the industry begins to question the morality of it all when he harbors an escaped living piece of meat. However, the question begs whether humanity’s hunger for flesh is more insatiable than our dedication to ethics. 

Every chapter feels like you are being bludgeoned by a meat tenderizer, gradually rotting your insides until you can barely stomach the bleakness of it all. Bazterrica doesn’t hold back with her raw, blood-drenched violence against innocent creatures, and really makes us look at how we are obsessed with consumption.

Two Dead Boys: Kyle Gallner in The Haunting in Connecticut

We don’t deserve Kyle Gallner. 

His body of work defies explanation. From Jennifer’s Body and A Nightmare on Elm Street (one of two shining beacons, along with Katie Cassidy, in an otherwise tepid film) to The Passenger and Mother, May?, Gallner has built an impressive repertoire. You flip through his catalog, and you’re bound to find him acting his face off. He doesn’t just chew up the scenery; he spits it back out into mangled, blood-dripping bits. There might not be much on the page, but he makes damn sure that you feel every word like an anvil to the jawline.

When I think about Gallner’s all-time best onscreen showcases, there’s one film that doesn’t get nearly enough credit. Turning 15 this year, The Haunting in Connecticut remains one of Gallner’s most masterful and criminally underrated performances. He doesn’t just bring Matt Campbell to pulsating vitality. He takes the viewer’s hand and guides them through a funhouse of human frailty, excruciating emotion, and heart-stopping terror. It’s a genre-defining performance that is, unfortunately, buried six feet deep beneath a film’s crusty, bone-dry layers. He rattles you awake as he excavates a young boy’s dance with death, shaking loose the cobwebs of mental anguish and turning in a performance that makes you bleed and tremble in pain.

When Matt’s family moves into a not-creepy-at-all home (which was once a funeral parlor), he undergoes a frightening transformation. Stricken with cancer, he must receive treatment at a local facility, but his physical weakness proves to be an ample gateway for the sinister forces jangling the floorboards and vibrating the cracked walls. As part of his care, he receives a brand-new medication, which could result in many side effects, including hallucinations. When Matt starts seeing things, like maggots seeping out of the front porch pillar, he keeps things under wraps with only his mother Sara (Virginia Madsen) knowing the truth. But if he were to reveal to the doctors what he’s witnessing, he would become ineligible for treatment.

Much like The Amityville Horror before it, the film erupts with frequent ghostly occurrences, growing in strength and power. For his part, Gallner sinks his teeth into the script to give Matt a full-bodied characterization. Matt’s willingness to survive, despite melancholic, depressive thoughts about death and the afterlife, makes him one of horror’s overlooked heroes. When it comes to light that funeral home proprietor Ramsey Aickman (John Bluethner) conducted psychic readings and seances, with a young medium named Jonah (Erik Berg) leading communications with the dead, Matt storms out of the medical facility and heads back home. There, he imprisons himself inside and pours gasoline around the property – knowing full well that hell-like flames are the only way to squash the vengeful souls trapped within its walls.

In the final moments, Matt teeters on the verge of death’s all-consuming abyss. Smoke and the soul-licking fire swirl around him. Sara, who lets out a blood-curdling scream, darts into the house to save her son. Nearly on the brink of dying herself, rescue personnel save the day and carry them through the flames and out into the cool night air. When you think Matt is beyond saving, he convulses to life – earning himself a second chance.

Throughout The Haunting in Connecticut, Kyle Gallner is a tour de force. Along with Virginia Madsen, he gives the film a much-needed emotional boost. Without both performers committing fully to the work, the film would fall even further apart than it already does. Thankfully, we have an actor like Gallner who always understands the assignment and brings his absolute all to whatever role he’s given. He slithers into characters like a chameleon changing their scaly skin color. While he might not be a household name these days like he so rightly deserves, horror just would not be the same without him.

Gallner, I look forward to whatever mountains you scale and seas you part next. It’s sure to be quite an adventure.

Technology is an important part of our daily lives. From the Internet to smartphones, as well as AI and robotics, we often forget about the negative aspects. For this week's newsletter, we chose 8 films that may have you think otherwise about how you approach any tech moving forward. Check out the Technology Terror list on Letterboxd here.

The 100 Horror Movies in 92 Days Challenge is back! The event runs from August 1st through October 31st, allowing participants to watch (at least) 100 horror films during this time (and all must be a first-time watch!). Read the guidelines here.

Popcorn Frights Film Festival, the Southeast United States largest international genre film festival, will celebrate its tenth year on August 8-18, 2024. Popcorn Frights showcases features and shorts by filmmakers from around the world to an audience of horror lovers and filmmakers, industry, and journalists. Learn more at popcornfrights.com.

Silver Scream Con, the horror convention that brought 5,000 blood-thirsty movie fans to Boston's North Shore in each of its first two iterations, brings the Three-quel everyone's been dying for to Worcester’s DCU Center on September 13-15, 2024. Tickets and information are available now at silverscreamcon.com.

The Fantasia International Film Festival will celebrate its upcoming 28th edition with an electrifying program of screenings, workshops, and launch events running from July 18 through August 4, 2024, returning yet again at the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screens and events at Montréal’s Cinémathèque québécoise and Cinéma du Musée.