News

Black Friday and the Death of Jeffrey Dahmer

Published

9 years ago

November 14, 2014

Jeffrey Dahmer

Nov 28^th marks the anniversary of the death of Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, a man that lured young men into his home and bludgeoned, mutilated and in some cases ate them. The body count for this serial killer reached 17 when he was done.

Netflix is offering a few streaming movies on Dahmer’s life, “Raising Jeffrey Dahmer” and the superior pseudo-documentary “The Jeffrey Dahmer Files”. The former is based on Dahmer’s father’s account of events, while the latter is a moody and charismatic blend of documentary and live action filmmaking.

Lionel Dahmer, Jeffrey’s father, has said that as a child his son was fascinated with dead animals, finding them in a crawlspace under his house, Jeffrey would collect the animal’s blanched bones and place them in a bucket to fondle over later.

Depending on which psychological journal you read, Dahmer apparently suffered from Asperger’s disorder, a pervasive developmental disorder that can hinder the sufferer’s ability to socialize or interact with others. Whether this is true or not, Jeffrey Dahmer certainly had no intention of making friends and keeping them in one piece.

In June of 1978, just out of high school, Dahmer picked up his first victim; Steve Hicks. Dahmer brought Hicks back to his parent’s home. There, after drinking and intercourse, Dahmer crushed the young man’s skull with a barbell, detached all appendages and buried Hicks in the woods behind the house. But that wasn’t the last time Dahmer would interact with Hicks.

A few years later, Dahmer’s alcoholism consumed him and he was discharged from the Army. Once home, he exhumed Hick’s remains, ground them up, and replanted them elsewhere.

For 13 years Dahmer continued to kill, nearly getting caught in May of 1991. But only a few months later in July, police discovered the gruesome photographs of his victims and took into custody.

It was discovered that Dahmer drugged, raped and quartered his marks, he saved the genitals and skulls as collector’s items. Dahmer also photographed his crimes, keeping snapshots of his victims for later viewing.

Once caught—one lucky victim escaped and led authorities to Dahmer’s residence– police found that Dahmer kept a collection of heads in a freezer and a stew of penises and hands in a kettle in the cupboard. His obsession with male genitalia was evident once more as an investigation revealed more male parts soaking in formaldehyde in a jar.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s mattress being taken out of his apartment after his arrest

If you are brave enough to search the basement of the internet, some crime scene photos are available for viewing, but be warned, they are in full color. By the end of his reign of murder, Dahmer had been indicted on 17 counts of murder and ordered to serve 15 life terms.

On November 28, 1994 while Dahmer was serving his sentence at Columbia Correctional Institution, a fellow inmate, Christopher Scarver, attacked and killed him. Ironically, although never proven, the weapon Scarver is said to have used was a metal bar taken from the prison gym, just like the one Dahmer had used to kill his first victim Steve Hicks.

Whether he was mentally ill, morbidly curious or the pure evil itself, Jeffrey Dahmer is an icon of real-life horror history.

So this year, on Black Friday, when you’re shopping for deals to celebrate the holidays, also remember it was the day in a true-life horror story that the devil died.

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News

The Tall Man Funko Pop! Is a Reminder of the Late Angus Scrimm

Published

1 hour ago

May 6, 2024

Timothy Rawles

The Funko Pop! brand of figurines is finally paying homage to one of the scariest horror movie villains of all time, The Tall Man from Phantasm. According to Bloody Disgusting the toy was previewed by Funko this week.

The creepy otherworldly protagonist was played by the late Angus Scrimm who passed away in 2016. He was a journalist and B-movie actor who became a horror movie icon in 1979 for his role as the mysterious funeral home owner known as The Tall Man. The Pop! also includes the bloodsucking flying silver orb The Tall Man used as a weapon against trespassers.

^Phantasm

He also spoke one of the most iconic lines in independent horror, “Boooy! You play a good game, boy, but the game is finished. Now you die!”

There is no word on when this figurine will be released or when preorders will go on sale, but it’s nice to see this horror icon remembered in vinyl.

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News

Director of ‘The Loved Ones’ Next Film is a Shark/Serial Killer Movie

Published

5 hours ago

May 6, 2024

Timothy Rawles

The director of The Loved Ones and The Devil’s Candy is going nautical for his next horror film. Variety is reporting that Sean Byrne is gearing up to make a shark movie but with a twist.

This film titled Dangerous Animals, takes place on a boat where a woman named Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), according to Variety, is “Held captive on his boat, she must figure out how to escape before he carries out a ritualistic feeding to the sharks below. The only person who realizes she is missing is new love interest Moses (Hueston), who goes looking for Zephyr, only to be caught by the deranged murderer as well.”

Nick Lepard writes it, and filming will begin on the Australian Gold Coast on May 7.

Dangerous Animals will get a spot at Cannes according to David Garrett from Mister Smith Entertainment. He says, “‘Dangerous Animals’ is a super-intense and gripping story of survival, in the face of an unimaginably malevolent predator. In a clever melding of the serial killer and shark movie genres, it makes the shark look like the nice guy,”

Shark movies will probably always be a mainstay in the horror genre. None have ever really succeeded in the level of scariness reached by Jaws, but since Byrne uses a lot of body horror and intriguing images in his works Dangerous Animals might be an exception.

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Movies

PG-13 Rated ‘Tarot’ Underperforms at the Box Office

Published

9 hours ago

May 6, 2024

Timothy Rawles

Tarot starts off the summer horror box office season with a whimper. Scary movies like these are usually a fall offering so why Sony decided to make Tarot a summer contender is questionable. Since Sony uses Netflix as their VOD platform now maybe people are waiting to stream it for free even though both critic and audience scores were very low, a death sentence to a theatrical release.

Although it was a fast death — the movie brought in $6.5 million domestically and an additional $3.7 million globally, enough to recoup its budget — word of mouth might have been enough to convince moviegoers to make their popcorn at home for this one.

_Tarot

Another factor in its demise might be its MPAA rating; PG-13. Moderate fans of horror can handle fare that falls under this rating, but hardcore viewers who fuel the box office in this genre, prefer an R. Anything less rarely does well unless James Wan is at the helm or that infrequent occurrence like The Ring. It might be because the PG-13 viewer will wait for streaming while an R generates enough interest to open a weekend.

And let’s not forget that Tarot might just be bad. Nothing offends a horror fan quicker than a shopworn trope unless it’s a new take. But some genre YouTube critics say Tarot suffers from boilerplate syndrome; taking a basic premise and recycling it hoping people won’t notice.

But all is not lost, 2024 has a lot more horror movie offerings coming this summer. In the coming months, we will get Cuckoo (April 8), Longlegs (July 12), A Quiet Place: Part One (June 28), and the new M. Night Shyamalan thriller Trap (August 9).

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