The 1980s Canadian family movie The Peanut Butter Solution remains one of the weirdest films I watched as a kid, and one of my all-time favorites to this day. If you have not heard about it, here is a good summary and review:
Month: February 2022
Ghost Rain
Horror Cinema Trivia: Wrong Turn 4
Did you know that Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings is the first movie in the series in which nobody survives the cannibals?
My favourite of the series! More facts about this prequel at IMDb Trivia: Wrong Turn 4.
Devil Baby Swap
Miniature Humanoids
“You think I’m mad. Perhaps I am. But listen, Henry Frankenstein. While you were digging in your graves, piecing together dead tissues, I, my dear pupil, went for my materials to the source of life. I grew my creatures like cultures, grew them as nature does, from seed.” – Dr. Septimus Pretorius, Bride of Frankenstein
The Homunculi are miniature humanoids artificially created by Dr. Septimus Pretorius. Unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, the Homunculi are grown from organic seeds and kept in jars to prevent them from escaping.
The six known Homunculi created by Pretorius are a Queen, an Archbishop, a Priest, a Devil, a Ballerina (who won’t dance to anything but Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song”) and a Mermaid (described as the result of an experiment with seaweed).
The tiny mermaid in Dr. Pretorius’ bottle was Josephine McKim, a member of the 1924 and 1928 U.S. Women’s Olympic Swim Teams and one of the four members of that team to win the 1928 gold medal in the 400-Meter Freestyle Relay.
Information from Fandom: Homunculi (Bride of Frankenstein) and IMDb Trivia: Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
Rue Morgue TV: My Bloody Valentine is Pure Slasher Love
Reader Beware
It’s a Man’s World
Curse of the King’s Tomb
In 1973, a group of archaeologists opened the tomb of the 15th-century Polish king Casimir IV Jagiellon in Kraków, Poland. As with the opening of King Tut’s tomb 50 years before, European media hyped up the event, and the researchers involved allegedly joked that they were risking a curse on the tomb by opening it.
When some of the team members began to die shortly after, some media outlets speculated it was due to a curse. Later, experts discovered traces of deadly fungi inside the tomb that can cause lung illnesses when breathed in. This was the cause of their deaths.
Learn about five more legendary curses as History.com.
Horror TV: Archive 81
Netflix released a horror show called Archive 81. The promotional trailer did not do justice to how good the series turned out to be. The story is told through videos on videotapes being restored by the protagonist, and the narrative does a great job of overlapping the past with the protagonist’s life and work in the present.
With each episode, the story expands and becomes partly more mysterious and partly more clear, which is a great mix and kept my attention. Even though the narrative got mystical and complex, I never felt like it was trying to trick or confuse me. Like the protagonist, I was eager to dive further into the evidence to uncover what the heck was going on.
Highly recommended!
The Devil's Muse 
