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RIVERDALE Recap: Chapter Six – Faster, Pussycats! Kill! Kill!

Editor’s Note: This recap contains spoilers for Riverdale’s sixth episode, “Faster, Pussycats! Kill! Kill!” Only read on if you’ve watched (or want to be spoiled on) Riverdale’s latest episode!

You guys. Holy cow. Betty Cooper finally found her sister. Polly had been locked away, and not because she was “sick” like the Cooper parents kept saying. No, Polly was pregnant with Jason Blossom’s baby. That’s why Jason wanted to fake his own death and disappear. He was going to run away with Polly. Until somebody killed him.

This revelation was, without a doubt, the biggest bomb dropped so far in the mystery of Jason Blossom’s death. We knew the Coopers had locked Polly up somewhere to keep her away from Jason – they’ll never forget the murderous maple syrup feud – but the fact that she is pregnant adds a whole new wrinkle. Polly wasn’t even told that Jason was dead! The Coopers have gone from manipulative and cruel to downright evil.

 

Betty and Jughead’s investigation into Jason’s murder also led to another big twist: a hardcore Betty and Jug makeout sesh. Their romance has been brewing for quite some time, what with the two spending so much time together at the school newspaper and all, but it still comes as a shock when they finally kiss. Sure, it was obvious the scene was heading to a big kiss, with Jughead slowly moving closer to Betty as they speak, but if you’re a longtime Archie fan, you can’t help but freak out a little bit. Jughead and Betty, guys! Betty and Jughead! What is going on?!

By the episode’s end, the kissing sleuths had discovered the car Jason had stashed to use as a getaway vehicle once he met up with Polly. It conveniently had Jason’s letterman’s jacket in it, and a bunch of drugs (weed, from the looks of it). Betty and Jughead quickly go get the sheriff, but by the time he arrived the car had been set on fire and that sweet kush was up in smoke. Who set the car on fire? Probably the same person who murdered Jason. Jughead and Betty raced over to the institution where Polly is held to tell her the news only to discover that she had escaped.

Elsewhere, Archie was preparing for performance in the Riverdale High School Variety Show. This show is a huge deal in Riverdale. Like, a strangely huge deal. This small town loves two things; football and variety shows. Josie and the Pussycats were also scheduled to perform, so you know it’s a big deal.

Initially, during the tryouts, Archie suffered from some severe stage fright and was all but ready to give up on his musical dreams. It was in that moment that you realize we’ve never really seen Archie perform. We’ve heard brief snippets and watched him hold a guitar while telling everyone in earshot that music is his true passion. But it was just lots of talk, until this episode.

As the big night inched closer, Archie became convinced he needed a partner to sing with him onstage. At first, Veronica volunteers and promises she can “sing like a nightingale.” Archie is stoked on this, until internal strife causes Val to quit Josie and the Pussycats. Suddenly, Val and Archie can perform together and Archie liked that option much, much more. Not only is Val a professional musician that Archie respects, but she’s also a babe and he clearly has the hots for her. Spoiler: they totes make out at the end of the episode. [Editor’s Note: Ben Bailey is a father of four]

Veronica obviously is not excited about being replaced, doubly so because she discovered her mom is making out with Archie’s dad. Basically, everyone in the town Riverdale is making out. Remember when we said this was the horniest show on television?

Things got screwy for a bit as Veronica joined the Pussycats and then Val rejoined the Pussycats because Archie, in his words, didn’t want to be “the guy who broke up the Beatles.” There was a lot of back and forth throughout the episode with varying degrees of hostility, but in the end Josie and the Pussycats were whole again and performed as planned.

This left Archie to perform solo. This could have been bad or awkward, but once again Riverdale knocked it out of the park. Archie was good. Really, really good. It even really sounded like actor KJ Apa was doing the singing, so maybe the dude is just insanely talented. His performance almost sounded like AA Bondy, which is a big, big compliment. So, after five episodes of buildup, we learned that Archie really can sing. He’s genuinely good.

“Faster, Pussycats! Kill! Kill!” was the most straightforward episode of Riverdale to date. It was very high school soap opera, which isn’t a bad thing. Sure, we missed the hardcore noir and creepy gothic elements, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love it when Riverdale gets all sappy and sticky sweet just like the maple syrup the residents of the town murder each other over. Plus, actually seeing that Archie’s musical aspirations weren’t a terrible, terrible idea makes the character work better.

We’re all in on Riverdale, guys.

Images: The CW

The Writers Panel #320: Fantasy TV from ATX

John Wirth (V; Falling Skies), Krista Vernoff (Charmed; Wonderfalls), and Joanna Klein (SVP Scripted Development, The CW) discuss fantasy TV from building the look of a new world and the characters that inhabit it to placing supernatural characters into our everyday lives. Moderated by Emily Moss Wilson.

PLUS: The Ugly Betty reunion with creator Silvio Horta and cast members America Ferrera, Vanessa Williams, Eric Mabius, Michael Urie, Tony Plana, Ana Ortiz, Mark Indelicato, Rebecca Romijn, Ashley Jensen, and Judith Light.

Recorded at ATX Television Festival on June 12, 2016.

Get your badge now for ATX’s sixth season, June 8-11 2017, at http://atxfestival.com/

Follow @BenBlacker and Like the show on Facebook!

Get Your Claws On This Logan and X-23 Fan Art

Home Geekonomics is a series that features the best in geeky home decor, food and DIY. Each week will focus on a specific fandom and highlight the best of geek for your home and everyday life.

This is the last Wolverine movie, at least the last as we know them. Say it ain’t so, Logan. While Hugh Jackman may be walking away from a role that he’s made his own for the past 17 years, fans will always associate him with the popular Marvel mutant.

This time around he’ll be joined by Laura Kinney, aka X-23. If the Logan trailers are any indication, X-Men fans are going to be thrilled with this latest, greatest (if you believe our Kyle Anderson’s review) adventure. Fans have already been including the duo in their Logan fan art and we can’t wait to see the two on screen.

Logan t-shirt JP Perez

It’s so great when artists take inspiration from a trailer and come up with creative fan art. This t-shirt captures the old and the new with Laura front and center. Bonus: You can get this art as a print on metallic paper for your wall, should you need X-23 and her bloody claws to inspire you as you head out the door in the mornings.

Logan and X-23 Cross Stitch by Creative Lemons

I love inventive cross stitch and this one is downright sweet. I could only hope that the X-Mansion is filled with them for every new student that graduates from the Institute. Per the description, “This is a pattern that attempts to blend the warm fuzzy family feeling with the gritty dark drama family feeling.” Aw. Points for the cross-stitched buried skeleton.

Logan Pencil Drawing by Charlotte Brooke Art

Based on the promotional poster for Logan, this drawing is full of stunning detail. The gorgeous piece of work took three days to complete and showcases the beautiful but simple gesture of Wolverine and X-23 holding hands (claws). The more you stare at it the more real it becomes, it’s hard to believe it’s just a pencil sketch.

X-23 Phone Case from TeePublic

After the Logan trailer was released everyone was stunned not by the action, not by the intensity, but by X-23’s too cool for school outfit. This phone case captures Laura in her summer shades, right after they hit up the mini-mart.

Images: JP Perez, Creative Lemons, Charlotte Brooke Art, TeePublic

Get sentimental with Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman

LAIKA CEO and KUBO Director Travis Knight Lands TRANSFORMERS Bumblebee Movie

This is an unexpected bit of news; it appears the fifth Transformers feature may not be the last “Knight” after all. According to Deadline, the director of the first Transformers spin-off movie, as-yet-untitled but featuring Bumblebee, will be…Travis Knight.

On the one hand, there’s some obvious logic to it. As director of Kubo and the Two Strings, he worked extensively with visual effects, integrating stop-motion and CG to a much more extensive degree than in any previous animated film. On the other, he also happens to be the president and CEO of Laika, the stop-motion studio behind Kubo that’s currently developing multiple projects. Scoring him is a coup akin to getting John Lasseter to make a non-Disney movie. 

No details of the Bumblebee movie plot have leaked yet, though Michael Bay joked that he had an R-rated idea for it. But getting an animator to direct is an interesting choice; non-Transformers fans sometimes complain they can’t tell the robots apart, and a guy at the helm whose life has been spent giving personality to inanimate objects can probably do something about that, though Bumblebee already has more personality than most.

Does this announcement “spoil” the outcome of the teased Optimus/Bumblebee fight in The Last Knight? Not necessarily. It could be a prequel. It’ll be interesting to see if Knight lets Bumblebee use his full speaking voice again, or stick to the radio-station-switching conversation of prior films. The Kubo director has such a different personality from the man most known for Transformers movies that their approaches could be, dare we say it…like Knight and Bay?

Nerdist has reached out to Paramount for independent confirmation, but had not received a response as of publication time. So now we reach out to you, readers–what do you think of the Laika CEO taking an Autobot out for a spin? “Bee” seeing you in comments to get your thoughts!

Image: Paramount

Image Comics Unleashes the SHIRTLESS BEAR-FIGHTER (Exclusive)

Bears will get punched. In the face.

This is the promise of the new Image Comics series, Shirtless Bear-Fighter. Writers Jody Leheup and Sebastian Girner, artist Nil Vendrell and colorist Mike Spicer have produced one of the strangest comics to be announced in recent memory. It’s literally about shirtless guy fighting bears. You can keep your science fiction dramas and your crime thrillers; we’ll take the bear punching. This sound like too much fun to pass up.

So, what exactly is Shirtless Bear-Fighter about? “‘Angriest man alive swears to fight all bears for what they did to him,’ would be the simplest pitch, but we hope readers will quickly realize that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Girner told us. “It’s also the story of a wrathful man who has to change if he’s going to save his loved ones and the forest he’s sworn to protect,” Leheup added. So yes, it’s about a shirtless dude piledriving bears, but there’s a heart and soul to it, too. “Bears will get punched (or suplexed, kicked, piledrived) every issue, but this comic will also deliver humor, drama, tears and cheers. It’s the full package,” Girner said.

The shirtless bear fighting character isn’t some one-dimensional punching machine, either. “It was like Sebastian and I had stumbled onto this legend that had been frozen in ice. All we had to do was wake him up and get the hell out of the way,” Leheup said of the comics’ development. The writing duo told us that the title of the story came first, which led to them building a mythology around it. “It was like we had the perfect title, now we needed to do the work and make a comic that was worthy of it!” Girner said.

There’s certainly a throwback quality to this title. From ’80s action movies to classic superhero comics, the influences on Shirtless Bear-Fighter are rooted in macho action-adventure stories. “The obvious well we drew from is superhero comics, and the very-silly-yet-mega-serious approach to pathos that genre does so well when it’s done right. So much of that is ‘screaming angry men forever flexing muscles for revenge’ which is hilarious and can be very cathartic, but we wanted to use that silliness as a vessel for a story that was very close to our hearts,” Leheup said.

It’s clear from looking at the covers – which you can peep in the gallery below – that Shirtless Bar-Fighter has cornered the market on the aforementioned “screaming angry men.” Finding the right artist to bring all that angry-dude energy to life was no easy task. “We needed someone who wasn’t just a good draftsman and great at storytelling but someone with a unique voice that could really nail comedic timing and most importantly, the emotional heart of any given scene. Nil (Vendrell) can do all of that and draw the crap out of a bear-fight.”

Shirtless Bear-Fighter is being unleashed this June, and we’re pretty damn excited to check it out, even though we love bears. When we asked Jeheup and Girner why they hated the lovable forest creatures so much, they gave us a couple answers, which ranged from “they don’t wear pants. It’s indecent,” to “they also sleep too much.”

The truth, it turns out, is much deeper than that though. “The worst bear is Kuma from Tekken,” Girner said. “When I play Tekken against Jody he always picks Kuma and kicks my ass. Because Kuma is bullshit.”

Images: Image Comics

Let’s talk about more famous fighters from comics!

Mean Girls Drive Us Mad in BEFORE I FALL (Review)

What if you had to live one day of your life over, and over, and over until you fully understood how even your most casual interactions impact those around you? That’s the premise at the center of Before I Fall, a teen mystery adapted from Lauren Oliver‘s YA novel. On its surface, its an intriguing idea, a Groundhog Day plot that focuses on a pretty and popular high school senior on a day that seems like any other. That is until it ends in her abrupt death, and then reboots to the morning before. Unfortunately, a rich concept is spoiled on a self-centered and self-righteous protagonist, who inspires exasperation more than empathy.

Before I Fall follows 17-year-old Samantha Kingston (Vampire Academy’s Zoey Deutch), who flits through the halls of her high school with her three best friends, gossiping, talking boys and popularity, and bullying anyone who dares to cross their path. The jeering quartet dubs their openly lesbian classmate a “bull dyke.” They brag about the reputations they’ve ruined via Snapchat shares. And they relentlessly harass sullen misfit Juliet (Elena Kampouris). As she silently shuffles past their lunch table, the girls grin like hyenas as they call her “psycho” and howl that she smells like urine. Samantha and her squad are mean girls so vicious they even chase Juliet out of a house party by spitting insults at her and chucking Solo cups of beer in her face. Then they die in a car accident.

In some teen movies (like Mean Girls), that moment might play as climactic comeuppance for their malicious ways. But in Before I Fall, it’s just the first terrible thing Samantha tries desperately to avoid in her repeated day. Not the bullying, mind you, just the part where karma repays them for it. Amid a teacher’s ignored lesson on Sisyphus’s punishing loop, and a half-hearted conversation about the butterfly effect, Samantha struggles to understand why this day is the one she’s stuck reliving. She quickly moves from confounded to infuriated, rebelling against this time trap by swapping her baby blue shirt-dress for an ultra low-cut black mini-dress, complete with dangerously high-heeled ankle boots and willfully smudged black eyeliner. Further mood changes are reflected in studded boots, simple sneakers, and finally a crop-topped sweat suit. Regrettably, the film itself is just as superficial, lacing the production design with circles (so many loops!) and butterflies (like the effect!), but offering nothing in the way of meaningful character development.

Eventually, Samantha realizes this looping day is a chance for self-reflection and change. She need not be a mean girl who dates a cute but uncaring boy just because “everybody wants to hook up with him.” She need not be silent when her group’s smirking ringleader Lindsay (a charismatic even when mean Halston Sage) torments her peers. She need not push away the love of her concerned mother (Jennifer Beals) and idolizing little sister (Erica Tremblay). Basically, she need not be a “bitch.” But what Samantha chooses to be instead is not as impressive as she thinks.

I don’t usually get into the third act in movie reviews. But Before I Fall left me livid, so I want you warned of exactly how it fails its audience. Spoilers ahead.

In the third act, Samantha finally starts saying not-nasty to nice things to the classmates she’d previously mocked or brazenly ignored. And we’re meant to think she’s become less shallow because instead of chasing the hot guy who treats her badly, she gives in to a Nice Guy (Logan Miller) who fawns over her, even though she doesn’t seem at all interested in him. This bad lesson declares that if a guy is nice to a girl, he deserves her love and devotion, and how she feels about him is incidental. But most galling of all, Samantha never even attempts to stop her friends from publicly and viciously shaming and assaulting Juliet at the party.

Continually caught up in her own dramas (mostly with boys and her own self-worth), Samantha repeatedly refuses to take a stand for Juliet when she knows how damaging that moment will be. Then the story crashes into an abrupt and infuriating end that has Samantha letting herself–and her still mean girl friends–off the hook because she lived one, single day as a decent person. Being not horrible is not enough to make her a hero, just as being not a boob-grabbing sex hound isn’t cause enough to make Miller’s pining creeper a worthy crush. The standards for teens here are so low that Before I Fall trips on them.

This movie is obliviously callous and vexingly vapid, delivering a story of a conceited girl who somehow makes a journey about learning to treat others with respect and care into being all about her. In the end, as Samantha beams with self-acceptance, I was hoping for one last loop so she might escape out her own ass. But instead Before I Fall fell to black, and left me groaning.

1 out of 5 burritos

STRANGER THINGS’ David Harbour Might Play Cable in DEADPOOL 2

Could Deadpool 2 have finally found its Cable? According to a report coming from the folks at The Wrap, Stranger Things’ own Sheriff Jim Hopper, actor David Harbour, could be playing the cyborg mutant solider from the future. This is after reports as early as this week said that none other than Russell Crowe wanted the role (you’re already Jor-El in the DCEU dude, don’t hog all the comic book roles) and earlier reports that said Pierce Brosnan and Don’t Breathe actor Stephen Lang were up for the role as well. Apparently another Man of Steel actor, Michael Shannon, was also up for the part, but scheduling conflicts prevented talks from going too far.

David Harbour isn’t the first person one might think of to play Nathan Summers (Cable’s real name, because he’s the son of X-Men Scott Summers and Jean Grey after all. Don’t expect that to come up in Deadpool 2 though). But if you were to just look at his work on Stranger Things, the roles of Sheriff Hopper and that of Cable are not that vastly different. Sheriff Jim Hopper has had a fairly big tragedy in his life, one that has left him grizzled and kind of “over it” all. He ends up finding himself again by connecting to a group of young people and helping them in their plight. Sounds kind of like Cable in the comics actually, so this might be a perfect casting.

Also, there are the physical attributes as well. Cable is almost always drawn in the comics as being physically bigger than Deadpool. But when your Deadpool actor is Ryan Reynolds, who is 6’2, it’s hard to find an actor who is imposing next to that guy. Luckily, David Harbour is 6’3 and built like a tank, so you have that as a positive as well. Now Cable doesn’t have to be bigger than Deadpool, because as comics fans know, Wolverine was a little short dude in the comics, and Hugh Jackman is anything but. And we all got over it pretty fast. But the actor playing Cable being a bigger, linebacker type could only help him in securing the role.

Whoever gets the part of Cable will probably be in this part for the long haul, as not only is the character supposed to show up in the Deadpool sequel, but he’ll be headlining the eventual X-Force movie as well. And if that takes off, the idea of a Cable solo film is anything but out of the question. Although Cable is usually portrayed as being older than the 41- year old Harbour, if this is a part that could last as long as ten or more years, they are going to want to cast an actor who isn’t too long in the tooth to play the physically demanding role for some time, but also has the gravitas to play an older character. David Harbour certainly has the grizzled “angry grandpa” voice down. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any reasons why David Harbour wouldn’t be perfect in the role.

What do you guys think of David Harbour potentially playing Cable? Do you agree with us that he’s perfect, or do you have other ideas? Let us know your thoughts down below in the comments.

Images: Netflix / Marvel Comics

Puck Soup #40: Best NHL Trade Deadline Ever

Greg and Dave and special guest Sean Leahy of Puck Daddy talk about the blockbuster trades of what was, without question, the most entertaining trade deadline in history. (And by “entertaining” we mean excruciating.) We analyze every trade, while also discussing alligator attacks, aliens, foods we hate, Leicester City, Neapolitan ice cream and Dave’s zipper problems.

Follow @wyshynski, @davelozo and @PuckSoupPodcast on Twitter!

A Pair of Teenagers Built an Awesome Roller Coaster in Their Backyard

There are plenty of ways to fight off boredom as a high school kid. Hang out with friends, go to the movies, play a sport, and other classic stuff. JT Nejedlo and Aidan Deaven of Delafield, Wisconsin did something a bit more ambitious than that, though, and established themselves as two of the coolest high school makers in the country by building their own roller coaster (via BoingBoing).

According to Wisconsin news station TMJ4, the pair decided to build the roller coaster one summer for the most child-like of reasons: because it would be fun. It also helped that Deaven’s father is a former physics professor, so his insight (and permission) were surely valuable. The ride starts on the backyard treehouse, using the momentum from that initial descent to take them across the property. Aside from riding their DIY attraction over and over, they also made a few basketball trick shots while sitting in the cart, as seen in the video above.

Fun aside, the project also had the added benefit of helping the boys get into college. With the roller coaster on their resumes, they both were accepted to the University of Wisconsin, where Nejedlo is a first-year business student and Deaven will be there next year pursuing an engineering degree.

If this isn’t an inspiring message for young makers, we don’t know what is. If you have a seemingly pointless project that’s a bit geeky but seems super fun to you, absolutely go for it, because who knows what’ll happen as a result. At the very least, you’ll probably enjoy yourself.

Featured image: TMJ4

Schlock & Awe: CURSE OF THE DEMON

During Christmas, I told everybody about a series of one-off ghost stories on the BBC that I find super amazing. (Read about Ghost Stories for Christmas here!) Most of these were based on short stories written by the early-20th Century scholar turned author M.R. James, whose stories were all fairly contemporary to the Edwardian or late-Victorian eras, and as such, the idea of adapting them to modern day can be hit or miss. However, to date, only one of James’ stories has been turned into a theatrical feature film, and it’s a doozy. It was made in 1957 and was called Night of the Demon in Britain, and cut down and called Curse of the Demon here.

The story in question by James is entitled “Casting the Runes,” which doesn’t quite have the same pop to it as either of the Demon titles. In any case, and especially in the longer British cut, the film hews quite close to the original story, which might go down as one of James’ best plots. His shorts were usually quite high on atmosphere and creepiness, but usually focused on a single scholar investigating some antiquity and find it to be haunted. The plot of “Casting the Runes” actually has a definite villain, and a propulsive, troubling timeline.

This film version was written by prolific genre screenwriter Charles Bennett (who wrote several early Hitchcock films and B-noir flicks) and directed by the great French ex-pat director, Jacques Tourneur (he of Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and War-Gods of the Deep). Most of the tension is built around the character interactions but Tourneur is able to mine many weird and disturbing moments out of it, bookended by two surprisingly well done effects sequences, all the more impressive given the way most low-budget British horror films of the time were done.

The movie opens with a man named Harrington (Maurice Denham) visiting another man, a Dr. Karswell (Niall MacGinnis), and pleading for him to call off whatever he has planned. Karswell, we soon learn, is an occultist who had been discredited by Harrington’s investigations. Harrington swears he’ll print a retraction and call off his investigation if Karswell will stop the threat he gave him. Karswell agrees, but when it’s learned that a piece of parchment Karswell had given him has disintegrated, Karswell smugly shrugs and tells him it’s too late. Harrington leaves, terrified, and is soon overtaken by a huge demonic beast with flaming wings.

We are then introduced to Harrington’s American colleague, Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), who was coming to join Harrington in a conference about the non-existence of the supernatural, as well as Harrington’s niece Joanna (Peggy Cummins), both of whom start looking into Professor Harrington’s mysterious death. Harrington was going to expose Karswell at the conference, and Holden’s only link between the death and the cult leader is a man named Rand Hobard, an accused murderer who has fallen into a catatonic stupor. Karswell meets Holden at the British Museum’s library and offers to show him a particular book at his mansion, which the American accepts. Though Joanna is wary, and show’s Holden her uncle’s diary which shows just how scared he was of Karswell’s power, she and Holden go to the mansion.

Things start to get extra weird at the Karswell mansion, where the mysterious man is dressed as a clown to entertain children with magic. Later, he and Holden belittle each other’s beliefs and a sudden wind appears, seemingly caused by Karswell himself. When Holden continues to mock him, Karswell predicts Holden will die in three days. Thereafter, strange and troubling occurrences begin following Holden everywhere, and it’s learned that Karswell evidently passed Harrington a parchment inscribed with runic symbols shortly before his death. As the time ticks down, Holden discovers that he too had been given runic symbols on a piece of parchment, and investigation into that leads him to realize it’s an ancient celtic curse.

While Holden doesn’t believe in the occult or the supernatural at all, he can’t help but be worried about the timeline and what happened to Harrington. He has a colleague hypnotize Rand Hobard for information, and he learns that the accused murderer is no criminal at all, just a follower of Karswell who objected to the man’s methods. The only true way to stop Karswell is to pass the runic symbols back to him, without him knowing, before the three days are up. Because the demon needs a victim, no matter who it is.

I find this movie intensely creepy, and very exciting, especially for the time. While Hammer Films were making sumptuous Gothic horror flicks in dazzling technicolor, Night of the Demon makes the most of its black & white photography, making every long hallway, set of stairs, or even STONEHENGE look insanely scary. The scene at Karswell’s mansion, with him in his hobo-ish clown makeup, is also intensely creepy, and it very nicely conveys just how superciliously evil the man is. Like a lot of the best villains, he’s unfailingly polite, but never, ever kind.

All of that leads us to talking about the two big effects sequences, where we do indeed see a demon, making the reality of such an entity completely unambiguous. The original story, and indeed the desire of Bennett, Tourneur, and star Dana Andrews, was to never show anything overtly supernatural, thus making the audience have to decide if the deaths of certain characters was due to accident, coincidence, or a real demonic entity. However, the film’s producer, Hal E. Chester, was adamant that the movie needed a real demon to give it the punch it needed. While I can see both sides of this argument, I do want to applaud them for the puppet they used, and the way it was filmed, which made it tangible and worth fearing. There’s also a very brutal moment when the demon picks up its final victim and claws their dangling body viciously.

So if no other M.R. James story ever gets turned into a feature film, I think at the very least, 60 years ago they did a great job with this spooky little movie. I actually think “Casting the Runes” could do well today, if the right tone was struck. It’s rumored that the great Joe Dante could be mounting a new version, but not much has been said about it since 2013, when Simon Pegg was attached to star. Let’s hope it one day happens; I would like to see that. As for now, you can get a very inexpensive and barebones DVD of both Night of the Demon and Curse of the Demon; not ideal, but the movie’s worth it.

Images: Columbia

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!