Joe Streckert
@joestreckert
Portland writer. Erstwhile podcaster. Occasional author. Horror fan and pinball enthusiast.
Mildly considering one of the support figures from the Skidmore Fountain. It was Portland’s first piece of public art and would be distinctive and non-obvious.
My cat jumped on my desk during a meeting today. A coworker said “Oh! He looks just like Brad Pitt in Interview With the Vampire!” Everyone in the meeting got very confused. “Joe’s cat is a hot blonde guy,” she said. Reader, I will leave it up to you if Waffles looks anything like a sad vampire.
Very sad to hear about Sal Buscema passing away. I always liked his version of the Hulk and how it incorporated monstrosity with physical ideal. His Hulk was part beastly Mr. Hyde, part herculean hero. A very good balance that worked for the character.
This magazine cover is a core memory for me. Simon Belmont looked like the ultimate badass.
"They called me mad at the academy! MAD! They said it couldn’t be done! But I’ll show those fools! I’ll show the WHOLE WORLD!"
31 days of horror recs day 31! Tales of Halloween is an anthology of ten horror shorts from various writers and directors. It's a grab-bag of trick-or-treat candies, all of which take place on Halloween night. Have a great Halloween, folks! And may Spooky Season live on in your heart all year!
31 days of horror recs day 30! House of Ashes is about a widowed woman under house arrest for having a miscarriage. It's about trauma, grief, and life under patriarchal fascism. It's also a haunted house movie that gets nuts at the end, a topical movie that knows how to have fun.
31 days of horror recs day 29! Do you like giallo-esque slashers? Queer horror? French stuff? Movies where blades come out of sex toys? The literal entwining of thanatos and eros into a big, bloody weird mess? Cool! You should watch Knife + Heart. It's all of those things.
31 days of horror recs day 28! Pieces is trashy. Exploitative. Nearly pornographic. It's schlock in its purest form. Is it any good? Probably not. But if you're looking for the platonic ideal of a cheap, nasty slasher film, this is it.
31 days of horror recs day 27! One last game. Inscryption got a lot of attention when it came out in 2021, and rightly so. Since I played it I can't get its ideas and the way it unfolded its narrative out of my head. An absolutely brilliant example of playable horror. Can't recommend it enough.
31 days of horror recs day 26! Let's stick with video games. Kill Knight is a game entirely set in hell. And it really feels like it. You're constantly surrounded by demons and on the brink of death. It's at once stressful and transcendent, like if the best black metal was a video game.
31 days of horror recs day 25! Slay the Princess is a video game where a narrator (Jonathan Sims of Magnus Archives fame) tells you to kill someone. Specifically a princess. But you don't have to! You can do other stuff if you want. You have free will and agency! Probably!
31 days of horror recs day 24! Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt is a haunted house book. It's also about the all-too-real horror of being trans in the UK. It plays around with subjectivity at the climax, pulling a trick that you can only really do in print to very good effect.
31 days of horror recs day 23! The Return by Rachel Harrison is about friends who've grown apart in adulthood. It's also about a monster. Harrison understands that monsters are symbolic reflections of our interiority, and at the same time they are literal gross scary things that try to get your.
31 days of horror recs day 22! What if Lovecraft was less racist and more horny? You'd get From Beyond! This movie is nuts, and features a whole lot of Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton being attractive while fucked-up cosmic horror shit happens. Also, a lot of really unsubtle phallic imagery.
31 days of horror recs day 21! Dead and Buried is about a small town with a horrible secret. Visitors arrive, they're attacked by locals, they die. A sheriff investigates, and what he finds is... really goofy actually. But also batshit and fun in the best kind of horror movie way.