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The holidays are now in full swing, with Thanksgiving arriving later this week. And as always, we’d like to remind you that horror can provide the perfect escape from holiday stress.

This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to horror titles perfect for Thanksgiving. These picks avoid some of the most obvious choices, like Blood Rage (available on Night Flight+) or Thanksgiving (on Netflix), in favor of more unexpected holiday horror offerings.

These titles include cult classics that bring nail-biting tension and/or extra servings of cheese, all set during the Thanksgiving holiday. Here’s where you can stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Black Friday – Prime Video

A raucous, campy creature feature that captures the horrors of shopping on Black Friday. Set within a toy store, it follows a group of disgruntled employees as they begrudgingly arrive for work on Thanksgiving...

One of the earliest Alien rip-offs was made for US television. We take a look back at 1981’s The Intruder Within.

Much like Jaws, Star Wars and Mad Max before it, the success of 1979’s Alien prompted studios and producers the world over to make their own hastily-made rip-off movies. Thanks to – shall we say – enterprising filmmakers like Roger Corman and Norman J Warren, we got cheap and cheerful fare like Barracuda (1978), Battle Beyond The Stars (1980) and Inseminoid (1981).

One of the earliest Alien clones to emerge like a shambling monster, though, was The Intruder Within – a low-budget TV movie that cheekily borrowed all sorts of ideas from Ridley Scott’s hit, but transplanted the entire thing from a spaceship in the future to an oil rig in the post-energy crisis early 1980s. As you can probably imagine, it isn’t a lost classic, but it’s fascinating to revisit, both...

Thanks to the continued dominance of the home video market and digitization of cable TV, horror’s identity in the ’90s was doomed to be tricky to nail down, thanks to the vast sea of options beyond theatrical releases. For every Candyman or Scream released in theaters, there are dozens more of straight-to-video or made-for-cable horror movies.

This week, we’re diving a little deeper into the ’90s catalog, spotlighting underseen ’90s horror movies that flew under the radar. These streaming picks run the gamut in style and tone, from esoteric extreme French horror to gonzo Hong Kong cinema and beyond.

Here’s where you can stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Baby Blood – AMC+, Kanopy

Well before the rise of New French Extremity horror, there was 1990’s bizarre Baby Blood. Yanka is a circus performer stuck in an abusive relationship until a...

This month’s installment of Deep Cuts Rising features a variety of horror movies, with some selections reflecting a specific day or event in November, and others chosen at random.

Regardless of how they came to be here, or what they’re about, these past movies can generally be considered overlooked, forgotten or unknown.

This month’s offerings feature Dracula, a giant zombie poodle, a golem, and more.

The Tomb of Dracula (1980)

Image: The Tomb of Dracula

Directed by Minoru Okazaki.

For World Television Day (November 21), Dracula followers as well as Marvel fans might get a kick out of the 1980 animated TV-movie based on the serialized comic series The Tomb of Dracula. Between 1972 and 1979, the iconic Count Dracula was reworked into a master antagonist who was routinely opposed by a team of vampire slayers. The same series also contains the introduction of popular Marvel character Blade.

Marvel and Toei Animation...

Welcome back to Let’s Scare Bryan to Death, where I’m thrilled to be talking to one of the great voices working in horror journalism today, Terry Mesnard. Be it through his website Gayly Dreadful or through Scarred for Life, the podcast he co-hosts with Marybeth McAndrews, Mesnard’s analysis is always intelligent, deliberate, and playful.

Not surprisingly, before nominating a film to discuss, Mesnard did a little research to look at the movies I’ve covered in past installments. Given that so far I’ve covered films ranging from Brian De Palma staples to classic J-horror to queer giallo flicks, Mesnard had just one thought: “Bryan really needs to class up his column.” Enter the 1991 James Cummins horror comedy The Boneyard, a film that I had not even heard of before Mesnard suggested it. But when I saw the cover, featuring what appeared to be some sort of mutant poodle,...

April’s home entertainment releases are closing out on a strong note, as we have a bunch of great titles coming our way on Tuesday. Arrow Video has put together a stellar Special Edition set for Killer Klowns from Outer Space that fans are definitely going to want to pick up, and Kino Lorber has given the cult classic The Boneyard an HD overhaul as well. Scream Factory is keeping busy with a trio of cinematic treats—Daughters of Satan, the Collector’s Edition of Cyborg and a Troll/Troll 2 double feature—and Full Moon has put together a special set for the original Puppet Master to boot.

Other notable releases for April 24th include The Maze 3D, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, 7 Guardians of the Tomb, Him, and Dead Justice.

The Boneyard

A policeman (Ed Nelson) and a psychic (Deborah Rose) link cult mayhem to a morgue (run...

This is the second year for the Makeup and Hairstylists Guild joining the awards game, and they've been a welcome addition to the circuit. They spread their nods thin across a number of categories, but it's a good window into what this branch digs, for sure. This year, the only two films on the Academy's bake-off list of finalists that didn't garner any recognition were "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" and "Noah." Meaning "Foxcatcher," "The Grand Budapest Hotel," "Guardians of the Galaxy," "Maleficent" and "The Theory of Everything" were each represented in one form or another. Meanwhile, "Guardians of the Galaxy" led with the most mentions at three, while "The Grand Budapest Hotel," "Interstellar" and "Into the Woods" each got a pair. As previously announced, Oscar-winning make-up artist Rick Baker and Emmy-nominated hair stylist Kathryn Blondell will receive the Guild's Lifetime Achievement Awards. Check out the full list of nominees below,...

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 and Into The Woods are among the feature nominees announced today for the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild Awards. There is a tie in the Television and New Media Series Best Contemporary Make-Up Category resulting in six nominees. The awards will be presented during a ceremony February 14 at Paramount Studios. Here’s the complete list:

Feature Length Motion Picture (Feature Films)

Best Contemporary Make-up

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Make-Up Artists: Allan Apone, Nicole Sortillon and Lisa Rocco (Petition)

Gone Girl

Make-Up Artists: Kate Biscoe and Gigi Williams

Guardians of the Galaxy

Make-Up Artist: Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou

Interstellar

Make-Up Artists: Luisa Abel and Jay Wejebe

Nightcrawler

Make-Up Artists: Donald Mowat and Malanie Romero

Feature Length Motion Picture (Feature Films)

Best Period And/Or Character Make-up

Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1

Make-Up Artists: Ve Neill, Nikoletta Skarlatos and Conor McCullagh (Petition)

Into the Woods...

I realize that I am one out of millions when I say how much influence the original Star Trek series had on my life when it premiered in 1966. I was four years old then, had an older brother of seven and we were hopelessly addicted to the adventures of the USS Enterprise and her crew. When Star Trek conventions started popping up in New Orleans in the very early 1970s, I even put together a “Gorn” costume (the lizard creature from the episode “Arena”) and won an honorable mention. When Star Trek disappeared from television, it was a bit shocking for us young fans, and it would be a few years before it reappeared in syndication, at least in New Orleans. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture opened, I was in High School. Already tainted by the adventures of Luke Skywalker and pals in Star Wars, I was a bit less enthusiastic by this big screen effort...

Next Tuesday Shout! Factory unleashes yet another winning package that we never thought we'd see. That's right, kids. The Slumber Party Massacre collection is heading our way, and we have a look at it for you!

From the Press Release:

Stay up all night with the films that put a new twist on the slasher genre. Along with Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980) and Prom Night (1980), Slumber Party Massacre (1982) helped define the slasher film ethos of the 1980s. Put together by first-time director Amy Holden from a script, titled “Don’t Open the Door," by feminist author Rita Mae Brown (Rubyfruit Jungle), the film was an immediate hit for Roger Corman's New World Pictures, eventually spawning two sequels.

Here, for the first time, all three Slumber Party Massacres are brought together in one DVD set, due to drill its way into your heart on October 5, 2010 from Shout! Factory, in association with New Horizons Picture Corporation.

October 5th is looking so sweet! In what's going to be a banner day for Roger Corman fans, Shout! Factory (god bless its soul) is releasing several of Corman's craziest titles as part of its stellar Cult Classics Collection, and we've got all the details!

From the Press Release:

Stay up all night with the films that put a new twist on the slasher genre. Along with Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th(1980) and Prom Night (1980), Slumber Party Massacre (1982) helped define the slasher film ethos of the 1980s. Put together by first-time director Amy Holden from a script, titled “Don’t Open the Door," by feminist author Rita Mae Brown (Rubyfruit Jungle), the film was an immediate hit for Roger Corman's New World Pictures, eventually spawning two sequels.

Here, for the first time, all three Slumber Party Massacres are brought together in one DVD set, due to drill its way into...