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Mark Harrison Oct 31, 2017

Want to enhance your horror movie? Make sure you sign up a cat...

This feature contains broad spoilers for several horror movies featuring cats, including Alien, Cat People, Drag Me To Hell, Fallen, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Pet Sematary and The Voices.

The relationship between humans and cats over time has given way to a number of cultural impressions and outright superstitions. Ancient Egyptians associated them with gods. In the Middle Ages, they were linked with witches and killed en masse, which probably hastened the spread of the Black Plague through the rodent population. And in the modern day, it's interchangeably lucky or not if a black cat crosses your path.

Like anything with such a wide array of symbolic links, movies have presented cats as characters in different ways over the years. It's their abiding association with the supernatural – whether as an omen...

Ask a certain crowd of people what the defining MTV show of their childhood was, and it’s not Trl, or Real World or Jersey Shore. It’s Daria. Though Ms. Morgendorffer had been seen on Beavis and Butt-Head before, the March 3, 1997, premiere of Daria proved that the two shows couldn’t be more different. Let’s take a fond trip back to Lawndale for a closer look at the best animated misanthrope of the ‘90s.

1. B&B-h creator Mike Judge had no involvement in Daria …

Judge agreed to release the character, but that’s where his involvement with the show ended.

By Jonathan Weichsel, MoreHorror.com

Tales of Poe, an anthology film directed by Bart Mastronardi and Alan Rowe Kelly, consists of three very strong, but very different short films adapted from the works of Edgar Alan Poe. Some viewers will prefer the straightforward yet creepy The Telltale Heart, others will laugh out loud the campy Tales from the Crypt inspired The Cask of Amontillado, while others will get sucked into the lush visuals of the abstract, surreal Dreams. The three stories in the anthology are all so strong, yet so distinct, that three people could watch the film and each one have a different favorite.

"The Telltale Heart", the most straightforward adaptation in the anthology, is also conversely the one that takes the most interesting liberties with its source material. Switching the genders of the main characters, and having the narrator, brilliantly played by the great Debbie Rochon, tell her...

In 10th grade, I got to take what is possibly still my favorite class of all time: an elective on writing horror, science-fiction and mystery. Every year, I look for a genuinely scary movie to add to my list of favorites. I have a demonological book club with a friend just so we can have an excuse to read too much into The Exorcist.

But that’s my usual thing. I’m not here to steer you towards Nightmare on 13th Street, Jason vs. Jamie Lee Curtis, The Heretic. I won’t tell you which book you should read next. What I am here to discuss is a list of 10 movies that are scary for non-traditional reasons. This is part satire and part acknowledgment of Hollywood scare tactics. Feel free to add your own to the list as usual. And these are in no particular order.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

10. The...

In the first episode of The Following, there’s a moment in which FBI investigator Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) stands in the middle of a gruesome crime scene, looking at the word nevermore scrawled on the wall in blood. A lightbulb goes on. “The Raven!” Bacon blurts out. “Poe is symbolizing the finality of death!” That pretty much encapsulates the show's approach to Edgar Allan Poe: He’s the would-be Charles Manson of the Romantic era, a man for whom art, violence, and insanity were inseparable. On the show, this vision is carried out by Joe Carroll (James Purefoy), a famous literature professor who forms a cult of Poe-inspired serial killers. (For example, they cut out victims’ eyes because of “eye motifs” in “The Black Cat” and “The Telltale Heart.”) To find out how actual Poe scholars feel about this interpretation, we got in touch with renowned Penn State professor Richard Kopley,...

In “The Raven,” which opens nationwide on April 27, John Cusack stars as a fictionalized version of Edgar Allan Poe. And in this big-screen extravaganza, directed by James McTeigue (“V for Vendetta”), Poe isn’t just the famous – and famously sozzled – author of “The Raven” and “The Telltale Heart”; he’s also a surprisingly spry action hero, recruited by the police to help solve a series of grisly murders based on his own stories.

Last weekend, Cusack, a newly minted Hollywood Walk of Famer, and his close friend Mark Leyner, author of "The Sugar Frosted Nutsack," appeared at the La Times Festival of Books to talk about Poe, his legacy, the new movie, and the artistic imperative – felt by writers and actors alike – to brave the darkness in order to tell great stories. He also offers some insight into why he hasn't starred in a romantic comedy for a while. Here...

With The Raven heading to cinemas, we met its director, James McTeigue, to talk films, R-ratings, V For Vendetta Masks, pet raccoons, and much more…

Director James McTeigue was responsible for adapting the shadowy world of Alan Moore’s V For Vendetta in 2006, and painted the big screen crimson in the violent Ninja Assassin three years later. Now, McTeigue has brought shadows and gore together for the period serial killer thriller The Raven, which sees Edgar Allan Poe on the trail of a murderer whose crimes are inspired by the author’s tales of the macabre.

Ahead of The Raven’s UK release this Friday, it was a pleasure to sit with McTeigue and talk about Poe, the iconic status of V For Vendetta’s Fawkes mask, R-rated movies, and best of all, pet raccoons…

I wanted to start off, if I may, by talking about raccoons. Was the idea...

When you see the same people at the same place everyday for a week, you become family. And the final day of Fantastic Fest 2010 was our family reunion. As the audience of film nuts all made our final trip to the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, the discussion turned backwards on a fantastic week of films. It was difficult to admit that day eight was the end, but the programmers certainly outdid themselves, featuring films and events that were the perfect way to end a perfect week. Hit the jump to read about the awesome sci-fi flick Transfer, the epic Hong Kong blockbuster Woochi and the live Edgar Allen Poe performance Nevermore.

Transfer is like Being John Malkovich meets Primer. It’s a German film about an elderly couple who decides to transfer their conscious into a pair of young, virile African people. The twist, though, is that while the technology works perfectly during the day,...