Poe Sundays – The Masque of the Red Death

Every Sunday in October is Poe Sunday, the day we celebrate the Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. This year, I’ll suggest the best movie adaptations of Poe’s work.

In the lingering post-pandemic era of Covid-19 and trump presidency, Roger Corman’s 1964 gothic horror triumph, The Masque of the Red Death has never seemed more relevant. Vincent Price’s sadistic portrayal of Prospero, the greedy devil-worshipping medieval ruler who tortured his peasant villagers and gave shelter to his wealthy courtiers from a plague, only to learn you can’t hide from death, is a chilling sublime performance that cemented his legacy as a horror legend.

Corman weaved two tales from Edgar Allan Poe, Masque of the Red Death and Hop-Frog to create this cult-classic and it’s one of his best. While he and screenwriters Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell took several liberties with the stories, I find this adaption is the closest to any of Poe’s works.

Poe Sundays – Extraordinary Tales

Every Sunday in October is Poe Sunday, the day we celebrate the Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. This year, I’ll suggest the best movie adaptations of Poe’s work.

Raul Garcia writes and directs this dark animated anthology of Edgar Allan Poe’s most beloved gothic tales, featuring both new voiceover and original pre-recorded narration from horror’s most legendary actors and directors. It’s colorful surrealist animation and perfectly ghastly for Poe lovers to watch on Halloween night.

Poe Sundays – House of Usher

Every Sunday in October is Poe Sunday, the day we celebrate the Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. This year, I’ll suggest the best movie adaptations of Poe’s work.

Atmospheric and spooky, House of Usher may be the best most faithful Poe story adaption that director Roger Corman ever created. Vincent Price, Mark Damon, and Myrna Fahey, earnestly chew through Richard Matheson’s screenplay so well, gothic drama oozing out of their pores in every scene, until that thrilling legendary cinematic end.

Poe Sundays – The Tell-Tale Heart, 1953

In 1953, United Production Artists produced an 8-minute animation based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. This surreal psychological horror short film, narrated by James Mason and distributed by Columbia Pictures, became the first animated film to earn an X rating in the UK. The reason? Well, that’s just what old stuffy white dudes do when someone makes a film about killing old stuffy white dudes for no reason.

Click here for more information on The Tell-Tale Heart from 1953.

31 Days of Halloween 2022

Happy October! After starting late this Halloween season, I’m now ready to post the schedule of this year’s 31 Days of Halloween Celebration. The theme this October is dystopian Halloween. With the doomsday clock ticking down, due to savages like Russian dictator Vladamir Putin and gun-crazed trump-loving jesus-freaks, it’s probably way past time to think about how humankind plans to survive the apocalypse, in particular, how we’ll preserve our traditions and holidays, like Halloween.

Part of the month, we’ll have some fun with the dystopian Halloween-horror theme, but I have decided to mix in some good old-fashion Halloween traditional themes as well, cuz, I just love talking about those Halloween memories.

Have a safe and happy Halloween season!

31 Days of Halloween Schedule

Monday Macabre
Mondays are always dedicated to Haiku, but every Monday in October we’ll explore a dystopian Halloween.

Tuesday Terror
Every Tuesday, I’ll share my favorite scary movies that I believe make great Halloween season viewing.

Wicked Art Wednesdays
Every Wednesday, I’ll share some spooktacular Halloween art with an apocalyptic twist. I might even post some my own original Halloween pencil stencil art.

Throwback Thursdays
Preservation of Halloween traditions is important for several reasons. Every Thursday, let’s explore the origins of some Halloween traditions and muse over whether these traditions might survive the apocalypse.

Friday Fright Nightcaps
Ghosts aren’t the only ones who like to get sheet-faced on Halloween. Check back every Friday for Halloween season-inspired cocktails.

Sinister Saturdays
In the past few years, Sinister Saturdays have always been dedicated to food and Halloween recipes. The problem was, besides my being the worst cook in America, people are simply reluctant to let you share their recipes online, even if you give them complete credit and link back to their website. So, in the true spirit of Sinister Saturdays, we’re just going to let the demons loose that day and see what they come up with.

Poe Sundays
This year’s tribute to the master of macabre, Edgar Allan Poe, will feature my thoughts on the best Poe adaptations on film.

4^th Annual Halloween Haiku Challenge 2022
#Halloweenhaikuchallenge

Share your most original or scariest visual Halloween Haiku photos during October for a chance to win some prizes.

More details about the haiku contest will be announced on October 18^th.

Join in the fun, and follow me @Halloweenhorrorhaiku on Instagram and @Halloweenkristy on Twitter

Poe Sundays

I couldn’t resist throwing in one last Poe Sunday before officially ending the Halloween 2021 season.

Poe created the modern detective story by creating many story elements that other writers would use in their own writings. He was the first author to leave clues for readers to pick up on, and the most significantly, Poe was also the first to create a recurring sleuth character in C. Auguste Dupin, a man of superior intellect and keen sense, who solves the mystery by analyzing the facts of the case through the power of observation. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle admitted to being heavily influenced by Poe, as his own masterful creation of Sherlock Holmes, shared many of the same qualities with detective Dupin.

You can learn more about the character here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Auguste_Dupin

Poe Sundays

Happy Halloween Sunday! On this last day in October, we pay tribute to Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe.

You can read the entire poem here: https://poestories.com/read/raven

Fun Fact: After being first turned down by a publisher friend, Poe sold the Raven poem to The American Review for $9. Subsequent publishings followed and even made Poe famous, but the man received little financial success.

Poe Sundays

On Sundays, we celebrate the Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe

Fun Fact: Readers of the day were so horrified by the story’s violence, they complained to the editor of the Messenger, the first magazine to publish Berenice. Poe himself later removed 4 paragraphs of text, thus, many early publishings are missing the detailed heinous act of Poe’s story.

Poe was angry at being forced to self-censor his own work, believing a story should be judged solely by how many copies it sold.

You can read Berenice in its entirety here:
https://poestories.com/read/berenice

Poe Sundays

On Sundays, we celebrate the Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe

Fun Facts: Poe himself had an obsessive fear of being buried alive do to catslepsy, a state where someone occasionally falls completely still and is unable to move or speak. There were a few cases of it happening during Poe’s lifetime that made the papers. No doubt those stories left a huge impression on the author.

Poe Sundays

Every Sunday, we celebrate excerpts and quotes from the works of the Master of Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe.

Fun Facts: It seems Poe was influenced by a number of other authors of his time to write a story based on the Spanish Inquisition, after reading History of the Spanish Inquisition by Juan Antonio Llorente. William Mudford’s The Iron Shroud, a short story of iron torture chamber was also an influence, as well as George Sale’s translations of the Qur’an, for which many of Poe’s works were heavily inspired by.*