The Gore Connoisseurs

Since the protagonists of your average horror movie are teenagers, it's not such a surprise that one of the genre's set pieces has become the classroom scene. From Halloween to Hereditary , we unpick four of the most memorable. Horror filmmakers often use classroom scenes to unpack the themes of their movies, allowing viewers to make metaphorical links between the film's villain and more abstract concepts like destiny and existential dread.  Teenagers in horror films can find themselves drifting off as their teacher waxes lyrical about Hamlet one minute, only to be rudely awakened by masked serial killers and demonic old ladies the next. If you thought you had painful memories of your schooldays, check out what these guys had to go through. Halloween (1978) - Laurie has a date with destiny What's going down? Studious Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is distracted from her English class by Michael Myers watching her at the window with murder on his mind. ...

To celebrate the arrival of spooky season, here's a throwback to the time in 2018 when  Sophia Moss  and I sat down to roadtest  an all new drinking game  for John Carpenter's Halloween . We revisited the slasher classic with two bottles of red and a bottle of gin and live tweeted our descent into drunkeness. Here's what happened... The short story: The drinking game was much more lethal than we intended. Having finished one bottle of wine around the twenty minute mark, we began to doubt whether we'd make it to the end. Early inebriation Drinking for every 30 seconds of the Halloween theme was a bad idea. Carpenter may have composed one of the most iconic horror themes ever, but he doesn't half know it. The tinkling piano and groovy synths were popping up pretty much constantly, and as a consequence the wine was quickly disappearing. We also drank each time Michael could be seen spying on potential victims - considering the first half of the film ...

With spooky season just around the corner, there can only be one film to celebrate the festivities. It's time to head back to Haddonfield to celebrate and get roaringly drunk in the process. Halloween is chock full of slasher tropes, so there's plenty of fodder for a catastrophic drinking game. And because it would be irresponsible to give you a drinking game without testing it ourselves, travel blogger Sophia Moss and I trialed it for health and safety reasons. You can see the full story of how it went  here . So grab a bottle of wine and a bottle of your favourite spirit, check the news to make sure no crazed killers have escaped your local psychiatric hospital, and whatever you do don't have sex. And for God's sake listen to Dr Loomis. Drink a finger of wine/beer if... The  Halloween  theme music plays We're a big fan of John Carpenter's jazzy synth music, and it's great that the director's multi-talented. But don't you thi...

We've been poking around YouTube trying to find the best horror short films so you don't have to. This week: Final Girls by Michelle Hanson Synopsis:  Jessica (Anna Leeper) and Courtney (Cat McApline) are a lesbian couple hiding out in a tent after their friends have been dispatched by a crazed masked killer. Courtney, like the cast of  Scream,  is clearly a horror nerd and has realised that only one of them can survive and become The Final Girl. Background:  The horror genre has a bad rep for its handling of female characters, particularly the "final girl" trope. This slasher flick cliche has a lone women – who is typically presented as less sexual and more intelligent than the other female characters – surviving the carnage. Think Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , Friday the 13th. The trope is still going strong with modern slashers like You're Next  or even Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead remake. Michelle Hanson has tackled this horror trope...