I Knew You Didn't Feel Like Sleeping: Happy Halloween!

There is something macabre about most of my posts, whether it's a documentary about odd people, strange phenomena, campy and nostalgic TV shows, the horrors of mother nature, history, or a catastrophe. In the spirit of Halloween I compiled the spookiest of my posts. I've dished out a bit of true crime, a bit of horror film dissection, and a touch of the supernatural. Queue up your Netflix. This list will keep you occupied (and looking over your shoulder) through All Hallows Eve. 

Room 237

This documentary attempts to lay bare the hidden messages Stanley Kubrick left in his classic horror film The Shining. I recommend watching Room 237 and then take a crack at The Shining after. See if you can spot them all, or start your own Kubrick conspiracy theory!

VBS Meets... Issei Sagawa

An interview with a real cannibal who committed a heinous crime and is free and living in Japan... Be prepared for gruesome crime photos.

Hunting for a Quality Ghost Show

This is the most viewed post on Consume+Consume. This is probably true because a lot of people are hunting for a quality ghost show by typing this very headline into Google. If you do reach this article in that manner, will your prayers be answered? Click to find out.

Nightmares in Red White and Blue

History as told by horror films. See how since the inception of motion pictures art has been imitating life on a deep psychological level.

Cropsey and H.H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer

Two stunning tales of serial killers from different eras, I paired these two documentaries in a post deemed a "double feature." Cropsey not only discusses the nightmarish string of murders of defenseless mentally challenged children, but also the horrors of the mental health system in the 1970s. H.H. Holmes:America's First Serial Killer tells the tale of a well respected doctor who committed murder to a scale never before  seen in the late 1800s. Whether you can stomach both at once is entirely up to you.

Sweet dreams!

Nightmares in Red White and Blue

Have you ever recalled one of your dreams and really analyzed it? Did you gather all the elements and realize that they represented deeper desires and fears you have in the material world... and that you are really f'ed in the head?
We could say from looking at what America has produced in cinema, that America has it's own collective conciousness. America's hopes and fears are fairly obvious up front, but when America dreams and makes art, something very scary comes out.
Nightmares in Red, White and Blue is an excellent documentary for the horror buff, history buff, and anyone asking the question, "Why the heck are American's obsessed with violence?"

If you enjoyed Bravo's The 100 Scariest Movie Moments (one of my top favorite countdown shows!) you will love Nightmares. You see the evolution of the horror movie genre shaped by social upheavals, changes in standards, politics, and most importantly, war.

Psychologically, we see the movie monsters alter to society's changing fears.  In 1910 Thomas Edison made a film adaptation of Mary Shelly's Frankenstien. A decent attempt at adapting a novel to film, it was a failure in theaters. It wasn't until after The Great War (WWI), when men were coming back injured and deformed like from no other war in history, film makers responded with the horror genre. They made their "monsters" mortal men who were hideous and cast aside by society, their ill fate causing them to be bitter and evil.

Nightmares explains how each decade's events, events that shapped the American psyche, were latently placed in horror movie topics, such as foreign evil-doers, body snatching, atomic insects, zombies, etc. Post Manson murders (and the end of the hippie era in general) gave way to extreme sexual blood lust movies, films about gangs of murderers senselessly terrorizing good people, and movies about the occult.

You thought that the b-movies, exploitation and slasher films were just mindless fun, but like the rings in a tree trunk, they reflect our own history back to us. So you sit down with America. Because you love America, you read between the lines of their dream journal and say,
"America, that's some heavy stuff. I think you might be paranoid about communists, have ptsd from the war, and were disenchanted by how the hippie movement went. Maybe you should talk to someone... Pft! Who am I kidding!? Repression is the backbone of these films. Get off on the blood and violence, or enjoy the allegory, who really cares? You got a good thing going America, don't change."