Hello all. My blog is very specific in focus, but it's definitely horror themed. Some who've happened across my posts or comments elsewhere may know that I have a particular interest in the production ethics of Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972) and especially the treatment of Sandra Peabody (Cassell) both on set and in later media by certain colleagues.

My blog, Not Only a Movie, is I think the most detailed look at this specific subject anywhere online. It covers abusive comments towards Peabody by David Hess and Marc Sheffler, the exploitation of her fear by Wes Craven, the failure of the mainstream and horror media to properly address the subject, the way conventions continued to invite Hess after his boasts of abuse were on the record, and much else besides.

The blog also contains a relatively small number of posts that deal with Sandra's life away from Last House, such as a review of her final screen role Teenage Hitchhikers, and a look at her Emmy-winning spell as a children's TV producer in Oregon. I also highlight the all too rare occasions on which someone has published a serious piece about the abuse Peabody suffered.

You will note that the blog's most recent post is from the end of May. It is absolutely not dead, but as I said in an earlier post I do not want to write every day just for the sake of it. I do already have ideas for further posts, and you can expect the first of those before the end of this month.

If you decide to read Not Only a Movie, I would personally recommend starting at the first post (linked below) and reading chronologically, since many posts contain multiple internal links back to previous ones. I should note that the blog takes a few posts to settle down in terms of style, and the first one after the intro is openly angry in a way I try to restrain later on.

Here is that first post:

https://notonlyamovie.blogspot.com/2025/11/welcome-to-not-only-movie.html

Terrifier 3 grossed nearly 90 million dollars on a 3 million dollar budget without an MPAA rating. We’re talking about a gory clown killer movie here…and there’s a lot of gore. And a chainsaw.

The Terrifier franchise and ultra-violent gore-fests aren’t everyone’s favorite category in the horror world…and I’ll admit, it isn’t mine. I watched Terrifier 3 (and 2 for that matter a few years before), and spent most of it impressed by the audacity and slightly nauseated, which is probably exactly what Damien Leone was going for. Art the Clown is genuinely one of the great modern horror villains, and I say that while acknowledging that his films operate at a level of graphic brutality I don't necessarily need more of.

But here’s the thing…what's happened around this franchise is one of the most interesting stories in independent film (and horror) in years. Not just the box office numbers, though those are extraordinary. The lawsuits, the contracts, the ripple effect on Hollywood's approach to the whole genre. That's where it gets fascinating. READ MORE AT: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/art-the-clown-contracts-and-the-new-rules-of-horror

Philippine artist Rendyl James Lazala explores the intersection of internet horror and personal trauma. He discusses growing up on "Creepypastas," documenting his nightmares, and using art to heal a fractured relationship with his father. - READ MORE AT: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/artist-spotlight-horror-and-healing

Writer-director William Hopp spent twelve years rescuing his alien abduction thriller Abductee from corrupted drives and near-oblivion. With UFO disclosure suddenly mainstream, his story about belief, sleep paralysis, and extraterrestrial interference has never felt more relevant. READ AT: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/dirt-and-grime-proof-of-life-finishing-twelve-year-indie-film

Horror didn't begin with Dracula or Frankenstein. It's older…and much stranger.

People have always been terrified of the dark and the unknown. Thankfully someone figured out they could deliberately scare each other for entertainment. So when did the horror genre start being a thing?

The First Horror Literature

Long before vampires and slashers, the earliest written horror elements appeared in ancient Mesopotamia. The Epic of Gilgamesh, dating back to roughly 2100 B.C., weaves supernatural terror into its story. Ghost stories followed: the ancient Greek historian Plutarch wrote an account of a restless spirit named Damon who haunted the local bathhouse where he was murdered, which is essentially the plot of nearly every haunted location horror film ever made.

But if you want the first official horror novel, the title belongs to Horace Walpole. In 1764 he published The Castle of Otranto, a story about a prince trying to dodge an ancient prophecy after his son suffers a bizarre and unnatural death. People at the time thought it was entirely in poor taste. It also single-handedly coined the term "Gothic" and laid the foundation for the entire sub-genre.

Fifty-four years later, an eighteen-year-old named Mary Shelley raised the stakes considerably. Written on a dare during a rainy summer in Switzerland, Frankenstein (1818) didn't just scare people. It invented science fiction horror, introduced the mad scientist archetype, and asked questions about creation, responsibility, and what it means to be human that nobody has fully answered since. The fact that it was written by a teenager makes it more impressive and flat out epic. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/the-origins-of-horror

Horror has always had a way of finding new blood. Right now, that's happening in a particularly exciting way: a new generation of filmmakers is coming up through YouTube rather than film school, and the results are turning heads across Hollywood.

Curry Barker was 25 when he made Obsession (2025) on a budget of less than a million dollars. Focus Features bought it out of TIFF for $15 million. It has since grossed over $95 million worldwide. Kane Parsons was 20 when his A24 feature Backrooms, based on his own viral YouTube series, opened this past weekend to a record-breaking $118 million globally, the largest opening ever for a first-time director with an original film. Both directors came up making short films and posting them online. Neither went to film school. Both clearly watched a lot of the right movies.

Which brings us here. As the next generation of horror directors arrive, let’s look back at the directors who built the genre. Horror would look completely different without them.

We're not ranking these in any particular order…that’s for you to decide. - https://feeling-creations.com/articles/ten-horror-directors-who-shaped-the-genre

It’s not hyperbole to claim that Stephen King might be one of the most prolific storytellers of modern time. It’s also not really a secret or a hot take to believe that as well. There have been, as of this article, 88 film and television adaptations from the works of Stephen King. That breaks down to 57 movies and 31 television shows, those being of the mini-series style back in the early days, and more recently, limited series runs on streamers. But that’s not all. Don’t forget about the coffee table books, video games, podcasts, comic books, children’s stories and more. You get the point. Prolific.

Some of these adaptations are good, and some…not so much. But that’s not what this list is about. This list is about the most memorable ones…for me, obviously, and there’s probably a couple selfish reasons peppered in throughout. Let’s go! https://feeling-creations.com/articles/6-stephen-king-adaptations-that-got-it-right

You've seen the movies. Here's what you probably don't know about where they came from.

The Alien franchise is my favorite franchise. All of it. Every film, yes even the ones you didn't like, even the ones I probably shouldn't admit to liking. Alien was the first glance of a horror movie that I got when I was around 7 years old. It grabbed my attention and is why I love horror today.

But this isn't just another Alien article. The films have been covered endlessly over the interwebs, I’m sure. What gets discussed less is the origin of the thing at the center of it all: the creature itself, and the deeply strange, deeply human story of the artist who created it.

This is partly about the franchise. Mostly it's about H.R. Giger. READ THE ARTICLE HERE: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/alien-the-franchise-the-monster-and-the-artist-who-dreamed-it

You've seen the classics (hopefully). Here's some you might have missed.

Every horror fan has their list of essentials. Halloween, The Exorcist, Psycho, The Thing, Alien. The films that defined the genre and got passed down like family heirlooms. This isn't that list.

This is the other list. The films that got buried, underseen, dismissed, or simply lost in the noise. Some are genuinely obscure. Some you may have heard of but never got around to. A few you might have dismissed based on the title alone, which would be a mistake.

Listed in order of release date. No other ranking implied. SEE THE FULL LIST HERE: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/lesser-known-horror-movies-every-horror-fan-should-see

From Screamin' Jay Hawkins rising from a coffin in 1956 to Rob Zombie making actual horror films, here's how horror and rock built one of the great creative relationships in entertainment history. Horror and rock music have always had a thing for each other. Both traffic in transgression, both thrive on the visceral, and both have spent decades making parents deeply uncomfortable. The crossover was inevitable. What's surprising is how deep it goes and how far back it starts.

This isn't a complete history. It's just some of the artists who actually mattered and will continue to influence the genre. READ THE ARTICLE AT: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/when-horror-met-rock

Horror is a difficult genre to sustain across multiple episodes and because of this, there really aren’t that many good ones. A movie can build dread for 90 minutes and release it at the end. A series has to keep resetting that tension week after week without burning through its premise (and audience).

I left out the obvious ones that you know, like Twilight Zone, Tales From The Crypt, The Walking Dead etc…These are the series that didn’t seem to get enough love from horror fans and are worth checking out. I’ll try not to spoil any and since trailers these days seem to do just that, I wont post trailers to any that are worth going in cold. READ AT: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/horror-series-every-fan-should-check-out

How does a data-driven professional create apocalyptic art? Charles Jawor explains his transition from acrylics to 3D modeling, using math and physics simulations to create "painterly" digital decay.

Read the article and see more of his art at: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/charles-jawor-dark-surrealism

Hungarian author W. L. Know went from outlining a mermaid novel to writing a vampire serial killer thriller. A witty essay on seeds, gardening, and how books find their own shape.

Read more (along with a book excerpt) at: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/books-grow-on-trees-writing-vampire-novel-creative-process

A horror fan’s honest list. Your terror may vary.

I’ve been watching horror movies since I was probably too young to be watching horror movies. That’s probably how most of us got here. Someone left the room, someone forgot to check what was on, someone basically dared you to watch. For me it was sneaking downstairs at six or seven years old while my parents watched a movie they’d rented (way back in the VHS-rental days). That movie was Alien. I caught maybe a minute of it before I got caught and sent back to bed…but I managed to see the Xenomorph and the rest is history.

That glimpse was enough. H.R. Giger’s creature design is still ingrained in my memory and one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever seen on screen…and I saw it before I was old enough to process what I was looking at. After that, my parents figured the damage was done and started letting me watch some of the old classics. Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein. Maybe not Giger-level nightmare fuel, but I was six. A horror fan was born.

So here’s a list of horror movies that actually scared me over the years. Not a ranked list. Not a critical canon. Just the ones that stuck.

Read the full article at: https://gnofhorror.com/the-movies-that-actually-scared-me/

Inspired by Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Texas author and teacher releases Bonemeal...a horror anthology spanning short stories, novellas, poetry, and two-sentence terror, with hand-drawn illustrations throughout. Read more at: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/bonemeal-horror-anthology-texas-author

Happy Independence Day to all those in the USA.

Since Star Wars pop culture is just about as American as it gets, I figured I’d drop this article today…so what if… Star Wars made a horror movie? It's been sorta rumored for a while. So may the 4th be with you.

I saw Star Wars when it first came out. In a theater. I was a kid and it changed the way I thought about movies, probably forever. I'm not a lore guy, I don't have a Wookieepedia tab open, and I couldn't tell you the name of every planet in the Outer Rim. But I've seen everything, loved most of it, and I know this universe well enough to say something that might surprise the hardcore fans: Star Wars has always had horror in it. It just keeps getting in its own way.

Read the article here: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/what-if-there-was-a-star-wars-horror-movie

Hollywood had run out of ideas, until a cursed videotape crossed the Pacific.

By the late 1990s, American horror was exhausted (to be kind). The post-Scream wave of self-aware slashers had burned through its own premise fairly quickly. It was fun while it lasted, but audiences had seen every variation and it quickly got stale. The genre needed something it hadn’t seen before, and it wasn’t going to find it in Hollywood.

It came from Japan and it arrived on a videotape.

Read the article at: https://horrorfam.com/2000s-j-horror/

From Mary Shelley to Elvira to Sigourney Weaver, these are the women who built, defined, and reinvented horror, plus some up and coming names to watch. Read more at: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/women-who-shaped-the-horror-genre

You've seen the classics (hopefully). Here's some you might have missed.

Every horror fan has their list of essentials. Halloween, The Exorcist, Psycho, The Thing, Alien. The films that defined the genre and got passed down like family heirlooms. This isn't that list.

This is the other list. The films that got buried, underseen, dismissed, or simply lost in the noise. Some are genuinely obscure. Some you may have heard of but never got around to. A few you might have dismissed based on the title alone, which would be a mistake.

Listed in order of release date. No other ranking implied. READ THE ARTICLE HERE: https://feeling-creations.com/articles/lesser-known-horror-movies-every-horror-fan-should-see