SCREAM QUEEN! PREMIERES AT FANTASTIC FEST
The queer horror documentary Scream Queen!: My Nightmare on Elm Street made its official world premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. Fantastic Fest is the largest genre film festival in the world specializing in horror, fantasy, and sci-fi premieres. The weekend featured a sold-out premiere for the film and drag celebration with an astounding rainbow Freddy Kreuger cake by world-renowned Sideserk Cake Studio. The film, by directors Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen, exp
INTERVIEW: WHAT HORROR REVEALS ABOUT US
Dr. Scahill was recently approached by the University of Colorado's "City Stories" desk to speak to his specialization in horror cinema and social history. City Stories asks professors to address contemporary issues through the lens of their research, and in this edition Dr. Scahill examines the history of the horror genre, its potential for social change, and the postcolonial politics of the two Colorado-set horror films, The Shining and Dr. Sleep. Read the full interview he
INTERVIEW: HORROR MOVIES AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Dr. Scahill was interviewed for a second time by VICE magazine to give his thoughts on the current slate of horror films and what they might reveal about contemporary cultural anxieties. Last August, Dr. Scahill was contected to give his thoughts of the shark attack film The Meg and the retrun of revenge-of-nature films like Jaws. In this follow-up interview about the alligator attack film Crawl, Scahill talks with Miles Howard about the film's use of home invasion and slashe
INTERVIEW: BLACK HORROR & SOCIAL CRITIQUE
Dr. Scahill was interviewed recently by Voice of America to give his thoughts on the movie US and the future of minority filmmakers using the genre of horror to wage social critique. VOA correspondant Penelope Poulou asked Dr. Scahill to provide historical context for genre and what the success of films like Get Out and Us might mean for forecasting genre trends. As Scahill notes, the horror genre has traditionally been antagonistic to minorities, as often "monsters" like Nos
INTERVIEW: HORROR MOVIES AT THE BOX OFFICE
Dr. Scahill was quoted recently in a piece about the long-range box office success of recent horror films like Get Out, A Quiet Place, It, and the recent Jordan Peele project Us. As Sarah Shevenlock notes, 2017 was the first year that the horror genre made over $1 billion collectively. Weekend box office returns for Us show a record-breaking $70 million opening, doubling Peele's previous film Get Out, and ranking as the third-largest ever opening for an R-rated film. Contribu
INTERVIEW: THE AGE OF QUEER MEDIA
Prof. Scahill was approached this week by Georgia Voice, an LGBT news magazine out of Atlanta, to give his thoughts on the current landscape of queer representation in film and television. According to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), 2018 was a record-breaking year, as 8.8% of series regulars identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered. While these are encouraging trends, Dr. Scahill noted that genres like horror, action, and the superhero
INTERVIEW: 'THE MEG' AND REVENGE OF NATURE
​Andrew Scahill was interviewed this week by VICE for an article on the upcoming sci-fi horror film The Meg, which features a 75-foot megalodon shark wreaking havoc on a beach community after being disturbed by deep-sea divers. Given his expertise in horror cinema, Dr. Scahill was contacted by VICE to provide some genre history for the revenge-of-nature film, which took over the box office in 1975 following the release of Stephen Spielberg's summer blockbuster Jaws. Recent fr
PROFILED IN CU DENVER TODAY!
In the most recent issue of CU Denver Today, Dr. Scahill was asked to take part in a new faculty profile. In the article, Prof. Scahill talks about his work on horror cinema, his current class on film censorship, the field of academia, and his Instagram-famous dog Otto. The piece begins: "An expert on horror, Scahill describes himself as a 'film historian' who considers how a movie’s successes are both deeply idiosyncratic and indelibly linked to larger cultural forces. At th
INTERVIEW: CREEPY KID'S DRAWINGS
Andrew Scahill was interviewed this week by SLATE magazine for an article on the pop culture trope of children making violent doodles and thus revealing their inner demonic self. In his book The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema, Dr. Scahill examined the child-as-monster, whose origins in the Cold War spoke to societal anxieties about a burgeoning and uncontrollable youth culture and the perceived susceptibility of children to alternative political ideologies. In "The Devil is
FEATURE INTERVIEW: REVOLTING CHILD BOOK
On October 29 2015, Dr. Scahill was featured in a five-page interview in Metro Weekly, DC's gay and lesbian newspaper. In the piece "Scary Movies: Gays Have a Special Dark Place in the Horror Canon," Dr. Scahill discussed his new book, the horror genre, The Exorcist Steps, and the unique relationship that gays and lesbians have to the genre of taboo-breaking and social upheaval. #interview #revoltingchild #book #feature #scarymovies #metroweekly #horror #queer #childhood #exo
