American Horror Story has given us some of the best Halloween specials I’ve seen on television. “Murder House” in particular set the bar for the horror anthology and I don’t think the subsequent specials have really stacked up. Come on, Season 1 had a stitched-together reanimated child, five bloody murdered teenagers, a hit-and-run, and the…
One of the things I love most about Freak Show so far is the inclusion of actual people as the “freaks.”Sure, you have your effects makeup and your digital editing, but it’s refreshing to see the producers using entertainers like Mat Fraser (as Paul the Illustrated Seal), Rose Siggins (as Legless Suzi), and Jyoti Amge…
I’ve been to a couple of circuses and even performed at a freak show once (for charity, and of the non-horrifying variety), but that was an experience. Personally, I think this is the scariest, most grotesque title sequence I’ve ever seen. I love the addition of the toy piano against American Horror Story’s theme. I…
In tribute to the late Lauren Bacall, we’re looking at the four classic films she made with husband and screen partner Humphrey Bogart between 1944 and 1948: To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo. Last week we looked at Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage. Today we’ll look at John Huston’s…
Well Read, Then Dead by Terrie Farley Moran is the first book in the Read ’Em and Eat cozy mystery series (available August 5, 2014). I picked up Well Read, Then Dead having read several of Terrie Farley Moran’s short crime stories and curious about how she would handle the longer format. Immediately, I was…
Now this is a different turn of events for a courtroom. A Florida judge, John Murphy, told a public defender to step outside, then punched the attorney in the head until court deputies stepped in to break up the little tiff between the men. Even though the scuffle took place outside the range of the…
An exclusive excerpt from No Way Back by Matthew Klein, a thriller featuring a newly sober CEO who grows suspicious of the company he's hired to turn around when he learns of the former CEO's disappearance (available April 15, 2014). Jimmy Thane thinks that his new job as the CEO of a failing company will…
I enjoyed Wallace Stroby’s recent Criminal Element post about some under-seen heist films. It got me thinking about a sister post that would cover some standout examples of heist novels. I’ve yet to mentally compile the list of books that I think should be included, but I knew one thing the second I had the…
The lack of a delicous ice cream treat made a Florida woman really hot-headed. According to the witnesses at the scene, the woman set a man's car on fire in the parking lot of a Jacksonville McDonald's after he refused to buy her a refreshing McFlurry. A witness who spoke to Action News Jax shared:…
If you're keeping track, it was just two days ago that Jennifer Proffitt told us all about the Hampton, the Florida town that might be shut down due to corruption in the police department after hundreds of thousands of dollars stemming from over 12,000 speeding tickets went missing. Well, it seems as if all of…
