Grimmfest 2020 Preview #1

In a change to the promised episode, this week we offer the first of our previews of October’s Grimmfest digital horror film festival.  (The latest in our Halloween franchise reviews will come next week instead.) We hope the diversity of the content will help you forgive the lower-than-usual Zoom-call sound quality.  Guest host Ian Winterton

Film Reviews: Frightfest 2020

This week, Stella and Dan talk about the films they saw at the recent digital Frightfest, including Logan Thomas’ road-movie-with-the-undead There’s No Such Thing As Vampires, the anthology-with-multiple-directors Dark Place, Jessie O’Brien’s outback splatter comedy Two Heads Creek, Adam Stovall’s spectral comedy romance A Ghost Waits and Dean Kapsalis’ doom-laden drama The Swerve.  Stella also

Missed Classics #3: Il Gatto Nero/The Black Cat (1981)

For the first time ever on ANTPS, both Stella and Kirsty are absent this week, prioritising work duties as the UK’s educational system goes full steam ahead again.  However, the show must go on, and Dan is fortunate instead to have another Dan to keep him company – the illustrious Spider-Dan, from the podcast Spider-Dan

Questions of Horror #1: Why Dark Endings?

In the first of an occasional series, Kirsty, Stella and Dan ponder some wide-ranging questions of the horror genre.  Dan’s been wondering why it is that so many horror films have dark endings of one kind or another, and why we spectators enjoy these endings, comparatively rare in other genres. SPOILER WARNING – By the

What We Love About What We Do In The Shadows

A shamelessly indulgent episode, as Kirsty, Stella and Dan rabbit on at length about why and how much they love the 2014 horror mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows, its current TV incarnation and other spin-offs.  It’s mostly spoiler-free, for the uninitiated (apart from a spoiler section beginning at 01:20:48), but it does contain

Missed Classics #2: Paranormal Activity (2009)/Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

Kirsty’s off on a lovely Scottish holiday this week, so Stella and Dan are joined by film journalist and playwright Ian Winterton for a spoilery discussion of  a landmark horror that Dan’s never seen before, Oren Peli’s ‘found footage’ haunted house film, Paranormal Activity.  They also go into detail on its 2010 sequel by director

Director Rob Savage on Host (NON-SPOILER)

One week after its release on the streaming service Shudder, it’s already been called the horror film of the year and even, by Dread Central, the scariest film of the decade.  It’s Host, a British horror film written and produced entirely during lockdown and over Zoom.  We’ve been following its director, Rob Savage, since the

Witchcraft and Paganism, Part 2

Following on from last week’s episode, in which Kirsty led Stella and Dan on a dive into witchcraft through history, reality and fiction, she’s now widening her scope to include other types of paganism.  If you only know paganism through what you’ve seen in horror films, there’ll be a lot to learn here – but

Witchcraft and Paganism, Part 1

Ever since 1922’s Haxan, depictions of pagan practices and witchcraft have been part of cinema, and particularly, of horror cinema.  But do such depictions have more to do with dominant impressions of witchcraft than with witchcraft itself? In the first of a two-part exploration, Kirsty, who knows a thing or two about her subject, guides

Halloween Retrospective #5: Halloween 5 (1989)

2018-vintage Howard, Dan and special guest Spider-Dan continue their retrospective of the Halloween franchise with a look at director Dominique Othenin-Girard’s quickly-churned-out, not-too-highly-regarded Halloween 5 (not Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, despite what the video cover above may say).  But is there more to it than meets the eye? Note: at one point