News

Bloody Disgusting is celebrating Halloween with a special Stream & Scream sign-up event for our all-horror streaming service Screambox, and it’s our all-time best offer.

Now through Halloween, new subscribers can save 31% on Screambox annual subscriptions by using the code “terrifyme” on our subscription page!

This deal slashes an annual Screambox subscription down to $41.40!

Click Here To Sign Up For Screambox Now!

Screambox will of course be the streaming home for Damien Leone’s Terrifier 3 (now playing in theaters) later this year, and we’ve also got the remake of 1980s cult classic Street Trash headed to the platform soon. The directorial debut of “Jersey Shore” alum Jenni “Jwoww” Farley, the found footage horror movie Devon is also coming soon to Screambox.

Based on tales from the popular r/NoSleep community, the Screambox original anthology series “Tales from the Void” is now streaming, with two new episodes arriving this week.

Horror cinema has long been divided into a variety of sub-genres, from the supernatural to body horror and creature features. However, few categories are as synonymous with horror as much as the slasher. First perfected in the early 1960s with films like Psycho and Peeping Tom, the slasher's formula is simple: a single or group of characters pitted against a malevolent killer, typically one who wears a mask, such as Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees.

While slashers can take a variety of forms, with some embracing the supernatural with seemingly invincible killers, others strive for a sense of brutal realism. Either way, these films remain some of the most iconic and terrifying in the horror genre, thanks to the use of the cat-and-mouse-inspired trope of a killer stalking young people. The 2000s gave fans a surprisingly strong output of these movies following a '90s slump, and some of its gems endure to this day.

In 2006, Camilla Belle starred as Jill Johnson in When a Stranger Calls, an American psychological horror film directed by Simon West and written by Jake Wade Wall.

Camilla Belle in her pivotal role as Jill Johnson in the suspenseful thriller ‘When a Stranger Calls’ (2006) (Credit: Sony Pictures Releasing)

The film is not based on a true story. It is a remake of Fred Walton’s 1979 horror film, which Walton wrote and directed, and Steve Feke co-wrote.

Rejection and Acceptance: How Camilla Belle Came to Star in the Film

After Evan Rachel Wood turned down the part, Camilla Belle accepted it despite her dislike for horror films.

“There’s really no script that a female character so young is able to play and to carry a film. There’s really no roles like that around, it’s very rare. So I wanted to take on that opportunity and see if I could pull it off,...

Urban legends and horror movies go hand in hand, whether they are real-life tales or completely made up. Films like Candyman, The Hitcher, The Ring, The Mothman Prophecies, and The Blair Witch Project all play into urban legends. Heck, there's a horror franchise called Urban Legend. Sometimes, more than one film will use the same urban legend as the backdrops for their plots. 1974's Black Christmas and 1979's When a Stranger Calls both dig into the urban legend involving strange calls coming from a killer already inside the house, which they both use to great effect. This urban legend, particularly for When a Stranger Calls, is based on more than just passed-down fiction. When a Stranger Calls' frightening first scene is based on a tragic true story about a babysitter stalked by a killer inside a dark house at night in the spring of 1950.

For decades since its heyday, the horror genre has followed the stories of a wide variety of protagonists who find themselves in various terrifying situations. From slashers to zombie apocalypse movies, these characters come in all forms and power levels, from some movies following tough heroes to others focusing on the vulnerable. Quite often, stories centered around weak characters become the genre's most compelling entries.

Horror movie protagonists are often written as being at an extreme disadvantage to their villains, making their experience all the more harrowing. This disparity can also make it even more satisfying to see the heroes win, effectively giving fans an underdog story from an unlikely source. These so-called final girls and final boys are some of the genre's most iconic characters, and their unlikely victories can make them even more interesting.

28 Weeks Later

Release Date

April 26, 2007

Director

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Cast

Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne,...

David Gordon Green's 2022 slasher film "Halloween Ends" is an unusual entry in the series in many ways. In it, the vicious masked serial killer Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) has been living in a sewer and stays out of the film's central action for the bulk of its running time. "Ends," instead, focuses largely on a character named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a man who, two years ago, accidentally killed the young boy he was babysitting. Green envisioned Corey's hometown town of Haddonfield, Illinois as a bitter and wounded place, full of spiteful, hurt people who cannot heal from the murderous damage that Michael caused way back in 1978, as well as his return in 2018. Every citizen is bitter, angry, and paranoid. Corey is bullied and picked on, unable to outlive his mistake. 

When Corey wanders into Michael's sewer (he was fleeing bullies), he finds Michael and a strange transference occurs.

RRRRing, rrring!

Ah, the sound of an innocent phone call… until it becomes the harbinger of unspeakable terror. Horror films have a way of turning the mundane into the macabre, and one particularly bone-chilling element they've mastered is the art of horror movie phone calls. In this hair-raising piece, we'll dial back through time and explore how iconic films like Scream, When a Stranger Calls, and Black Christmas have transformed this everyday device into a terrifying plot device.

So, turn your cell on airplane mode — and let's dive into the chilling world of horror movie phone calls!

Warner Bros.

The Christmas Caroler

In the golden age of horror, the telephone was merely a tool for communication. But then came Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974), a pioneering slasher film that dialed up the fear factor. As the mysterious killer tormented the sorority house with menacing phone calls, the mundane act of...

The latest episode of Popped Culture powered by Crackle features five *killer* titles. Satisfy your spooky season fix by catching horror favorites Train to Busan, Silent Scream, When A Stranger Calls, and The Blob on Crackle this month. Host Aaron Sagers and guest Chris Woolsey also discuss a bonus title, John Carpenter’s iconic slasher Halloween, which is streaming for Free on RedBox.

Additional spooky season titles streaming on Crackle this month include: V/H/S, Dahmer, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Lake Placid 2, and more. Check them out here.

Watch Episode 3 of Popped Culture: Spooky Season Edition below.

Simon Pegg reveals that he believes She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is the best thing Marvel has crafted since Avengers: Endgame.

“The Marvel Cinematic Universe is such a part of pop culture that everyone has an opinion on it whether they tune in or not. This is before even accounting for those Gamergate/gatekeeping-style,...

Spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Consider yourself warned. The first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds wrapped up earlier this summer, and as someone who was hungry for episodic Star Trek once again… I loved it. The second season is already in the can and will debut next year, but the production has been keeping a big secret all this time. It was announced during today’s Star Trek Day presentation that Carol Kane will be beaming up for the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Carol Kane is best known for her roles in Dog Day Afternoon, When a Stranger Calls, The Princess Bride, Taxi, and much more. She also received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Hester Street. Carol Kane will be playing Pelia in the Star Trek series, a “highly educated and intelligent” engineer who “suffers no fools.” She solves problems “calmy and brusquely,...

It’s blockbuster season and Amazon Prime is celebrating by bringing a major action film to its stream.

That’s right, Amazon Prime’s list of new releases for July 2021 is highlighted by none other than The Tomorrow War on July 2. The year is 2051 and mankind is locked in a vicious war against an alien species. Our only hope is to go back in time and find…Chris Pratt. Ok, perhaps that’s a little reductive of the film’s plot. Future humanity also comes back to bring Sam Richardson to the future.

In terms of originals, there isn’t much else to speak of on Amazon Prime this month. The only other major release is The Pursuit of Love on July 30. This BBC series is directed by Emily Mortimer and takes place during the WWII era and follows two cousins as they navigate their lives. Lily James and Andrew Scott star.

Technology may have changed, but the phone's history in horror has remained all but the same. This revolutionary device still sends chills down spines and gives listeners a serious case of goosebumps, given the right circumstances.

Related: 10 Horror TV Shows Everyone Forgot About

Horror movies like When A Stranger Calls and Scream are crucial in how the phone is perceived in horror. However, these 10 other horror movies are entirely underrated, and are just waiting to reach out and touch someone.

Long before an age of lockdown, films from Rosemary’s Baby to The Shining and In the Shadow unveiled the home as the ultimate fear

• Lockdown watch: film-makers reveal what they’re watching in self-isolation

In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, that classic of locked-down cinema, the photographer Lb Jefferies (played by James Stewart) gazes out at his doll’s house kingdom of Manhattan apartment windows, peering remotely into others’ lives. A leg in plaster has confined him to the building, and so he falls back on his professional instinct to watch. As weeks pass, he becomes convinced that the man opposite has committed murder, killing his invalid wife and preparing for a new life with his girlfriend. For Hitchcock’s voyeuristic hero, at least there’s the comfort that wickedness resides in other people’s apartments and not in his own. Likewise, in The Birds, a makeshift family shelters in place,...

Some horror movies go with a "slow-build" approach, and some go for the jugular right off the bat. The unexpected horror hit "It Follows" definitely falls into the latter category, as you can see in the opening scene embedded below (narrated by director David Robert Mitchell). Are you sufficiently unnerved? Good! That's what we're going for here. As the indie horror hit prepares to expand into over 1,600 theaters this weekend, below I've ranked 18 of the most iconic/frightening horror openings of all time from least to most scary. The result is a completely objective list that will remain set in stone for all eternity. Are you ready? Can you handle it? Countdown starts now... 18. "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) "They're coming to get you, Barbara." While I have no doubt that contemporary audiences covered their eyes in fright during the opening sequence of Romero's original "Night of the Living Dead,...

There you are, tucked away sound and snuggly in your little bed. Counting sheep and drifting off to dreamland. The next thing you know, a stranger is in your house with nothing but bad intentions. To celebrate the release of Mischief Night, we bring you the Top 11 Home Invasions in Horror.

We could go on forever with the list of honorable mentions in this category. Films like The Desperate Hours, Kidnapped and High Tension (Haute Tension) come immediately to mind. As do Panic Room, You're Next, The Purge, The Aggression Scale and Funny Games. Hell, even Macaulay Culkin got terrorized by Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci in Home Alone. Some on the list are traditional assaults and some are more unique, but we think we've got it narrowed down to...

Black Christmas (1974)

All is calm, all is bright. Except for the fact that you've got a raving lunatic holed up in your attic!

The telephone has a sordid history in cinema, dating back to Dial M for Murder and even earlier, and creepy callers were the subject of a previous FEARnet feature (if you missed it, be sure to check it out here). As we all know, any time the phone rings in a horror film, you can be sure that it’s Satan on the line. Part of what makes telephone calls in horror films so frightening is that the viewer typically cannot see who's tormenting the film’s protagonist. It’s the same basic idea as the unseen perpetrator; we fear that which we cannot see. Therefore, the telephone has been used for many a game of cat and mouse... and to terrify countless babysitters. In honor of one of the most nefarious tools of terror horror cinema has to offer, we count down eight of the most terrifying phone calls in horror.

Halle Berry's new thriller "The Call" has a pretty simple premise: a gal is kidnapped but manages to make a 911 call that is answered by Berry's emergency operator. And then, you know, all hell breaks loose.

Sounds pretty harrowing, right? But when it comes to frightening, dangerous and downright creepy phone calls, Hollywood history is filled with examples even more extreme. So in honor of Berry and "The Call," we thought this would be a perfect time to look at the 5 Worst Phone Calls in Movie History.

5. 'When a Stranger Calls' (1979)

You probably don't remember the 2006 remake because, well, why would you? But the 1979 original remains a terrifying classic thanks in large part to the phone call in the opening scene. Babysitter Jill Johnson (Carol Kane) is relaxing after putting the kids to bed when she gets a creepy, threatening phone call. She contacts the police and...

“I wanted to make The Hierarchy like a feature film with all the boring parts cut out!” writer/director Jorge Godinez tells Fango. “I’m from Mexico, but really love American teen movies and pop culture, and I wanted to combine those elements and make something hip, funny and bloody. If I had to describe what I was going for, I would say The Hierarchy is like Carrie meets Heathers.”

The Hierarchy, produced by Julia Hebner, is set at Crawford Academy, where shy student Marti (Megan Hartig, pictured right with Godinez) is routinely tormented by the school’s top trio of mean girls (Michelle Cutolo, Elizabeth Venezia and Avery Dresel-Kurtz, 1st photo below left-right), with the complicity of guidance counselor Regina Fletcher (Catherine Mary Stewart of Night Of The Comet, The Last Starfighter and The Apple, 2nd photo below). What they don’t know is that Marti, who works in...

“I wanted to make The Hierarchy like a feature film with all the boring parts cut out!” writer/director Jorge Godinez tells Fango. “I’m from Mexico, but really love American teen movies and pop culture, and I wanted to combine those elements and make something hip, funny and bloody. If I had to describe what I was going for, I would say The Hierarchy is like Carrie meets Heathers.”

The Hierarchy, produced by Julia Hebner, is set at Crawford Academy, where shy student Marti (Megan Hartig, pictured right with Godinez) is routinely tormented by the school’s top trio of mean girls (Michelle Cutolo, Elizabeth Venezia and Avery Dresel-Kurtz, 1st photo below left-right), with the complicity of guidance counselor Regina Fletcher (Catherine Mary Stewart of Night Of The Comet, The Last Starfighter and The Apple, 2nd photo below). What they don’t know is that Marti, who works in...

Serial killers have long been the stuff of which nightmares are made. The serial killer sub-genre of horror has brought us some amazingly memorable characters that still haunt us to this day. On February 19th Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will bring us a new name in fear with The Factory.

Starring John Cusack and Jennifer Carpenter as detectives tracking a murderer, The Factory is set in the bitter cold of a Buffalo winter. A great place to hunt a hunter. And to celebrate the release of this newest addition to the sub-genre, we've compiled a list of the Top 11 Movie Serial Killers.

There is certainly a long list of names to choose from, but we narrowed the field a bit by limiting it to those who were just regular human people. No supernatural involvement here, just a person or group of people who've gone off the deep end and made...

Some acting careers are made by a single role. Think Brando’s Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Robert DeNiro’s Johnny Boy in Mean Streets (1973), Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack in the box office behemoth Titanic (1997).

A similar connection can happen on a more personal basis. You watch a movie and an actor — for whatever magical, alchemical reason – clicks with you. You suddenly remember the other times you’ve seen him or her, you want to know more about what they’ve done, what they’re going to do. From that moment, their name in the credits means something to you.

And in that great, romantic way Hollywood dream-making works, they may not even be stars; never were, never will be. But they are somebody you respond to, somebody’s who work touches you.

For me, Charles Durning was one of those actors. At the news of his passing on Christmas Eve,...

Before there was such horror spoofs as Scary Movie starring Anna Faris. Before there was such self referential horror films such as Scream from director Wes Craven. After there was Student Bodies. There was Rolfe Kanefsky's independent horror spoof of "There's Nothing Out There". There's Nothing Out There arrives to DVD today in a 20th Anniversary Edition courtesy of Troma Team Video. There's Nothing Out There went virtually ignored when it first came out, but over the years this trend setting film has went on to find an audience with multiple DVD and video releases over the years. There's Nothing Out There is a criminally underrated film that is still attracting a slow, but surely following. What was especially noteworthy about There's Nothing Out There was the fact that it featured a character who had seen every horror film there was out there and realizes that the actions that...

Just the other day we shared the press release for the upcoming horror/thriller Room and Board and tonight we have the new one-sheet for you to check out! Be sure to keep up with all things Room and Board for more news! The film is directed by Julia Davis and stars an all-star cast; Burt Reynolds, Kane Hodder,Luke Goss,  Robert Patrick. Darcy Demoss and Brooke Lewis and even more! More on this cool film:

"Room and Board" is taking reservations as the American Film Market in Santa Monica, CA on November 4, 2010 approaches, following a haunting Halloween weekend that gathered some of the cast members of the hilarious and spooktacular horror film. Fans of the horror genre are bracing themselves for a trip to the bloody "Room and Board", where patrons are dying to get in and end up on the menu. 

The buzz already surrounds this star-studded horror flick,...

Oh, Halloween is totally On! Counting down, "Extra" has collected 25 of the most spine tingling and scariest quotes ever uttered in movies.

25 Best Horror Movie Quotes25. 'Paranormal Activity' (2007)

"No, you haven't been having any progress, and you're not in control. It is in control, and if you think you're in control, then you're being an idiot! Not a single thing you've done has helped, and I'm sorry, I don't mean to burst your bubble,...

Simon West is in negotiations to direct a remake of the cult horror flick When a Stranger Calls for Sony's Screen Gems division. Jake Wadewall is writing the script for the redo of the 1979 film, which was released by Columbia Pictures. Ken Lemberger is producing. The studio also is developing a sequel called When a Stranger Returns. Stacy Cramer is overseeing the project. The original film starred Carol Kane as a high school student traumatized while baby-sitting, after she receives calls she thinks are coming from the parents asking her to check on the kids. The calls turn out to be coming from inside the house. West's credits include Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The General's Daughter and Con Air. He also is set to direct RPM. He is repped by CAA.