Macabre Mondays: Boo Without Goo

first in series

Since I have been consuming horror and horror/sf since early childhood, as I have talked about on the podcast (and in my first Sci-Friday entry), I thought it would be appropriate for my first Macabre Monday post to be an invite for other strange and unusual kids to enjoy horror movies without sexual violence and menace, buckets of blood, and well, Achilles’ heel stabbings (looking at you, Sam Raimi and Stephen King, much love).

So let’s start this challenge with a challenge. My best friend is, well, squeamish. It’s partially my fault, I admit it. This amuses me, because I am, myself, strange and unusual. Never fear, it amuses him as well. We had a tradition started in high school and continued into college: we took turns being the one to go to the mom-and-pop video store (RIP) and choosing the horror movie, then we would meet up after school and subject the other to our choice. His were mostly funky entries from the 70’s, like The Burning. Mine…were not. Cheeky. :) One memorable night at NCSU, I chose The Evil Dead. (See above Achilles’ heel.) He enjoyed it, but the twenty-minute walk from my dorm to his is a quiet, dark, tree-lined path that had several dimly-lit areas in 1990. I told him to call me when he got home and thought nothing of it. The phone rang before I could even straighten up and go to the bathroom.

Me: “Where are you?”

Him: “My room…I ran…Too many trees.”

Now mind you, this is the same mind who brought Hellraiser to my house in high school. Part of his squeamishness is burned-out receptors; too much of too much.

So this idea sprang up between us as adults; could I make a substantial list of horror movies that wouldn’t make him run like a Looney Toons character? Yes, baby. I am the queen of details and lists—that’s why I have a podcast, so I can throw them into the ether, instead of bugging individuals too often. I know myself.

I am now working on my third episode of what I call Boo Without Goo, aka gateway horror, or horror for the squeamish. Each of the first two episodes have 31 movies suitable for the horror beginner, including the peculiar kids you might know. I have made notes in the episodes and in the resources post(s) if there is gore off-screen or images that might need to be prepared for (for example, the opening scene in It Follows happens off-screen, but a sensitive viewer might, well, need a heads-up.)

I need to complete the resources post for the second episode; I will add its link here in the comments when it’s posted. Here’s the list and resources for the first episode, and the two episodes of Boo Without Goo are embedded below. Podcast episodes are usually within Substack for paid members only, but I’ll unlock them after I hit publish. They are also available in your favorite podcatcher.

Please check out the other lovely participants, and look for the the third episode in this series soon. Happy spooky season! If you find some new movies to you on these lists thanks to my suggestions, or you turn on a new fan, please let me know! I’ll be thrilled.

• Jeff Kinnard

• Andrew Smith

• A. B. Frank

• Cole Noble

• Leigh Parrish

• Maribel

• Honeygloom

• Jenovia

• Andrei Atanasov

• Shaina Read

• Buck Weiss

• John Ward

• L.C. Marino

• The Chronicler

• Lloyd Moritz