Mister Organ doesn't reach the level of societal horror of The Act of Killing or the creepypasta-meets-true-crime gruesomeness of Beware the Slenderman, but there's something deeply unsettling about Michael Organ and his intimate campaign of terror against everyone who enters his life.

Mister Organ is a documentary by David Farrier, an Auckland, New Zealand journalist. The movie starts with Farrier reporting on Bashford Antiques, a shop in Ponsonby that has begun aggressively clamping cars in its lot and demanding exorbitant fees to release them - up to $760. Farrier's article for The Spinoff eventually led the government to introduce legi …

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George A. Romero is obviously best known as the father of the modern zombie movie. But between inventing the genre with Night of the Living Dead and his outbreak horror, The Crazies, Romero made two much lesser-known films: There's Always Vanilla, which I'll admit I've never seen, and Season of the Witch, or, as it was originally titled, Hungry Wives.

Hungry Wives was supposed to be an exploitation film. The studio marketed it as a softcore porn, but it failed to find an audience - probably because the movie features minimal nudity, just one sex scene, and lots of talking. It was an undeniable flop upon its release in 1973. It was eventual …

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While deep in the recording process for The Downward Spiral, Trent Reznor lent some of his production talents to old friend Kevin McMahon, from the new wave band Lucky Pierre (which Reznor was briefly a member of). While Reznor is only credited as the producer on four tracks off Prick's self-titled debut record, his fingerprints are all over it. But McMahon also can't suppress his inner theater kid, which also gives the songs the sort of glammy flamboyance found on T. Rex records. Prick embraces the inherent theatricality of goth in a way that Nine Inch Nails never did.

Opener "Communiqué" is a fuzzy blast of simple punk riffs with electro …

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In August, I wrote about my love of the music history podcast No Dogs in Space, but mourned the fact that there hadn't been a new episode in over two years. Little did I know that hosts Carolina Hidalgo and Marcus Parks were gearing up to announce the show's return with season four, Punk 2.0. The first episode premiered this week, part one of a series on the New York Dolls, a band near and dear to my heart as a native Staten Islander, home of frontman David Johansen.

For the new season, Hidalgo and Parks decided it was time to get back to basics. Part of that was that they felt punk rock was where their passion and expertise were strongest. …

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The Units are a band I discovered in part thanks to No Dogs in Space. During their miniseries on The Screamers (another incredible band worth checking out), they mention synthpunk.org as one of their sources. And there's no better way to get my attention than to combine two of my favorite things - punk rock and synthesizers. The site was down that day (it appears to be back up now), but I was able to access a version from July through the Wayback Machine. What greeted me was a bare-bones site with links for six bands, including The Screamers. But at the top was The Units, a band I'd never heard of and, after tracking down their 1980 record D …

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I recently dug out my CDs and started reripping them all. I've found a few forgotten gems in there, but few hit harder for me than the beautifully concise Professor Murder Rides the Subway EP. There was a period of time in the mid-aughts in NYC where it seemed like every indie band wanted you to let loose, dance like no one was watching, and just have some damn fun. Few embodied that as much as New York dance punk band Professor Murder.

LCD Soundsystem and The Rapture were the biggest names of the dance punk revival. But there were also bands like Rahim, Liars, Dan Deacon, and countless lesser-known acts on DFA that you could see on any giv …

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Jane Schoenbrun's latest film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, is making a splash in theaters right now. So it seems like the perfect time to revisit their first film, We're All Going to the World's Fair. I fell in love with this film when I first saw it at Sundance in 2021.

We are immediately introduced to our protagonist, Casey, as she engages in the World's Fair Challenge, a sort of ARG creepypasta meets ice bucket challenge. There's a creepy mantra, some bloodletting, and a mysterious video - basically a speedrun of horror movie tropes. But having them all delivered by this young girl alone in her room who just stares directly in …

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