Blade, The Exorcist III, An American Werewolf in London, You’re Next, The Night House, and Night of the Creeps headline this episode of This Week in Horror History, covering August 17 through August 23. Our late-summer Halloween horror pregame continues with Marvel vampires, supernatural possession, haunted-house grief, masked home invaders, alien parasites, reanimated corpses, and one of the greatest werewolf transformations ever filmed.
Inside this episode:August 17, 1990 — The Exorcist III opens in U.S. theaters William Peter Blatty returns to the world of The Exorcist with a rain-soaked supernatural detective story starring George C. Scott as Lieutenant Kinderman. A series of murders carries the signature of the Gemini Killer—a serial murderer who should already be dead—leading Kinderman toward a locked psychiatric ward, an impossible suspect, and one of the most terrifying hospital-hallway sequences in horror history.
August 20, 2021 — The Night House begins its U.S. theatrical run Rebecca Hall stars as Beth, a grieving widow left alone inside the lakeside home her husband designed. When music begins playing by itself, footprints appear outside, and a reversed version of the house seems to wait across the water, grief takes on an architectural shape. Director David Bruckner turns negative space, mirrored rooms, hidden plans, and absence itself into a supernatural presence.
August 21, 1998 — Blade opens in U.S. theaters Wesley Snipes introduces Marvel’s Daywalker in a stylish collision of vampire horror, martial arts, comic-book action, ancient mythology, and late-1990s cool. Armed with swords, silver weapons, and absolute confidence, Blade hunts a hidden vampire society while Deacon Frost pursues the power of an ancient Blood God.
August 23, 2013 — You’re Next reaches U.S. theaters A wealthy family’s anniversary dinner becomes a masked home-invasion nightmare when attackers wearing animal faces surround an isolated house. The intruders expect frightened victims—but they do not expect Erin, whose survival skills transform every room, doorway, and ordinary household object into a potential weapon.
Deep-Cut Spotlight — Night of the CreepsAlien parasites, fraternity zombies, exploding heads, college-campus chaos, and Tom Atkins with a flamethrower collide in Fred Dekker’s gloriously strange 1986 creature feature.
After a frozen body is accidentally thawed during a fraternity prank, slug-like alien parasites begin entering human hosts, taking control of their brains, and reanimating the dead. Soon the campus is overrun by infected students, undead fraternity brothers, possessed animals, and a growing outbreak headed directly toward the college formal.
Night of the Creeps throws alien invasion, zombie horror, slasher history, teen comedy, detective noir, and creature-feature slime into the same movie. Fast, funny, gross, and packed with practical-effects charm, it is an ideal cult-horror addition to any early Halloween movie marathon.
Horror Birthdays This Week:Taissa Farmiga, Peter Weir, Ray Bradbury, and Park Chan-wook enter the birthday roll, bringing connections to American Horror Story, The Final Girls, The Nun, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The October Country, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Thirst.
Ray Bradbury’s autumn carnivals, October shadows, and dark childhood wonders make this an especially fitting week to begin the annual transition from summer horror into full Halloween season.
Weekly Recommendation — An American Werewolf in LondonTwo American backpackers cross the Yorkshire moors, ignore some extremely urgent local advice, and encounter something monstrous beneath the full moon.
John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London blends horror, comedy, romance, supernatural tragedy, and groundbreaking practical effects without weakening any of them. David Naughton’s transformation remains one of the defining sequences in werewolf-movie history: brightly lit, painfully physical, and presented without a merciful cutaway.
Rick Baker’s landmark effects earned the first competitive Academy Award for Makeup, but the movie lasts because the creature spectacle is tied to a genuinely tragic story. David is funny, likable, frightened, and slowly becoming dangerous to everyone around him. For horror fans pregaming for Halloween, An American Werewolf in London delivers full-moon atmosphere, haunted warnings, undead visitors, creature effects, dark comedy, and the painful realization that some transformations cannot be stopped.
Plus, Weekly Spooky returns Wednesday with another original horror story, followed by more frightening history, terrifying true stories, horror movie discussion, and unexplained broadcasts throughout the week. From The Exorcist III and The Night House to Blade, You’re Next, Night of the Creeps, and An American Werewolf in London, this week in horror history proves that evil can hide inside a hospital patient, take shape within an empty house, operate beneath a modern city, surround a family home, crawl into the human brain, or wait beneath the light of a full moon.
Summer is beginning to fade, the nights are arriving earlier, and the Halloween horror pregame is officially gaining momentum.🎧
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