What connects Stephen King’s blood-soaked teenage nightmare with Isaac Bonewits’s attempt to formulate a theory of magic? From the supernatural power of Carrie White to the occult principles explored in Real Magic, we examine the fascination with mind over matter, the boundaries between belief and evidence, and the enduring desire to discover what lies beyond our understanding of reality.

A bucket of pig’s blood. A school gymnasium. A teenage girl standing beneath the wreckage of her dreams.

When Carrie White finally unleashes her telekinetic abilities in Stephen King’s Carrie, the consequences are catastrophic. Objects move without being touched, machinery becomes a weapon, and a community that has spent years humiliating a vulnerable young woman discovers that she possesses a power it cannot control.

For horror audiences, telekinesis is an instantly recognisable supernatural device. It transforms invisible intention into physical consequence, allowing a character’s thoughts to reach beyond the limits of the body. In Carrie’s hands, that power becomes an instrument of terror, but it also raises a more fundamental question: what if the mind could exert a direct influence over the material world?

It is a question that belongs to a much wider history of occult speculation, paranormal investigation and philosophical inquiry. Long before Carrie became one of horror’s most recognisable figures, human beings were searching for explanations for experiences they could not readily understand. From religious ritual and folk magic to the developing field of parapsychology, the possibility that consciousness might influence events beyond ordinary physical interaction has occupied a persistent place in our cultural imagination.

That brings us to Isaac Bonewits’s Real Magic: An Introductory Treatise on the Basic Principles of Yellow Magic, the subject of an earlier episode of Library of the Occult. Published in 1971, the book attempts to establish a theoretical framework for magical phenomena, drawing connections between occult traditions, psychology, religion, anthropology and parapsychology.

Bonewits does not provide a scientific demonstration that Carrie’s extraordinary abilities could exist. Nor does his work establish telekinesis as a verified human capacity. What it offers is a starting point for a different kind of inquiry: how do we define magic, how might claims of paranormal phenomena be investigated, and why do we continue to imagine that human consciousness might possess powers extending beyond the familiar limits of the body?

By placing Carrie alongside Real Magic, we can examine the cultural appeal of telekinesis without confusing supernatural fiction with scientific evidence. More importantly, we can explore why the power to move objects with the mind has become such a potent expression of human frustration, ambition and the desire to exert control over an otherwise indifferent world.

The Impossible Made Tangible

Telekinesis is, at its simplest, the supposed ability to move or manipulate physical objects through mental power alone. The term has become firmly embedded in popular culture, particularly within science fiction, fantasy and horror, where it provides a convenient way to turn thought into action.

Yet its appeal extends beyond spectacle. Telekinesis offers an answer to one of humanity’s oldest frustrations: the gap between what we want to happen and what we can actually make happen.

Our minds are capable of imagining extraordinary transformations, but our bodies remain subject to physical limitations. We cannot move a mountain simply by wishing it elsewhere. We cannot stop a falling object through concentration alone. We may influence the world through speech, physical action, technology and cooperation, but those processes require some form of material interaction.

Telekinesis imagines a way around those restrictions. The mind becomes an instrument capable of reaching directly into the external world, bypassing the usual mechanisms through which intention becomes action.

In fiction, this creates immediate dramatic possibilities. A character can manipulate objects without touching them, defend themselves against an unseen threat or turn an ordinary environment into a weapon. The familiar becomes unstable because the rules governing it have apparently changed.

In Carrie, however, the power has a more intimate function.

Carrie White begins her story as a young woman with very little control over her own existence. Her religiously oppressive mother regulates her behaviour and teaches her to regard her body as a source of shame. At school, her classmates make her an object of ridicule, exploiting her isolation and inexperience for their own amusement. Even the institutions that should protect her fail to provide the support she needs.

Her telekinesis presents a radical reversal of this powerlessness. The girl who cannot prevent others from humiliating her can eventually make the world itself respond to her will.

The transformation is not simply from weakness to strength. It is from a life in which Carrie’s agency is repeatedly denied to one in which her intentions can produce immediate, devastating consequences. The power that once seemed impossible becomes terrifyingly effective.

This is one reason telekinesis works so well in horror. It makes invisible emotions visible. Anger becomes movement; fear becomes destruction; psychological pressure acquires a physical form.

The supernatural ability might be fictional, but the emotional conditions it expresses are recognisable. Carrie’s telekinesis gives extraordinary form to the ordinary human desire to regain control after a lifetime of powerlessness.

Isaac Bonewits and the Question of Real Magic

In the sixteenth episode of Library of the Occult, I explored Isaac Bonewits’s Real Magic, a distinctive volume within Dennis Wheatley’s collection because it moves away from supernatural fiction and towards the theoretical study of magical phenomena.

Bonewits, an influential figure in modern Paganism and Neo-Druidry, was interested in the relationship between magical traditions and the systems through which people interpret experience. Rather than treating magic exclusively as a matter of folklore, religious belief or imaginative storytelling, he attempted to formulate principles that might help explain how magical practices were understood and why they appeared across different cultures.

The book examines a broad range of subjects, including extrasensory perception, ritual, psychic claims and the proposed laws of magic. Its ambition is considerable: to construct a framework through which phenomena traditionally associated with the occult might be classified, examined and discussed.

The important word here is framework.

Bonewits’s approach is not equivalent to a modern scientific consensus that supernatural forces exist. His proposed explanations and interpretations must be assessed on their own merits, and the presence of a theoretical system does not itself establish that the phenomena it describes are real.

Nevertheless, Real Magic is a useful companion to Carrie because it encourages us to look beyond the dramatic image of a supernatural power and consider the assumptions that make such a power meaningful.

What do we mean when we describe something as magic? Are we referring to a religious or ritual practice, a subjective experience, an unexplained event or a claim that a person can influence physical reality through means not currently understood?

These are not interchangeable categories. A ritual may produce a profound psychological experience without demonstrating a supernatural mechanism. A person may sincerely report an unusual event without that report establishing its cause. And a fictional representation of telekinesis can communicate something meaningful about human psychology without offering evidence that telekinesis is possible.

Bonewits’s book invites us to examine the ways these categories have historically overlapped. That makes it a valuable starting point for exploring Carrie’s powers, provided we distinguish the questions the book raises from the conclusions science can support.

Rather than asking whether Bonewits proves Carrie could exist, we can ask what his approach reveals about the desire to understand magical phenomena — and why the possibility of mind over matter remains so compelling.

Telekinesis and Psychokinesis: Mind Over Matter

The terms telekinesis and psychokinesis are frequently used interchangeably, although their emphasis can differ.

Telekinesis is the familiar term in popular fiction for the apparent ability to move objects at a distance through mental power. Psychokinesis, often abbreviated to PK, is commonly used in parapsychology for alleged mental influence on physical systems. Some research in this field has examined whether human intention might correlate with changes in random-number generators, rather than attempting to demonstrate the dramatic movement of large objects seen in films.

The distinction matters because the popular image of telekinesis is considerably more spectacular than the phenomena investigated in most experimental research. Carrie can move objects, manipulate machinery and wreak destruction on a scale that would be impossible to mistake for ordinary physical interaction. Experimental studies of alleged psychokinesis have generally focused on much smaller effects and have produced contested interpretations.

A 2006 meta-analysis examined 380 studies investigating whether human intention correlated with random-number-generator output. The researchers reported a very small overall effect, alongside substantial variation between studies, with the relationship between effect size and sample size raising the possibility that publication bias could explain the results. The findings therefore did not establish a robust, unambiguous demonstration of psychokinesis. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16822162/

Later reviews have continued to discuss experimental claims and unresolved methodological questions. The existence of research into a phenomenon, however, should not be confused with proof that the phenomenon has been established.

At present, there is no robust, reproducible scientific evidence demonstrating that people can move ordinary objects through mental intention alone, as Carrie does.

That qualification need not end the discussion. It simply establishes the boundary between a fascinating claim and a demonstrated ability.

The distinction also helps clarify why telekinesis remains such an effective fictional device. Horror does not need to demonstrate that a supernatural power is scientifically possible. It needs to establish a world in which the power feels emotionally and dramatically convincing.

Carrie’s telekinesis works because the audience understands the consequences of being able to impose her will upon a world that has denied her agency. Its emotional logic is far more important to the story than any hypothetical scientific explanation of how the objects move.

What Does Magic Mean to Us?

One of the most interesting themes in Real Magic is the relationship between belief, experience and interpretation. Human beings have developed countless systems for understanding events that seem unusual, inexplicable or beyond ordinary control. Religious traditions, folklore, ritual practices and paranormal theories all provide different ways of interpreting the world.

Bonewits attempts to identify principles that might help explain magical practices across these different contexts. Whether or not one accepts his proposed framework, the broader question is worth considering: why do people continue to seek hidden connections between intention and events?

Part of the answer lies in our need to make sense of experience. We look for patterns, search for causes and construct explanations for things that surprise us. When an event appears to defy our expectations, we may respond by revising our understanding, questioning the evidence or turning to a framework that offers a different explanation.

This is not unique to the occult. It is part of ordinary human reasoning. The challenge is distinguishing between an explanation that feels meaningful and one that has been adequately supported.

Belief can influence perception, behaviour and emotional experience. Rituals may provide structure, comfort, communal identity or a sense of agency. Expectations can shape how people interpret ambiguous events. These effects are worthy of study in their own right, even when they do not require supernatural explanations.

The difficulty arises when the psychological or cultural significance of an experience is treated as proof of an extraordinary physical mechanism.

A person may experience a ritual as transformative without demonstrating that it has altered external reality through supernatural means. Equally, a fictional story can express a profound truth about human suffering without providing evidence for the literal existence of its supernatural premise.

This is where Real Magic and Carrie intersect most productively. Bonewits’s project asks how magical claims might be understood and organised into a coherent framework. King’s novel asks what happens when a young woman possesses a power that her surrounding community cannot comprehend or control.

The two works approach the unknown from different directions. One attempts to construct a theory; the other imagines the human consequences of an extraordinary ability.

Neither needs to be mistaken for the other.

Carrie White: Power as a Response to Powerlessness

Carrie’s telekinesis has attracted literary and cultural interpretations that go well beyond the mechanics of supernatural horror. One particularly compelling reading treats the ability as a symbolic expression of suppressed agency: the power to manipulate the external world becomes a response to the restrictions imposed upon Carrie’s body, behaviour and social identity.

In an essay published by Ball State University’s Digital Literature Review, Leah Heim examines Carrie’s telekinesis through the concept of the abject, drawing upon feminist theory to explore the relationship between the female body, social repression and supernatural power. Other critical approaches have similarly connected Carrie’s abilities with the institutional and interpersonal forces that deny her a meaningful place within her community. https://blogs.bsu.edu/dlr/2017/04/10/telekinesis-as-the-female-abject-in-stephen-kings-carrie/

These readings help explain why Carrie’s powers are so closely tied to her experiences of adolescence and humiliation.

Her first period is a moment of profound vulnerability. She has not been given the knowledge needed to understand her own body, and her classmates turn that vulnerability into public entertainment. The incident is not simply an example of bullying; it establishes a pattern in which Carrie’s lack of control becomes a source of pleasure for others.

The telekinesis offers the opposite possibility. Through it, Carrie can affect the world without requiring anyone’s permission. Objects respond to her intentions, and the boundaries between her inner life and the external environment begin to dissolve.

Yet power does not automatically bring freedom.

Carrie’s abilities do not provide her with the emotional understanding she has been denied. They do not teach her how to navigate relationships, resolve conflict or distinguish between genuine affection and manipulation. Nor can they repair the damage caused by years of abuse.

Instead, her power develops alongside the pressures bearing down upon her. The more intolerable her circumstances become, the more catastrophic the consequences of its release.

The prom sequence brings this contradiction to its horrifying conclusion. Carrie is briefly allowed to imagine that she might belong. When that hope is destroyed, her telekinesis turns the gymnasium into an extension of her anguish.

The power is real within the fiction, but its deeper significance lies in what it represents. Carrie can control objects, yet she cannot recover the innocence of her childhood or undo the humiliation she has suffered. Her ability to impose her will upon the physical world cannot restore the relationships and security that have been denied to her.

This is what makes the story tragic rather than simply triumphant. The fantasy of absolute control becomes inseparable from the recognition that some forms of suffering cannot be repaired through power alone.

If Telekinesis Were Real, What Would It Mean?

Imagining telekinesis as a genuine human ability immediately raises questions that extend beyond the occult. How would such a capacity be demonstrated? Under what conditions would it operate? Could it be measured, reproduced and distinguished from ordinary physical causes, deception or experimental error?

These are the kinds of questions that any claim of an extraordinary physical ability would need to withstand.

If a person could reliably move objects through mental intention alone under appropriately controlled conditions, the result would warrant serious scientific investigation. Researchers would need to establish the effect, rule out alternative explanations and determine whether independent teams could reproduce the findings.

That is a very different proposition from assuming that an unexplained event must be supernatural simply because its cause is not immediately apparent.

The distinction is central to an intellectually responsible approach to the occult. Curiosity is valuable, but curiosity is not confirmation. An open mind does not require the suspension of critical judgement; indeed, the more extraordinary a claim, the more important it becomes to examine the evidence carefully.

Bonewits’s ambition to formulate a theoretical framework for magic makes Real Magic a useful historical document in this discussion. It reflects an attempt to bring order to a subject often divided between traditional belief, personal testimony and sceptical dismissal. His work can be studied for the questions it raises, the categories it proposes and the way it reflects the occult intellectual climate of its time, without assuming that all of its theories have been validated.

The same distinction applies to Carrie.

We can investigate the cultural history of telekinesis, examine claims of psychokinesis and explore the philosophical questions surrounding consciousness without needing to believe that Carrie White’s abilities could exist in the real world.

Fiction gives us the freedom to imagine the consequences of possibilities that remain unproven. Its value is not diminished by the absence of scientific confirmation. Sometimes, the impossible premise allows a story to illuminate something that is entirely real.

Why Horror Needs the Impossible

Horror frequently gives physical form to experiences that are otherwise difficult to represent. Fear becomes a creature in the darkness. Guilt becomes a haunting. Repression becomes a monstrous transformation. The supernatural allows internal conflicts to escape the mind and enter the shared world of the story.

Telekinesis is particularly suited to this process because it transforms intention into visible action. A character’s emotional state can change the environment without the usual physical mechanisms that separate thought from consequence.

In Carrie’s case, the effect is both empowering and terrifying. The ability that gives her an unprecedented degree of control also becomes the instrument through which her anguish destroys the possibility of a future.

This relationship between power and consequence is what separates Carrie from a straightforward fantasy of supernatural wish fulfilment. Her abilities do not provide a clean escape from vulnerability. Instead, they magnify the conflict between what she wants, what she has suffered and what she ultimately does.

The story asks us to recognise the cruelty inflicted upon Carrie without pretending that her retaliation repairs it. Her suffering deserves empathy, but the destruction that follows remains horrifying. Telekinesis makes that contradiction spectacular, turning a private history of humiliation into a public catastrophe.

Seen through the lens of Real Magic, Carrie also becomes a useful reminder of the different meanings the word magic can carry. In Bonewits’s book, magic is the subject of an attempted theoretical investigation. In King’s novel, it is a supernatural premise through which human conflict is dramatised. In popular culture, it is an image of power that seems to transcend ordinary limitations.

These meanings can illuminate one another, but they should not be collapsed into a single claim.

The fictional power does not prove the occult theory. The occult theory does not establish the scientific reality of telekinesis. Yet the relationship between them opens a worthwhile conversation about belief, agency and the human fascination with the possibility of influencing a world that often seems beyond our control.

The Prognosis: The Power to Move More Than Objects

Telekinesis remains one of horror’s most enduring supernatural concepts because it gives visible form to an invisible force: intention. It allows the mind to reach beyond the body, transforming thought into action and vulnerability into power.

In Carrie, that transformation is inseparable from tragedy. The young woman who has spent her life being controlled by others discovers an ability that makes the external world answer to her. But the power cannot provide the love, knowledge or security she has been denied. It can destroy the structures around her, yet it cannot undo the circumstances that brought her to the brink.

Isaac Bonewits’s Real Magic offers a different route into the question of supernatural power. Rather than telling a story about telekinesis, it attempts to construct a framework for understanding magical phenomena and the beliefs surrounding them. Its theories deserve to be considered in their historical and intellectual context, while extraordinary claims must remain subject to careful examination.

Bringing these works together does not require us to choose between unquestioning belief and dismissive scepticism. It invites us to distinguish between what we can demonstrate, what we can meaningfully interpret and what we continue to imagine.

Perhaps that is the most productive connection between occult inquiry and horror fiction. Both are drawn to the possibility that the familiar world might conceal something we have yet to understand. One asks how such possibilities might be investigated; the other explores what they might mean for us.

Carrie White’s telekinesis may remain firmly within the realm of fiction. Its emotional truth, however, is far more immediate. We understand the desire to exert control when life has made us powerless, the temptation to answer humiliation with retaliation, and the danger of confusing the ability to command the world with the ability to heal ourselves.

The real question is not whether we can move objects with our minds.

It is what we would do if we could.

And whether, like Carrie, we would discover that power alone cannot save us from the damage we carry within.

• Saul Muerte

The novel that turned adolescence, repression and female rage into horror

Before Carrie White became a cinematic icon, before the prom dress became one of horror’s most recognisable images, before the blood became an indelible part of popular culture, there was a novel.

Published by Doubleday on 5 April 1974, Carrie was Stephen King’s first published novel. It arrived before the phenomenon, before the adaptations, before the author became synonymous with American horror. At the time, King was still a high-school English teacher in Maine, writing in the evenings and weekends and trying to establish himself as a professional writer. The book would change everything. But read more than half a century later, its most remarkable quality is not that it launched a career. It is that so much of what would make Stephen King such an important chronicler of American fear is already there.

The small town. The school. The family. The outsider. The private cruelty hiding beneath respectable surfaces. The collision between the supernatural and the painfully ordinary.

And, at the centre of it all, a girl.

Before the blood, there was Carrie.

THE GIRL IN THE SHOWER

The first great horror of Carrie is not telekinesis.

It is menstruation.

Carrie White’s first period arrives in the girls’ shower at school, and she does not understand what is happening to her. Rather than receiving compassion, she becomes the object of ridicule. Her classmates throw sanitary products at her and laugh while Carrie panics, believing something terrible is happening to her body.

It is an extraordinary opening because King establishes the novel’s central conflict before introducing its supernatural element.

Carrie’s body is changing.

Everyone around her has an opinion about what that means.

And Carrie has been given almost no opportunity to understand it for herself.

That distinction is fundamental to Carrie. The novel is often remembered as a story about a bullied girl who develops telekinetic powers and eventually takes revenge upon her tormentors. But that description makes the supernatural sound like the beginning of the horror.

It isn’t.

The supernatural is the escalation.

The horror has already begun.

Carrie has been taught to fear her own body. She has been taught that sexuality is sinful. She has been taught that desire is dangerous. She has been taught that the outside world is corrupting. At school she is ridiculed for failing to understand the social rules everyone else seems to know instinctively.

She is trapped between two institutions that both insist they know what she should be.

Neither allows her to discover who she actually is.

MARGARET WHITE’S RELIGION OF SHAME

At home, Carrie is controlled by Margaret White, one of horror fiction’s great portraits of religious extremism.

Margaret’s faith has become a mechanism of punishment.

The body is sinful. Sexuality is sinful. Desire is sinful. The ordinary processes of growing up are transformed into evidence of moral failure.

For Carrie, puberty therefore becomes something approaching possession.

Her body is doing things she does not understand, while her mother responds not with education or reassurance but with condemnation.

Margaret does not simply teach Carrie that the world is dangerous.

She teaches her that Carrie herself is dangerous.

That distinction creates the psychological architecture of the novel.

Carrie grows up believing that there is something fundamentally wrong with her. Her mother confirms it. Her classmates reinforce it. Even her own emerging sexuality becomes another source of fear.

The telekinesis therefore fits perfectly into the novel’s logic.

Carrie possesses a power that nobody can adequately explain.

Neither can Carrie.

But unlike her body, this power belongs entirely to her.

She can make things move.

She can make doors close.

She can make the world respond.

For the first time, something inside Carrie cannot be controlled by somebody else.

And that is precisely what makes it frightening.

THE BODY AS A BATTLEGROUND

Stephen King has described Carrie as being partly concerned with the ways women discover their own channels of power and with what men fear about women and female sexuality. That idea is embedded throughout the novel.

Carrie’s telekinesis is not simply a supernatural ability.

It is metaphor made physical.

Her body changes and she is frightened.

Her emotions intensify and she is frightened.

Her sexuality emerges and her mother is frightened.

Her independence develops and everybody around her becomes increasingly uncomfortable.

The more Carrie begins to understand that she possesses power, the more the people surrounding her attempt to control it.

This makes Carrie a deeply physical horror story.

Not because it is obsessed with gore, but because it understands that the body is where so many systems of power begin.

The body is where puberty happens.

It is where sexuality happens.

It is where shame is imposed.

It is where violence leaves its evidence.

And, eventually, it is where Carrie discovers that she can no longer be contained.

THE SCHOOL AS A MACHINE

Carrie’s school is not merely the setting for the story.

It is a machine.

A machine for sorting people.

Popular and unpopular.

Beautiful and ugly.

Powerful and powerless.

Included and excluded.

The cruelty of the novel is particularly effective because it does not require monsters.

The students already understand how to hurt each other.

They know which words matter.

They know who can be humiliated without consequences.

They know that an audience makes cruelty more powerful.

Carrie is not merely bullied.

She is turned into entertainment.

That is one of the novel’s most disturbing ideas.

Humiliation is not necessarily private. Sometimes the humiliation requires witnesses. Sometimes the laughter is the point.

The school becomes a theatre, and Carrie is the unwilling performer.

The other students become spectators.

And eventually, on prom night, the entire system of humiliation becomes a spectacle on a much larger scale.

The tragedy is that Carrie has spent much of the novel wanting exactly what the school temporarily appears to offer her.

Acceptance.

Recognition.

Belonging.

That makes what follows considerably more painful.

She does not walk into the prom expecting to destroy everything.

For a brief moment, she walks into it hoping she might finally be allowed to belong.

THE STRANGE POWER OF KINDNESS

One of the most interesting things about Carrie is that it does not divide the world into simple monsters and saints.

Sue Snell is capable of cruelty.

She is also capable of remorse.

Tommy Ross is not Carrie’s tormentor.

He becomes part of the attempt to give her a normal evening.

Miss Desjardin, the gym teacher, understands more than most of the adults around Carrie and attempts to protect her.

These moments matter because they prevent the novel from becoming a simple revenge fantasy.

There are alternatives.

Carrie’s tragedy is not that nobody ever offers her kindness.

It is that kindness arrives too late, and it exists inside a culture where cruelty remains more powerful.

That makes Carrie considerably more tragic than a straightforward tale of supernatural revenge.

The question is not simply whether Carrie deserves revenge.

The question is whether the damage inflicted upon her can ever be undone.

THE TELEKINETIC GIRL

King’s official account of the novel notes that Carrie was a composite character inspired by two girls he knew during his own high-school years. The supernatural premise grew from King’s interest in the possibility of telekinesis and its supposed association with young people around puberty.

The idea is almost absurdly simple.

Puberty.

Telekinesis.

Put the two together.

But simplicity is precisely why it works.

Telekinesis is the perfect horror device for Carrie because it externalises the emotions she has been forbidden to express.

Anger becomes force.

Fear becomes force.

Humiliation becomes force.

Desire becomes force.

For most of her life, Carrie has been taught to suppress everything.

Now the suppressed things can move the furniture.

The novel therefore turns adolescence into supernatural horror without ever making adolescence itself unnatural.

Carrie’s feelings are ordinary.

Her circumstances are not.

Her response becomes extraordinary because she has been denied every ordinary way of processing what is happening to her.

THE NOVEL THAT ALMOST WENT INTO THE BIN

There is an extraordinary irony in the history of Carrie.

The manuscript almost disappeared before it existed.

King began writing the novel but abandoned it after only a few pages. He later recalled throwing those pages into the wastebasket. His wife, Tabitha, retrieved them, read them and encouraged him to continue. She also helped him with the material surrounding the girls’ locker room and the social world he felt he did not understand well enough to write convincingly.

It is tempting to treat this as a charming anecdote from the early career of a famous author.

But there is something almost perfectly appropriate about it.

Carrie is a novel about a young woman whose voice is repeatedly dismissed.

Its author nearly dismissed hers too.

Tabitha King pulled the pages from the bin.

The rest, as they say, is history.

But the episode also reminds us that Carrie emerged from uncertainty. It was not the work of an established master calmly beginning a career in horror.

It was the work of a young writer still discovering what kind of stories he wanted to tell.

And that rawness remains part of its power.

A NOVEL BUILT FROM EVIDENCE

One of King’s most effective decisions was to tell Carrie as though the catastrophe had already happened.

The novel does not rely exclusively on straightforward chronology. It incorporates newspaper reports, testimony, official documents and other fragments that allow the reader to reconstruct the events surrounding the so-called Black Prom.

This changes the nature of the story.

We are not simply waiting to discover what will happen.

We are investigating what happened.

The result is almost forensic.

Every act of cruelty becomes evidence.

Every warning becomes evidence.

Every moment of kindness becomes evidence.

Every decision not to intervene becomes evidence.

The reader becomes something like an investigator trying to understand how a disaster that seems almost impossible could nevertheless have become inevitable.

That structure also complicates the question of responsibility.

Who caused the catastrophe?

Carrie?

Her mother?

Her classmates?

The adults?

The school?

The culture that allowed cruelty to become entertainment?

The novel never offers an easy answer.

And that ambiguity is one of the reasons it remains so potent.

THE FANTASY OF REVENGE

There is an intoxicating fantasy at the centre of Carrie.

What if the person everyone laughed at suddenly became the most powerful person in the room?

What if the girl pushed to the edge could push back?

What if every humiliation could be returned?

It is an adolescent fantasy of absolute power.

And King understands that such a fantasy can become horrifying very quickly.

Carrie’s revenge does not remain neatly targeted.

Once the machinery of destruction begins, the distinction between perpetrator, bystander and innocent becomes increasingly unstable.

That is where Carrie escapes the limitations of a simple revenge narrative.

King is not merely asking whether bullied people deserve revenge.

He is asking what happens when someone has been denied every healthy avenue for anger until violence becomes the only language left.

Carrie does not suddenly become evil.

She becomes capable of expressing the rage that everyone else has spent years insisting she must suppress.

That is much more frightening.

THE GIRL WHO WAS NEVER ALLOWED TO BECOME A WOMAN

Perhaps the saddest thing about Carrie is that she is never given the ordinary space in which to grow.

Margaret fears the woman Carrie might become.

Her classmates ridicule the girl she currently is.

Nobody allows her the uncertain territory between the two.

There is no gradual transition.

No healthy education.

No room for mistakes.

No safe way to discover sexuality.

No safe way to discover anger.

No safe way to discover independence.

Carrie is expected either to remain the frightened child her mother controls or become the dangerous woman Margaret fears.

The novel offers almost no middle ground.

That makes Carrie a profoundly disturbing coming-of-age story.

Most coming-of-age fiction asks what happens when a young person discovers who they are.

Carrie asks what happens when everybody else has already decided who you are supposed to be.

THE PROM BEFORE THE PROM

We tend to remember the climax.

The dress.

The stage.

The crown.

The bucket.

The blood.

But the real architecture of Carrie is built beforehand.

It is built in the shower.

In the classroom.

In the White household.

In the locker room.

In every joke.

Every insult.

Every moment Carrie is made to feel that she does not belong.

By the time the prom arrives, the catastrophe has already been constructed.

The bucket merely provides the spark.

That is why the title Carrie: Before the Blood feels so appropriate for the beginning of this anthology.

Because the most important question is not what happens when Carrie finally loses control.

It is what happened to her before she ever had the opportunity to lose it.

THE FIRST CARRIE

It is easy, more than fifty years later, to forget how strange Carrie must have seemed in 1974.

It was a horror novel about a teenage girl whose first menstruation coincides with the emergence of telekinetic power. It placed religious fanaticism, female sexuality, adolescent cruelty and supernatural destruction inside the apparently ordinary world of an American high school.

It made puberty terrifying.

It made bullying apocalyptic.

It made the family home feel more dangerous than the haunted house.

And it gave its monster a face that was recognisably human.

That last point matters most.

Carrie is not an ancient evil.

She is not a demon.

She is not a creature from another dimension.

She is a teenage girl.

That is what makes the novel work.

The supernatural element may be impossible, but the circumstances that produce the catastrophe are painfully plausible.

THE BEGINNING OF STEPHEN KING

There is another reason Carrie deserves to be examined on its own terms.

It is the beginning of Stephen King’s published novelistic career.

The book’s success gave King the opportunity to leave teaching and write full-time. Within a few years came ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand and The Dead Zone. The machinery of the King phenomenon was already gathering momentum.

But Carrie contains something that later King novels would sometimes bury beneath greater length and larger mythology.

Concentration.

It is short.

It is vicious.

It knows exactly what it wants to examine.

There is no sprawling mythology required to make Carrie frightening.

There is only a girl, a school, a mother, a body and an extraordinary power.

The horror comes from putting those elements together.

BEFORE THE ICON

The Carrie we know today is difficult to separate from the images that came later.

But that is precisely why it is worth returning to the book.

Before the blood became an image, it was an idea.

Before Carrie became a cultural icon, she was a literary character.

Before the prom became one of horror cinema’s defining sequences, it was a scene in a novel about a girl who wanted, desperately, to be accepted.

The cinematic Carrie will have her own story.

So will the television Carries.

So will the cultural phenomenon that grew around her.

But none of them can exist without this first Carrie.

The girl Stephen King created in 1974 is where the story begins.

And she begins not with revenge.

She begins with shame.

THE BLOOD BEFORE THE BLOOD

That is perhaps the most important thing to remember about Carrie.

The blood is not where the horror starts.

The blood is where everything that came before becomes visible.

Puberty.

Fear.

Religion.

Sexuality.

Bullying.

Loneliness.

Power.

Humiliation.

Carrie’s tragedy is not that she discovers she possesses extraordinary abilities.

It is that she discovers them in a world that has given her no healthy way to understand herself.

The telekinesis gives Carrie power.

But the world around her has already taught her how to use it.

And that is what makes Stephen King’s first novel such an enduring piece of horror fiction.

The monster was never simply Carrie.

The monster was the machinery that created her.

The Prognosis:

Before the blood.

Before the prom.

Before the scream.

Before the cinema.

There was a book.

And inside that book was a question that horror would spend the next fifty years asking in different forms:

What happens when the person everyone has taught to feel powerless discovers that they were never powerless at all?

That is Carrie.

Not simply the story of a girl with telekinetic powers.

Not simply a revenge story.

Not even simply a coming-of-age nightmare.

It is a story about what happens when a human being is denied the right to understand their own body, their own anger and ultimately their own identity.

The blood was coming.

But first, there was Carrie.

• Saul Muerte

A century ago, cinema was still learning how to make the supernatural visible.

The horror film had not yet settled into the familiar grammar that would emerge during the following decade. There were no established monsters, no Universal template, no rigid distinction between gothic horror, fantasy, science fiction and the occult. Filmmakers were still discovering what the camera could do with dreams, doubles, demons, magic and the irrational. In October 1926, two films arrived within twenty-four hours of one another that demonstrate just how fertile that territory remained: Rex Ingram’s The Magician and Henrik Galeen’s The Student of Prague.

Released in the United States on 24 October and premiering in Berlin on 25 October respectively, the films could hardly be more different in temperament. The Magician is an extravagant Anglo-American fantasy of occultism, alchemy and forbidden experimentation, adapted by Ingram from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1908 novel. The Student of Prague, meanwhile, is a German Expressionist meditation on the divided self, remaking the 1913 film that had already become one of the foundational works of German fantastic cinema.

Yet placed together at their centenary, they reveal something remarkable. Both films are ultimately concerned with the same terrifying proposition: what happens when a human being attempts to cross a boundary that should remain intact?

In one film, that boundary is between life and death.

In the other, it is between the self and its reflection.

Both discover that the supernatural is rarely interested in granting human beings exactly what they want.

The Magician: Where Science Ends and Sorcery Begins

Rex Ingram’s The Magician begins in a world where rationality appears to have the upper hand. Margaret Dauncey is saved by the surgical skill of Dr Arthur Burdon after suffering a terrible accident. Medicine has intervened successfully. The body has been repaired. Science has done what science is supposed to do.

Then Oliver Haddo arrives.

Played by Paul Wegener with a commanding physicality that makes him appear almost to have wandered in from another, darker film, Haddo is part hypnotist, part magician, part scientist and part occultist. He is fascinated by ancient knowledge and obsessed with the possibility of creating life. His ambitions place him beyond conventional scientific inquiry because he is no longer interested in understanding nature. He wants to dominate it.

The premise comes from Maugham’s novel, itself shaped by the author’s encounters with occult circles in Paris and particularly with Aleister Crowley, who became one of the inspirations for the character of Oliver Haddo. Maugham was careful to distinguish his fictional magician from Crowley himself, transforming his real-life acquaintance into something considerably more theatrical, sinister and supernatural.

Ingram takes that literary fantasy and turns it into cinema through image.

This is where The Magician remains fascinating a century later. The narrative may be melodramatic, but Ingram understands that occult cinema depends upon visual suggestion. The film moves from Parisian society and medical science toward hypnosis, pagan imagery, ancient texts, secret experiments and a remote castle. Haddo’s world gradually becomes a visual rejection of the rational world occupied by Burdon.

The conflict is therefore not simply between two men competing for Margaret. It is a conflict between competing ideas of knowledge.

Burdon believes the body can be understood.

Haddo believes it can be conquered.

That distinction gives the film more intellectual weight than its melodramatic structure might initially suggest.

Paul Wegener: The Face of the Occult

The presence of Paul Wegener gives The Magician an extraordinary historical resonance.

Wegener was already an important figure in German fantasy and horror cinema, having appeared as Balduin in the original The Student of Prague in 1913 and having created the role of the Golem across several films, most famously The Golem: How He Came into the World in 1920. His casting as Oliver Haddo therefore brings an entire tradition of European supernatural cinema into an American production.

There is something almost uncanny about watching Wegener embody Haddo. He carries with him the memory of German Expressionism even when the film itself is not operating entirely within that aesthetic tradition. His physical presence suggests that the occult is not merely a subject but a cinematic inheritance.

Haddo is theatrical, imposing and frequently excessive, but Wegener understands that the character’s power depends upon appearing to possess knowledge that other people cannot access. His menace is not simply physical. It comes from the suggestion that he knows something.

And cinema has always understood that the unknown is often more frightening than the monster.

The Occult as Forbidden Science

The most interesting aspect of The Magician may be its treatment of magic as an extension of scientific ambition.

Haddo does not simply cast spells because he enjoys evil. He is conducting an experiment. He wants to create life. His occultism therefore occupies the same conceptual territory as the mad scientists who would soon populate horror cinema. He is not rejecting modernity so much as taking its logic to an extreme.

This makes The Magician an intriguing precursor to the scientific horror that would emerge more fully in the 1930s.

The forbidden experiment becomes the bridge between Gothic supernaturalism and modern horror.

Haddo wants to penetrate the ultimate mystery: the creation of life itself. But his experiment requires the destruction of another human being. Creation and destruction become inseparable.

The film’s horror consequently comes from the transformation of Margaret from person into ingredient.

That idea would become one of horror cinema’s great recurring nightmares.

The Student of Prague: The Monster in the Mirror

If The Magician looks outward toward forbidden knowledge, The Student of Prague looks inward.

Henrik Galeen’s 1926 film revisits the story first brought to cinema in 1913, with Conrad Veidt now playing Balduin and Werner Krauss as the sinister Scapinelli. Set in Prague in 1820, the film follows a student who, ashamed of his poverty and desperate to improve his circumstances, sells his reflection to Scapinelli. Wealth follows. So does tragedy.

The premise is one of the great inventions of early supernatural cinema because the double is not simply a monster stalking the protagonist.

The double is the protagonist.

Balduin has not summoned an external demon to terrorise him. He has surrendered a part of himself.

That makes the film’s horror psychologically richer than its Faustian surface might suggest.

The supernatural transaction is essentially a bargain with the self: give up something fundamental and receive the life you believe you deserve.

The problem is that Balduin cannot control what he has given away.

The Double Takes Control

Galeen understood that the crucial cinematic problem of The Student of Prague was not merely telling audiences that Balduin no longer possessed a reflection.

They had to see it.

Galeen himself explained in 1926 that the earlier version had not exploited the missing reflection sufficiently and that the audience needed to repeatedly witness its absence before the double eventually became an independent physical presence.

This is the essence of cinematic horror.

The impossible has to become visible.

And when Balduin’s reflection begins to move independently, the film achieves something remarkably sophisticated. The mirror image ceases to be a trick of optics and becomes a dramatic character. It is Balduin without restraint, consequence or social control.

Where The Magician imagines forbidden knowledge producing artificial life, The Student of Prague imagines forbidden desire producing an independent self.

Both are forms of creation.

Both become forms of horror.

Conrad Veidt and the Birth of the Modern Horror Face

Conrad Veidt’s performance is central to the film’s power.

Veidt would become one of the defining faces of German Expressionist cinema, and his performance as Balduin contains the physical elasticity and psychological vulnerability that would later make him so effective in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and, eventually, The Man Who Laughs.

But what makes him so compelling here is the contrast between the man and his double.

Balduin is initially capable of charm, romance and aspiration. His tragedy is recognisably human. He wants money. He wants love. He wants social status. He wants the humiliations of poverty to disappear.

The supernatural does not create those desires.

It exploits them.

That is why the film remains so potent. Scapinelli does not need to force Balduin into damnation. He simply offers him the opportunity to become the person he thinks he wants to be.

The horror comes later, when Balduin discovers that self-improvement may have required self-destruction.

Scapinelli: The Devil as Broker

Werner Krauss’s Scapinelli is a fascinating counterpart to Wegener’s Haddo.

Haddo is flamboyant. Scapinelli is transactional.

He does not need to seduce the audience with theatrical demonstrations of power. He offers Balduin a deal. Money in exchange for a reflection. The supernatural is presented almost as commerce.

This is one of the film’s most enduring ideas.

The devil does not necessarily need to threaten us.

Sometimes he simply needs to offer us what we already want.

Scapinelli belongs to the same broad tradition as Faust’s Mephistopheles, but Galeen’s film makes the bargain visual. The price is not an abstract promise of damnation. It is the absence of Balduin’s reflection, a literal hole in his identity.

The supernatural contract has become body horror.

Two Films About Creating the Unnatural

Placed together, The Magician and The Student of Prague begin to resemble variations on the same nightmare.

Haddo wants to create life.

Balduin wants to create a better life for himself.

Both attempts depend upon a transaction.

Both violate a natural boundary.

Both produce consequences that cannot be controlled.

And both films ultimately suggest that the greatest danger lies not in supernatural forces themselves but in human beings believing they can manipulate those forces without paying the full price.

That idea would become one of the foundational principles of horror cinema.

Frankenstein would make it scientific.

Dr Jekyll would make it psychological.

Dracula would make it erotic.

The mad scientist would make it technological.

But The Magician and The Student of Prague were already exploring the territory.

From Romantic Fantasy to Expressionist Nightmare

The two films also demonstrate how rapidly cinema was evolving.

The Magician belongs partly to the world of romantic fantasy: exotic locations, occult spectacle, melodrama, mysterious villains and forbidden rituals. Ingram had the resources and visual ambition to transform Maugham’s story into an elaborate cinematic fantasy, filming in actual locations in France and exploiting the picturesque possibilities of the material.

The Student of Prague, meanwhile, belongs much more clearly to the emerging language of Weimar cinema. Its visual world is psychologically charged, and its central conceit — the externalisation of an internal conflict — is almost a definition of Expressionist storytelling.

Cinema is moving from asking:

What if magic existed?

toward asking:

What if the things inside us could become visible?

That is a profound shift.

The supernatural is no longer simply something that enters the human world.

It begins to emerge from the human psyche.

Two Shadows of the Same Decade

There is another reason these films make such compelling centenary companions.

They belong to a cinema standing on the threshold of enormous change.

Within only a few years, sound would transform filmmaking. German Expressionism would produce some of the most influential visual ideas in horror. Hollywood would begin assembling the monster pantheon that would define the genre for generations. The fantastic would become increasingly codified.

But in 1926, the boundaries were still porous.

A magician could be a scientist.

A scientist could be an occultist.

A reflection could become a person.

A human being could bargain away part of himself.

The genre had not yet decided what horror was supposed to look like.

And that freedom is visible in both films.

A Century Later

A hundred years later, The Magician and The Student of Prague remain compelling not because they anticipate every convention that would follow, but because they demonstrate how much horror cinema was already capable of before those conventions existed.

The Magician is an extravagant nightmare about forbidden knowledge, the desire to manufacture life and the transformation of scientific curiosity into occult obsession. Its imagery, its locations and above all Paul Wegener’s presence make it an important bridge between European supernatural cinema and the American horror tradition that would soon emerge.

The Student of Prague is more intimate and psychologically disturbing. Its supernatural conceit remains extraordinarily elegant because the monster is not simply chasing Balduin. It is Balduin’s own discarded identity returning to claim him. Galeen’s decision to make the missing reflection increasingly visible turns a simple Faustian story into an exploration of identity, desire and self-destruction.

One film looks toward the forbidden laboratory.

The other looks into the mirror.

One asks what happens when humanity tries to create life.

The other asks what happens when humanity gives away part of itself.

Both arrive at the same conclusion.

The supernatural does not have to invade our world to destroy us. Sometimes all it needs is something we already want.

At 100, The Magician and The Student of Prague remain fascinating precisely because they stand before horror cinema became a fixed language. They are experiments in what the medium could make visible: magic, doubles, forbidden science, fractured identity and the terrifying possibility that the boundaries separating the human from the monstrous are far less secure than we might like to believe.

A century later, the mirror still moves.

And somewhere beyond it, Oliver Haddo is still trying to manufacture life.

• Saul Muerte

There is an inevitable weight that accompanies the Romero surname when attached to a zombie film.

For more than half a century, George A. Romero’s undead were never simply flesh-eating monsters. They reflected society back upon itself, exposing consumerism, prejudice, class division and humanity’s remarkable ability to self-destruct. With Queens of the Dead, Tina Romero wisely avoids trying to recreate her father’s legacy. Instead, she carves out a space that feels distinctly her own—a vibrant horror-comedy that places queer community, chosen family and unapologetic self-expression at its centre.

The result is an energetic and often charming debut that delivers plenty of laughs and personality, even if its bite isn’t always as sharp as its premise promises.

Set during an enormous warehouse party in Brooklyn, the film throws together drag performers, DJs, club kids and long-standing rivals just as a zombie outbreak begins to consume the city. What follows is less a conventional survival horror than a colourful ensemble comedy, where glitter, high heels and quick wit prove almost as valuable as any improvised weapon.

The setting immediately distinguishes Queens of the Dead from the countless zombie films that have preceded it. Romero understands the nightclub as a world of performance and reinvention, where identity is celebrated rather than concealed. That atmosphere gives the film an infectious energy, transforming what could have been another generic apocalypse into something far more distinctive.

Its greatest strength lies in its cast.

Rather than relying on familiar horror archetypes, Queens of the Dead embraces an eclectic ensemble whose chemistry frequently carries scenes that might otherwise feel narratively slight. The humour rarely stems from mocking its characters; instead, it celebrates their individuality, allowing each personality to contribute something different to the group’s increasingly chaotic fight for survival.

That generosity extends to the film’s broader themes. Beneath the camp humour and splashes of gore lies an affectionate portrait of community under pressure. The apocalypse becomes another challenge to overcome together, reinforcing the importance of solidarity in spaces that have historically relied upon chosen family for survival.

There is also an amusing contemporary twist to Romero’s undead. These are “scrolling zombies,” creatures whose mindless behaviour draws obvious parallels with modern digital culture. While the satire is never especially subtle, it offers enough playful commentary to give the film an identity beyond its colourful aesthetic.

Unfortunately, Queens of the Dead occasionally mistakes enthusiasm for momentum.

Its ensemble cast is undeniably engaging, but the screenplay spreads its attention so widely that individual character arcs often feel underdeveloped. Moments that should carry genuine emotional weight are sometimes rushed in favour of another joke or energetic set piece. The pacing similarly fluctuates, with the middle act occasionally losing sight of the escalating danger as it juggles multiple personalities and subplots.

For a zombie film, the horror also proves surprisingly restrained. There are enjoyable practical effects and flashes of inventive gore, but genuine suspense is relatively scarce. Those expecting relentless tension may find themselves wishing the film embraced the darker implications of its premise more fully.

Yet perhaps that isn’t Romero’s intention.

Where George Romero frequently used zombies to expose humanity’s capacity for cruelty, Tina Romero appears more interested in celebrating resilience. Even amid social collapse, her characters retain humour, compassion and defiant joy. It’s a noticeably warmer worldview—one that values connection over cynicism.

That tonal shift won’t satisfy everyone, but it gives Queens of the Dead its own identity rather than reducing it to an exercise in nostalgia.

The Prognosis:

Queens of the Dead may not reinvent the zombie genre, nor does it possess the satirical precision of the Romero films that inevitably cast a long shadow over it. However, Tina Romero demonstrates a confident voice, delivering a lively horror-comedy that celebrates queer culture with warmth, humour and infectious energy.

While its narrative occasionally loses focus and its horror rarely achieves genuine menace, the film’s vibrant ensemble and affectionate sense of community ensure it remains entertaining throughout.

Like the warehouse party at its centre, Queens of the Dead is at its best when it embraces chaos, individuality and the simple joy of bringing people together—even if the undead threaten to crash the dancefloor.

• Saul Muerte

Queens of the Dead premieres exclusively on Shudder and AMC+ Friday 7 August

There was a time when horror cinema and heavy metal seemed inseparable.

By the mid-1980s, both were being accused of corrupting young minds. Parents worried about the rise of occult imagery, religious groups condemned devilish iconography, and politicians questioned whether popular culture had become dangerously enamoured with darkness. At the centre of it all stood a procession of larger-than-life rock stars who embraced horror not as something to fear, but as something to celebrate.

Few embodied that collision of music and macabre more completely than Alice Cooper.

For more than a decade, Cooper had transformed the concert stage into a theatrical house of horrors. Guillotines, electric chairs, snakes, fake executions and gallons of stage blood became as much a part of his performances as the music itself. Long before shock rock became commonplace, Alice Cooper understood that horror wasn’t merely something to sing about.

It was something to perform.

So when Monster Dog arrived in 1986, casting Cooper as its leading man, it felt less like an unusual career move and more like an inevitable extension of the persona he had already perfected.

Whether it resulted in a great film is another matter entirely.

More Than a Werewolf Movie

Viewed purely as a werewolf film, Monster Dog struggles to stand alongside the genre’s finest examples.

Its pacing often falters, the performances are uneven, and the modest budget occasionally limits its ambitions. Even by the standards of 1980s creature features, it never quite delivers the visceral transformation sequences or sustained suspense audiences had come to expect following films such as An American Werewolf in London and The Howling.

Yet judging Monster Dog solely on those terms overlooks what makes it genuinely interesting.

This isn’t simply a horror film starring Alice Cooper.

It is an Alice Cooper performance stretched across ninety minutes.

The werewolf mythology provides the framework, but the real attraction is watching one of rock music’s most iconic theatrical figures inhabit a world that already feels tailor-made for his macabre sensibilities.

The film isn’t asking audiences to believe Alice Cooper could become a monster.

By 1986, popular culture had already decided he was one.

When MTV Invaded Horror

One of the more overlooked aspects of Monster Dog is how completely it embraces the visual language of the MTV generation.

The 1980s witnessed an explosion of music videos that prioritised atmosphere, stylised lighting and striking imagery over traditional narrative. Smoke drifted endlessly through abandoned buildings. Blue moonlight illuminated every corner. Wind machines blew dramatically through perfectly coiffed hair.

Narrative often became secondary to mood.

Monster Dog feels remarkably similar.

Rather than grounding itself in realism, the film leans into spectacle, constructing an almost dreamlike environment where rock concert aesthetics merge seamlessly with Gothic horror. The result often resembles an extended Alice Cooper music video more than a conventional feature film.

Ironically, that may be precisely where its greatest appeal lies.

Viewed through a contemporary lens, the film serves as a fascinating time capsule of an era when horror cinema increasingly embraced the stylised excesses of music television.

The Satanic Panic’s Favourite Son

It is impossible to discuss Monster Dog without acknowledging the cultural climate that surrounded its release.

The mid-1980s represented the height of the Satanic Panic.

Heavy metal bands were accused of promoting devil worship. Album artwork was scrutinised for hidden meanings. Parents feared that theatrical stage shows concealed genuine occult influence. Organisations such as the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) fuelled debates surrounding censorship, morality and the supposed dangers of popular music.

Alice Cooper found himself at the centre of many of those anxieties.

The irony, of course, is that Cooper’s stage persona was never rooted in genuine menace.

It was theatre.

Like the Grand Guignol productions of the nineteenth century or the Universal Monsters before them, his performances revelled in exaggerated horror with a knowing wink to the audience. Beneath the makeup and the mock executions was an entertainer who understood that fear and fun had always shared the same stage.

Monster Dog extends that theatrical tradition.

Rather than attempting to reinvent Cooper as a dramatic actor, the film wisely allows him to inhabit the persona audiences already recognised. He becomes less a traditional protagonist and more a living extension of the myth that had surrounded him throughout his musical career.

Celebrity as the Real Monster

Perhaps the film’s most intriguing idea emerges almost accidentally.

Throughout Monster Dog, people project expectations onto Alice Cooper’s character before he has done anything at all.

They assume darkness.

They anticipate violence.

They expect transformation.

In many ways, the audience does exactly the same.

The werewolf becomes almost incidental.

The real subject is celebrity.

More specifically, the way society constructs monstrous identities around public figures who challenge convention.

Whether intentional or not, Monster Dog captures that phenomenon remarkably well. Cooper spends much of the film playing a version of himself burdened by other people’s expectations—a man whose reputation often arrives before he does.

That tension proves more compelling than the creature feature surrounding it.

A Cultural Artefact

None of this suddenly transforms Monster Dog into an overlooked masterpiece.

Its narrative remains uneven, its pacing inconsistent and its creature effects rarely rival the best genre offerings of the decade.

But perhaps greatness was never the point.

Instead, the film preserves a unique cultural moment when horror cinema, heavy metal and music television briefly occupied the same creative space.

For ninety minutes, they speak the same visual language.

Blood becomes stage makeup.

Moonlight becomes concert lighting.

The monster becomes the rock star.

The Prognosis:

Monster Dog may never earn a place among horror’s greatest werewolf films, but it deserves recognition as one of the most fascinating intersections between heavy metal culture and horror cinema.

While its storytelling often struggles beneath the weight of its ambitions, its cultural significance has only grown with time. It captures an era when shock rock dominated headlines, MTV reshaped visual storytelling and horror enthusiastically embraced theatrical excess.

Alice Cooper didn’t become a horror icon because he played monsters.

He became one because he understood that the greatest monsters have always been performers.

Forty years later, Monster Dog remains less a forgotten werewolf film than a compelling snapshot of the moment when heavy metal and horror looked at one another—and realised they were already part of the same show.

• Saul Muerte

Most horror franchises are built upon familiarity. Audiences return expecting the same masked killer.

The same final girl.

The same summer camp.

The same suburban street.

Comfort arrives through repetition. Innovation often comes second.

The Evil Dead franchise has survived for more than four decades by embracing the opposite philosophy. It refuses to stand still. Every new chapter tears down what came before, rebuilding itself around a different tone, a different style and, occasionally, an entirely different idea of what Evil Dead should be. And remarkably… It still feels unmistakably like Evil Dead. That may be the franchise’s greatest achievement.

A Cabin in the Woods

When Sam Raimi released The Evil Dead in 1981, the formula appeared deceptively simple.

Five friends. A remote cabin. An ancient book. A force that possesses the living. Yet beneath that familiar premise lay extraordinary ambition. The film blurred supernatural horror with relentless camera movement, savage practical effects and an almost punk-rock energy.

It wasn’t polished.

It wasn’t elegant.

It was raw.

Every frame felt as though it had been willed into existence through sheer determination. The cabin became horror’s perfect pressure cooker.

Isolated.

Claustrophobic.

Inescapable.

Most franchises would spend the next forty years returning to that same location. Raimi did something far stranger. He blew the cabin apart.

When Horror Learned to Laugh

Only six years later, Evil Dead II arrived.

Neither straightforward sequel nor conventional remake, it remains one of horror’s most audacious reinventions. Where the original embraced terror, the follow-up leaned gleefully into slapstick. Limbs fought their owners. Furniture laughed. Blood became choreography. Bruce Campbell transformed Ash Williams from terrified survivor into horror’s most reluctant action hero. Many filmmakers fear changing tone. Raimi understood that horror and comedy spring from the same source.

Timing.

Tension.

Release.

The result was a film unlike anything audiences had seen before. Instead of repeating success… It reinvented it.

Medieval Mayhem

If Evil Dead II surprised audiences… Army of Darkness bewildered them. Suddenly, the haunted cabin gave way to medieval castles. Chainsaws shared the screen with knights. Stop-motion skeletons battled wisecracking heroes. Fantasy collided with horror. Ray Harryhausen met The Three Stooges. It was gloriously absurd. Some fans longed for the terrifying intensity of the original. Others embraced Raimi’s fearless creativity. Regardless of preference, one truth became increasingly clear. The Evil Dead series had no interest in becoming predictable.

The Weight of Horror Returns

Following a lengthy silence, director Fede Álvarez resurrected the franchise in 2013. Many expected nostalgia. Instead, they received something almost merciless.

Gone were the jokes.

Gone was Ash.

In their place came addiction, trauma and astonishing practical gore. The familiar cabin returned, but its purpose had changed. Rather than celebrating the past, Álvarez stripped Evil Dead back to its most primal elements.

Isolation.

Possession.

Survival.

The result became one of the strongest modern horror remakes precisely because it resisted becoming a tribute act. It respected Raimi’s spirit. Not his formula.

Taking Evil Upstairs

Then came Evil Dead Rise.

Once again, expectations shifted.

The forest disappeared.

The cabin vanished.

Instead, evil emerged within a decaying apartment block. Vertical rather than horizontal. Neighbours instead of woodland. Family replacing friendship. The setting changed. The emotional stakes changed. Even the Book of the Dead evolved. Yet audiences recognised the franchise instantly. Because Evil Dead has never been defined by geography. It has always been defined by escalation. Every chapter asks the same question. How much worse can this become? Then answers… Far worse.

The Constant Among Chaos

If locations change…

If protagonists change…

If tone changes…

What exactly makes an Evil Dead film?

The answer isn’t Ash Williams.

Much as Bruce Campbell’s performance remains iconic, the franchise has demonstrated it can survive without him. It isn’t the cabin. Nor the chainsaw. Nor even the Deadites themselves. It is the Necronomicon. The cursed book has become the franchise’s true protagonist. It is the thread connecting every era. The catalyst that transforms ordinary lives into unimaginable nightmares. Unlike Dracula or Frankenstein’s Monster, the Necronomicon possesses remarkable flexibility.

It travels.

It waits.

It tempts.

Every generation discovers it anew. In many ways, the book reflects the franchise itself.

Forever changing.

Forever returning.

Reinvention as Survival

Many long-running horror franchises eventually become prisoners of nostalgia. They recreate familiar scenes. Repeat iconic dialogue. Resurrect beloved villains.

Sometimes this offers comfort.

Sometimes it exposes creative exhaustion.

Evil Dead has largely avoided this trap. Rather than asking audiences to relive old memories, each filmmaker contributes a fresh interpretation of Raimi’s original idea. Every generation receives its own version. Not a replacement. A continuation. The franchise has become less a single narrative than a shared mythology. A haunted framework within which different voices can flourish. That willingness to evolve explains why Evil Dead remains culturally vibrant after forty-five years. It refuses to become a museum piece.

The Prognosis:

Perhaps the greatest horror stories aren’t those that remain unchanged. They’re the ones brave enough to mutate. Like the demonic force that courses through its pages, Evil Dead has never stayed still.

It moves.

It possesses.

It transforms.

From isolated cabin…

To medieval battlefield…

To blood-soaked apartment tower…

The franchise continually sheds its skin without ever losing its soul.

Few horror series have reinvented themselves so completely. Fewer still have succeeded every time. As a new chapter begins with Evil Dead Burn, one thing seems certain. The Necronomicon has another story to tell.

And somewhere…

• Saul Muerte

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Long before revisiting the Evil Dead franchise for this retrospective series, I dedicated a trio of podcast episodes to Sam Raimi’s original trilogy. Listening back today, it’s fascinating to hear how my own appreciation of these remarkable films has evolved—but the enthusiasm remains exactly the same.

If you’d like to continue the journey, revisit these conversations from the archives:

🎧 The Evil Dead (1981)

🎧 Army of Darkness (1992)

🎧 The Evil Dead (2013)