// Category Archive for: Issues

Look Who’s Growling, Too: Our Deep, Abiding Love of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby

By John Lane and Less Lee Moore

Hands-down, Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby is one of our favorite horror movies of all time. We love it as much for what it doesn’t do as for what it does do. It seems that there’s a storm cloud of creepiness that settled upon this movie before, during, and after which makes it all the more fascinating. Like a lot of other things from the late sixties, it is a sinister relic from a haunted time. So here are our reasons why Rosemary’s Baby—behind and in front of the camera—is one of the most enduring, complex horror films ever committed to celluloid.

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New Orleans Is Halloween

By Lisa Haviland

The first time I drove my new-resident ass down Pine Street in 2000, dodgin’ craters, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell I’d done, even as I knew I belonged in this witchy, subtropic gingerbreadland. Halloween is much better as an ethos, a lifestyle, than a holiday whose significance ebbs with age, and Halloween had manifested in the form of this secret city. Constraints didn’t exist in New Orleans the way they did elsewhere—to where they swallowed you, to where people somberly did their day-to-day and duty trumped joy after all. The thick air vibrated me right out of regular America’s orbit.
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Acid Leaves No Trace: Ten Morbid Melodies from Garbo’s Daughter

By Kristin Messina, Mandy Mullins, and Jaime Sparrowhawk

This issue, the lovely ladies from Garbo’s Daughter share their favorite songs about death, including car crashes, motorbike crashes, violent beatings, and getting poisoned!
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The Music of the Scares: A Soundtrack for Halloween

By Less Lee Moore

Halloween conjures many images: candy, costumes, decorations, haunted houses, and horror movies. While these are all integral parts of the holiday, there is one factor that is often overlooked but which is vital to embracing the spirit of the season: music.

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The Zombified’s Hallowhaus: Q & A with Artist Krystal Fancey Beck

By Less Lee Moore

Hallowhaus tells the tale “of a newly undead girl, risen from the grave on one Halloween midnight, soon to discover she’s not quite as alone as she’d first assumed.” In this issue of Popshifter, we chat with artist and creator Krystal Fancey Beck about the comic as well as The Zombified website.
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Going With The Known Demons: An Interview With The Melvins

By Summer Hayes

Early on I knew the Melvins only by association, but it wasn’t until I saw them live that I realized how incredibly talented and unusually bizarre they really are. My initial introduction occurred in the early ’90s when the surge of grunge-angst rock (a.k.a. Temple of the Pearl in Chains) emerged from the northwest shores of Washington State. Ironically, I was too busy listening to Faith No More and swooning over Mike Patton to delve into the unconventional, yet highly addictive, sounds of the Melvins (and to think that I was on the right track and didn’t even know it). Nearly ten years later, in late 2002, I went to New Orleans to check out Mike Patton’s latest creation, Tomahawk, only to discover that the Melvins were the opening band. I was hooked.

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Metallica, Kill ‘Em All

By Christian Lipski

For a brief shining period in my life, this was the hardest music ever. My brother (yet again), acting as the advance scout, returned from the fringes of the music world carrying Metallica’s debut in a thick mesh net. It was like the Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest I had heard, only faster, more aggressive. It sounded like freedom!
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The Grey Zone: Or, Why Battlestar Galactica Is So Frakkin’ Good

By David Speranza

I admit I was a latecomer to the new Battlestar Galactica. But as someone who hasn’t had cable since 1999, I’m a latecomer to pretty much all the cool shows (with the record going to The Prisoner, which I’m still trying to catch up with—only 40 years after it first aired). So it’s a point of pride for me that after watching Battlestar Galactica‘s first three seasons on DVD, followed by Amazon downloads of the first half of season four , I’m actually up to date on a current show (just in time, too—its final episodes start airing in January).
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Getting With The Program: Q & A With The Spook Lights

By Less Lee Moore

From Legends of America:

According to the legend, the spook light was first seen by Indians along the infamous Trail of Tears in 1836; however, the first “official” report occurred in 1881 in a publication called the Ozark Spook Light.
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The Dawn Of The Living Dead: I Walked With A Zombie

By Chelsea Spear

The year was 1942, and the producer/director team of Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur were riding high. Cat People, the first feature released through Lewton’s B-horror division at RKO, had saved the studio from bankruptcy and was on its way to becoming a cornerstone of contemporary horror. Before they’d finished counting the receipts, RKO studio heads gave the pair their next assignment.
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