New essay on Night Terrors (Tobe Hooper, 1993) in Vinegar Syndrome 4K/Blu-ray booklet

Vinegar Syndrome is re-releasing Night Terrors in two gorgeous limited edition cases.

Both special limited edition sets come with spot gloss hard slipcases + slipcover combos and include 40-page perfect bound books). Only available on the Vinegar Syndrome website and select indie retailers.

A criminally underseen later work from master of horror Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Poltergeist), 1993’s NIGHT TERRORS (aka Tobe Hooper’s Nightmare) sees the legendary director reunited with his Eaten Alive stars Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Mangler) and William Finley (Sisters, The Phantom of the Paradise), with the former turning in an incredible dual performance as Paul Chevalier and the Marquis de Sade himself in a series of atmospheric flashbacks. Packed full of erotic scenes, surreal visuals, and sadomasochistic set pieces, Vinegar Syndrome is thrilled to present this too-long-neglected opus from one of the horror genre’s most revered craftsmen, painstakingly restored in 4K for its disc debut and served up with lashings of newly-produced bonus features.

Bonus content:

  • Commentary track with film writer Scout Tafoya
  • “Femme Fatale” (16 min) – an interview with actress Alona Kimhi
  • “Writing Pains” (20 min) – an interview with co-writer Daniel Matmor
  • “Dressed for Excess” (19 min) – an interview with costume designer Rona Doron
  • “Sounds Alarming” (17 min) – an interview with supervising sound editor Gregory King
  • “Not Holding Back” (27 min) – an interview with critic and author Kim Newman
  • Trailer
  • 40-page perfect-bound book (limited edition only) with writing by Steven Thrower, Mike Thorn, and Fred Barrett
  • Reversible cover artwork

Pre-order here.

New essay on The Mangler in Vinegar Syndrome Limited Edition 4K booklet

Order The Mangler (Vinegar Syndrome Limited Edition 4K).

From the minds of horror master Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Poltergeist) and writer Stephen King (The Shining) comes a terrifying and darkly comedic vision of technology gone mad: THE MANGLER (1995). Starring horror legend Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street), along with Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs), and voice work by actor Jim Cummings (Winnie the Pooh). Packed with outrageously gory and bizarre set pieces along with impressive visual effects, Vinegar Syndrome is excited to present the UHD debut of this supremely strange and entertaining 90s horror classic, presented in a stunning new 4K restoration of its original 35mm camera negative, in its extra gruesome unrated version, and loaded with extras including an extended new making-of documentary featuring interviews with cast and crew.

directed by: Tobe Hooper
starring: Robert Englund, Ted Levine, Daniel Matmor, Jeremy Crutchley, Vanessa Pike
1995 / 106 min / 1.85:1 / English 5.1 Surround + 2.0 Stereo

Additional info:

  • 2-disc Set: 4K Ultra HD / Region A Blu-ray
  • 4K UHD presented in Dolby Vision High-Dynamic-Range
  • Newly scanned & restored in 4K from its 35mm original camera negative
  • New commentary track with editor David Heitner and film critic Alison Foreman
  • New commentary track with film critic Scout Tafoya
  • “Waking a Brutal Beast” (46 min) – a brand new making-of documentary featuring interviews with writer Stephen David Brooks, actors Robert Englund and Jeremy Crutchley, and special effects team Scott Coulter, Scott Wheeler, and Todd Masters
  • Behind-the-scenes footage
  • Still gallery
  • Theatrical trailer
  • TV spot
  • 40-page perfect-bound book with writing by Mike Thorn, Chris Cabin, and Ariel Esteban Cayer (limited edition only)
  • Reversible sleeve artwork
  • English SDH subtitles

MONSTRUM 8.2: Vegan and Animal Liberation Horror, guest edited by Mike Thorn (read now!)

Monstrum vol. 8, issue 2 is now available!

Guest-edited by horror scholar and fiction writer Mike Thorn, this robust issue presents six feature essays, two works of original fiction, a dossier of retrospective reviews, and two essays in our student forum. Feature essays cover both literature and the moving image from a broad range of perspectives. From reorienting human and more-than-human animal perspectives in the essays by Poulomi Choudhury, Dru Jeffries, and Britt MacKenzie-Dale, to epistemological and ontological shifts in the way we think of human and more than-human ecologies in the essays by Zoë Anne Laks, Jenni Makahnouk, and William Taylor, and the Introduction by Mike Thorn, the contributions to this special issue explore the challenge of thinking beyond harmful anthropocentric and hegemonic capitalist world systems.

For the first time, this issue of Monstrum includes original fiction. In “The Playground,” celebrated horror author Kathe Koja (The Cipher, Under the Poppy, Straydog) traces a shift in ecological sensibility to what might be called a necessary violence. And with “Cogno,” Mike Thorn (Darkest Hours, Peel Back and See) brings us into the terrifying world of tech-bro longevity at the expense of … maybe everything. 

A selection of retrospective reviews considers literary and cinematic texts that strive to reorient human and nonhuman animal perspectives, including a critical reassessment of the (anti-)anthropocentrism in Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2018), the vegan aesthetic of Rob Zombie’s films via House of 1000 Corpses (2003), and the brutal struggle against becoming-animal in Stuart Gordon’s grim King of the Ants (2003).

The student forum includes two essays by emerging scholars that continue the issue’s investigations of radical otherness. A product of the SSHRC-funded “Horror Ecologies” workshop by CORERISC held in summer 2024 at Dawson College, Emerson Reault’s essay reads Ginger Snaps as a trans allegory, reconsidering the film’s metaphorical “curse” as less one of becoming a woman, than that of an understanding of one’s embodiment. In their essay, Luka Romney looks at radical empathy for the “animal” Other via Julia Kristeva’s concept of herethics in two of Larry Cohen’s most provocative 1970s films, It’s Alive! (1976) and It Lives Again (1978).

Film International, “The Houses That Hooper Built – American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper”

“This juxtaposition between some admittedly cheesy films and their serious thematic undercurrents can be jarring, and nowhere is this effect more evident than in Mike Thorn’s ‘Lizard Brain Ouroboros: Human Antiexceptionalism in Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive and Crocodile.’ These films are not the director’s best by a longshot (although the former, his 1976 follow-up to Texas Chain Saw, has enjoyed a cult following), but Thorn skillfully dissects how they illustrate ‘the [triune brain] theory…that human cognition’s roots can be traced to the nonhuman animal world’ (106). The boundary separating these worlds dissolves, and viewers may find themselves rooting more for the so-called ‘monsters’ than the oblivious humans exploiting them.”

Read the full review.

Darkest Hours author Mike Thorn talks to Josiah Morgan about writing, genre and influences

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Josiah Morgan and I have been online acquaintances for several years, bonding initially over our mutual passion for film. I recently read his debut poetry collection Inside the Castle and was stunned by its formal sophistication, thematic complexity and breadth of reference. I sent him a message asking if he would like to publish a chat with me about writing, genre and influences, and he kindly agreed.

Our conversation is now available to read on Kendall Reviews.

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