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‘SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK’ Features Frightening Ghouls, Lame Teenage Acting

Growing up in the 90’s, scholastic horror was all the rage. A generation cut their teeth on R.L. Stine’s ‘Goosebumps’, devouring forbidden stories of devious child heroes and things that go bump in the night, before graduating to Steven King works. Few threaded the needle between Stein’s adolescent-aimed novellas and King’s more mature themes better than Alvin Schwartz with his 1981 shorts collection “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”. A dark mirror reflection of Shel Silverstein whimsy and optimism, Schwartz’s bleak poems were outlandish and spooky, often eliciting Cronenbergian body horror and a sense of cruel recompense to disturbing effect. Coupled with Stephen Gammell’s drawings, a splattering of acid-influenced black-and-white gothic art pocked with American splotches of red, white, and blue, “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” were OG nightmare fuel for a whole generation of kiddos looking to get their kicks with a good bedtime scare.   Read More

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Out in Theaters: PAPER TOWNS

Paper Towns is as infantile as it is pointless; a sloppily rendered, paint-by-numbers filmic blunder that celebrates femininity and the free spirit without understanding either. It’s a glossy venture through teenagedom (emphasis on “dumb”) that both takes itself too seriously and is too fantastical and inconsequential to be taken seriously. As such, it simply fails to grasp anything of value, though its fingers remain greedily extended. Though acted with suitable gusto by its young cast, Paper Towns is the movie equivalent of a rambling troglodyte, spouting words and ideas without having much to say at all.   Read More