As dyed-in-the-wool metalheads we all love Slayer and appreciate everything they’ve done for heavy music. That much is a given. But what do all those normal people think of them? Y’know, the sort who think we’re all mad for loving this music? That was the admittedly slim premise that prompted us to ask our very funny comedian pal Sarah Sumeray if she’d give their 1986 classic Reign In Blood a listen for the first time and let us know what she reckoned. Because it’s nice to get some perspective on these things. Imagine hearing those songs afresh again. Lucky, Sarah, right? Or maybe not…
Orion Pictures
Oscar tradition is for the previous year’s best actress winner to handle the best actor category at the next ceremony, and so it was at the 1992 Academy Awards when Kathy Bates announced, “And the Oscar goes to Anthony Hopkins in ‘The Silence of the Lambs.’” How fitting it was that the actors who had portrayed two of the most memorable and we dare say beloved serial killers in cinematic history would share the stage that night. Just as Bates in “Misery” burnished the character of Annie Wilkes into the cultural landscape with such memorable lines as, “I’m your No. 1 fan,” Hopkins created an unforgettable movie legend in Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who told his FBI inquisitor Clarice Starling, “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice CHIANTI.”
There have long been tales of witches and black magic that have held people in a state of both awe and terror. There was a time when the dark wilderness out past the light of the lanterns and campfires was populated by such nefarious forces, and remote areas seemed to be particular wellsprings of grim tales of witchcraft, hexes, and curses. One such case involves a remote town that was allegedly besieged by a powerful witch, who was stopped by a tormented young man who had been the target of her spells and who would become embroiled within a trial pitting modern rationale against the ancient superstitions of witches and dark, arcane forces.