Graveyard Shift Sisters

I've always felt that Black History Month gives us time to reflect on how we're all involved in the process of continuing to add more to celebrate each February. Women in Horror Month continues to prove why it exists all throughout the year and how it has successfully created communities of women as well as men who look to support each other's artistic efforts.

The merge of the two this year was clearly intentional. In cinema and beyond,very rarely are Black women given the kind of spotlight and brevity some of our fore-women/scream queens receive. I can think of two solid reasons. As I consider how both months remind us of how the marginalized deserve equal footing all year in all aspects of society, there constantly seems to be missing gaps and missed opportunities to understand each other and talk about some first steps in solutions instead of focusing on the problems.

By Takima Bly (@emma_fRhost2)
Book: The Walking Dead (Comic book series)

Synopsis: The comic book follows sheriff Rick Grimes and a group of survivors during a zombie apocalypse. The world is in a state of catastrophe due to flesh eating “walkers”, a rapid spreading disease, and dangerous search missions for food and medical supplies. Not only are survivors afraid of being killed by the walkers, but they also have to protect themselves from other people. The mindset of humanity has shifted and the dynamics of society fell apart. No one can be trusted. The population is contaminated by the disease that is rapidly spreading. Families are broken apart as they struggle to live with depleting resources and seeking shelter against the hungry and deadly walkers. Paranoia grows as survivors are being killed, by other living people, to save and protect themselves.

Beloved is a film I touched briefly on here before. Set not long after the emancipation of enslaved Africans in America in the midwest, a Black woman named Sethe grapples with her enslaved past when she is reunited with the child she bore and slain for fear of being recaptured by her slave master after escaping.
Recently watching this for the first time, my visceral and intellectual response was pleasantly mixed and complicated. It was such an uncomfortable movie to experience and at the same time, empathetic and endearing. Some re-affirming academic work as been done on the film by Ellen C. Scott who titled her work, "The Horrors Of Remembrance: The Altered Visual Aesthetic of Horror in Jonathan Demme's Beloved," Jonathan Demme being the director, Toni Morrison, the author and source of content and inspiration.
What is profound to note is the film's intimate relationship to traditional horror/the Southern gothic as well as it presents itself as removed from that tra…

By Fay McCray (@fayewrites)
I scare really easily...like too easily.
Just a commercial for the latest horror movie can mess me up for the rest of the day, the fear giving me irrational fears that turn far off sounds into monsters and the soft hum of benign household utilities into whispers from the beyond.
In sum, I am a victim of my own overactive imagination.  Frightening tales often pale in comparison to things that I conjure up in my head. An article about a sinkhole making headlines in the news?  I will stare into space for ten minutes after I read the article and wonder if the gaping sink hole has the potential to spread to me, 300 miles from where it originated, and engulf everyone unfortunate enough to be in its path, unexpectedly pulling me from where I sit at my computer, leaving only enough time to scream, "WHY?!?" as my weakening fingers lose their grip on the edge of the Earth.  A plane flying too low as a thunderstorm approaches?  I stare up at the sky just a lit…

"I have always loved horror it was my Mom’s favorite type of film and back in the day there were still ‘Fright Night’ channels  so I grew up watching all kinds of things go bump in the night."
Geretta Geretta may not be a name you recognize, and it's not often that genre actresses are lauded for their well-rounded portfolios and experiences. Geretta Geretta is definitely in that camp. Accomplished, beautiful, and loving her fans, the most important aspect about Black History Month for me has always been getting to know more about a figure in African (diaspora & American) history that others may not acknowledge.

The amount of eye rolling I've received from half interested listeners when I'm trying to explain the significance of They Live in our sociopolitical reality is just about as frustrating as the sting of tears from slicing an onion. Slap a low budget on a film with lesser known "stars" and an alien conspiracy plot and the normies cry lunacy. I'm not one to completely dismiss a film's ability to make an imprint on the American consciousness, camp be damned. I loathed Titanic for all its hype of a mediocre love story and an insufferable Celine Dion ballad. But maybe there was some overall sense of romance and love masses of people were trying to negotiate and grasp for themselves. Scratch that, I have no clue what made people so batshit over Titanic.

1988's They Live was penned and directed by John Carpenter. Based on Ray Nelson's 1963 short story "Eight O’Clock in the Morning," the film sticks firmly to the original ideas and concepts of whi…

A part of the inspiration for this website is discovering the blog, Real Queen Of Horror orchestrated by the lovely Zena. I figured, if a Black woman loved horror enough to start a blog and boldly describe herself as the queen of it, well, first, I had to get to know more about her and second, felt confident that there were other women of color who existed with a similar fervor for the genre.

She's a blogger, filmmaker, and movie reviewer hailing from New York but currently in the very warm state of Florida who also puts fashion in the mix of her fore interests. Keeping true to my word, I wanted to know more about Zena's inspir- and asperations for all her endeavors...

Black History and Women in Horror Month merge to offer a rich, unique perspective on the lives of marginalized people who have looked to inject positive, inclusive, and transformative work into the consciousness of the human condition.

To kick off February's celebration and acknowledgement of both movements, I wanted to look at the genesis of African American portrayals in horror films as well as look at two, prominent Black women that were in some these films. Rarely does Black History Month highlight the contributions of Black women in horror cinema. This consideration enriches the prosperity of Women in Horror Month as well.