horror movies
Don’t Feed This Book After Midnight!
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai started streaming today on Max. I didn’t work on that show. But if you’re looking for a Gremlins-related project I did work on, you’ll be happy to know that I wrote The Gremlins Little Golden Book, which comes out on September 5, 2023 from Penguin Random House.
The Gremlins LGB is a retelling of the classic 1984 movie Gremlins, written as a Little Golden Book for very young readers.
When I was a kid, Gremlins was one of my favorite movies. So it was a real thrill to write The Gremlins Little Golden Book. (Also, working on this book was a good excuse to re-watch Gremlins several times in a row.)
Here’s the official publisher description of the book:
Whatever you do, don’t get this Little Golden Book wet! The first ever Gremlins Little Golden Book based on the classic film features those mischievous Gremlins as lovable Funko Pop figures! Follow the wild misadventures of those trouble-causing Gremlins in this delightful retelling of the classic movie. Illustrated in the quirky and loveable Funko POP! art style, kids 2 to 5—and their parents—will love this love this light-hearted reimagining of one of the funniest films of all time as a collectable Little Golden Book! Little Golden Books enjoy nearly 100% consumer recognition. They feature beloved classics, hot licenses, and new original stories. . .the classics of tomorrow.
As you may recall from an earlier blog post, I also wrote The Goonies Little Golden Book. But what you might not know is that I wrote the Goonies and Gremlins LGBs back-to-back. Which was SO much fun. It also made me compare and contrast the two films, especially since they’re both written by the same screenwriter (Chris Columbus). And both films feature Corey Feldman, and are Executive Produced by Steven Spielberg. Also, both films involve a character who’s an inventor (Data in Goonies and Rand Peltzer in Gremlins). There’s even a line of dialogue in Goonies that references the plot of Gremlins! Do the two films take place in a shared universe? I wouldn’t go that far. But they’ve got quite a lot in common.
Anyway, that’s the sort of thing you think about when you’re working on a project like The Gremlins Little Golden Book.
Check out the book’s page on the Penguin Random House site.
Check out the Amazon page for The Gremlins Little Golden Book (where you can also see a few of the interior pages from the book!).
And click HERE to find out more about some of the other books I’ve written for Penguin Random House.
Hey, I Came Up With Some Title Ideas for a Hanukkah-Themed Horror Movie
You know what? It’s Hanukkah! So I figured I’d talk about Hanukkah! No, not Hanukkah the holiday; Hanukkah the MOVIE. See, there’s a horror film that came out a few years ago called Hanukkah. It’s a slasher movie about Hanukkah, and they decided to CALL the movie Hanukkah. Which is a terrible title for a Hanukkah-themed horror movie. It’s so unimaginative! I mean, couldn’t they come up with a better title than…Hanukkah? It doesn’t even SOUND like a horror movie title.
I know that some of you reading this might be thinking, “Oh yeah, Arie? You think you can do any better? You think YOU can come up with a better title?”
And here’s my answer: Challenge accepted! I decided to come up with a list of BETTER titles for a Hanukkah-themed horror movie. I gave myself a few minutes to accomplish the task, and here are the titles I came up with:
- Judah Maccabeast
- Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel, I Made You Out of SLAY
- MenoraaaaaaAAAAGGGHHH!
- The Whining
- Fried-Dough the 13th
- Mr. President, Those Latkes Are Alive!
- Gelt By Association
- Killer Kleins from Outer Space
- A Great Miracle Happened SCARE!
- Macca-Beat You To Death
- Jelly Donuts from Hell!
- The Discount Pair of Men’s Slacks That Wouldn’t Die
- Death Dreidels: Dreidels of Death
- The House of Wax…Menorah Candles
- Kvellraiser
- Skullcaps
- Tales from the Dark Sidelman
- Catskills Resort Massacre
- Menorah-morphosis
- The Wrath of Cohen
- Burial Plotz
- Salem’s Latke
There. ANY of those are a better title than Hanukkah. So if you’re reading this and you’re a film producer, and you want me to write a Hanukkah-themed horror screenplay to go with any of the above titles, you know where to find me. (Um, via the “Contact” page of this website. Or just email me at arie@ariekaplan.com That’s where you can find me.)
Monsters (And Not The “Elmo” Kind)
I was recently interviewed by reporter AJ Frost for the geek culture site The Beat. We talked about my recent children’s book projects for Scholastic and Disney Book Group. We also talked about the series of lectures that I’ll be doing throughout 2017 at the NYC performance space QED Astoria.
I’ll be kicking off that lecture series with a talk titled “THE MONSTER MAKERS: UNIVERSAL PICTURES, CARL LAEMMLE JR., AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD HORROR MOVIES.” It’s happening on Saturday January 7th 2017 at 2pm.
This first wave of monster movies (1931’s Frankenstein, 1933’s Invisible Man, 1941’s The Wolfman, etc) didn’t just inspire future generations of horror filmmakers. It inspired ALL purveyors of fantastic cinema, including Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Peter Jackson, Joss Whedon, Clive Barker, and Robert Rodriguez. Not to be coy, but I can’t really tell you WHY or HOW it influenced them. Because then you wouldn’t come and see the lecture.
During my “MONSTER MAKERS” lecture, I’ll talk about people like Boris Karloff, Gloria Stuart, Bela Lugosi, Tod Browning, James Whale, Curt Siodmak, and Jack Pierce. By the time I’ve finished the lecture, you’ll understand why those people are important, why you should care about them, and how they shaped modern pop culture.
You’ll also understand what all of this has to do with the creation of the first wave of comic book superheroes, and how these horror movies were informed by then-recent events in world history.
And I just might explain how the story of these early horror filmmakers ties in to the narrative of my award-winning nonfiction book From Krakow To Krypton: Jews And Comic Books.