James Reinhardt

Dracula is a character that has achieved true immortality, not by sucking the blood of the living like in the original novel but through constant pop-culture rebirth. From his earliest cinematic adaptations until now, Dracula has shown a remarkable ability to change and adapt with the times by feeding on his audience’s deepest insecurities and repressed desires. He has been a symbol of everything from post-war Germany to the counterculture of the 1960s and evolved from a rat-like monster to a...

Ari Aster’s folk horror film Midsommar became an instant horror classic after its release in the summer of 2019. Centered on Dani (Florence Pugh), a woman still dealing with the trauma of the murder/suicide of her sister and parents, she travels to Sweden along with her emotionally distant boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and several of his friends to take part in a once-in-a-lifetime midsummer celebration.
Since this is a folk horror story, there’s a sinister reason why this group of outsid...

Even if they’ve never seen a horror movie, every kid in America knows about Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy. These characters and archetypes have been around long before movies existed, but the film adaptations from Universal Pictures created the iconic versions of the characters that people still picture today. Though these legendary cinematic monsters are household names, none of them seem to have the passionate fan base that the titular Creature from 1954’s Creature from the Black Lag...

By James Reinhardt
We’ve all seen it in movies before — a group of shallow, unlikeable teenagers decide to venture someplace that they shouldn’t for a weekend of debauchery. From the very beginning, the movie is telling us “Oh yeah, you’re gonna love watching these people get murdered.”
Will we though?
There’s a mode of thinking when making a horror film that the prospective group of victims should be as unlikable as possible so that we enjoy seeing them suffer a horrific fate later in the mo...

By James Reinhardt
The Wicker Man (1973), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Midsommar (2019)…
These films call to mind images of bloodthirsty cannibals chasing people through the American countryside and pagan cults celebrating human sacrifice. The antagonists in these films are groups of people who have slipped through the cracks of society and the influence of modern life. Though with these movies, the problem lies as much with the company the villains keep as ...

Images of rusty bridges, ketchup bottles, and football seem to come to mind when people think of Pittsburgh, PA. While we certainly are proud to be home to Heinz Ketchup and love our Steelers here in the Steel City, we’re also working hard to leave our rust belt image behind us. The city of Pittsburgh has become a small tech hub, and the healthcare industry has replaced the steel industry as the main jobs provider. Football is something that seems to be forever here in Pittsburgh, and you’re ...

I first saw Takashi Miike’s Audition (1999) as part of a horror film class in college. At the time I had never heard of the film, nor knew anything about the plot, and when I told friends what movie we were watching in class that week, the reactions were usually something like “Oh man…” or “Good luck”, or in the case of a female friend, a wide grin followed by the exclamation “I love Audition!”
Like many horror films, Audition is at its most powerful if you go in knowing as little as possible...

Few figures have maintained a foothold in pop culture like Count Dracula, the vampire first introduced in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel. Dracula jumped from the page to the theater with several stage adaptations of Stoker’s novel, and it was only a matter of time before the fledgling film industry decided to bring the Count to cinematic life. The legendary vampire’s first film appearance was in an unauthorized adaptation called Nosferatu (1922), and later in the now-iconic 1931 adaptation starring...

There are few characters who have endured in pop culture like Count Dracula, the legendary vampire who first appeared in a novel by Bram Stoker published in 1897. Though at the end of the book the heroes finish off the titular vampire with knives, that was far from the last we saw of the famed bloodsucker who would live on in a myriad of stage plays, books, movies, toys, and even breakfast cereals. During his time in the public consciousness, Dracula’s ability to change shape has extended bey...