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Cinema in 2023 boasted a slew of surprise hits and surprise flops, but one constant was the Black presence in horror. Not necessarily a year of earth-shattering accomplishments, 2023 was for Black horror more about consistency and variety, broadening the typical Black roles into period pieces, ghost stories, mad scientist tales, horror-comedies, and family-friendly fare. As with last year,...

Like every other Internet gnome trolling the Web for treasure, I traced the progress of the film Snakes on a Plane for months, drinking in the online parodies and speculating on the possibility of sequels (Giraffes on a Speedboat) or even prequels (Dodos on a Frigate). I cheered when New Line Studios ordered five days of re-shoots to bump...

Rappers are busy people, what with all the ho juggling, money stacking, and ride pimping. That's why so few of them have time to fully devote to the craft of acting. And yet so many of them are doing it, mucking up our precious horror films with their half-assed performances. Now, the time has come to set them straight...

How Much Have Black Horror Roles Increased? Tracking the number of modern horror movies per year with significant* Black roles. For  details on specific movies, refer to: 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s *Admittedly, "significant" is a subjective term that varies by era.

Don't feel like seeing black blood spilled? Wanna see the black guy escape with his life (and a new respect for power tools)? Here are some films that have been rated NDN (No Dead Negroes)... Movie Actors Who Live Year Abby Carter, Terry 1974 Cook, Nathan 1974 Cowden, Michael 1974 Kinchelow, Felice 1974 Marshall, William 1974 Moore, Juanita 1974 Ray, Joan 1974 Robinson, George 1974 Speed, Carol 1974 Stoker, Austin 1974 Alligator People, The Dickerson, Dudley 1959 Goodwin, Ruby 1959 Townsend, Vince Jr. 1959 Amityville II Gunn, Moses 1982 Ross, Ted 1982 Amityville 1992 Carpenter, Willie C. 1992 Amityville:...

Everyone knows that the "black guy" (or gal) usually dies in horror movies -- so much so, in some instances, the characters themselves seem to be aware of their inevitable fate. Thus, we have the phenomenon of black "heroic death," in which black characters (usually peripheral) voluntarily sacrifice themselves -- or at least, volunteer for tasks that mean certain...

It goes without saying that over the years, Hollywood has had some issues with adequate racial representation in starring roles, and horror is certainly not immune to that problem. However, that doesn't mean there haven't been some excellent "mainstream" (for lack of a better word) fright flicks starring black folk. For this list, I'm excluding all-black films (e.g., Blaxploitation, "urban,"...

Originally posted on Pretty-Scary.net Black women in cinematic history have long faced the double-barreled Hollywood stigma of race and gender "otherness," their fleeting moment of glory coming in the '90s when "You go, girl!" was introduced into the popular lexicon. On the more formal level of Oscar recognition, meanwhile, the black female images thus far celebrated by the Academy of...

Be they stereotypes or monotypes, they're the "types" that most black characters in horror films inevitably fall into... The Spook As the name implies, the spook is spooked by all things spooky. Typically the comic sidekick, he's often spared from death by his ability to make people laugh. The "classic spook" (most widely represented by Mantan Moreland and the catchphrase often...

  Black Is Boo-Tiful When Jordan Peeele’s Get Out became a breakout success in 2017, earning him the first Original Screenplay Oscar awarded to an African-American, "black horror movies" suddenly became the new hot property in Hollywood, with many people seeming to believe that this was an entirely new subset of the horror genre. As landmark of a film as Get Out...