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Helper Rock-Wrecked

It’s a bit late for Christmas-themed stuff — and even later for Halloween horror! None the less, we just came across Monsters of Metal: Krampus in Concert, still available from Opus Comics. “Written by director and visual effects artist Jason Howden (Guns Akimbo) and Llexi Leon, Monsters of Metal takes iconic creatures on the road as a heavy metal band in this riotous send-up of life on tour! This time out, our favorite monster metalheads cross paths with the dreaded Krampus!” The bloody artwork is by Ryan Christensen. Check out the preview over at Bleeding Cool to see just how wild they get!


image c. 2024 Opus Comics

Review: 'Five Nights at Freddy's' (the movie, not the game)

Your rating: None Average: 3.4 (12 votes)

fivenightsatfreddys.jpgDo you like scary movies?

I do. A downside of reviewing movies for a furry site is that you don't get to review horror very much, and when you do, it kind of feels like you're stretching more than a little (not pseudo-apologizing for this one, though, it's awesome). What you end up reviewing mostly is movies whose intended audience is for kids, and though the primary audience of Flayrah seems to be adults, its sometimes important to acknowledge that there are limits to what can and can't be done in a lot of more mainstream productions featuring talking animals.

Which makes it even wierder to finally get to a wide-release horror movie featuring a bunch of characters the furry fandom has embraced (if e621 is any indication), and my most positive response is, "yes, but the kids'll love it!"

Five Night's At Freddy's is a (very soft) PG-13 horror movie, directed by Emma Tammi, and is an adaptation of the 2014 horror video game of the same name, created by Scott Cawthon, who is a credited writer on this movie. The premise features an abandoned "dinner and a puppet show" pizzeria and arcade haunted by ghosts who possess the old animatronic puppet attractions. Though given a theatrical release, it's also available on the Peacock streaming service.

'Huggy Wuggy' triggers police warning to horrified parents

Your rating: None Average: 4.3 (4 votes)

Dorset police are warning of the impact on young children of videos related to Huggy Wuggy, an anthropomorphic antagonist in the independently-developed horror game Poppy Playtime, released last year. The game itself is reminiscent of Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach and has been rated 12+ by Common Sense Media. An official plush toy with Velcro paws was released mid-March.

Media featuring the character is proliferating, including a depiction of Huggy's reassembly on TikTok and 'Free Hugs', a multi-verse song from the monster's point of view. Reports indicate that the friendly nature of the character's name seems to be allowing their content to bypass filtering that would usually defend young viewers from such disturbing content, similar to issues before YouTube's COPPA implementation.

A new sort of animal: 'Lady into Fox', by David Garnett

Your rating: None Average: 3.1 (19 votes)

I don't feel the need to justify bringing up David "Bunny" Garnett's 1922 short novel Lady into Fox in a furry context. As the title suggests, the story involves a lady who turns into a fox. Technically, it is not a story about an anthropomorphic animal, and is in fact about the direct opposite of that, a zoomorphic human. Of course, this is a nitpick. I doubt anyone cares.

Sylvia Tebrick as a fox merrily chasing ducks in a cute little dress, from Lady into Fox

On the point of genre, however, there is one area where I would like to make a rather more controversial "take" on the subject matter. Though the novel was a bit unclassifiable when it was first introduced, with H.G. Wells (an author known for his use of anthropomorphic animals) praising it as "a new creation, a new sort of animal, let us say, suddenly running about in the world," a phrase that I imagine had him enthusiastically punching the air at his own cleverness.

More modern takes tend to classify it as a "contemporary fantasy". However, I find it to be entirely different: it seems nothing more (or less) than a tale of the supernatural; a ghost story whose 'ghost' merely requires a few scare quotes - or, put another way, a horror story.

Culturally F'd enters The Bone Zone

Your rating: None Average: 3.3 (16 votes)

Meet Rattles: Lives in bones, eats bad movies, pukes acid, vulture.The Bone Zone.

Our new Vulturally F'd host Rattles has a unique appetite. He eats terrible movies, looking for that juicy, so-bad-it's-good fermentation of cheesy old cinema. The lair he calls home is the Bone Zone, a hollowed-out corpse of a once mighty beast, nesting in an old video rental store.

With nothing but an old TV to keep him company, he shares his favourite meals with you, and warns you to steer clear of certain buffet items strewn about the floor of his cave. In proper Culturally F'd fashion, all the films Rattles will be reviewing feature anthropomorphic characters at their core. (Show trailer)

Bizarre 'Lone Wolf' promises fursuit slasher/sewing action

Your rating: None Average: 3.7 (10 votes)

If you felt fursuit drama Bitter Lake lacked action, or were looking for more of a horror vibe, High Octane Pictures' Lone Wolf may be the pre-Halloween therian fursuit slasher flick for you.


'Lone Wolf' poster

Charlie, a professional cosplayer that specializes in dressing up in Furry Animal costumes decides to go to the biggest Furry Party of the year with her friends, but the party is soon cut short when she realizes that the party’s host, Leon Fowl known as Lone Wolf, is a murderer who enjoys turning people into real life Furry Animals by sewing the "Fursuit" to his victim’s bodies. Charlie and her friends are now in a race for their lives to escape the clutches of this madman before it's too late.

Billed as 'a psycho insane crazy furry dream', Lone Wolf comes in at 82 minutes, is rated 16+, and is to be available on VOD platforms October 5. Fursuiters Gabrielle the Red Panda, Kanna the Oppossum, Charlie the Cheetah, and Valentina Lynx are played by Kennedy Wunderle, Alexandra Dustin, Jane Gardner and Victorya Danylko-Petrovskaya.

REVIEW: Bleak Horizons, edited by Tarl Hoch

Your rating: None Average: 4.5 (10 votes)

Bleak Horizons.jpgA great many people only experience science fiction by what my mother and millions of others referred to as "monster movies". From Frankenstein to Aliens and beyond, the unknown and the unexplored are often our undoing. Bleak Horizons, edited by Tarl Hoch, is a wonderful collection of 15 stories that mix SF and Horror with various levels of anthropomorphic settings and characters. And, full disclosure, one of those stories is mine. Happily, the mix includes more than just blood thirsty monsters and end of the universe scenarios.

Overall my favorite stories in this anthology are Hardwire, Pentangle, and The Ouroboros Plate. My least favorites are 4/13/2060 and Not Like Us. Below is a short review of all the pieces. I think you should snag a copy, if only to read my favorites and have a taste for this genre. However, I also really enjoyed Carmen Miranda's Ghost Is Haunting Space Station 3 so you have every right to question my taste.

'Barkham Horror' expansion is for the dogs – and their fans

Your rating: None Average: 4.9 (8 votes)

Arkham Horror card game developer Fantasy Flight Games has turned an April Fools suggestion into reality with new scenario Barkham Horror: The Meddling of Meowlathotep. [tip: Shazardek]

'Barkham Horror' investigators Bark Harrigan, Jacqueline Canine, Kate Winthpup, 'Skidds' O'Drool and Duke

New investigators Kate Winthpup, Bark Harrigan, Jacqueline Canine, 'Skidds' O'Drool and Duke have "picked up the scent of something big" and "must stop Meowlathotep, the Prowling Chaos, Meowsenger of the Outer Feline Gods, who is terrorizing the city of Barkham".

The dog-vs-cat-themed product, first teased on April 1 (of course) as The Dogwitch Legacy was encouraged by support in the game's forums, especially after cats became allies in The Dream-Eaters expansion pack. Like all expansions, the core Arkham Horror set is required to play.

Multiverse, hopes to bridge the communities of Fantasy, Sci-fi, & Horror Fans—Furries included

Your rating: None Average: 4.2 (13 votes)

Mutiverse_0.jpgEditors Disclosure: This article has been posted by the communications director of the convention.
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Multiverse, a brand-new convention for fans of science fiction, fantasy, horror, comics, furry culture, and more, will hold its debut event from October 18th to October 20th in Atlanta, GA.

The convention, located at the Hilton Atlanta Airport, will bring together fans, authors, artists, and other creators, all of whom share a common passion⁠—genre fiction. Attendees can expect sci-fi, fantasy, and horror media, tabletop role-playing games, cosplay, and other beloved staples of “geekery” to feature heavily at Multiverse.

“Panel discussions, a fursuit festival, an art gallery, a gaming hall, and even a charity auction for the nonprofit RAICES⁠—it’s going to be so much fun, truly,” says convention chair Allie Charlesworth. “Whether you love Game of Thrones or Black Panther, the movie Get Out or Dungeons and Dragons or even My Little Pony, this is absolutely your con.”

Retrospective review: 'Dog Soldiers'

Your rating: None Average: 2.6 (11 votes)

dogsoldiers.jpgFirst of all, happy Halloween!

For our final foray into lycanthropic cinema, comes— a movie I saw as a Sci Fi Channel original movie. It never even had a theatrical release in America. I will point out that it is by far the greatest Sci Fi Channel original movie ever produced, but I need hardly point out that is not a big accomplishment.

But, sometimes, hidden in the terrible filler, something emerges from the shadows. Perhaps I waste my time watching bad Sci Fi movies, but they provided a baseline. It's harder to know when you've got a good werewolf movie if you've never seen a bad or even just indifferent werewolf movie. Of course, if you don't have the patience to sit through the bad (with or without the MST3K patter), you can just take my word for it.

Dog Soldiers is a gory blast.

Retrospective review: 'An American Werewolf in London'

Your rating: None Average: 2.3 (6 votes)

anamericanwerewolfinlondon.jpgOccasionally, there comes a pair of movies that share remarkably similar themes that come out together. Sometimes, as in Antz versus A Bug's Life, there's evidence that one of the movies was designed as a direct competitor to the other. More often than not, however, there's just something in the water. Just last year, Disney went out of its way to advertise how unique a movie Zootopia was for featuring a fully anthropomorphic animal world in the one year in the history of American feature animation where that was not a unique quality. These things just happen.

1981 was one of those years, featuring not one, but two werewolf movies utilizing cutting edge (for the time) makeup effects that also happened to be horror comedies as opposed to straight horror movies. The Howling came out first, but it was the scrappy underdog that went up against the real Hollywood juggernaut, An American Werewolf in London, written and directed by John Landis, an up and coming director who hung out with the likes of Steven Spielberg.

Though An American Werewolf in London is an acknowledged classic of the horror genre and features a ghoulish sense of humor (Landis was, and still is, best known for Animal House, early poster taglines noted this movie featured "a different kind of animal"), it is, like The Wolf Man, very much a tragedy. And not all the tragedy is on screen.

Review: 'Bunnicula, A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery' by Deborah and James Howe

Your rating: None Average: 3.3 (15 votes)

A book cover, showing a rabbit that looks similar to Dracula the vampire.In the days before mobile phones and the Internet, people would have to have conversations with their pets to keep themselves from going insane. That's how it is with the Monroes, a nuclear family with two young children, two careers, and two pets: a cat (Chester) and a dog (Harold).

And every day, when the family members head out of the house, they leave their pets unsupervised to indulge in their vices. Chester reads horror stories; Harold daydreams about food. Life is perfect.

Until the day the Monroes go to a Dracula film, and come home with a little fluffy bundle of a rabbit in a shoebox full of dirt.

Review: 'Corpus Lupus', by John K. Smith

Your rating: None Average: 3.8 (6 votes)

30300363.jpgThis book is actually a collection of three novellas about your worst nightmare: A WEREWOLF WITH A BADGE.

OK, I know for some of you (me included), the image that first comes to mind might be more erotic than horrific... but I assure you that your ride along is going to take you into some deeply, darkly, disturbing places.

Highridge is a cop that became a werewolf in an Urban Fantasy Setting where lycanthropes have a subculture and are an accepted part of modern society. And the revelation of their existence is no recent thing.

As is often the case when the werewolves are (mostly) good guys, there are worse things out there than wolfmen.

Legion Printing and Publishing, 2010, ebook $2.66 (194 pages).

Yes, but are eldritch horrors furry?

Your rating: None Average: 4.4 (5 votes)

Furry fans who have long been debating whether Cthulhu, Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlarathotep, and the other often-squiddly “indescribable horrors” of author H.P. Lovecraft’s dark imagination count as “furry”, will find their arguments heating up in October when the animated feature Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom is released in Canada.

Howard Lovecraft and the Frozen Kingdom, written, directed and produced by Sean Patrick O’Reilly and currently in production by Arcana Studios, to be distributed by The Shout! Factory (a company known more for its DVD releases than for theatrical distribution), is adapting the movie from the popular comic book written by Bruce Brown and illustrated by Renzo Podesta. It was reprinted as a 96-page trade paperback by Arcana in February 2010 that is still in print.

Movie review: 'The Witch'

Your rating: None Average: 2.9 (11 votes)

thewitch.jpgYou shall have to forgive me; this is not a very furry movie. It may not be a furry movie at all, but to truly come down one way or another, I'd have to spoil things. However, one does not often have the opportunity to review a movie endorsed by the Satanic Temple; in fact, this is the first opportunity any reviewer ever has had. If you're the kind of person who likes to take movie recommendations from the Satanic Temple, well, there you go. Stephen King liked it too.

So, why am I reviewing this movie for Flayrah (I mean, other than I want to, and I can)? Well, this is one of those horror movies where you can't know for sure if what you're seeing is real, or a vision, a dream, or a hallucination. Two small children assure us they talk to a goat; this goat is named Black Phillip. When not playing imaginary friend to all children (or is it the witch in the wood's familiar pretending to be playing imaginary friend to all children?), he enjoys Tweeting cute goat videos, vintage furry art, vague threats at the Pope and, of course, humblebrags. Not in the movie, though (that would be quite a twist), but as part of the bizarre viral marketing employed by cult distributor A24 (see also, Satanic Temple endorsement). Don't laugh, the goat has more followers than we do.

Oh, also there's a bunny. I should probably mention that.