Editorials
Horror-Themed Fireworks for Your Fourth of July Celebration!
Many horror fans look at the Fourth of July as merely a waypoint for Halloween. Last year’s offerings have disappeared from the discount bins and the stores haven’t yet stocked up on this year’s goodies. The Fourth of July is usually sunny and hot. Something we tend to avoid like the vamps we are. Standing over a grill will just melt our battle jacket enamel pins and make our black eyeliner run into the potato salad.
Aside from a handful of holiday-set movies, finding holiday horror themed items is fairly difficult. No limited edition, super exclusive red, white and blue striped sweater Freddy from NECA to be found anywhere. And there are no events for us to hang our fangs on. Zombie George Washington’s Hayride really should be a thing.
But look no further, fiends. The fireworks companies have had our hunched backs for ages and many of us didn’t even know it. Every year, I like to cruise the fireworks stands and see the wonderful art on the packaging and giggle and hoot at the insane names they give their sparklers, fountains, firecrackers and blow-the-sky-to-smithereens offerings. Being in California, where anything that lifts off the ground means a hefty fine, the offerings are pretty small and quaint. But go to a real state where they encourage all-out war between neighborhoods and the loss of fingers, and buddy, there is horror to be found in them hills.
Here’s a little visual of what you can see, or what you’ve missed over the past few years at your local fireworks stand.
Somebody over at Area 51 Fireworks is a big horror fan. Or at least, they know how to pry our wallets open. They offer a ton of themed fireworks, the most of any other company right now, ranging from classic monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein to today’s favorites, like Godzilla and ACK! ACK! MARS ATTACKS! Now, the fireworks, themselves, don’t rain blood or black cats, but it’s all about the packaging. And seriously, get a load of Freddy in those Minion Goggles. All the better to see that Jason bomb when you create your own sequel on your street.
TNT Fireworks also offers quite a nice range of horror goodies to blow up the front porch. Like this Texas Chainsaw and Pennywise… er… Zombie Clown, which shoots flaming balls. But just pretend they’re exploding balloons.
Other companies are no slouch when it comes to the scare factor. Check out these movie maniac inspired packages. My favorite being the “damn the licensors” Maximum Overdrive (I’ve been looking for this one, so if you can help a bud out…) and Killer Klown. And those Draculas are to die for. I’ve been looking for those for ages. That Night of the Living Dead-inspired art is still waiting for me to frame it. But be careful with that one. It aims for the head.
But for me, the ultimate thing for fireworks is the classic firecracker. The art on these are gorgeous, and often highly collectible, due to the product being so disposable. And flammable. These aren’t simply slapped together in Photoshop. These are true works of art, with some using a stone litho printing process. I lit and threw many of these into the neighbor’s yard when they were sun tanning, and wish I had the forethought to save some of these masterpieces. I was fortunate enough to find that Werewolf one many years ago, before prices went sky high.
About Shane Bitterling: Writer with 26 produced movies that I don’t often admit to and an unproduced, big one I never shut up about. Prose can be found in the horror anthology, Hell Comes to Hollywood and I talk about “ALF” a lot.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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