Greetings fellow WOD‘ers and Happy New Year! As 2018 reached an end, World of Death celebrated its 200th episode. This awesome milestone was made possible thanks to more than 400 films representing over 40 countries that have aired during our two-year run. My fellow curators, designers, editors, and contributors also deserve a gruesome applause for helping keep this wonderful indie community alive.

World of Death‘s goal has always been a simple one; to give an avenue of exposure to all of the great independent horror talent that thrives across the globe, while building a community of filmmakers who can communicate and work together. Individually we are one filmmaker, one voice. But together we are an army of talent, wholly capable of influencing audiences and the filmmaking community the world over! My sincerest hope is that through World of Death, fans have been introduced to some truly incredible movies over the last two years, and that filmmakers have felt that there was a place they could come to let their voices be heard.

As we move forward, my co-producers and I felt it would be best to reconfigure World Of Death‘s platform. With the ever-changing world of distribution opening its arms to more and more short-form content, we believe it would be best to transition to a monthly episode consisting of a handful of short films. Episodes will premiere on the first Wednesday of the month. At the month’s end, the episode will be taken down from the internet. This will allow filmmakers the freedom to seek other forms of distribution beyond WOD, including those that provide financial return. We hope that the change will benefit our filmmakers significantly! Thank you again to all of you out there who take the time to check out all of this badass independent content. Now, on to the episode!

– Tony Wash
World of Death Curator

Hola, amigos. Welcome back to the World of Death! I know it’s been awhile since I rapped at ya, but everyone needed to regroup and re-calibrate for the next round of World of Death shorts. Moving forward we’ll be doing things slightly different around here. Look, no one likes change. When I was in high school this book came out called Who Moved My Cheese and all the kids I knew that had therapists had to read it. It was about dealing with change. World of Death has changed, we moved your cheese. The trick now is to embrace it and allow it to make you stronger.

First up we have MR. TICKLES by Pablo S. Pastor, which gets three cheers for NOT trying to reinvent the horror wheel and delivers a concept we’ve probably read before in one of those “two-minute horror stories” turned into a 6-minute scary clown flick. Its success is methodical and textbook and I applaud anyone that can breathe new life in the scary clown genre. It’s also kinda in Spanish? It’s like a Spanish film where the characters speak English. Trust me it’s cool. But if there’s one singular reason to check this bad boy out it’s the theme song. Yes, Mr. Tickles has an honest-to-god theme song that plays over the end credits that brought fucking joy to my blackened heart.

Secondly, horror comes beautifully shot and executed in #SHARED by filmmaker William Capps. This mostly silent, yet genuinely scary short film is the perfect short film thriller for the social media age. The setup is simple, the execution is flawless, the colors are vivid, and the concept is something straight outta Creepypasta only with the flair and craftsmanship of a true auteur. Bravo!

Next is DANCE OF THE SPIDERWOMAN (no hyphen) by Will and Joseph I. Martinez. This one has it all; shots with drones, voyeurism, and offers a masters class on how to fake having a dog in your movie when you don’t have a dog to put in your movie. Personally, I think dogs are awesome, I don’t know why the production didn’t just go out and get one for the sole purpose of this movie, but that’s none of my business. The story is a classic EC Comics morality tale that’s just plain fucking weird and the titular Spiderwoman (no hyphen) is none other than Yesenia Adame, dance choreographer for the Prime Time Emmy’s. Definitely worth the 7 minutes.

Rounding out this month we have THE SEAMSTRESS by Tyler Mann. Great tension and musical cues, gross ending but there are two things I gotta talk about. First, they had a dog, and they used the dog. I don’t know if the dog had special training but they made working with a dog on film look easy. I’ve tried working with cats before for my World of Death offering T is for Tentacles (aka just Tentacles) so I get why they say don’t work with animals, and why Dance of the Spiderwoman (still no hyphen) took a hard pass, but kudos to Mr. Mann for pulling it off and making it look so natural. Second, the house they shot in has the most ridiculously expensive looking refrigerator I’ve ever seen. I’m no class warrior but when what happens at the end happens I couldn’t help but feeling “Good, fucking rich people…” Maybe that was intentional, maybe this was all a thinly veiled political piece about the oppressed rising up to wear the skins of the 1% but goddamn I’ve never seen a fridge like that in my life and I’ve seen some shit.

Anyway, that’s all for this month! Join us next time for another collage of weirdness and perversion that can only be known in these parts as World of Death.

Rock over London, rock on Chicago.

– Pat O’Sullivan

World of Death is the web series that fans of independent horror have been waiting for.  Featuring short horror films from all over the globe created by the largest variety of talent that a collection has ever been able to boast, WOD provides plenty of blood, guts, screams and laughs for all fans of the macabre.  WOD is the perfect entertainment for a fan base constantly on the go.  Watch it anywhere, at any time, for FREE! New episodes premiere the first Wednesday of every month at 10am CST.

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