Podcasts
BD’s ‘Horror Queers’ Celebrate the Best Horror of 2020 with Second Annual “Hereditaries” Awards; Vote Now!
Last year, following the lack of recognition at the Oscars for horror films, Trace Thurman and I created “The Hereditaries” (named after Toni Collette’s Hereditary omission from the Oscars), a horror award to acknowledge all of the great work being done in the genre.
The response that we received was out of this world and we immediately decided to make the awards an annual event.
Enter the second annual Hereditaries, which celebrates the amazing diversity of horror films released in 2020. Ranging from blockbusters like The Invisible Man to stealth releases like Netflix’s His House, we’re shining a light on all of the great horror content that has come out during this highly unorthodox year.
Here’s what you’re voting on:
- Best Wide Release
- Best Indie
- Best Non-English Horror – New for 2020
- Best Under The Radar – New for 2020
- Worst Film
- Best Horror TV
- Best First Time Director – New for 2020
- Best Director
- Best Actor
- Best Actress
- Best Supporting Actor
- Best Supporting Actress
- Best Child/Teen Actor – New for 2020
- Best Animal
- Best Ensemble – New for 2020
- Best Villain
- Best Twist – New for 2020
- Best Scare
- Best Sequence; and
- Best Kill
Context:
The 20 categories were informed by listener responses and then narrowed down by Trace and I. In order to be eligible, films had to be widely available this year (either wide theatrical, VOD or on streaming services), which sadly means no festival films (maybe next year, Saint Maud!).
In order to keep the voting competitive, most of the categories include a maximum of six options. Sadly, this will inevitably mean that some folks’ favorites have been left out, but we also learned last year that too many nominees in a single category usually just means a bunch of options that only get a few votes.
New for 2020
Based on feedback from last year’s voters, this year the categories have been expanded to address gaps. As you can see from the list above, there were a quite a few areas that listeners wanted to recognize!
We’ve also added spoiler warnings for the last five categories, just in case you haven’t seen films like Becky, The Lodge or Sea Fever.
Click here to vote. The deadline to enter is Tuesday, Dec 15 at 11:59pm EST.
Winners will be announced on Horror Queers social media accounts (Facebook group and Twitter), as well as a special Patreon minisode that will come out in early January 2021.
Maybe you haven’t thought about your good friend Sweeney Todd in a while, or maybe you have. The 2007 movie is a bit of a memory, though a fond one – it has a healthy 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, for what it’s worth. But 2023’s Broadway revival starring Josh Groban, who your mom thinks is “so talented” (she’s right!), was enough of a hit that its run was extended.
It appears we’re in a bit of a Sweeneyssaince.
For the uninitiated, Sweeney Todd is the story of a barber who kills his customers and disposes of the bodies by passing them off to pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett, who uses them as a special ingredient. But there’s more below the trap door.
Sweeney Todd isn’t just a late 70s musical that turned into a movie; it started as a penny dreadful called The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance (author unknown), told week-to-week in the 1840s. Penny dreadfuls were essentially fiction zines featuring serialized stories that were usually horror-based and cost a penny, leading to the very literal nickname.
The String of Pearls differs from the more well-known Sweeney Todd plot in that it follows the investigation of a missing persons case that leads to the reveal of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett’s arrangement, as opposed to the more modern iteration which treats audiences to the duo hatching their homicidal plan and then giving the worst haircuts ever. What a delightfully wild reveal that must have been if you were a reader in Victorian London after weeks of wondering what had become of the missing sailor carrying a string of pearls to deliver to a lovely girl.
Kristen and Will discuss the history and future of Sweeney Todd and works inspired by it this week on Guide to the Unknown. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to get a new episode every Friday.
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