Podcasts
Killer Clowns, Paris Catacombs, and Haunting Folklore in This Month’s ‘Horror Bytes’ [Safe Room Podcast]
Before diving into this week’s episode of Safe Room, be sure to check out last week’s discussion on Netflix’s Resident Evil series!
What better way to beat the heat than with some new indie horror games?
For this month’s edition of Horror Bytes, in which Neil and I each highlight four bite-sized indie titles, we have a new crop of horror experiences to chat about that can typically be completed in less than an hour.
Neil’s Picks
Wintercoffin – Surviving the elements while navigating the Winter coffin’s treacherous terrain will test the player’s navigational skills.
The Catacombs – Fans of the film As Above, So Below will feel right at home with this claustrophobic found footage experience underneath the streets of Paris.
The River Runs Through Us – As highly polished of an interactive fiction experience as we’ve come across. Personable, humorous, and haunting folklore adventure with stellar production value.
Our Lady of the Drowned Lake, Zero Reporter – Reel in the truth behind the Lady of the Drowned Lake and the folklore that precedes her.
Jay’s Picks
There is a Man in the Attic – A childhood fear suddenly resurfaces, forcing the protagonist to question whether their fear was well founded all those years ago.
You vs. Cannibal Clowns – To avoid becoming meat for a posse of cannibalistic clowns, the player must hunt down three keys to awaken from their nightmare.
Landlord – It’s a messy job, but someone has to do it, right? Cleaning a vacant unit takes a demonic turn that asks this landlord to do more than putting off much-needed repairs.
The Pale – If the boredom of being the sole lighthouse keeper on an abandoned island doesn’t get you, the horrifying secrets within will.
And as always, we ask that if you can do so, support the developers behind these games through their itch.io, steam, or Patreon pages.
Safe Room is a weekly horror video game discussion podcast with new episodes every Monday on
iTunes/Apple, Sticher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Linktree for additional streaming services.
Feel free to follow the show and hosts on Twitter:
Safe Room | Horror Bytes | Neil | Jay
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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