Connect with us

Misc

HORROR 101: Everything You Need to Know About Giant Nuclear Bugs

Name a creepy crawler. An insect, an arachnid, four legs, six legs, eight legs, a hundred… If it exists, somewhere in 1950s cinema it has been irradiated, grown to terrifying size, and crushed puny little humans beneath its mighty, composited feet. On this month’s Horror 101, we’re here to give you a quick and dirty breakdown of the who, what, and why behind this towering titan of science fiction tropes.

Published

on

It’s Creepy Crawlers month here at Horror Press, and while there may be something creepier, there’s certainly nothing crawlier than one of my favorite subgenres of the 1950s: the giant nuclear bug movie. Name a creepy crawler. An insect, an arachnid, four legs, six legs, eight legs, a hundred… If it exists, somewhere in 1950s cinema it has been irradiated, grown to terrifying size, and crushed puny little humans beneath its mighty, composited feet. On this month’s Horror 101, we’re here to give you a quick and dirty breakdown of the who, what, and why behind this towering titan of science fiction tropes.

Why Were 1950s Sci-Fi Movies Obsessed with Radiation?

Wouldn’t you be obsessed with radiation if you were living in the years after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan at the end of World War II? Sure, in America, plenty of people at the time were pretty pleased with themselves about said atrocity. But those concerns were nevertheless ever-present. Did the testing we performed to put the bomb together already plant the seed of our own destruction in our soil, water, and DNA? Will other countries pick up on what we did and, in return, split the atom on our smug asses? These fears have carried on into the modern era, of course, but the ongoing Cold War stoked those tensions to a fever pitch in the 1950s.

It might seem unlikely that people flocked to see movies about scientists tampering in God’s domain and having their nuclear testing go wrong and bite them in the ass. Or the torso. Or the head. However, like many a good horror movie, those giant nuclear bug titles provoked a reaction by playing into those fears, only to have the intrepid heroes solve them, neutralize the threat, and probably mack on a sexy lady scientist at some point in the process. Or, more likely, mack on a sexy lady who’s the daughter of a scientist – the 1950s weren’t exactly a haven of progressive virtue. 

Whatever the case, those movies poke at the wound a little bit, only to bandage it up and tie a little bow around it by the end. They offered the same cathartic experiences as horror stories throughout time, allowing audiences a glimpse into their deepest fears just long enough for them to begin to cope with them.

What Are Some Key Giant Nuclear Bug Movies?

Them! (1954, dir. Gordon Douglas) – Them!, which follows giant ants rampaging around New Mexico, isn’t fucking around. It literally ends with a character more or less staring into the camera and wondering what other horrors the Trinity test and ongoing nuclear testing may have unleashed that we are as yet unaware of.

Advertisement

Tarantula (1955, dir. Jack Arnold) – Arnold didn’t direct too much else under the giant nuclear bug territory, but he did helm It Came from Outer SpaceCreature from the Black Lagoon, and The Incredible Shrinking Man, so when he talks, you listen. The titular tarantula that took to the hills has been embiggened thanks to tests attempting to use a radioactive element to create an artificial super-nutrient, showcasing how even the best intentions can lead to destruction and chaos. Oppenheimer who?

Beginning of the End (1957, dir. Bert I. Gordon) – This schlocky but entertaining venture follows USDA testing of radioactive fertilizer causing a cloud of giant locusts to tear their way through Illinois. Keep an eye on this Bert I. Gordon fellow. The notorious B.I.G. made plenty of giant movies, nuclear movies, and bug movies, though not always at the same time, including King Dinosaur (1955), The Cyclops (1957), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), War of the Colossal Beast (1958), The Spider (1958), Village of the Giants (1965), The Food of the Gods (1976), and Empire of the Ants (1977).

Monster from Green Hell (1957, dir. Kenneth G. Crane) – The giant wasps here are exposed to cosmic radiation. I’ve decided that this premise does count for the list, because even though our scientific hubris didn’t come from exposing the wasps to radiation on purpose, we still sent wasps up to space in the first place, which seems like a silly idea if you ask me.

Mothra (1961, dir. Honda Ishirô) – OK, the Japanese monster movie Mothra is a little outside the scope of its study for multiple reasons, not the least of all being its year of release. However, it does involve a giant nuclear moth who defends her remote island home against further nuclear testing. The combination of gentleness and power at the center of both the story and the titular figure in Mothra is a beautiful button on a decade of tension and dismay, offering a way forward beyond mere catharsis.

For more giant bug fun without the “nuclear” part, see The Black Scorpion (1957), The Deadly Mantis (1957), and The Spider (1958). For a giant nuclear octopus, see It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955). For a non-giant nuclear teenage werewolf, see I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). For the granddaddy of giant nuclear monsters, see Honda’s previous monster movie Godzilla (1954), which of course was already a riff on the giant nuclear dinosaur movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953).

Advertisement

Looking to expand your horror knowledge even more? Check out our other HORROR 101 articles here!

Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the  Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can also find his full-length movie reviews on Alternate Ending and his personal blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Misc

Our Halloween Giveaway Is Here!

Published

on

Halloween and our final giveaway of the month is also here to spice up your Fall before the Holidays take a snowier, and less creepy turn. So be sure to enter now for a chance to win this prize that’ll be sure to keep the thrills going all season long! Don’t miss out—grab your costume, some BBQ and join the fun.

Enter Our Halloween Giveaway!

How to Enter:

Step 1. Make sure to FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK AND JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP!

Step 2. LIKE AND SHARE the giveaway post!

Step 3. This is the most important step, email us at contact@horrorpress.com with your FULL Facebook name (so we can verify you’re in the group) and who your favorite character is from the Texas Chainsaw franchise.

**Giveaway entries are limited to addresses in the United States.**

**All entries must be 18 or older to enter**

Advertisement

What You’ll Win

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow Video

  • 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
  • Original DTS-HD MA 7.1 and 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio
  • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • Brand new audio commentary with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon
  • Archival audio commentary with director Marcus Nispel, producer Michael Bay, executive producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form and New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye
  • Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, director of photography Daniel Pearl, production designer Greg Blair, art director Scott Gallager, sound supervisor Trevor Jolly and composer Steve Jablonsky
  • Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, Michael Bay, writer Scott Kosar, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and actors Jessica Biel, Erica Leerhsen, Eric Balfour Jonathan Tucker, Mike Vogel and Andrew Bryniarski
  • Reimagining a Classic, a brand new interview with director Marcus Nispel
  • Shadows of Yesteryear, a brand new interview with cinematographer Daniel Pearl
  • The Lost Leatherface, a brand new interview with actor Brett Wagner
  • Masks and Massacres, a brand new interview with makeup effects artist Scott Stoddard
  • Chainsaw Symphony, a brand new interview with composer Steve Jablonsky
  • Chainsaw Redux: Making A Massacre, a making-of documentary
  • Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield, an in-depth look at the infamous killer who inspired the character of Leatherface
  • Severed Parts, a look at the cutting room floor and some of the scenes excised from the final edit
  • Deleted scenes including an alternate opening and ending
  • Screen tests for Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour and Erica Leerhsen
  • Behind-the-scenes featurette
  • Cast and crew interviews
  • Theatrical trailers and TV spots
  • Concept art galleries
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
  • Double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
  • Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold
Continue Reading

Misc

NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights: A Sneak Peek at ‘The Lost Boys’ Musical, ‘Resident Evil: Requiem,’ and More!

Published

on

As soon as New York Comic Con announced that its 2025 theme would be “haunted,” I started lacing up my comfy shoes and making a beeline for the Javitz Center! Horror has always been represented at the con, but it felt fitting that it should play a central role in this year’s event at a time when the genre seems more popular than ever. 

From beloved family-friendly properties like The Nightmare Before Christmas to pants-dampening titles like the upcoming Resident Evil: Requiem, horror appeared in countless shapes and forms. Here are all the best and scariest insights I gleaned from the show floor, panel rooms, and pop-ups of New York Comic Con 2025! 

Our NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights

Resident Evil: Requiem Is Going to Test Your Bladder Strength

Full disclaimer: I’m not a gamer. I’m honestly pretty bad at games, which made my Resident Evil: Requiem play session all the more frightening because I was convinced that everyone around me would realize I’m a fraud. But with easy-to-grasp controls, even for a newb like me, the latest installment in the iconic horror franchise quickly sucked me in and left me on edge for entirely different reasons. 

During my 30-minute session, I was introduced to FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, Requiem’s central character. She swims to consciousness to find herself strapped upside down on a gurney with a needle in her arm, siphoning her blood. After Grace managed to free herself, the controls were handed over to me to explore the creepy facility through Grace’s eyes, looking for a fuse. Some spaces were bathed in red light; others were lit only by flickering bulbs that left me white-knuckling the controller, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows and swallow me whole, not helped by Grace’s anxious, stuttering breathing in my ear. 

I took a moment to appreciate how detailed video games have become since my childhood experiences playing Evil Dead: Hail to the King on the original PlayStation (seriously, you can see the dust drifting in beams of light now?!), only for the sound of movement somewhere in the facility to yank me back to the present. I renewed my frantic search for the fuse, only to run blindly into a pitch-black room and encounter something enormous that dragged me into the darkness. Sorry, Grace!

You can find out what happens next when Resident Evil: Requiem releases for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on February 27, 2026.

Advertisement

Megan Fox Is Among the New Cast Members in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2—And Blumhouse Hasn’t Given Up on Its Other m3gan Yet

Blumhouse made several announcements at their NYCC panel, most notably that Megan Fox (Jennifer’s Body) is voicing Toy Chica in director Emma Tammi’s highly anticipated sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, coming to theaters on December 5. Other new additions to the cast include YouTuber Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, who cameoed in the first movie and will voice Toy Bonnie, and Kellen Goff, who has voiced multiple characters in the game series and will now lend his pipes to Toy Freddy.

I’m interested in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, not least because my best friend is terrified of the franchise and makes a wildly entertaining moviegoing companion—but I’m more interested in the future of another Blumhouse franchise, M3GAN. After the sequel underperformed, likely due in part to its hard genre pivot away from horror and into action territory, the future of the killer doll is uncertain. But in a special industry presentation on “The Business of Fear,” Jason Blum revealed that “we’re all working to keep M3GAN alive,” adding that Blumhouse is exploring other potential mediums before trying to resurrect her on film. 

Does that mean a M3GAN video game might come our way in the future, or perhaps a TV series? I don’t know, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the silicone diva.

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.

The Lost Boys: A New Musical Will Feature Flying Stunts and a Live Vampire Band

My queer heart is a sucker for musical adaptations of horror films I love, so you can be certain that I’ll be heading down to the Santa Carla Boulevard—aka Broadway’s Palace Theater—for The Lost Boys: A New Musical, which begins previews on March 27, 2026. At their NYCC panel, producer Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring franchise), director Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending), and cast members LJ Benet, Ali Louis Bourzgui, and Maria Wirries revealed why they feel Joel Schumacher’s 1987 classic translates so well to the stage, and what audiences can look forward to. 

“There’s something that I see with both horror movies, musicals, and superhero movies—there’s an element of melodrama that’s really rewarding,” says Wilson, who began his career in musical theater and worked with Schumacher on the director’s 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. “Some people view it as camp, but there’s a reality of it being heightened that felt like this story cemented itself so much to being a musical.”

“They’re a biker gang, after all, and there’s a level of theatricality to that in and of itself,” says Arden. “Our biker gang also happens to play instruments.” 

That’s right: the vampires will be playing instruments live on stage, which made casting twice as hard. Ali Louis Bourzgui, who plays David, the character portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland in the film, reveals that he plays guitar. And that wasn’t the only unusual request in the casting call: auditions included a flying test. (Presumably wires were involved, unless Arden has found himself a real cabal of vampires in his cast.)

Advertisement

Other highlights that fans can look forward to include killer music from one of Arden’s favorite bands, The Rescues. You can listen to the song “Have to Have You” right now, featuring instrumentals from Slash. The director also teases that many fan-favorite moments from the film will feature in some way in the musical, including the bridge scene and, yes, even the sexy saxophone guy. 

Greg Nicotero’s Guts & Glory Marks a New Challenge for a Legend of the Business

If you like looking at gnarly practical effects in horror movies, chances are you’re familiar with Greg Nicotero’s work, whether you realize it or not. The legendary SFX artist has worked on everything from George Romero’s Day of the Dead and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Kill Bill and, more recently, The Walking Dead. The impressive extent of his resume was made clear at the panel “Shudder is Here to Scare the S*** Out of You,” in which almost any film mentioned by the other panelists was met by a small smile and a humble murmur of “worked on that” into the mic, often followed by a wild anecdote. Nicotero seems like the most interesting man in the world to grab a drink with, and his new horror competition show for Shudder—Guts & Glory—will let us see more of the man behind the makeup brush.

Guts & Glory is one of the most fun times I’ve had on a show,” Nicotero says, teasing that the series is “part Sam Raimi, part Halloween Horror Nights, and part Survivor.” 

In the six-episode first season, contestants are dropped into an Alabama swamp, where there’s an urban legend about an evil spirit. “One of the contestants gets possessed by the evil spirit, people start dying off, but in the meantime, they’re still competing and there’s a prize,” Nicotero explains.

Guts & Glory is effects-heavy, which was challenging to do in an unscripted series relying on real people’s real-time reactions. “You do a movie, you can cut and try it again,” Nicotero explains. “[This] was completely out of my wheelhouse and out of my comfort zone, but I’m really, really proud of it.”

Nicotero’s Creepshow was one of the first original shows to debut on Shudder, so he’s truly part of the DNA of the horror streamer, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Guts & Glory premieres on October 14 as part of Shudder’s Season of Screams programming.

Advertisement

Horror Short The Littles Deserves the Big-Screen Feature Treatment

Some short films are perfectly suited to their bite-sized format, while others contain the seeds of something much bigger. At the New York Premiere of The Littles, a new short written and directed by American Horror Story producer Andrew Duplessie, I could immediately see the potential for the feature film that Duplessie hopes to make. 

Equal parts charming and unsettling, The Littles stars M3GAN’s Violet McGraw as a little girl with a loose floorboard in her bedroom. One night, a scuffling sound and a crack of light between the boards lead the little girl to discover that her family isn’t alone in the house… 

Duplessie says The Littles was inspired by his own experiences growing up in a creaky old house with a no-doubt overactive imagination. The short features creepy-cute stop-motion animation from Anthony Scott (The Nightmare Before Christmas), puppets by Katy Strutz (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), and some truly adorable miniature sets by Aiden Creates, all blended perfectly with the live-action scenes. Check it out if it’s playing at a festival near you, and watch this space for a (fingers-crossed) future feature! 

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.

Disney Publishing’s New The Nightmare Before Christmas Tie-in Novel Welcomes Younger Fans into the Scary Fun

NYCC’s horror happenings weren’t all geared toward an adult audience. Disney Publishing took over Daily Provisions Manhattan West for a pop-up experience inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas, featuring themed food and drinks like a delectable Pumpkin Potion coffee that I could honestly drink all season long. 

At a media and creator event in the space, I took a look at the newly released Hour of the Pumpkin Queen from New York Times best-selling author Megan Shepherd, who also wrote the official novelization of The Nightmare Before Christmas for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2023. In this new tie-in novel, Sally and her rag doll apprentice, Luna, embark on a time-bending adventure to save Jack Skellington and Halloween Town after falling through a mysterious portal.

I was gifted a copy of the book by Disney, but all opinions are my own here. I’m looking forward to giving it a read during the inevitable Halloween hangover that takes place in November, before likely passing it on to my young nieces when they’re old enough. It’s a full novel, not a picture book, so definitely geared more toward a YA audience, but between the beautiful artwork on the cover and the seasonal theme, it might just be the perfect gift for the budding horror lover in your life. 

Advertisement

That’s a wrap on New York Comic Con 2025! Be sure to bookmark Horror Press if you haven’t already so you never miss our coverage of conventions, festivals, and more. 

Continue Reading

Horror Press Mailing List

Fangoria
Advertisement
Advertisement