Category: Horror

A photo from Orrin featuring a few of the mixed up monsters from Fearsome Floors, with a fancy lad with an eyeball for a head and a top hat on the left, a melty jawn in the middle, and a skinless skull with milky eyes on the right, all pointing at leach other like three spidermen

Fleeing Fast from Freaky Fiends: Finding Fun with Fearsome Floors

By Orrin Grey • June 7th, 2023

Indeed, Fearsome Floors is one of those European imports, hailing from eccentric German game designer Friedemann Friese, whose fixation on the color green and massive use of alliteration of the letter F can sometimes get lost in translation but certainly helps to set his games apart.

Cycle of the Werewolf

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • May 29th, 2023

It must be a full moon tonight.

A still from the trailer of Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, where the three young adults are dressed in their 70s weirdo finest, in front of some wood paneled walls, caressing a corpse and laughing at their hijinks

It’s a Boneyard: Revisiting Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972) on 4K

By Orrin Grey • January 19th, 2023

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things is a fairly accurate portrait of what macabre weirdos like us got up to – or imagined ourselves getting up to – in the days before we had the internet to distract us.

screenshot from Nightmare at noon, with four characters hiding out in a starkly lit police office. A giant framed collection of patched leans against the wall, while the officers lean on various bits of furniture and look forlorn

Meat and Potatoes Country: Nightmare at Noon (1988) on Blu-ray

By Orrin Grey • December 23rd, 2022

To an enormous extent, your enjoyment of (and even tolerance for) Nightmare at Noon will rely largely on how much affection you have for these actors, since they’re the beating heart of the film.

Letter from the Editor

A selection from the cover art for Unwinnable Monthly #158, featuring several gremlins from the movie Gremlins grinning at the viewer.

Unwinnable Monthly – December 2022

By David Shimomura • December 15th, 2022

Welcome to the Gremlins issue! But before you dig in, there are some rules that you’ve got to follow…

Exploits Feature

My Least Favorite C-Word

By M. Shaw • December 1st, 2022

Every brush I’ve had with actually celebrating Christmas has been a complete horror show.

Cadabra Records

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • November 28th, 2022

Classic horror tales on vinyl!

Always Autumn

A still from the internet phenomenon "Too Many Cooks" showing the recurring serial killer character in a 1980s kitchen with a bloodied face and apron.

There are Decapitations

By Autumn Wright • November 10th, 2022

Too Many Cooks is at once an absurdist comedy sketch and a critical cautionary tale, full of pastiche referents like “relics of a time that we long for but shouldn’t return to.”

Run It Back

1943

By Oluwatayo Adewole • October 26th, 2022

How do you see that the world is bigger and more full of mystery than you had ever imagined and yet still your purest impulse continues to be to subjugate?

Eyeing Elsewhere

Hellraiser's Female Cenobite, Pinhead, and Butterball stand in front of starkly back-lit binds.

On Monsters and Ourselves

By Phillip Russell • October 25th, 2022

Hell in the Hellraiser universe reflects back to others what they struggle with the most. It’s a fluid space that changes as our own sense of self does.

Feature Story

A painting of the many-headed King Ghidorah surrounded by a hazy orange glow. The three heads are roaring into the sky.

Monstrous

By David Shimomura • October 22nd, 2022

Monsters, necessarily, cannot be “bad.” Instead, like many horrors, the true monsters are dark reflections of our anxieties and stresses.

2022 Unwinnable
Halloween Video Store

Week One: Transgressive Terrors

By Team Unwinnable • October 9th, 2022

Welcome to the Spoopy Season!

Here Be Monsters

A stone frieze depicting a winged figure holding unbalanced scales.

An Introduction and Manifesto

By Emma Kostopolus • October 3rd, 2022

The horror of videogames, and a lot of horror more generally, rests on the fear of time.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

Crop of the cover of Monster Mayhem, a painting featuring your classic mosters like Sexy Ghost, Necktie Werewolf, Dog Collar Dracula, Too Many Teeth Mummy, and Jock Zombie

Offensive Stereotypes: Monster Mayhem Rises from the Crypt… But Maybe Shouldn’t

By Orrin Grey • September 30th, 2022

Despite its cartoony demeanor, Monster Mayhem is no different from White Wolf’s RPGs, and its approach is… not exactly sensitive, even for 2007.

Keifer Sutherland is sidding criss-cross-apple-sauce in a room with high arched windows and afternoon yellow light with a lone lamp for company

Today’s a Good Day to Die: Reliving the Past with Flatliners (1990)

By Orrin Grey • August 9th, 2022

It’s no surprise that Schumacher made the campiest of Batman movies, because there’s an extravagance to the production design here that would have been right at home in Burton’s Gotham City.

Let Us In

By Stu Horvath and John McGuire • August 8th, 2022

Let me outta here!

I Played It, Like, Twice...

The tite from the Doom board game (2004) cover of the rules with the mid-era cyber Doom font and the spooky Diablo font

Fragged!: Translating DOOM to the Tabletop via a Somewhat Unlikely Route

By Orrin Grey • July 26th, 2022

Despite the box art and the demonic miniatures, DOOM is fundamentally an action game that isn’t particularly interested in horror.

Letter from the Editor

A narrow view of the Doomslayer in a hallway full of dead demons with a cacodemon looming behind.

Unwinnable Monthly – July 2022

By David Shimomura • July 17th, 2022

We ripped and tore and this is what was done.

The title screen for La Llorona, with the name of the movie opaquely set over a glowering sculpture of a skull

Strange Things Happen There: Two Early Mexican Horrors

By Orrin Grey • May 17th, 2022

A piece of history – not merely Mexican cinematic history, not merely horror history, but a broader snapshot of a period in time, and the changes that were happening around it.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

A cropped selection of the box art for Horrified: American Monsters, featuring the head of a Sasquatch and a spectral figure.

We Did Warn You: Playing Horrified 2 During [checks notes] Still a Pandemic

By Orrin Grey • May 5th, 2022

The good news is, most of the winning formula that made its predecessor tick is reproduced nicely here.

I Played It, Like, Twice...

figures from the game Space Hulk, blue and red, moving across a tabletop.

They’re Coming Out of the Goddamn Walls: Reliving a Moment with Space Hulk

By Orrin Grey • February 28th, 2022

It is difficult, for me at least, to separate the game itself from that dream, solidified by glossy magazine photos of massive Space Hulk boards set up.