Episode Details

Dracula, The Hills Have Eyes, Nope, Maximum Overdrive, and Deep Blue Sea headline this episode of This Week in Horror History, covering July 20 through July 26. Summer horror gets seductive, sun-scorched, mechanical, extraterrestrial, and shark-infested as we explore gothic vampires, desert survival horror, reverse-horror gaming, Jordan Peele’s terrifying vision of spectacle, Stephen King’s killer-machine apocalypse, and genetically engineered sharks loose inside an underwater laboratory.

  Inside this episode:
July 20, 1979 — Dracula releases in the United States
Frank Langella gives Count Dracula a dangerous combination of gothic romance, theatrical charm, and supernatural menace. This version of Bram Stoker’s vampire proves that evil does not always need to force its way through the door. Sometimes it gets invited inside.
July 22, 1977 — The Hills Have Eyes premieres in Tucson, Arizona
Wes Craven turns an ordinary family road trip into a brutal desert survival nightmare. When a shortcut leaves the Carter family stranded far from civilization, the open landscape becomes a trap filled with heat, isolation, violence, and another family watching from the hills.
July 23, 2020 — Carrion releases
This reverse-horror video game flips the familiar monster formula by letting players become the creature. A growing mass of teeth, tendrils, and hunger escapes through a research facility while terrified scientists and guards discover that containment has completely failed.
July 22, 2022 — Nope releases in U.S. theaters
Jordan Peele turns the sky into a haunted house in a strange and ambitious collision of UFO horror, creature-feature spectacle, Hollywood exploitation, western imagery, animal behavior, and the dangerous human need to capture the impossible on camera.

Deep-Cut Spotlight — Maximum Overdrive
Stephen King steps behind the camera for one of the loudest and most gloriously unhinged killer-machine movies of the 1980s. After Earth passes through the tail of a comet, trucks, vending machines, arcade games, lawn equipment, and other everyday technology suddenly turn against humanity. At the Dixie Boy truck stop, a group of survivors becomes trapped by eighteen-wheelers that appear to have developed personalities, grudges, and a deep hatred of human beings. With a goblin-faced truck, massive explosions, diner panic, homicidal machinery, and AC/DC blasting through the chaos, Maximum Overdrive remains a greasy, absurd, and unforgettable piece of Stephen King horror history.

Horror Birthdays This Week: 
Diana Rigg, Josh Hartnett, Willem Dafoe, and Lynda Carter enter the birthday roll, bringing connections to Theatre of Blood, Last Night in Soho, Halloween H20, The Faculty, 30 Days of Night, Trap, Shadow of the Vampire, The Lighthouse, Nosferatu, and The Initiation of Sarah.

Weekly Recommendation — Deep Blue Sea Researchers inside an isolated underwater facility genetically engineer mako sharks while searching for a medical breakthrough. Unfortunately, making enormous predators more intelligent turns out to be a catastrophically bad idea. Packed with violent storms, flooding corridors, underwater laboratories, corporate hubris, giant sharks, and one of the most memorable shock moments in 1990s horror, Deep Blue Sea remains a fast, fun, and wonderfully ridiculous summer creature feature. From Dracula and The Hills Have Eyes to Carrion, Nope, Maximum Overdrive, and Deep Blue Sea, this week in horror history proves that summer terror can wait inside a gothic mansion, watch from the desert hills, escape from a laboratory, descend from the sky, take control of an eighteen-wheeler, or circle silently beneath the water.