The Latest Texas Horror Shorts
For those craving some Halloween scary fun, here's five shorts you can watch to get your spooky in gear
It’s June, which means we are more than halfway to the October Country. Soon, skeletons and zombies will begin quietly infiltrating the big box stores as everyone in Texas looks forward to the cool autumn breezes on the other side of summer.
What better way to celebrate halfway-to-Halloween than with some half-sized horror shorts made by Texas filmmakers? Here are five shorts you can watch right now to get your spooky in gear.
Couch dir. By Ross Chavez
San Antonio-born director Ross Chavez turned in this goofy but unforgettable horror short last year that you won’t be able to get out of your head. A young woman (Emily Marcheschi) is trapped in an abusive relationship with her girlfriend. Things are so bad that she even forms a close friendship with the man who brings her the apology flowers her girlfriend orders.
Luckily, a hand comes out of the couch and offers her support and a violent way out of her predicament. It’s very silly, but the surreality doesn’t detract at all from the terror.
Daughters of Evil: Dear Diary dir. Ghoulio
The Daughters of Evil are a fake-ish band based in Dallas led by Natasha Malone. Their original horror short film involved a YouTuber discovering a tape of a forgotten 1960s girl group who made a deal with a demon for fame and who ended up massacring a studio audience.
That film is still not widely available, but the Daughters did release a new music video last year that continues the basic premise. This time, they appear on a cursed VHS while a couple of hapless ghost hunters are possessed Evil Dead-style. Fellow Texas filmmaker Ghoulio did a fantastic job recreating the frantic, slapstick horror style of the Sam Raimi classic. Here’s hoping the entire Daughters of Evil saga makes it into a collection at some point.
A Day of Horror dir. Ramon Galindo
This 1964 silent horror short was filmed in Austin by local tailor and magician Ramon Galindo with his coworker Chris Crow portraying a surprisingly fearsome monster. After a young girl is injured fishing on Lake Travis, the monster kidnaps her and uses her blood to enhance his evil form and strength.
The film isn’t terribly exceptional, but it does give a rare look into independent filmmaking in Texas before Chain Saw Massacre. Recently rediscovered and now hosted by the indispensable Texas Archive of the Moving Picture, it’s good to see that the outlaw filmmaking spirit goes back more than half a century!
The Sound dir. Jason-Christopher Mayer
You can always count on the Alter channel delivering premium short horror films, and “The Sound” is no exception. A women who lost her hearing two years ago (Sabrina Stull) has started hearing/feeling a strange noise stalking her. When her best friend (Emree Franklin) comes to say goodbye before leaving the country, the sound starts to make its devious presence even more known.
Made by Austin-based filmmaker Jason-Christopher Mayer, The Sound is a brief but deeply unsettling experience that makes the audience question whether a monster even has to have physical form. The gore-soaked finale is a complete shocker you won’t see coming. Be sure to also check out Mayer’s full-length House on Eden as well.
Skintight dir. Ciara Boniface
Another short presented by Alter worth watching is Skintight, though the torture scene aspects might be a bit much for some viewer. A woman (Morgan Simone) in a small Texas town is being stalked by a mysterious organization obsessed with skin until she falls into a den of horror.
Writer and director Ciara Boniface was born in Louisiana but moved to North Texas to study and make films. Skintight is a great example of her Southern Gothic style that highlights the sinister feeling some tiny towns can have, especially for ethnic minorities.
Boniface references the work of dermatologist Albert Kligman in the opening credits, a terrifying monster of a man who conducted sadistic skin experiments on Black inmates in Philadelphia. Kligman was testing different skin reactions for everything from rare fungi to Agent Orange, treating Black flesh as a canvas. That demonic pursuit of perfection is prevalent in the unnamed organization in Skintight, who treat their victims as milestones to a brighter future rather than people.
Sadly, Boniface seems to have gone on something of a hiatus since moving to Los Angeles after her auspicious start in Texas. Her IMDB page shows nothing much after 2022. Here’s hoping one of the most brilliant new voices in Texas horror finds something else to terrify us with.
Comments ()