Gravid With Decay

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Gravid With Decay: Issue #6 (Holiday Frights)

This is Gravid With Decay, a short newsletter by John Tolva about all things horror.

My neighborhood theater, The Esquire, setting the right tone for the holidays. (Of note, I consider Gremlins a Christmas horror movie, fight me.)

Welcome to another annual edition of reviews and recommendations for your spooky Christmas needs.

#6
December 14, 2022
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Gravid With Decay: Issue #5

This is Gravid With Decay, a short newsletter by John Tolva about all things horror.

A happy spooky season to you all! I enjoy horror all year round, but I’ll admit that there’s a special glee watching movies in the few weeks leading up Halloween when normal people seem to enjoy frights too. So, here are some notes on things you might enjoy while carving a pumpkin.

#5
September 28, 2022
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Gravid With Decay: Issue #4

This is Gravid With Decay, a short newsletter by John Tolva about all things horror.

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#4
April 20, 2022
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Gravid With Decay: Issue #3

This is Gravid With Decay, a short biweekly-ish monthly newsletter by John Tolva about all things horror.

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Bit of a longer gap than intended since the last dispatch as I was the last person standing in a home full of virus and other ailments. A final guy, if you will. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

Fist of Jesus has some fun with Christianity’s obsession with the undead by pitting the Son of Man (and his trusty sidekick Judas) against hordes of zombie Judeans, Roman centurions, and cowboys (!?) after the Lazarus miracle goes awry. It’s way over the top, borderline slapstick, but you can’t help giggling. The main weapon used to dispatch the living dead? Fish, of course, as Jesus can make as many as he needs. Thrown fish, slapped fish, boned fish, swordfish. Just a delightful, bloody mess. Amen.

#3
February 8, 2022
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Gravid With Decay: Issue #2 - Seasonal Horror

Gravid With Decay: Issue #2

Welcome to Gravid With Decay, a short biweekly-ish newsletter by John Tolva about all things horror.

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Happy holidays, dear readers. This is one of my favorite times of the year for horror, primarily because for once the holiday (which, let’s face it, is usually Christmas) has some relation to plot. Halloween? Not about trick-or-treating or pumpkin-carving, except as setting. My Bloody Valentine? Not really about cupids and crushes. (Die Hard on the other hand … definitely a Christmas movie.)

#2
December 13, 2021
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Gravid With Decay: Issue #1

Welcome to Gravid With Decay, a short, occasional newsletter by John Tolva about all things horror.

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When I was a tyke my family would vacation in a tiny town in Wisconsin called Montello. We’d sleep and eat on the floor of an unfurnished apartment (because, I think, my dad partially owned the building for some reason). But mostly we’d fish on the lake. It’s where my grandmother taught me to thread a worm on a hook, not get stung by a catfish, and tolerate stretches of intense boredom. It’s also where I learned that certain dogs cannot distinguish between a grassy lawn and a water surface covered in algae, leading inevitably to hilarious wet doggo pratfalls.

What I remember most about Montello, however, is that the lake was manmade, a flooded depression backing up to a dam, and that there was a submerged house in the middle of the lake just sitting on the bottom. Montello was formerly a granite mining town, so when the dam was built there was a ready source of material to fill it. Apparently it was also cheaper to fill the lone house-to-be-flooded with granite than move or raze it, so the engineers anchored it with rock and let the water flow.

#1
December 7, 2021
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