Welcome to all friends of the horror genre! This website covers some horror genre niches. Scary topics and creepy items are staples that occupy the horror fan’s mind. Alarmingly, there are too many horror niches that a hardcore fan of the genre gets lost easily.
Yes, life without the horror genre can become pretty drab. It is Shock Depot’s mission to help you find curated horror things presented in a highly focused, orderly manner.
Access detailed information on old and new shock content. Make informed horror genre choices when deciding how to spend your horror leisure moments.
Please keep reading for a detailed description of the website
↓
Four Main Horror Genre Niches
In this section of the page an explanation of the main four horror genre niches of the website. Curated horror things will give you and edge in your daily, weekly or monthly venturing into the horror genre.
Horror items are most popular among the things that occupy the minds of fans.
Horror Genre on Video Streamers
It’s undeniable that video streamers must be high up there, with rosewater-flavored sliced bread.
Video streaming services have taken over and horror fans shouldn’t overlook them. In my experience, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu are the three most talked about. Still, for shock fans, most of the video streaming services need special attention, beginning with Shudder.
Old-fashioned things like radio, television and print magazines have a very different model of consumption to the web and its modality of having the world at one’s fingertips. I think video streamers show this with the ginormous and ever-evolving choice of movies and tv shows they offer.
Shock movies belonging to the horror genre are added to Netflix and all the other streamers on a constant basis. It may be junk, it may be diamonds, but the healthy flow is there.
Interface shortcomings may take from the brilliant idea of VoD. Not if you have a resource like this site on hand that will give you the bare facts of horrors you think you should watch. Even more, if it’s categorized with germaneness and aggregated in ways that it will be of most use to you.
Because we want it, to personalize our own connection between our scary fun and our leisure time.
Since for the seasoned horror movie watcher generalist VoDs doesn’t have a very big offer, a proficient way to grok the horror items in VoDs is to make lists of all the best, must-watch movies and series.
Lists of horror movies and series in VoDs are especially useful, given the random way in which viewers are alerted of the movies they would like to watch.
Sometimes good (for the viewer’s criteria of good) horror movies get buried deep in the lists of a VoD’s interface and they may pass unperceived. Then the VoD pulls it out and you end up missing a movie or series that may have entertained you. This is a very unfortunate scenario.
Enter reviews and lists of the best horror on streamers. Using these two resources, you are forced to pay attention to movies or series that must not be missed.
Horror on Streaming Services Articles
Beyond curating horror movies on streamers, and creating lists with a central theme, there is another thing that Shock Depot offers for a special type of horror movie that you see on a streaming service.
I’m talking about the rare movie that comes once in a while that has a script, a cast, or any other element that is so masterful, that leaves you thinking and even inspired to write about it.
A review would serve such a movie, but sometimes a review is not enough. When that is the situation, you are better off writing a longer article that explores the things you liked from the item in depth.
You can find that kind of article on Shock Depot, and you can also submit your own for publication.
Bear in mind that the content about streaming services on this website is not limited to their offer of horror audiovisual media.
There is also a need to generate and publish content that analyzes the value a streaming service has for those who are interested in horror.
Such content can be many different things, from a review of the service, a case study of your experience using it to watch horror media, or a critique of a feature (or lack thereof) of the service that annoys you, to more technical articles, like a feature that scrutinizes the in-house horror productions of the service.
Negative Articles about VoD Services
Finally, there is a possibility that your experience with a streamer, as a horror fan, did leave a lot to be desired, or that it changed you in some negative way.
If something like that happened to you, then your experience may be valuable to others. You will do a great service to horror fans who are considering the possibility of subscribing to a VoD service by sharing your experience and why it wasn’t a good one for you.
Someone who expects something that a VoD is not may suffer a rude awakening after subscribing and be left with a bad experience that afterward is not easy to forget.
If someone looking for information about a streaming service, to use the service as a tool for continual horror audiovisual media consumption and find an article that warns her or him about what to expect, they may approach the subscribing process differently, and go into it with a different, more forgiving set of expectations.
Go to the Horror Genre on Streaming Services section.
Horror Lifestyle
Horror lifestyle is not just searching for horror genre movie lists and watching each one of them in a quest to become a walking encyclopedia.
It’s neither waiting the whole year for Halloween and preparing for it to enjoy it in an either active or passive way.
If you’re obsessed with shock you learned how to appreciate every second and feeling that takes you to the shock zone.
Some enthusiasts go as far as theming their houses, by means of furniture, art, and similar items, with interior designs, informed by horror genre sensibilities.
There are also those that may not give much importance to theming but take pride in being collectors and being recognized as such, showing others their collections.
These kinds of living with horror, and loving other close-related styles, branch out into a lot of different departments that make a spooky daily life possible. There are many ways through which you can make your lifestyle horror-oriented.
There are many ways through which you can make your lifestyle horror-oriented.
Real-Life Horror Amusements
One thing is to play horror video games or pass time in horror simulations on the metaverse or own and operate one.
Still, there is an old-fashioned way that predates those two by many years. I’m talking about visiting real-life horror amusements like dark rides, ghost trains, and haunted house establishments.
Nowadays these kinds of amusements may seem trivial and too ephemeral to be of interest. I beg to disagree.
Granted, they demand more effort than commoner types of horror amusements.
Yes, they are not as accessible as the horror metaverse or horror video games, requiring an investment of time, money, and travel to be enjoyed. Still, that they are not as easy to get doesn’t mean they aren’t a great topic and an awesome alternative for fans that want to make horror their lifestyle.
Example of Horror Lifestyle: Horror Genre Comic Books
If you have any prejudices against American horror comic books, lay those ignorant feelings off now, because you don’t know what you’re missing.
American horror comic books dominate the global market for spooky comics. They always did and still do. From their controversial beginnings in the 1950s they have come a long way, and have evolved into the wonderful graphic novel form.
Those who are enthusiasts of horror genre comics know that even if the graphic novel sounds like a buzzword of this and the previous generations, they actually existed when EC comics began publishing horror genre comics. Some of the lines that EC had were definitely of the graphic novel form, but back then in the nineteen-fifties, they called the format picto-fiction.
Nevertheless, audiences didn’t seem to appreciate picto-fiction too much back then. Sixty-plus years later, things are much different, and growing in a graphic novel environment made me accept the old ones.
I guess that the baby boomers and the generation before them rejected graphic novels because in a world where the TV was new, to go through an EC graphic novel was too many words for too few visuals. They could keep loving regular comics, but graphic novels might have been too much to read when the novelty was audiovisual.
Metaversal Horrors
Horror fandom has a heavy presence in Second Life, the life simulator. Virtual worlds in general have a great potential for horror fans. They allow for the recreation of all things shock, and even to improve on the real thing with the malleability advantages that a simulation has over the real thing.
Let me give an example. In a Second Life ghost train, I’ve seen the wet dream of the ghost train fan realized.
A ghost train that had stations in which you could go down and explore a horror setting, and later return to the car and continue the journey.
There are also walk-in dark rides, like fun houses, and even regions that are horror-themed, but that don’t pretend to be the simulated counterpart of a real-life horror amusement.
Social Horror
Another way to incorporate the horror genre into your lifestyle can be becoming a horror-oriented socialite. For the socially inclined horrorist, we are living in a golden age of horror social scenes.
It’s really exciting for those who love horror to find out that there are big groups of like-minded horror fans on social media sites, catering to every imaginable horror niche.
Whatever horror vertical is your favorite, be it movies, games, literature, collectibles, or what have you, it’s probable that there is a group for it on any of the social media sites. In case there isn’t you can create yourself, and sooner or later people will join it.
For instance, if you like to chat about the horror genre, there are Facebook horror groups. If you like to curate the best pages with the most amazing horror imagery, there is Pinterest. If you love to listen to horror-oriented music, there is YouTube.
Of course that there is always the possibility of using the horror metaverse as a social media tool, even when other people, like yours truly, use it simply as a casual form of horror amusement.
The lifestyle topic probably is one of the most fragmentary topics for a fan of shock, but such is life.
Go to the Horror Genre Lifestyle section
Horror Genre Cult Classics
There are classic horror movies and then there are adorable classic B movies. In this section, you will find many subgenres of horror grouped under the cult classic label. I hope my interpretation of the cult classic category will be well received.
There are many definitions of what constitutes a cult classic. I decided to use the catchphrase as a means to group movies and TV shows that I personally think to deserve the status. This, while not trespassing the limits of what the general consensus of horror fans decided a horror cult movie is.
But think of it, the naked truth of genres, categories, and pigeonholing things is that they are just organizational tools that help us make the best of the time we have to study, work or rest. What to say of leisure? If you didn’t notice it by now, the more the stuff, the more need to focus. In my experience, while you give time and think about how are you going to pass your leisure time things turn out at least decently.
Contrarily, almost every time I didn’t plan out my leisure time, like just going to a VoD site and searching for a movie, with the search function or in my queue, I lost time or ended up watching movies that made me fall asleep. The problems I described in the previous two paragraphs are endemic in the horror cult classic crowd, a crowd to which I belong.
Scary movie lists on the web can take you to a point deep into this genre, but so much deep only. I noted many lists are similar and seem to follow a pattern of commercial success or audience approval that feeds on each other.
This is a good starting point, but sooner or later you run out of shock movies and TV series to watch.
Since horror cult classics are mostly old, done by defunct companies, done by independent filmmakers, or otherwise removed from the mainstream, there is a generalized compulsion in the air to prevent us, horror fans, from watching them.
That is because they don’t generate a commercial motion. The truth is that for a fan of horror cult classics there is nobody better than another fan of horror cult classics.
It’s up to us to generate quality sources of thought and information on this sub-genre of horror because corporations aren’t going to do it for us.
The Search for Kitsch
Tonya Crowe as Marylee Williams in Dark Night of The Scarecrow (1981)
I’m yet to see lists with the movies that I found by other means than the web. Or that I found by chance on the web but while organically looking for stuff on sites like YouTube. Not in a structured list on a website.
When you desire to watch things that are removed from the mainstream you need to do considerable fieldwork. Relying only on our power for coining search phrases gets old very fast. When that happens you realize that there are no absolutes.
Every source of information we resort to is just a one-sided take on reality and a kind of filter. When I didn’t plan my b movies watching I lost many nights of annoyance. Sometimes the movies were so rudimentary, that I felt I was an idiot to watch them. Other times I had bad surprises when the shock went too far and the movie stopped being a pleasurable ride to become something revolting that should have been left unwatched.
If you developed such a particular taste for movies that real the cult classics of shock delight you, you’re bound to find odd things, and sometimes you might get a very different feeling from some b movies.
It may happen that you thought you were going to like, maybe even more than like, love, a b movie, and when you watched it you didn’t enjoy it. This happened to me, for instance, a day I strayed, albeit not too far, from horror and shock and watched Corman’s “Wild Angels”.
I’m not going to deny that for me it was eye-candy and, at the aesthetic level, a great movie to watch during the summer. But I couldn’t care less for the story and characters, and that’s a sign I didn’t like it 100%.
Still, I went to that movie because not one but several persons were proactive in sharing the fact that an obscure movie like that will always have some positive points to justify rescuing it from oblivion to pass it on to others.
Go to the Horror Genre Cult Classics section.
Horror Genre Series
In this section, you’ll find serialized horror things that have a built-in story and fine art. You might find all kinds of serialized lifestyle content, but this section is only for items that include the narrative dimension.
Horror Movie and TV Series
There are many sagas of horror movies that have become well-rounded, self-contained universes. One may argue that there’s no point in focusing on shock series from a curating perspective.
That one can benefit more from going directly to a VoD site and see for oneself, instead of having to research, curate, or seek advice from someone who already watched the series and can give a, hopefully spoiler-free, opinion.
Yet, I think it’s not a wise move. I tried that approach, and I’m stuck with a lot of series that I started. I liked them all, and every time I want to relax and watch one, it’s a very tough choice to pick one.
I still don’t know what’s at play when this happens to me. It may be that I’m reluctant to invest a lot of time on a show, to find by the end of the first season that it wasn’t that good. In fact, I almost never binge on TV series. I refuse to throw away my time mindlessly.
Before you say anything, I’m not trying to insinuate I’m better or more intelligent because I don’t binge on TV or Netflix shock series.
I fear becoming a couch potato. That is because I can swallow the horror series I watch episode after episode like water. I actually love to go on a series binge so much that I can’t control it.
For some persons, the way to deal with something one can’t control, the best solution, is to cut the thing out completely. To control my tendencies to binge, I approach horror TV series in a more old-fashioned way.
I just watch one series only one day of the week and never more than two or three episodes during a single sitting.
Horror Art Series
It’s common for curators to curate horror. Much more so now, that the web provides tools to do it in integrated, social, and far-reaching ways. So far, I have found some good collections.
There are traditionally curated ones, like Kirk Hammet’s “Classic Monsters” and ongoing “It’s Alive”.
We can call virtual collections to articles that aren’t a collection that’s physically on exhibition. To some content in sites that show a set of extremely creepy paintings, like this one.
Other types are retail websites with a flexible search system that lets you generate your own gallery to watch, and possibly buy, their frightful materials for sale, like for example Macabre Gallery
Go to the Horror Genre Series section.
Shock Depot’s Services to the Horror Community
Here in Shock Depot, we strive to develop and release a new feature each quarter of the year. Each of these features aims to provide a useful service to the horror community in general and the internet horror genre community in particular.
It is relatively hard to come up with new features every three months because the horror community at large is more action-oriented than information-oriented.
You play horror games, you watch horror movies and TV series, you go to horror conventions or amusement parks that feature horror rides, you listen to horror music, you create horror items, designs, or other types of horror media.
You do all these things rather than read about them, or seek information about them.
Still, there is a lot of horror heads that need information about specific topics of the horror genre, and that’s why the original purpose of this website was (and continues to be) information about a few different niches of the horror genre.
Still, we believe that implementing interactive features that add value to the life, work, and leisure of horror fans is the best way to make this site grow.
Interactive Features of Shock Depot So Far
If you work with horror, study horror, or spend your leisure time with horror the features in this list may be of use to you.
Core Site Pages
As in any other site, certain generic pages must be in place. This is not an interactive feature per se, but I thought it made sense to include them in this list.
Legal Pages
Every website must have legal pages available, where the legal terms of the service are revealed. As of now, the legal pages available are:
- Terms of Service: Explains the nature of the website’s service
- Privacy Policy: Explains what information the site collects from users
- Affiliate Disclosure: Discloses the affiliate policy of the website
- About: a brief explanation of what Shock Depot is about
Site Maps
It is always a good practice to make two site maps available. One for users, and one for robots.
You need not worry about the robot’s site map, since it is only to help the search engine crawling spiders do their job of indexing the website.
While the robot’s site map is of no interest to you, there may be a reason why you want to check the user site map. In the user site map, you will find all the content pages and regular pages on the website.
Direct Contact
Ways to interact with the site directly.
Contact
Contact Bholenath about any issue. This feature is for short, real quick messages, but if you want to send a long message, no problem, you can do it too. Still, you have to enter at least 180 words to be able to submit a contact query.
Suggestion Box
Send Shock Depot suggestions about improvements, corrections, features that you would want to see implemented, niches that you would like the site to cover, etc.
If you, as a horror fan, have a problem that you think could be solved through software running on a website, please let us know by sending us a message through the suggestion box. We will make everything possible to have your solution implemented.
Submit Guest Posts
You can submit different types of content to Shock Depot, and have it featured in any of the four main niches/top categories that you see in the main menu.
It can be general, related to the main niches in general, or it can be specific, falling inside any of the subcategories that appear in the pull-down menu when you hover over one of the four top categories.
Submit Horror Content
A few of the most wanted types of content you can submit to Shock Depot as guest posts:
- Horror Movie/Series Review (1000-1200 words)
- Horror Movie/Series List (5-12 items, 700-1000 words)
- Horror Cult Classic Movie Review (1000-1200 words)
- Horror Cult Classic Movies List (5-12 items, 700-1000 words)
- Horror Product Review (700-1000 words)
- Horror Essays (2000-5000 words)
- Horror Features (2500-3500 words)
- Horror Case Studies (700-1500 words)
- Horror Think Pieces (700-1000 words)
- Horror Advice Article (700-1000 words)
- Horror Guides (minimum 1500 words)
- Horror How-Tos (minimum 1000 words)
You can submit audiovisual horror content, but take the text content word count requirements above as guidelines to how long the script of the audio or video you want to submit should be.
For a detailed explanation of the guest post submission feature, please go to the submit a guest post easily and without hassle page.
Submit Horror Advertisements
You can submit free horror advertisements to be featured on the site for free and without hassle.
This feature is classified separate from submitting guest posts because advertisements don’t have the same word count requirements that regular content has.
Ads may be a video, image, or design without actual text-mode content.
Yet, you must consider that even if you already have an advertisement in audiovisual or graphical format, adding either a transcript or a dedicated promotional copy of at least 300 words below it will help it to become indexed by search engines.
For a detailed explanation of the free horror advertisement submission feature, please go to the post free ads page.
© Bholenath Valsan 2021 — Horror Genre