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Tonight on The Introverted Obelisk, we sail back to 1922 for a film that gave vampires their cinematic passport — Nosferatu. It’s the story of Count Orlok, a man who looks like a plague rat in formalwear, and poor Hutter, the real estate agent who thought closing a deal with the undead was a good career move. What follows is a slow, creeping nightmare of shadows, rats, and real-estate regret as Orlok brings pestilence to Wisborg and an entire generation of silent-film audiences learn to fear pointy ears and long fingers.

We’ll also wander through the chaos behind the scenes — how this unlicensed “Dracula” knock-off got sued by Bram Stoker’s widow, who demanded every copy be burned, and how the film survived thanks to a few brave souls who refused to let horror history go up in smoke.

So grab a candle, close the blinds, and join me as we descend into the world where sunlight means death, silence screams louder than sound, and the shadows have teeth. Because tonight, The Introverted Obelisk shines its flickering light on Nosferatu, the vampire who started it all.

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This week on The Introverted Obelisk, we scale the heights of tragedy and stone with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)—the film that gave Lon Chaney the keys to cinematic immortality and taught audiences that monsters aren’t always born, sometimes they’re sculpted by cruelty. Beneath the shadow of Notre Dame’s great cathedral, Quasimodo rings his bells, worships from afar, and discovers that love and loneliness echo just as loudly from the belfry.

We’ll explore how Chaney’s self-inflicted makeup turned empathy into horror, how Universal’s massive Paris set nearly bankrupted them before Frankenstein and Dracula could finish the job, and how this silent epic gave voice to every outsider history tried to hide. Expect cathedrals, torches, and heartbreak—with just enough Obe-brand sarcasm to remind you that the Middle Ages were not known for their HR policies.

It’s been a hundred years since Quasimodo first cried “Sanctuary!” from those stone towers—and the bells still ring.

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Stranded on an isolated island with nothing to eat except a suspicious buffet of oversized mushrooms, a group of wealthy socialites slowly discovers that hunger isn’t the only thing gnawing at them. In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk, host Obie Knox dives into Matango, Ishirō Honda’s eerie, slow-burn descent into fungal madness. We follow a pleasure cruise gone catastrophically wrong, a derelict research vessel covered in mold, tempers shredding under starvation, and the creeping temptation to take just one little bite of those forbidden mushrooms.

Turns out that bite comes with consequences—namely, the gradual transformation into one of the island’s haunting “mushroom people,” the Matango. As Obe recounts the unraveling of each passenger’s sanity, he digs into the film’s Cold War-era anxieties, post-Hiroshima trauma, and the way addiction, class tension, and environmental decay seep into the story like spores in the walls.

Equal parts atmospheric horror and psychological tragedy, Matango proves that sometimes the scariest monsters aren’t giant kaiju, but the things you’ll do when you’re starving, desperate, and surrounded by mushrooms that won’t stop staring at you.

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In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk, your host Obie Knox takes you on a rain-soaked detour into James Whale’s The Old Dark House (1932), the pre-code classic that accidentally invented an entire horror subgenre by asking the bold cinematic question: What if a house was both haunted… and also just full of horrible people?

Stranded travelers Philip, Margaret, and Roger stumble into a Welsh mansion where the décor is dust, the lighting is lightning, and the hosts are one nervous breakdown away from biting someone. Inside lurk the Femm family: Horace, who greets guests like they’re Girl Scouts selling cursed cookies; Rebecca, a religious zealot who could shame a mirror; Morgan, the drunken mute butler built like a refrigerator; and Saul, a pyromaniac locked upstairs like a bonus boss battle.

As the storm escalates, so do the bizarre encounters, accidental fires, unhinged monologues, attempted murders, and an unexpected romance forged entirely from trauma bonding.

Join Obie as he breaks down how this atmospheric oddity blended horror and humor, shaped decades of “strangers trapped in a creepy house” stories, and remained one of the strangest, funniest, and most influential films ever set in a building that probably needs to be condemned.

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In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk, Obe slips on his funereal gloves and dives headfirst into the wonderfully bizarre world of bride-snatching, botany, and Bela Lugosi’s increasingly questionable skincare routine. Our story begins with brides dropping dead at the altar—romantic, I know—and disappearing before anyone can even say “refund the caterer.” Obe guides listeners through the tangled mystery with his usual blend of dry commentary and affectionate mockery, following an intrepid reporter who investigates a remote mansion run by a sinister botanist and his equally unsettling household.

As the plot unfolds, the episode dissects Lugosi’s scheme to harvest the youth of young brides to keep his wife… moisturized. Yes, really. From the eerie family dynamic to the grave-robbing floral experiments, Obe highlights every melodramatic beat, every eyebrow arch, and every gloriously nonsensical twist that makes early-40s horror such a delightful mess.

Along the way, expect plenty of acerbic asides about wedding etiquette, suspicious florists, and the eternal danger of accepting corsages from strangers. By the time the final reel rolls, you’ll understand exactly why some vows truly need the disclaimer: “Results may vary. Not responsible for sudden vanishing.”

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In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk, we swoop into The Vampire Bat (1933), a film that asks the daring question: what if the vampire menace terrorizing a small European village wasn’t supernatural at all—just the work of an overzealous mad scientist with a blood fetish and questionable ethics? Set in the eternally torch-lit town of Kleinschloss, the movie mixes gothic paranoia, mob mentality, and early-’30s science-gone-mad melodrama. I walk through the story of Lionel Atwill’s quietly deranged Dr. von Niemann, Fay Wray’s ever-endangered heroine, and Dwight Frye’s tragic simpleton, Herman Gleib, who just really likes bats—unfortunately, at the worst possible time. As always, I dissect the film’s quirks, budget shortcuts, and its habit of borrowing sets from Frankenstein and The Old Dark House like a cinematic raccoon. Expect commentary on early horror tropes, the studio’s desperate attempt to cash in on vampire fever without actually showing one, and a few lovingly exasperated observations about 1930s villagers and their instant torch-wielding instincts. The Vampire Bat may not sparkle—or even bite—but it’s a fascinating relic from an era when horror was still figuring out just how weird it wanted to be.

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In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk, we descend into William Castle’s gothic funhouse of greed, ghosts, and marital loathing: House on Haunted Hill (1959). Vincent Price stars as the ever-smiling Frederick Loren, a millionaire who invites five strangers to spend the night in a supposedly haunted mansion with the promise of $10,000 each—provided they survive until morning. The house is less “haunted” and more “booby-trapped death trap,” complete with severed heads, ghostly apparitions, and, of course, the famous skeleton that gets more screen time than some of the human cast.

We walk through the deliciously petty war between Loren and his wife Annabelle, a couple so toxic that murder is basically their form of flirting. Castle’s gimmickry is in full swing here too—originally releasing the film with Emergo, a plastic skeleton that would swoop over the theater audience during the climax. It’s both ridiculous and perfect, because much like the film itself, it’s cheap, over-the-top, and absolutely unforgettable.

So join us for a night in a mansion where the ghosts may or may not be real, the guests are definitely unstable, and the Price is—well—always right.

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In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk, we shuffle through the empty streets of The Last Man on Earth (1964), the Vincent Price classic that adapted Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend on a budget that looked like it was borrowed from the props department’s coffee fund. Price stars as Dr. Robert Morgan, the sole survivor of a plague that’s turned humanity into a shambling horde of vampires — though these vampires mostly stand outside his house half-heartedly groaning, as if waiting for a pizza delivery that never comes.

I’ll walk you through Morgan’s monotonous daily routine: gathering supplies, stringing garlic, hammering stakes into neighbors, and recording sad monologues into a tape recorder like the world’s loneliest podcaster. Along the way, we’ll admire how Price manages to elevate endless scenes of routine with sheer gravitas, making garlic shopping sound like Shakespeare.

We’ll also cover the tragic reveal of Morgan’s lost family, the arrival of other “survivors” who aren’t quite what they seem, and the bleak finale that underlines the title: he really is the last man, though not in the way he thinks.

It’s moody, it’s low-budget, and it’s the blueprint for every apocalyptic vampire and zombie movie that followed.

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