The Film You Are About to See, page 1
Praise forThe Film You Are About to See
"Buttery snack bar popcorn, drive-in intermission ads, classic horror cinephilia: clearly I’m the target audience for this book. But I think you’ll love it too. The Film You Are About to See is a book with its eyes on the past, but at the same time announces Newlin as a modern horror voice to watch.
"It’s showtime!"
—Adam Cesare, Bram-Stoker-Award©-winning author of Clown In a Cornfield
"The book you are about to read is a cinephile’s spine-tingling fever dream. Haley Newlin pens a love letter to celluloid, capturing the grain and gimmicks of a bygone era where the blood seeps right off the screen and into your book. William Castle would be proud... and you’ll be absolutely terrified."
—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
"Retro, raucous, and a roaring good time, The Film You Are About to See is a must-read for horror fans everywhere. An absolute blood-soaked delight."
—Gwendolyn Kiste, four-time Bram-Stoker-Award©-
winning author of Reluctant Immortals
"Energetic and full of popcorn and bodies. The Film You Are About to See pays loving tribute to the classic horror of yesteryear with a blood-soaked romp at the drive-in."
—Hailey Piper, author of A Light Most Hateful
"Newlin takes everything we love about classic horror films and the drive-in experience, turning pages into silver screens with piercing screams."
—Nick Roberts, author of Mean Spirited and The Exorcist's House
"Like a mad scientist from the films of yore, Haley Newlin has crafted a delightfully deranged spectacle on the page with The Film You Are About to See. You’ll never want to leave this blood-soaked drive-in... but the creepy thing in your backseat won’t let you anyway."
—Brian McAuley, author of Breathe In, Bleed Out and Curse of the Reaper
"The Film You Are About to See is a spooktastic tribute to classic horror films that will leave your spine tingling. With a kick ass heroine, gore galore, and the creepiest creature ever to grace a drive-in, you’ll devour this novella faster than a bucket of movie theater popcorn!"
—Angela Sylvaine, Bram-Stoker-Award©-nominated author of Frost Bite and Chopping Spree
"A terrifying love letter to the drive-in movie era where the real creature feature is off-screen. The perfect bloody homage to William Castle and Vincent Price horror."
—Wendy Dalrymple, author of Credenza and Birthday Party Demon
"The Film You Are About to See has all the glorious flavor of a classic horror movie combined with characters you can’t help but love. Haley Newlin’s writing evokes both a 1950s time capsule and a fun, monster-filled romp you won’t be able to put down."
—Viggy Parr Hampton, author of The Rotting Room
"From the opening reel to the final frame, The Film You Are About to See is bursting with monster-movie mayhem. This is drive-in horror at its gleefully bloody, devilishly fun, and heartfelt best!"
—V.S. Lawrence, author of 80s Ghosts and With Friends Like These
"Full of appreciation for the genre, beautifully written, and above all, a really fun time, wrapped in a celluloid skin of pure retro camp, The Film You Are About to See is a story that will not release readers from its pincered grip until the end credits roll. With nods to Castle and Price and their B-Movie brethren, this is a creature feature with claws and brains that is not to be missed."
—FanFiAddict
Copyright © 2025 by Haley Newlin
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact info@madaxemedia.com.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
Published by Mad Axe Media
Cover & Interior Design by Joey Powell
Edited by Clayton Bohle
Print ISBN: 978-1-966497-10-3
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-966497-11-0
For the two who started it all, William Castle and Vincent Price
“I'm going to give the people what they want. Sensation. Horror. Shock. Send them out in the streets to tell their friends how wonderful it is to be scared to death.”
—Vincent Price as Professor Henry Jarrod in House of Wax (1953)
Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Acknowledgements
About the author
AN INTRODUCTION
FROM THE AUTHOR
“And remember this, a scream at the right time, may save your life.” - William Castle, The Tingler
When I was six years old, I came home from school and found my mother’s car in the drive. Surprised and excited to see her home an hour or so early, I hurried into the house, my identical twin sister on my heels. My mother wasn’t in the living room, so we checked her bedroom where she often paced, munching on chips and salsa, and chatting on the home phone with a friend from down the street.
She wasn’t there either. The adjoined master bathroom door yawned open.
“Mom?” We called in unison, to our annoyance, as we often did.
No answer.
We inched closer, exchanging quick glances.
“Mom?” My sister tried again. I raised a hand, stopping her. I pointed to the white tile floor inside. It was spotted with brilliant red.
I pushed the bathroom door wide and into the wall and gasped. The bathtub was stained red, too, only a few shades deeper. With no explanation of the source for this logic, I thought that meant this blood had been there longer. Had Mom hurt herself somehow in the tub, stumbled out, and dripped fresh rivulets across the bleach-treated tile? If so, how long had she been hurt? Was she alright?
There’s some disagreement about who cried first, me or my sister, but I’d wager we both gave in to distress. “Mom?” We tried once more.
“Dammit,” my mother’s voice came from the hall. “Dog spends its whole life outside, sees all kinds of wild animals, but when it catches a glimpse of the housecat it goes insane.”
She exhaled, exasperated. “Yes, Trace, I know it was the cat who bit me, but the dog terrified her.”
She came into the room with the phone held between her ear and shoulder. She wrapped a dish towel around her palm.
“Katie bit you?” my sister asked. Katie was our German Shepherd.
It took my mom a moment to clock our tears, the pain of her bloodied hand clouding her otherwise precise suspicions.
“It was Carly,” I said. Carly was our cat.
Our eyes went to the tub and then back to our mother’s wet hair. Globs of crimson hair color stained her forehead and around her ears. She never had the patience to do it with a dye brush and gloves.
That explained the color of the tub. Mom got off early, came home and colored her hair, rinsed it, and did laundry. When she’d opened the backdoor to hang sheets on the line outside, the German Shepherd spotted the cat, who my mom had been holding at the time, and growled ferociously. Startled, the cat sank its teeth into my mother’s hand and clawed herself free.
My sister went about her night, telling stories at dinner, but I had a bit more trouble letting go of the horror I’d felt coming home from school that day, wondering if something awful had happened. At this ridiculously young age, I began to wonder what life would be like without someone I loved around. Even worse, if I saw how they left. If I found them bloodied in the bathtub or their lifeless body spilled on the bathroom floor.
I had nightmares for weeks.
Years later, I stayed with my grandfather for a chunk of the summer as my mother finalized a particularly difficult divorce. Leaving her alone in the house triggered an assortment of fears for her safety. Ours, too.
After dinner one night, my grandfather retired to bed early, and my mind raced.
Apparently, my sister’s mind did too, as she sat up and declared, “I can’t sleep.”
We turned on the old TV that stood on four short legs and within a golden frame that curled like Greek architecture.
None of our usual channels promised any good watches. In fact, it was close to Halloween and though my sister didn’t like to admit it, she didn’t like watching Halloween specials at night, especially if I fell asleep first.
Remote in hand and being a full thirty minutes older, I chose a title I recognized: Psycho. I’d never seen the film before but had seen a few episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. And though Psycho was labeled as a horror title, it was in black and white and, therefore, mild, even tame, I’d assumed.
But the television program ran behind. Psycho wouldn’t play
Castle promised that filmgoers would actually play a part in the action on screen while in the theatre. I wondered how I would do so, immediately transported into a theatre audience at one of the first showings of The Tingler in 1959. Castle promised more shocks per minute in this film than his previous release, House On Haunted Hill. The screen cut into a film trailer unlike any I’d ever seen. Floating heads emerged on screen, screaming shrill, unnerving shrieks.
“Turn it down,” my sister whisper-shouted, clearly disturbed.
I fumbled for the volume button and quieted the screams that admittedly gave me quite the fright, too. I was also afraid of waking my grandfather and his wife. Of being bad house guests and being sent home.
TCM appeared in the bottom corner of the screen and a man laughed to himself, going on about the legendary William Castle and his gimmicks.
Then, he said, “And now back to the film.”
A woman named Mrs. Martha Ryerson Higgins, played by Judith Evelyn, awoke from sedation to a series of horrors. A hairy arm reached from dreadfully slow opening doors, holding a hatchet just inches above her head. Her eyes widened in shock, but she didn't scream. A bathroom door opened, seemingly on its own. Mrs. Higgins stumbled inside, and the same look of terror poured over her face. The faucet, in this otherwise black and white movie, was spewing brilliant, bright red blood. And not just in the sink, but the bathtub, too.
I turned to my sister, “Do you remember that day after school?”
I didn’t have to repaint the image of Mom’s bloody hand or the “blood-spotted” tile or the stained tub. Twin thing, I suppose.
My sister nodded as we watched a blood-soaked hand reach from the tub on screen.
“We were so scared,” I said. I remember wanting to scream then.
“Why isn’t she screaming?” I said of Mrs. Higgins.
My sister shook her head. She didn’t understand it either.
We had to know.
We watched the rest of the film, and learned that Mrs. Higgins was a non-hearing, non-verbal woman who couldn’t release her scream, and therefore couldn’t dispel the creature that grows upon every human’s spine as fear mounds within them. Studying this phenomenon was a pathologist, played by the infamous Vincent Price, who of course we were drawn to right away.
We loved The Tingler, and I ran into my grandfather’s kitchen, hunting for something to write down the film title as well as the one William Castle mentioned during TCM’s replay of the old trailer for The Tingler. House On Haunted Hill, it was called.
TCM showed that one, too, just a few days later. And we learned that Price starred in this film as well, and that The Tingler wasn’t the first film where Castle employed his iconic gimmicks.
We had so much fun watching these films for the first time. And with TCM’s incredible commentary, Castle’s devious and juvenile showmanship, and Price’s charm, we were hooked.
And, we were able to suspend enough disbelief, sidestep the occasional goof like a hard-to-miss wire pulling a creature along its way, to imagine what it would’ve been like to see these films in-univertheatre when they’d first debuted. This made them all the more terrifying. And of course, all the more fun.
I hung on to these movies for years to come, diving headfirst into the horror genre, remembering how I’d felt that day I came home from school, the red hair color, and of course, how The Tingler took me back to that place years later.
That’s how good horror works, I thought.
For this and all the reasons above, I’ve written The Film You Are About To See. I imagined giving modern horror fans, friends, and family the experience of oldies horror films, especially those produced or directed by William Castle and starring Vincent Price. And watching horror movies from the 50s and early 60s, of course, introduced me to car culture and, therefore, the horror drive-in experience. This would be where I’d discover Universal monster pictures like Dracula and other horror classics such as The Blob.
When you stumble on the marquee in The Film You Are About To See, you may be surprised to see that I did not select a single Universal monster flick.
GASP!
The audacity, right?
I juggled with that decision, but my editor, Clay, pause for applause, reminded me that this idea stemmed from what I imagined I would show if I got to host a DUSK TIL DAWN horror show at the local drive-in. Better yet, if I could somehow recreate Castle’s famous gimmicks like Emergo! where a skeleton flew over the heads of theatre goers during a showing of House On Haunted Hill. Or Percepto! where Castle and his crew stationed vibrating devices underneath theatre seats during showings of The Tingler.
And that conjured the idea, rather the fascination, of this momentary terror where the line between theatrics and real-life horror blurred.
And so, that’s what I hope to bring you in The Film You Are About To See. An experience that hasn’t been captured quite as effectively since the 1950s, a limbo of pranks and terror. The urge to scream while everyone else laughs as if they were all in on it all along.
Please note, to bring you the oldies horror experience as I had it, I employ a few tricks outside of their timeline. For example, I couldn’t leave out one of Castle’s 1961 gimmicks that always cracked me up called “The Fright Break.” For The Fright Break, Castle interrupts the film and offers a chance for anyone too afraid to finish the movie to exit the theatre. However, if you did, Castle encouraged the audience to taunt you, to point and laugh at anyone heading for what he called “The Coward’s Corner.”
You’ll also note a playful spelling of the school mascot. This is intentional and a nod to my alma-mater. And it’s actually a completely accepted spelling of the word, no matter what Mike Salt tells you.
So, grab some popcorn, lean in close, because The Film You Are About To See is one I hope you carry with you for years to come, just as I have these oldies titles I hold so near and dear. For those of you who’ve enjoyed these films just as I have, I hope this book reminds you of times both pleasant and not so much, because after all, horror, like life, is a constant limbo. And of course, I hope I get you with a few scares of my own. This is a love letter to oldies horror, but it’s still a horror story of its own, and as Vincent Price says in Haunted Palace (1963, directed by Roger Corman), “I’m entitled to a few amusements.”
Thanks for going on this journey with me. I hope I make oldies horror fans of you all.
Yours (Horrifically),
Haley Newlin
P.S. Keep a pen nearby. Every film mentioned in this book, on the marquee or otherwise, comes with a LOUD, SCREAMING, BLEEDING stamp of approval from me.
It’s alive!
Thursday, August 6, 1959
8:30 PM
An impending storm bruised the evening sky a corpse-blue and purple. Wild wind blasted through the night. Trees bent against the force. Carrion beetles, or “burying bugs,” as some referred to them, skittered from tree roots and across the forest floor. Birds squawked overhead, distressed and in search of sanctuary in the expanse of soaring oak trees. The rain came down heavy and fast and all at once. Ominous flashes of lightning reached from the clouds and clear to the ground. Steam rose from the undergrowth as the muggy air cooled.
As the electric shocks across the dark sky grew more frequent, a single strike broke away and zapped straight through the tallest cherrybark oak tree standing. Bark burst as the current singed through the tree, limbs to its buried roots, with a hiss.
Its fall awakened something underground. A long forgotten, cursed creature.
Born in steam, it unfurled like smoke. It was without immediate recollection of its purpose. It came with a bare consciousness, a sponge ready to absorb matter. But then, it began to remember things. Pain and fear. Life and death. To hunt and to be hunted. Humans. Which drew forth a single word. Monsters.
