[RM contributor Alexandra West checks in with a shiny new Sinister Seven.]

Horror is often relegated to the cobwebbed corners of popular culture. It’s dismissed, misunderstood or deemed a guilty pleasure. But the EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington has given the genre its due. With their exhibit Can’t Look Away: The Lure of Horror Film, senior curator Jacob McMurray, along with guest curators Roger Corman, John Landis and Eli Roth, has created an interactive and sensory experience that illuminates the history of horror cinema for gore-hounds and the casually curious alike.

The exhibit incorporates props such as the axe from The Shining, the Xenomorph creature suit from Alien and the Creature From the Black Lagoon’s mask as well interactive elements including The Scream Booth, where photos of shrieking visitors become part of the exhibit, and artist Philip Worthington’s Shadow Monster installation, which invites visitors to turn their own shadows into projected monsters…

Welcome to another edition of Daddy’s Little Monster. Tonight’s feature presentation? The British sci-fi/horror/action/comedy mash-up, Attack the Block. It’s just opened here in North America but we were fortunate enough to catch an advance screening of it in May. I’m gonna sit this one out and hand over the reins. So, without further ado, a 100% Little Monster’s view of Attack the Block.

Emma: Attack the Block takes place in South London, and it’s about a gang of young-kid muggers – is that a word? (Note: Insert “Yes, it is” from off-mic Dad.) Anyways, the kids are trying to mug this lady, when they get caught in the start of an alien attack. They kill the first alien that attacks them, but they find themselves being chased by the other aliens, and they’re bigger and way meaner. They run back to their apartment building in “the block” to hide out. The rest of the movie has the gang, along with the lady they tried to rob, fighting to stay alive.

To quote Sara Lee, “Some people don’t like some things, but nobody doesn’t like… brain-eating zombies!” Alright, not word for word, but zombies have always been a popular horror staple, especially in our household. From Romero’s series to Shaun of the Dead, right up to the recent TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, the “deceased and mobile” have been a regular fixture in Emma’s “education”. That’s why, for our next film, I decided we should fill in one of the crucial blanks in her zombie repertoire: Dan O’Bannon’s cult classic horror-comedy, The Return of the Living Dead.

Five years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Heather Gillies at the Festival of Fear. The Ontario artist’s collection of cute but creepy clown dolls was bizarre, but I had to have one. Now she’s back in the Artist Alley, peddling her wicked wares.