News

MOVE OVER, KRAMPUS: Meet Perchta, the Belly-Slitter!

Published

7 years ago

December 23, 2016

Written by Dr. Jose

There is perhaps no better-known Christmastime monster than Krampus, the half-goat, half-demon from Germanic folklore who punishes the children who were bad during the holiday season. He is the anti-Santa. (Anti Claus, if you wanna get cute about it.) He’s big, has horns, and he’s terrifying. Most people are probably familiar with those creepy turn of the century greeting cards that feature him scaring tots while wagging a big, red tongue.

But did you know he has a female equivalent? Her name is Perchta, and I’m here to tell you: she is far, far more scary than Krampus – in fact, she’s downright horrifying.

Hailing from the same West Germanic folklore as Krampus, Perchta has embodied many interpretations over the centuries. In traditional narratives, she was the goddess of Alpine paganism. She was closely associated with the Wild Hunt – a myth involving elves, fairies, and the dead – which spelled certain doom for anyone who witnessed it. Under the designation Frau Perchta, she was thought to be something far more innocuous: a white-robed goddess who oversaw spinning and weaving. However, contemporary culture has rebranded her as something a bit more insidious: a “rewarder of the generous, and the punisher of the bad, particularly lying children“.

Her physical description varies, though none of it pleasant: occasionally she’s been described as an old woman with a very wrinkled face, hook nose, and disheveled appearance. Other times, she’s a shape-shifting beast, with one foot bigger than the other. Perhaps most creepy of all, she’s been described as having two faces: a nice expression for the good children, and a wretched one for the bad.

What really sets her apart from Krampus is her punishment of the naughty ones. Krampus delivered coal and sticks to the children he thought were bad. Perchta? Well…

If you were good, you had nothing to worry about. Come the 12th night of Christmas, Perchta would sneak into the homes of everyone who had been good and worked hard that year and would leave a small silver coin for them. Those who’d been bad, however, would have their bellies slit open – their organs would be removed and replaced with dirt, pebbles, and straw. She also slit open the bellies of those who didn’t feast enough during the holidays; if you weren’t eating, drinking, and being merry, then you were in direct violation of not invoking the holiday spirit and therefore at risk of a slit. And if slitting bellies wasn’t bad enough, she was also known to boil the female yarn-spinners who didn’t get their work done.

Suddenly, coal and sticks don’t sound like such a bad punishment.

These days, Krampus and Perchta have become almost interchangeable, mostly due to the well-known Alpine celebration Krampuslauf (“Krampus run”), the wintertime event where men dress as Krampus and parade through town. Perchta is often also represented during Krampuslauf, but is usually seen wearing very similar attire or almost identical masks to that of Krampus.

If I were them, I’d give Perchta her own distinction. Otherwise, she might get mad. And I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side.

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Movies

‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

Published

3 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

^{High Desert Hell}

^{The Gemini Project}

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Movies

‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

Published

5 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

^{Happy Sad Confused}

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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News

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

Published

8 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Timothy Rawles

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.