Chapter 30
THE SPRINKLER Chapter Thirty
2.1.2026
Editor – Mykal - Content – Technical - Layout
Research & Editor – Mike - Content - Layout
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Chapter 30
A Monthly Film-First Dispatch
Psycho Studios (Phoenix)
Film Image of the Month
The Bates family home from the 1960 Hitchcock masterpiece, Psycho. Original house was built on Universal Studios lot.
EDITOR’S NOTE
We are embarking on a new layout and content for our newsletter The Sprinkler. Mykal was instrumental with editing our previous format which had too many irons in the fire. This chapter and moving forward will include:
Film: New – Newer releases. Reviews.
From the Vault: Films from the 1930s through the 1980s. Retrospect.
VHS Corner: Talk about cool and obscure films that are available only on videotape.
Some TV: Looking at one to two current TV series, that resonate with us.
Music: This is about music that is directly linked to a film or films.
Psycho Studio’s Spotlight: We look at icons of the horror film genre; directors, actors and their fictious counterparts.
The Sprinkler evolves into something that packs more punch with less. We focus on our core strength and interest, film. We keep it interesting, unique and free from politics and the world at large. This month’s mood is one of hope, prosperity and creativity that propels us into success in 2026!
Mykal’s and my journey has been one of beauty, courage, strife and creativity at a level I never imagined we would achieve. We are here; this is our year! I want to acknowledge Mykal, and his brilliance with creativity and technology. He is an amazing young man and I’m proud to call him my son.
**We use the Psycho Scale when reviewing with a score, it is 0-Psycho (10) and these scores are real and true.
FILM
New Releases
Black Phone 2 2025 runtime 1h 54m
The first film worked because it felt small, focused, and mean in a quiet way. A contained nightmare. A villain who felt like urban legend material. Childhood fear treated seriously. This sequel forgets most of that.
Instead of tightening the dread, the story stretches it thin. The supernatural angle that once felt eerie and mysterious is pushed to the front and over explained. What used to be chilling suggestion turns into plot mechanics. The phone calls no longer feel like desperate lifelines from the other side. They feel like devices moving the script from scene to scene.
The emotional weight also weakens. The first story felt like survival horror through a child lens. Here the characters often feel like they are reenacting beats instead of living through new terror. Familiar imagery shows up again, but without the same tension behind it. The film keeps pointing at what worked before instead of building something sharper.
The villain presence is another issue. Less mystery. Less menace. The more the film shows, the less power the figure seems to have. Horror villains often live in the shadows of the imagination. Dragging everything into the light flattens the fear.
What earns the time here is very little beyond a few scattered atmosphere moments that remind you what the series once did well. A couple of sequences land visually, but they are islands in a movie that feels unnecessary. Other than enjoying being at the theater with my son, this film sucked. A hit at the box office nonetheless.
Psycho Scale: 3 out of 10
Barely a Pulse
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 2025 1h 44m
The concept still has fuel. Haunted mascots. Corporate rot. Childhood spaces turned hostile. That should be a playground for dread. Instead, this sequel drains tension almost every chance it gets.
The film leans harder into lore but confuses detail with depth. Backstory piles up, yet fear does not. The mystery that should feel unsettling starts to feel like rules being recited. When horror turns into explanation, the nightmare loses its teeth.
The animatronics are the biggest missed opportunity. They look the part, but the movie rarely uses space, silence, or stillness to make them threatening. Too often they are simply present instead of staged for maximum unease. The best moments in this world should feel like waiting in the dark, listening for movement. Instead, we get noise where there should be tension.
Tone is another struggle. The film cannot decide if it wants to be dark or safe. Scenes that should push into real fear often pull back. The atmosphere never fully commits to being oppressive or disturbing, which leaves the experience feeling flat.
What earns the time is mostly the production design. The environment still has creepy potential. You can see the movie that could have been lurking in the sets and creature work. It just never fully arrives on screen. This film is popular at the box office, go figure. Unwatchable.
Psycho Scale: 2 out of 10
Barely a Pulse
FROM THE VAULT (1930s–1980s)
Let’s take a look at classic horror films. We will kick off with these two icons:
Frankenstein 1931 runtime 1h 11m
Rewatching this now feels less like revisiting a horror movie and more like opening a gothic tragedy that just happens to wear monster makeup.
The first thing that lands today is the sorrow. Boris Karloff is not playing a creature of rage. He is playing confusion. Pain. Loneliness. The famous image of the flat head and neck bolts has been copied into pop culture so many times that it is easy to forget how human the performance underneath it is.
What holds is the emotional spine. The film asks a question that still stings in modern times. Just because we can create something, should we. That question now lives in conversations about technology, science, and power. The movie feels older in its pacing, sure, but the theme is not dusty. It is disturbingly current.
Director James Whale gives it elegance instead of chaos. Shadows stretch. Sets feel theatrical in the best way. The lab scene still crackles, not because of effects, but because of the obsession on display. The real horror is not the monster. It is the man who needed to play God.
Reevaluation note: This plays better today as drama with horror elements than as a scare machine. If you watch for mood and meaning, it is timeless. If you watch for jolts, it is quiet. But that quiet is heavy.
Verdict: It absolutely holds, just not in the way modern horror is wired. It is a gothic character study wearing a lightning storm. The many remakes over the years (Hammer Films excluded) have been abysmal including Del Toro’s latest disaster! One of our all-time favorites!
Dracula 1931 runtime 1h 15m
This one is fascinating on a rewatch because it both holds and feels frozen in time at the exact same moment.
Bela Lugosi is the reason to be here. The voice. The stare. The stillness. Modern vampires run, snarl, and leap. Lugosi barely moves, and somehow that restraint is the threat. He does not chase you. He waits. That energy still works.
Where reevaluation comes in is pacing and staging. The film often feels like a photographed stage play. Long pauses. Static camera setups. Silence where modern audiences expect score or motion. Some viewers may read this as slow. Others may find it dreamlike, almost hypnotic.
Director Tod Browning leans into atmosphere over action. The cobwebbed castle, the mist, the sense that death itself has manners. It is less about fear spikes and more about dread drifting through a room.
Time has changed how we experience it. Today, it plays like a mood piece and a performance showcase more than a pulse-raiser. But Lugosi’s Dracula is still the blueprint. The cape, the stare, the aristocratic menace. Every vampire since is either borrowing from him or rebelling against him.
Verdict: Part museum piece, part eternal icon. It may feel slow, but the central performance still has bite. This is a masterpiece that we love more each time we see it.
VHS CORNER (Available only on videotape)
I remember vividly, the trips to the small video rental stores. F Blockbuster! We will share some cool tales about those excursions to the celluloid palaces of yesteryear in future chapters.
Blue Monkey 1987 Runtime 1hr 36m
Before streaming queues and polished digital monsters, there was late night cable static, dusty rental shelves, and films like Blue Monkey. This 1987 creature feature creeps out of the era when horror loved tight spaces, bad luck science, and that feeling that no one is coming to help.
The story traps its victims inside a hospital that becomes ground zero for a biological nightmare. A strange plant sample carries more than research value. It carries teeth, rage, and the kind of growing terror that feeds on panic. Doctors, patients, and staff go from routine night shift to survival mode as corridors turn into hunting grounds.
What makes this one linger in the brain is the mood. Fluorescent lighting, empty hallways, locked doors, and the slow realization that the building itself has become a cage. The creature is not just a jump scare machine. It is a spreading threat, tied to infection, mutation, and human error. Classic cold war era anxiety seeps through the story, where science pokes the unknown and everyone pays.
The effects are pure hands-on horror. Wet textures, practical creature work, and that gritty film look that digital can never fake. You feel the slime. You feel the air getting thinner. It is the kind of movie you find by accident at a rental shop and never forget, even if you wish you could.
Blue Monkey lives in that sweet spot of VHS horror lore. Not a blockbuster. Not polished. Just raw, contained, and mean in the best way. Perfect for a night when the lights stay low and the nostalgia hits like a flickering tube television glow. This is a must watch for 80’s horror fans!
SOME TV
We will focus on smart dramas, twisted thrillers and horror.
The Chair Company 2025 8 Episodes
Office culture satire is having a moment; this one leans all the way in. The Chair Company takes the painfully normal world of meetings, middle managers, and corporate speak and quietly sets it on fire. The humor is dry, the awkwardness is weaponized, and the real villain is workplace politeness. This is not loud comedy. It is the slow burn kind where a glance across a conference table says more than a monologue. If you have ever worked a job where nothing makes sense but everyone pretends it does, this hits home in a way that is almost suspicious.
Verdict: Smart. Twisted. Uncomfortable.
IT: Welcome to Derry 2025 8 Episodes
Back to Derry, and somehow it feels worse knowing what is coming. This series digs into the town itself, the rot under the paint, the history people pretend not to see. The horror here is not just the clown. It is the place. The feeling that something has always been wrong.
Expect dread over jump scares. Slow tension. Kids in danger. Adults in denial. The kind of story where the setting is as dangerous as the monster. It expands the world without softening it, which is exactly what fans hoped for. The episodes are scattered; acting is very good and the retro setting and vibe rock!
Verdict: Ominous. Expansive. Bad things happen here.
MUSIC (That collides with film)
The Album: Trick or Treat Soundtrack. 1986. 9 Tracks, runtime: 33 minutes
Group: Fastway. This was the band’s fourth album, and last for lead vocalist Dave King. The album was released one week after the film opened in 1986, Halloween.
The movie was a mild success; the unique nature of the soundtrack was not only that Fastway provided songs for the film, but also soundtrack filler music throughout it. The main villain of the film is fictious and sings Fastway tunes, very unique for its time. Maximum Overdrive used this theme to a degree with AC/DC in 1986 as well. The music stands alone as great hard charging rock and a quiet signature of the 1980’s metal sound.
Mykal and I listen to our music through Spotify Premium
Psycho Studio’s SPOTLIGHT
Alfred Hitchcock
The Master of Suspense
Before slashers. Before jump scares. Before gore became the headline,
There was tension.
And no one sculpted tension like Alfred Hitchcock.
Hitchcock didn’t just direct films, he controlled the audience. He knew exactly where your eyes would look, when your pulse would rise, and how long to hold you in discomfort before release. He treated fear like music, rhythm, pause, crescendo.
In 1960, he changed horror forever with Psycho.
The Moment That Broke Cinema Rules
At the time, audiences thought they knew how movies worked. The star was safe. Stories followed structure. Violence was suggested, not felt.
Then came the shower.
With rapid cuts, shrieking strings, and the illusion of brutality (without ever actually showing the blade enter flesh), Hitchcock proved something revolutionary:
Your mind is the scariest special effect in existence.
The scene didn’t just shock viewers, it changed expectations. Suddenly, no character felt safe. The rules were gone. And horror stepped into psychological territory it had never fully occupied before.
The Real Horror Was Never the Knife
What makes Psycho endure isn’t the murder, it’s the mind behind it.
Norman Bates wasn’t a monster in the traditional sense. He was human. Broken. Lonely. Fragmented. Hitchcock forced audiences to confront something deeply uncomfortable:
Evil doesn’t always look like evil.
It can smile politely. Offer help. Speak softly.
That idea, that horror lives inside people, not just in creatures or the supernatural, is the backbone of modern psychological thrillers.
Hitchcock’s True Weapon: Suggestion
Hitchcock famously believed:
There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.
He showed less. Implied more. Let silence stretch. Let the camera linger just a second too long. He understood atmosphere before the word became a genre buzzword.
The house on the hill. The empty office. The stillness of a hallway.
Fear doesn’t always run at you. Sometimes it waits.
Why This Matters to Psycho Studios
Our very name nods to Psycho for a reason.
The film represents everything we believe in as storytellers:
Character-driven horror
Psychological tension over spectacle
Atmosphere as a living presence
Suspense built through restraint
Hitchcock proved that terror doesn’t need scale, it needs precision. A glance. A shadow. A moment that lingers just long enough to make the audience lean forward.
That philosophy runs straight through the kind of worlds Psycho Studios builds.
We don’t just want to startle. We want to unsettle. With splashes of contemporary gore.
And it all traces back to a black-and-white motel office in 1960.
Next Month in the Spotlight…
We may follow a director who turned fear into realism…
an actor who wore terror like a mask…
or a fictional figure who became horror’s most silent icon.
Because every nightmare has a lineage.
And this one started with Hitchcock.
CLOSING THOUGHT
We refrain from speaking to politics, religion and the strife across the globe. Film has been an incredible connection and enthusiastic distraction, hobby and life pursuit. 2026 is Psycho Studio’s year, and we look forward to sharing thoughts, experiences and the like. We will pull the curtain back and review our progress, our amazing intellectual property (IP) as well as the special journey we are on. We wish everyone a positive New Year!
“Give them pleasure, the same pleasure they have when they wake from a nightmare.”
Alfred Hitchock
END
Mykal and I shared this credo with one another a couple years ago; it was poignant then & surely is today!
Be cool to one another
Please subscribe to our newsletter; back issues available with some great content!
We have thoroughly enjoyed writing this newsletter each month for the last 29 months. We will continue with our unique voice in a sea of sameness and will do so through 2026 with a newly streamlined format. Less is more!
Mykal and I wish everyone a cool February! Be safe and stay psycho! We would love to hear from our audience. Comments, feedback and suggestions are welcome!
Email us at - psychostudios66@gmail.com
Reach us at our website: www.psycho-studio.com
Find cool stuff on our website! We make announcements on Instagram, Bluesky and X
The Sprinkler is dropped on the first of each month.
Mike & Mykal - Psycho Studios Phoenix – 2.1.2026
Thank you, psychos! Chapter 30