The Cutprice Guignol

There’s a scene in this week’s episode of Riverdale, a scene that’s so purely horror that it hurts: Betty confronts Alice in the family home, in the midst of an enormous storm. The lights cut out – for a moment, we can make out a shadowy figure moving past the windows lit by the watery blue light of the moon (it wasn’t Chic, but it was Chic, you know?). As Alice goes to check the circuit breakers, the Gargoyle King himself turns up in their front room. Fleeing to Betty’s bedroom, the pair stumble across an even more sinister tableau: a grave marker, with their names written in red, lying above a human skull. They scream, the camera twists in, and I’m over here cheering with delight.

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