You Don’t Have to Wait Till Spooky Season — PVD Horror Brings Thrills to Rhode Island All Year Long

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Spooky season is right around the corner but you don’t have to wait until people start breaking out the Halloween decorations to get in the spirit. From fun movie nights to a wildly successful podcast, Dave Lizotte and Brandin Whetstone of PVD Horror are happy to supply Rhode islanders with thrills all year long. We caught up with the cofounders to learn more about how they first fell in love with the genre, what fun happenings they have slated for the next couple of weeks and even which movies they’s recommend to horror newbies. 

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How did you each first get into horror?

Dave: I think both of us connected wit it at a very young age through sharing it with other family members. My grandmother was into it, she was into movies in general, like oldies and stuff like that. I would go over and we’d watch things and I remember watching her reactions to certain thing and just finding it hilarious but also wanting to see it more. She would cover her eyes when she would watch those black and white horrors. I always found that funny, but then growing up it just became a comfort thing. Like on sick days I’d watch whatever horror was on cable TV and it just became a thing. And then there were some core moments of sneaking out of my room and seeing Pennywise in the drain on the TV. Or my parents took me to the drive in and the second movie was Silence of the Lambs. Maybe they thought I was gonna be asleep by then, but I wasn’t. So those things just ingrained in my memories. I think a lot of it is nostalgia now. 

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Brandin: So just like Dave, my grandmother also turned me on to horror. Me, my grandmother and my two aunts would always watch horror movies together. The rest of my family couldn’t stand it, so it was always like, ‘Alright, I’m going to Grandma’s house!’ I definitely grew up watching some movies I should have never watched at a such a young age but now are some of my favorites today. Like Dave said, it’s like a comfort. For me, everything with horror is that time that I spent with my grandmother. And now I actually watch some of the same the films with my kids. It’s cool to be able to pass on. And now with PVD Horror, we turned something that we love into something even bigger that we can enjoy with everyone else. 

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How did you two link up for PVD Horror?

Dave: We both worked at a children’s residential group home for kids with disabilities and one day we had — I think it was around 2010 — all this torrential flooding in the basement. We were down there cleaning up and I don’t even know how the conversation started, but we were talking about horror movies. And we were like, ‘Oh, wow, you like these, too.” I think both of us had the experience where most of our family and close friends didn’t like horror. So we had never really had people to talk about it with. It was funny when we went upstairs, everyone we were working with at the time were like, ‘Wow, you guys are like little chatty Cathys downstairs.’ They could hear us talking a mile a minute because we were excited. We just started to share movies and eventually I think we both were listening to a horror podcast and we were like, ‘We should do this.’ 

But the events came first?

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Dave: Right. So, we also thought — it’s not like we were loners walking around the world. We know a decent amount of people. But we wondered, if we’ve felt like nobody else enjoyed the thing that we love, or felt like we had to keep it secret because people would look at us weird, how many other people feel that way? So we kind of got the idea to get people together that have a similar interest. We stumbled onto the idea of doing a movie night thing and we had a small turn out. I think there were maybe twenty people, but to us, it felt huge. We decided to do a few more, and sometimes it was fewer people and sometimes it was more. But the thing we noticed was people started to come back. And then they started to talk to each other. I think that’s when it clicked for us. Like, it’s happening. The thing that happened to us, is happening to other people. It really blossomed from there.

Tell us more about the podcast. 

Brandin: Our main goal was to create a podcast, but we couldn’t make our schedules work at first. And so I remember I just created the social media platforms in 2018 and kind of got the brand going. We made our first post and it just started to take off. Everybody started to like the content. We started to build an online community with people from all around the world. It was crazy having those connections with everyone and then our local community, too. We were able to get the podcast started that same year. 

Dave: We try to do it weekly. Sometimes it’s little bit more depending on what we’re doing. It’s kind of a little bit all over the place. Sometimes we’ll have our own episodes — we’ve been doing these monthly recaps where we cover all the news happening in the horror world. Not just movies, but also toys, comics, books and so on. 

But now we also get sent screeners and interview opportunities and that actually takes up a large chunk of the show. We spend a lot of time talking to filmmakers and actors. We just had an author on the other day. Sometimes some local organizations like Halloween New England, we’ll have them on to help promote their events. So just anything within the genre. 

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Brandin: And then we also turn the the lens on to ourselves sometimes. We’ll have horror psych episodes where we dissect some of our favorite horror movies. We’re both in the psych field so we like to kind of shed light onto that so other viewers can see hidden things that they might have not seen like. 

Also music. We have a thing called like PVD Horror Radio where we take some of the soundtracks or some of the styles like of hip hop from the horror sub genre and create music with it. Horror just kind of goes everywhere. It’s cool. When we’re doing this and being creative, it’s like we’re always just thinking about, ‘Okay, how can we incorporate horror into this? How can we make something new and make it fresh so we can sit there and connect with everyone?’

It must be so cool to have the opportunity to talk to people you probably idolized as kids. 

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Dave: Yeah, for sure. It’s cool because sometimes it’s indie film makers or first time film makers, and sometimes it’s, like you said, people who we’ve looked up to. I’ll never forget, one of the first ones that kind of made us sweat was Tony Todd, the CandyMan. We’re huge CandyMan fans and I remember we were stuttering and there were awkward pauses. That was the first, ‘Wow, I can’t believe we’re we’re talking to him right now’ moment. And there’s been a a few others along the way. 

Brandin: Dee Wallace, Diane Franklin. Just a lot of big names. It’s a really cool opportunity because, to bring it back to our grandmothers, we watched these actors and actresses and directors when we were younger. Getting the opportunity to talk to them is just wow. I remember meeting Joe Bob Briggs, he does horror movie marathons. He was on TNT and now he’s on Shutter, and we I was telling him at an event about how I used to watch his show with my grandmother. He was like, “What? Your grandmother? That’s crazy!”

Speaking of movies, what are your recommendations for newbies to the genre?

Dave: Boy, that’s a loaded question. I mean probably the things that we talk about the most: I’m a Nightmare on Elm Street guy and Brandin’s more of a Friday the 13th guy. But I would say the obvious one, Halloween, is a great introduction to horror. The original Halloween has the perfect amount of story and scary elements. But another big favorite of mine is Brain Scan. I like to mention it just because it’s one that most people don’t know who are not big in to horror. That was my first Rated R movie and it also has Eddie Furlong from Terminator 2. That movie just always stuck with me.

Brandin: We also usually start off with gateway horror films, sometimes even for kids, like The Gate. But it depends on who you talk to. When you kind of throw some of the big names out, some people will say, ‘Oh that’s not real horror, that’s commercial horror.’ But horror is whatever you like about it. My first movie was actually Wax Works. But that’s definitely a big surprise to a lot of people, but those are the types of films I watched with my grandmother, you know? So it’s like a lot of underground horror, that wasn’t as big at the time. 

Dave: I thin you would call it cult horror, right?

Brandin: Yeah. And horror has definitely come a long way. Nowadays at some of the award shows horror is a big part of the nominations when it used to always be snubbed. You have a lot of big actresses that had a great year this year, so it’s a good thing for horror for it to finally get respect. 

Tell us about some of your upcoming events. 

Brandin: We’re doing a Friday the 13th movie night on Friday, September 13. We’re going to play the 2009 remake at Buttonwoods Brewery at 8 p.m. It’s not our favorite of teh entries but we’ve already played the others and we’re committed to going through the whole series. 

And then we have a double feature on October 11 at the brewery. We’ll be showing Trick ‘r Treat and Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. Those are two big fan favorite films and so when we announced those films, everybody went crazy. And we usually never do double features, we only do it for special occasions. It’s going to be a fun time. 

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Dave: The other big thing we have coming up is our fourth Little Pop Up Shop of Horrors on Sunday, October 13. Brandin had the idea of showing the people that have been supporting us some love back and giving them an opportunity to showcase their work. Which is kind of the bigger theme of PVD Horror in general, just like showcasing the community. It’s usually about thirty genre-related vendors and we hopefully will have a beer collab release Buttonwoods on hand. 

Then on October 19 at 6:30 p.m., we’re hosting a Rock the Dead Halloween Karaoke Party, also at Buttonwoods. This is our third year doing it. It’s like a big party that with a costume contest, vendor and giveaways. One year we had two people come in with these latex masks that took them hours to apply and they looked seamless. It was actually one of our buddies and I didn’t even know it was him. He was a super creepy looking clown and he stayed in character the whole time.

And then you also have more happening throughout the year?

Dave: Yes we usually do movie nights once a month. 

Brandin: That’s the thing that’s special about PVD Horror: we’re able to do it year round. Like during Christmas time we’ll show a Christmas horror movie. And we try to do things like collect canned goods around the holidays, or also most of the events will start off with a raffle with proceeds going towards animal shelters. It’s cool to mix it up and also give back to the community. 

Anything else you want people to know about you?

Brandin: We’re also brand ambassadors for Fangoria magazines, and we also work with Showcase Cinemas on promotions for horror events. We just did a Strange Darlings early screener event — sometimes we’re able to invite people to come out and watch films before they come out. 

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Dave: Ironically, it’s sometimes harder to spread the word about teh bigger events we do. When we have an event at Buttonwoods, a lot of the local community will find out about it through Buttonwoods. But we’d like to get the word out about the other opportunities and things we’re doing, too. One of the really heartwarming things we did was a screener with this group called Monster Makeup LLC. They’re big in the LGBTQ community in Rhode Island, all local film makers,  and they made a indie horror project called Death Drop Gorgeous and another one called Saint Drogo. We’ve known them since day one, they came to our first movie night, and we’ve just been connected with them ever since. Earlier this year we we did a screening of Saint Drogo at the Avon Cinema. It was packed and it was just so cool seeing our followers and theirs, the intersections of all these communities, and how excited they all were. It was one of the moments where I was like, “This is exactly what PVD Horror is about.”

Brandin: Sometimes for events Dave and I will do an intro and we’ll look around and  see new faces mixed with people from the past and it’s so heartwarming. Our crowd is just there for the love of horror.You know, it doesn’t matter what a person is, or how they identify themselves or, anything like that. They’re there to have a fun time. It’s a cool community. 

To learn more, keep up with PVD Horror on Facebook and Instagram, and be sure to check out their podcast.