Sardonic Tales: “Programmed to Receive”

A few years ago, I did a thing where I picked a movie that would make a good double-feature with one of the stories in my then-newest collection, Painted Monsters. This year, for the Countdown to Halloween, I thought it might be fun to do the same thing, but with my now-newest collection, Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales.

There’s a pretty obvious movie to tie in with “Programmed to Receive.” It was, after all, written in response to a call for stories inspired by Lovecraft’s “From Beyond” and by Stuart Gordon’s cinematic adaptation of same. And as much as I love Gordon’s take on the material, I’m going with a different companion piece for this one.

While From Beyond certainly left its slimy, sleazy thumbprints on “Programmed to Receive,” it wasn’t the only movie to do so. I also had the 2013 found footage horror flick Banshee Chapter, itself a sort of take on the same story, with the addition of numbers stations, conspiracy theories, and Ted Levine doing his best Hunter S. Thompson, in my mind as I was writing.