"There's a maniac lives there and he's dangerous."

I went down to the River Styx this morning to sign for my weekly delivery of lost souls.

For a moment I thought the boatman handed me the wrong shipping invoice.

Lee, Harper.

No way. A Pulitzer Prize novelist who won on her first try, as if she was just breaking in a new typewriter, and the cleaning lady found the manuscript sitting out and started showing it around? That was in 1960.

Maybe she figured she peaked, because she didn't try again until 2015.

What could she have done wrong? This lady was considered a national treasure for her stirring indictment of racial inequality in the Jim Crow South, as told through the eyes of a precocious 6-year-old who just don't know no better.

I'm talking, of course, about To Kill A Mockingbird, which Hollywood made into a movie in 1962, and is loaded with the kind of stuff you mortals are still barking at each other about on Facebook to this day. The movie is available on Netflix.

I can hear you already: "But Satan, that's not a horror movie."

What are you even talking about?

The story itself has been banned in more school districts than I can be bothered to look up and count, but that hasn't stopped teachers from using it. I happen to know of a select group of adults in southern Indiana who were assigned to read it three times during their school days in the late 1980s and early 90s. On average, they all actually read it 0.75 times.

To Kill A Mockingbird is about three children who are allowed to play outside unsupervised, and the mystery man who lives in a house their dad told them to stay away from. Legend has it the mystery man stabbed his own father with a pair of scissors. One day the children find little voodoo doll versions of themselves hidden in a tree outside his house.

Not scary enough? Fine, I'll raise the stakes with rape, incest, some malevolent hillbillies and a rabid dog. Hell, this movie is practically The Hills Have Eyes.

That still doesn't explain why I have Harper Lee now. Best I can figure, there's a commandment about honoring thy mother and father. A lot of the reason the story has been banned is because of its use of the N-word, which appears a few times, but if you consider the context, it's pretty obvious only hateful dumbasses say it. For example, a drunk Bob Ewell, who has accused a black man of raping and impregnating his daughter, calls Atticus Finch, the lawyer who has sworn to defend the accused, a "nigger lover." In context, the word is used to demonstrate the hatred and contempt white society held for black people in the mid-20th century.

So I guess Harper Lee is here because you can't just go around writing instant classics that would later be used to teach kids how shitty some of their grandparents were.

I don't make the rules, i just torment the damned.

I realize, of course, that talking so much about Harper Lee goes against my Black History Month rule, which is only to review horror movies in which at least one black person played a prominent role, and that's why I hearby nominate Lee for the posthumous title of Honorary Black Person!

Of course, I'm fucking with you. To Kill A Mockingbird can't be this week's Thursday Thriller. It's not even Thursday yet. I'm not even sending this to the copy department to put the film titles in italics. Check back Thursday and I'll review a movie with Tony Todd in it, maybe something that's actually like The Hills Have Eyes.