So you Got An iPad For Christmas: Must Have Horror Themed Apps

Maybe you’ve got a rich uncle that loves to blow wads of cash on you or maybe you’re fleet of foot and sticky of finger and managed to outpace mall security or maybe Santa just plain overlooked what a rotten bastard you were all year (cat fur is VERY difficult to clean out of the blender you know) but somehow you’ve wound up with a shiny new iPad under the Christmas tree this year.  Of course your first question as a horror fan is what are the best apps to put on that gorgeous ten incher. After playing around with my own (stop it) for a couple of weeks, I’ve come up with a handful of apps that any horror fan should download right away. 

The Rue Morgue App 

Among the monthly periodicals, Canada’s rue Morgue stands head and shoulders above the rest. In the age of instant news online, magazines needed to reinvent themselves, and no one gives you more in depth coverage and well thought out and researched articles than RM. The app allows you to download current and back issues of Rue Morgue directly to your iPad. Even better, the  app saves you 50% off the newsstand cover price as each issue is only $4.99 to download. Even shrunken down to the iPad screen size the font is easy to read and the photos, art and layout look gorgeous on the screen. If your eyesight isn’t what it used to be, double tapping the screen allows you zoom in with no loss of resolution or detail.  The app download comes with a free digital copy of issue 100 for those that want to give it a spin.

The Walking Dead 

With the ratings success of the AMC television series, it’s no surprise that the source material is tearing up the New York Times Bestseller lists . While I’m resigned to the fact that I watch the show out of a sense of obligation as a horror fan and it’s one of the rare programs that’s not about true crime involving gruesomely murdered husbands with large life insurance policies that my wife enjoys, there’s no denying the power of Kirkman’s never ending zombie tale. At 92 issues (including 15 soft cover collections) and counting readers need to reserve a lot of space on the bookshelf. This app acts as a comic book store allowing you to purchase individual issues for $1.99 a pop (a 33% savings) or trade paperbacks for $9.99 each (also a 33% savings). New readers can download the first issue free.

Zombie Exodus and Vampire As a child of the 80’s I have nothing but love for the old Choose Your Adventure books. These free text-based role playing games bring back warm memories of opening the door to the right and falling down a worm hole where the flesh is rent from my bones over the course of 1,000 agonizing years. The first game finds you in the middle of a zombie outbreak. Your sister is lost somewhere in the city and it’s up to you to find her. The second game spans nearly 200 years and finds the player taking on the role of a newly created vampire. The games are ongoing and in need of new chapters, but it’s fun customizing your character and playing through the scenarios a different way each time.

Netflix Not so much for the ability to stream titles directly to your 10” screen (though the movies do look awesome) as for the newly updated GUI.  Horror fans can dig DEEP into the Instant offerings with the category broken down in to sub categories including B-Movies, Gory flicks, camp and classic horror, foreign horror, slashers and Satanic fare and more. I added about two dozen titles to my queue that I failed to see on any of my other devices capable of surfing the instant catalog. Movies can be added directly to your instant queue or watched right away.   

The Horror! Trivia Game 

This is a nifty little game for a couple bucks. It consists of screen shots and artist renditions from famous horror films and the player is in a race against the clock to rack up right answers and points. I’m within 8 points of the high score, and knowing I’m that close is getting me a little twitchy on my answer finger. My one complaint is it seems every third screen shot is from The Shining. We get it. It’s a great film. Let’s try to fig a little deeper.

Retro Horror TV Granted, this one’s not much more than a fancy skin stretched around a YouTube feed for public domain horror movies. But if you remember your Grandma’s TV-the one with rabbit ears that pulled in two stations and had knobs instead of a clicker for control-then this app will bring a smile to your face. There’s even an analog dial that allows users to “adjust” the image for snow and retro television ads (everyone I’ve seen contains some variation of young boys playing ‘Cowboys & Indians’). To call the selection of films cheesy would be an insult to the great state of Wisconsin but for a free download (spending a $1.99 gets you a commercial free version) this will put a smile on your face.

These are a handful of apps I’ve been playing with so far. I haven’t touched gaming on the iPad, but the $1.99 special on an Evil Dead game (it looks like you control a bobble head version of Ash) is tempting.