You are now listening to Pokedmortem with Mick Garris where the most influential voices in horror cinema will spill their guts, literally, to the renowned horror director, writer and producer.

Now here's your host, Mick Garris.

From Nice Guy Productions World Headquarters overlooking the glamorous San Fernando Valley, I'm Mick Garris and this is Pokedmortem.

Let's talk about animals in horror movies.

It used to be the cat's scare.

Tension would be built putting the audience into a heightened state of suspense and suddenly a cat would jump out of the waste basket or dumpster and scare the bejesus out of the cast and hopefully the audience.

Everyone would laugh and he would sigh of relief and then bang, the real scare would happen.

It's the cheapest, unearned scare possible and I confess to having pulled it myself in the opening scene of sleepwalkers almost 30 years ago.

But now it's the dog.

Not any dog, but the cutest, sweetest, most charming and lovable dog you can imagine.

If such an animal shows up early in a horror movie, you can bet the farm that it will die horribly by the end of act two.

The deal is that you make the audience love this furry creature so much that you want him for yourself and then and then scruffy gets shredded.

It's time to put that one to bed, isn't it?

I think the only genre film I've seen in recent years that doesn't do that is the wonderful love and monsters, which makes us love that dog and embrace his survival.

It's an easy way to disturb an audience, but is it any way to create fear and tension?

Can we put a stake in the heart of the lovable dog getting killed?

I'm not so sure that sounds the way I intended it.

And while we're on the subject, another easy gross out is to set a scene in an abattoir or in some setting where actual animals not latex and fake fur movie animals are slaughtered or dismembered in the search for truth.

Mangle human corpse in a movie and I'm fine. I know it's not real, no matter how engrossed in the film I am, but slaughter an animal for an audience is so called entertainment is just repellent and not in any good way.

It's just cheap and exploitive and cruel. There, I've said it.

The king of animals and horror movies, our guest Adam Wingard has concocted new iterations of two of our favorite monster beasts in Godzilla vs. Kong.

Let's talk with him about this transition from micro budget independent festival favorites to big budget monster matches.

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