WIRE Buzz: Lovecraft Country podcast; Ghostbusters shares raw FX footage; The Amityville Harvest

One of the summer’s most hotly anticipated genre shows just announced an accompanying podcast looking to guide fans through its dangerous lands. Lovecraft Country’s tentacled and unknowable evils desperately need navigating — and Lovecraft Country Radio is here to help.

Series writer Shannon Houston teams up with host Ashley C. Ford in this introductory episode, which explores the adaptation strategy taken by showrunner Misha Green from Matt Ruff's novel, the experience of the writers room, and the series’ influences.

Take a listen:

The show will take on a recap role once the series premieres — likely leaving fans with less homework than the pre-air episode — helping viewers get through the dense series in the most insightful way possible.

Lovecraft Country hits HBO on Aug. 16.

Next, warnings to not cross the streams have been present in geek culture since 1984’s Ghostbusters’ climactic scene atop a New York apartment building. Now fans can get a glimpse behind the scenes at what it looked like when Venkman, Ray, Egon, and Winston didn’t have any streams coming out of their proton packs — all pre-viz, raw, uncorrected footage.

Released on the Ghostbusters YouTube channel, the scene is presented in splitscreen, showing the final version with its iconic glowing proton energy streams and the original version with its...acting. Seeing the ‘Busters flail around with nothing at all is pretty entertaining.

Check it out:

Thank Zuul for special effects. Not to take away from the acting abilities of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, or Ernie Hudson, but that scene really — really — needed those beams. And the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, of course.

Fans can next feel good thanks to bustin’ when director Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife hits theaters — hopefully on March 5, 2021.

Finally, it's time to head back to Amityville. Sorry for those fans that don't want to be haunted, but we don't make the rules. Lionsgate does. The Amityville Harvest looks to enter into the extensive horror canon based around the famous Lutz family haunting, and it's dropped its first footage today.

Written and directed by Thomas J. Churchill, the film sets a documentary team into a very evil mansion with a host that can't be filmed. That seems like bad pre-production work and a definite recipe for spooky behavior.

Horror fans can watch the first trailer below:

Vincent Miller is up to no good - and that old-school trailer voiceover...beautiful. The film stars Sadie Katz. Paul Logan, Julie Anne Prescott, Eileen Dietz, and Kyle Lowder in all its gory, butchery glory.

The Amityville Harvest hits DVD, Digital, and On Demand on Oct. 20 - plenty of time to organize a distanced Halloween screening.