Scott Wampler, Beloved Podcaster and Film Critic, Dead

Critic, podcaster, and film journalist Scott Wampler passed away on May 31 due to unknown causes, as shared by his “Kingcast” co-host Eric Vespe on Friday.

But, as sad as his passing is, we expect that Scott Wampler wouldn’t want tears. He would want you screaming. He would want you wailing in agony, convulsing in terror, blood shooting out of every orifice. He would want you laughing until you cried, thinking in ways that didn’t make your brain hurt, and engaging with one another cause he knew that it’s the only way to make sense of this silly, scary world.

He spent his professional life making genre entertainment, particularly horror, accessible to the masses and sharing his passion with not just outsized glee, but downright fervor. He loved movies and television that made you squirm and he made us love them too. He found beauty and art in the disgusting and unseemly and approached what some may view as trash with care and admiration.

Wampler was a lifelong Texan who was born in Plano, raised in Dallas, and spent most of his adult life in Austin. Though his age is up for some debate, he would probably want us all to believe he was 130, but just constantly appeared 25 — a tragic consequence of drinking water from a cursed well.

During his career as an entertainment journalist, he wrote for many publications, including Alamo Drafthouse’s now-defunct website and magazine Birth.Movies.Death, where he served as managing editor. For those…