Scary Thoughts

What better time than a pandemic to cover Safe (1995) by Todd Haynes? This illness thriller is on a lot of “best of” lists even though it’s rarely talked about now. In this episode we’re joined by author K.M. Soehnlein. We cover AIDS activism in the 80-90s, the weirdos of the wellness scene, cults, 80s yuppie decor, Christian Science, and Moore.

The Hunt (2019/20) is surrounded by political drama but is pretty mediocre. Except for our hero Betty Gilpin, who absolutely slays. We spend just about as much time talking about fake martial arts, conspiracy theories and war as we do the actual movie.

Our pandemic podcasting continues with the 2002 fast-zombie film 28 Days Later. We both loved it when it came out, but some elements of the film have aged better than others. The conversation drifts into COVID-19 talk, tactical training for actors, hotels for the homeless, and conspiracy mindsets.

Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994) is his best film and Johnny Depp’s best performance. Your inner goth teen might bristle, but everything about it is near perfect. Joshua Grannell (Aka Peaches Christ) joins us again to talk about why the great weirdos of film matter and what it means to be in love with the people who create the strange and unusual. 

In the age of COVID-19 there are only two popular subjects: Trump and the Tiger King. We are tired of both. But the memes remain strong. We talk about the saga of these cat-addicted mutants, how well the story works as a doc, and the inevitable reality show dominance of streaming services. Fair warning: this is a rantier than usual episode. And our sound quality is again poor due to Zoom; hopefully we will return to audio excellence one day.

Thanks to COVID-19 caused social distancing, this is the first episode we’ve recorded remotely. With compromised audio, and fortified immune systems, we talk about life under the virus, answer a lot of listener questions, and make predictions about the future.

Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 Contagion is eerily prescient because of the filmmakers dedication to research and realism. The cast, cinematography, and script are excellent. But it’s not exactly an uplifting watch, considering the news. We recorded this episode the day before the Bay Area was ordered to shelter in place for COVID-19.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) is debut director Ana Lily Amirpour’s stylish Iranian vampire spaghetti western. It’s more or less everything we like here at Scary Thoughts: it looks cool, it has a great soundtrack, a mesmerizing cast, and it’s about the undead. We talk about why we both loved it, we disagree about Amirpour’s follow-up film, and get into why female artists are great, but can’t get behind “male feminists of Tinder.”

H.P. Lovecraft’s work has been largely poorly adapted for film. So we were relatively excited for Richard Stanley’s 2019 take on Color Out of Space. He is a legit occult weirdo with a deep love of horror. And Nicolas Cage is basically our Vincent Price. The end result is, well, not all cosmically horrible. We’re joined by Jeremy Lassen (Sci-Fi/horror book sales/publishing veteran, Editor-in-Chief of Nightshade Books) for his second appearance on the show. We hit on Susan Sontag’s concept of camp, black metal theory, psychedelia in horror, what makes Cage great, Lovecraft’s racism, and the recent rise of witchcraft in popular culture.

Our friend Daniel Coffeen (Zero Books, Renegade University) returns to help us appraise Todd Phillips’ 2019 Joker. We survey the various controversies surrounding the film while discussing class, resentment (you can use the fancy critical theory/French pronunciation), alienation, and Joaquin Phoenix’s dancerly grace and peculiar improvisations. And we make time to celebrate Marc becoming a citizen of the USA.

When the ghostly yarn, A Christmas Carol, came out in 1843, it revived Christmas traditions all over the world. There have been countless versions of the story made since then, and some of them are quite ghoulish. But is it horror? Well, not really. However, it does involve the supernatural and it’s critical of the dreary machine of modern industry. So we take a crack at it in our usual manner. This episode features talk of free will, self-improvement, and general holiday cheer.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 memoir, Eat Pray Love, is thoroughly likeable. It also represents a certain kind of 21st century spiritual journey that remains popular in Oprah book club circles, but is viewed with suspicion in today’s privilege-obsessed culture. We talk about why we love this book, why it’s not premium mediocre, whether or not failing at a relationship means it’s a failure, and as always, way too much conversation about violence.

In 1994 The Crow unfurled its celluloid wings and took flight in the imaginations of teenage Goths everywhere. 25 years later, does it still hold up? For the people who love the remarkable comic and are still ride or die for the soundtrack, the answer is a resounding yes. But the film has not aged well. In this episode we cover James O’Barr’s personal story, we spend a lot of time talking dark 90s music, and we even have a brief visit from unofficial third co-host Monique to cover women and vengeance. Also, if this episode were an album, the B-side would be our somewhat long discussion of John Wick. Afterall, The Crow is basically John Wick with Juggalo makeup and a goth soundtrack.

2019’s Child’s Play reboot took some heat from die-hard fans, but it’s fairly successful as a Black Mirror episode. It replaces the supernatural with the technological, which allows it to address modern anxieties about connected devices and AI. We talk about Shoshana Zuboff’s book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, how children play in the YouTube age, and how the 80s action figure boom might have influenced media.

Predator (1987) is a big movie. The actors are big. The guns are big. The campiness is big. Marc had never seen it; Chad is obsessed with it. And that friends, is a recipe for hilarity. We discuss 80s action tropes, masculinity, hockey violence, and whether or not Arnold Schwarzennegger is the greatest human to have ever lived.

This is the first episode of our newest podcast, Self Help for Nihilists. It’s a departure from our focus on horror, but fans of the main show, especially those caught in soul-crushing existential despair, should enjoy it. We discuss the problems associated with a nihilist worldview, some of the philosophers that helped shape it, and make some suggestions about books that have helped us navigate this bleak an uncaring universe. Plus jokes!

In this episode, we finally take a look at Stranger Things 3. With some distance from our 4th of July weekend binging, we’ve found ourselves a lot more critical of the season. Even though we both enjoyed it on first viewing, we bristle like crusty old haters at our old frenemy: nostalgia. We also discuss the film classic Predator and whether or not young actors will be safe from Hollywood predators in the future.

Drag legend and horror director Peaches Christ (Joshua Grannell) joins us for Poltergeist (1982). We talk about the effectiveness of sweetness in horror, the controversy over who directed the film, the franchise’s curse, and what makes this PG flick an iconic horror movie. Peaches also gives us some insight into what it takes to create an over-the-top haunted house.

Jim Jarmusch’s meta zom-com, The Dead Don’t Die (2019), wasn’t exactly loved by genre fans. We discuss what we liked, what we didn’t, and why watching Game of Thrones and reading Harry Potter might not be the best way to spend your few remaining years on Earth. This episode is saltier than usual, perhaps caused by the ambient dread created by polar fracking.

Zombieland (2009) is one of the more successful zom-coms. It features a great cast and a lot of fun ideas. It’s not the most philosophical of films, but we do manage to get into what it means to live life by a set of rules. And more importantly, what our zombie apocalypse outfits would look like.