This episode, Chad & Marc venture outside the realms of film and fiction to grapple with the very real horrors of social media. Though Lovecraftian in scale and Orwellian in rancor, our hosts take very different positions on whether to slay Zuckerberg’s beast or harness its dark energy.
2016’s Ouija: Origin of Evil made a boatload of money, but it’s terrible. It deals in nostalgia, weak jump scares and has a muddled plot. Why do people keep watching movies like this? Why aren’t they better? Will anything change, or is horror continuing to split and become a genre that produces a few auteur gems and a ton franchise style crap? We attempt to answer these questions and more, all without the help of a Ouija board of our own.
Scooby Doo has been on the air since 1969. Those meddling kids have been in a shocking number of series and movies since then. Is this horror? Is it worth watching? We land on a solid 'maybe' for those questions and more. Join us as we explore everything from the laugh-tracked early episodes to the surprisingly smart, and conspiracy riddled, Mystery Incorporated.
The 2015 New Zealand vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows is all about fangs and foppery. In this episode we uncover rare undead lore, our favorite vampires, and explore the eternal question: what does it mean to become old and uncool?
Since Michael Dougherty's Krampus came out in 2015, the pagan hipster Christmas demon has only grown in popularity. We explore the ancient roots of the anti-Santa, discuss Dougherty's extended universe, and make an unavoidable turn down the road of capitalist critiques of holiday favorites. src="https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/6069613/height/360/width/450/theme/standard/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/autoplay/no/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/forward/" height="360" width="450" placement="bottom" theme="standard"
This episode is about the most evil genre of music: Black Metal. We are joined by extreme music authority, Andee Connors. He co-owned the notorious Aquarius Records, curates Pandora’s unholy Black Metal station and creates infernal music as a member of A Minor Forest and Common Eider, King Eider. We invoke blasphemous critical theory, the abysmal history of youth movements and the odorous politics of several necrotic musical personalities.
Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho came out to a flurry of controversy in 1991. Director Mary Harron brought it to the screen in 2000. This episode focuses on the film, but the book is brought up quite a few times. It’s a killer conversation that covers Moby Dick, political correctness in the 90s, yuppie culture, Christian Bale’s hotness, A Clockwork Orange, and whether or not Gordon Gekko is more evil than Patrick Bateman.
2007’s horror anthology Trick ‘r Treat is our official Halloween episode. You may notice it is a little late. Excuses? Marc was on tour promoting his new album Deface and Chad was shooting antique firearms in New Orleans. It’s still a good episode. We cover EC Comics’ influence on anthology films, the importance of heroic figures in horror, and whether or not being eaten by sexy werewolves is a good way to exit this mortal coil.
Julia Ducournau’s 2017 film Raw is French and it’s extreme, but is it French Extremity? We discuss this gnarliest of horror subgenres as well as American film in general. We both quite enjoyed this one, so get ready for a sprawling conversation about body horror, misogyny in interviews, and what foreign films get right about fear in the modern age.
The subject of our first live episode is the new version of Stephen King’s IT (2017). We are joined by Philip K. Dick Award-winning horror writer Meg Elison (The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, The Book of Etta) and editor and publisher Jeremey Lassen (Borderlands Books, Nightshade Books). Just like the film, this episode is fun and loud. In fact, if this is your first listen, don’t despair at the noisy café sounds, our audio quality is usually top-notch thanks to Marc’s chronic audiophilia.
This episode takes up Netflix's sort of controversial take on Death Note. We discuss appropriation, adaptation, what we'd do with the shinigami powers and whether or not Kraftwerk's eradication from history would stop techno in a Terminator franchise sort of way.
Clive Barker's Nightbreed hit theaters in 1990. Some would say this version suffered from major studio interference, but it might have been a bit too ambitious for its time. Over the decades there have been multiple edits of the film, short story collections, video games, comic books and all kinds of other tie-ins. We talk about why this "franchise" has endured, what works, and what doesn't, in the 2014 director's cut.
In episode 23 we talk about the highly requested 2017 film by Jordan Peele, Get Out. We both loved this film, but knew it deserved some deeper thought, so we took time doing our research (which mostly included listening to Jordan Peele tell you exactly what everything meant in his Nerdist interviews with Chris Hardwick). We hit everything from genre fandom to wokeness. It’s an important and fun film, though despite all the praise, maybe not a future classic (though we believe Peele will soon create an all-time great film).
This episode is a little different because it's our first attempt at tackling a book. Horrorstör is a 2014 horror comedy novel that was written by Grady Hendrix and illustrated by Michael Rogalski. Unlike our usual show, there are only mild spoilers (so you can enjoy the book). We get into horror adaptations, representation in genre and the ever present specter of Capitalism.
The Babadook came out in 2014, but 2017 has been an exciting year for the titular monster of Jennifer Kent's Australian horror masterpiece. Mr. Babadook is now officially an LGBT icon and we brought in a special guest, Andrew Sheets AKA Meredeath, to discuss what this all memes.
Fright Friends, this is a delightfully dark discussion drilling deep down into the films The Conjuring & The Conjuring 2: Judgement Da..er..,The Enfield...Case? Anyway, we discuss Ed & Lorraine Warren, cinematography, franchise juggernauts, and extended universes and overextended universities.
Our extra special guest for this abjectively (no, not a typo) excellent episode is Monique Jenkinson, AKA Fauxnique. She is a multi-genre performing artist and choreographer whose work uses drag to consider the performance of femininity as a powerfui, vulnerable and subversive act. She has a background in ballet and does an incredible Slavoj Zizek impression, both of which we make a lot of use of in this conversation about Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film, Black Swan.
Is John Goodman’s character insane? Is he hypersane? Is he right? When does it pay to believe in conspiracies? We ask all these questions and more in our 10 Cloverfield Lane episode and explore the larger Cloververse and whether or not this expanded universe makes the actual movies any better.
Cabin in the Woods is one of those horror films everyone seems to love. It's smart, funny and for the purposes of this podcast, epically intertextual. Listen in to find out more than you ever wanted to know about horror tropes and the way your hosts, Marc and Chad, would prefer to be killed if a hundred nightmare creatures were suddenly released into their office space.
With so many excellent horror movies to cover, Boo! A Madea Halloween is a bit of a strange choice for an episode. Fear not fright fiends, it's a better film than you might imagine. Even if it sort of sucks. We cover the Illuminati's desire to see male black actors wear dresses, what it means to be outside of Hollywood, and the future of YouTube stardom.
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