the body snatcher

October is upon us! With scary movie season under way we're returning to our "Communicating Fears in Film" theme all month long. To kick off our specialty programming this spooky season, host Garret Castleberry is joined by Scott McMurry to dissect a pair of science fiction horror films that strike at fears relating to identity and duplicity. In the spirit of last year's "The Thing from Another World/The Thing" double-feature, Special Topics  revels in dualisms featuring the work of director John Carpenter. Garret and Scott first introduce Carpenter's cult film They Live (1988) before winding back the "Invasion movie" clock to assess the film's relationship to Don Siegel's 1956 classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The dialogic duo resurrect their "Communicating Fears in Film" methodology, including presence versus absence, imitation versus innovation, and the centrality of understanding cultural context, before introducing their newest layer of analytic discourse, filmic echoes.

Hosts: Garret Castleberry, Scott McMurry

Producers: Garret Castleberry, Will McMurry (Audio Engineer), Alli Garner (Cover Art), Austin Foster (Music)

Fears in Filmography:
Don Siegel. (Director). Invasion of the Body Snatchers. California, USA: Allied Artists Pictures/Walter Wanger Productions, 1956.

John Carpenter. (Director). They Live. Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA: Alive Films/Larry Franco Productions, 1988.

Phillip Kaufman. (Director). Invasion of the Body Snatchers. San Francisco, California, USA: SoloFilm/United Artists, 1978.

Recommended readings paired with Season Seven "Communicating Fears in Film":
Kendall Phillips. Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Modern Horror Film. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012.

Ray Nelson. "Eight O'Clock in the Morning". 1963.

Stephen Prince. Apocalypse Cinema. Rutgers University Press, 2021.

Ways to Connect with us online:
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Join the Special Topics in Media Facebook Group and share your reviews of the film or this episode.

Subscribe to Dr. Castleberry's academic YouTube Channel.

Garret's academic website is available at https://garretcastleberry.academia.edu/.  

Welcome to the 16th Annual A-Z of Horror Festival. Join us, as we reveal and discuss movies for letters A-G. First, we spend time with some stereotypical, self-centered, 80s yuppies. Including one that seems to be a complete psychopath. Then, we have the misfortune of crossing paths with an irritating graverobber, who we just cannot seem to get rid of. A lonely man, who may or may not be impotent, and his non-speaking assistant, perform their daily duty of making sure that the dead, who happen to return to life, cannot actually leave their cemetery grounds. A classic story of alter ego, finds itself the subject of one of the finest horrors of the silent era. In her big screen debut, a horror icon tests the limits of just how many boob jokes she can squeeze into her dress before she busts right out of it! Vincent Price attempts to discover who murdered his brother, when his sister-in-law seems to be the only suspect. Where is that buzzing sound coming from? And then from there, the ancient Myrthian culture is reborn, when a man develops an insatiable taste for blood, after being stabbed with a ceremonial dagger.