Deep Cuts

One of the most famous movie directors was involved in the death of a legendary actor and two children on his set. In the early 1980s, hot off the heels of several hit movies, director John Landis was hired to direct a segment from the Twilight Zone movie being produced by Steven Spielberg. After a series of shady decisions - most of them illegal, Landis ended up directing a scene at 2:30 AM featu...

He fooled the world into believing he had telekinetic powers, but his true secret was much darker. In the late 1970s, James Hydrick came onto the scene claiming to have the ability to move objects with his mind. This landed him in newspaper articles, owning a handful of martial arts dojos, and making several television appearances where he demonstrated his powers. For a while it seemed like he had...

He invented the Satanic Church to shock people, but he had an immeasurable impact on our culture. In the 1960s, Anton LaVey founded the Church or Satan, wrote the Satanic Bible, and became one of the most infamous figures in history. But so many people wildly misunderstand what LaVey and the Church of Satan was about. On this episode of Deep Cuts, we explore the strange world of Anton LaVey and th...

They stole Mickey Mouse and put him in comics where he did drugs and had sex. The legal battle they fought against Disney saved free speech. In the late 1960s, newspaper cartoonist Dan O'Neill wanted to walk away from his job at the San Francisco Chronicle with ownership of the copyright to his comic strip, Odd Bodkins. But they wouldn't give it to him. So he hatched a plan. He'd start sticking to...

It's an app where people can learn about and report crimes in their neighborhood. It's designed to make us spy on each other and stoke fear. In the mid 2010s, Andrew Frame and his company launched an app called Vigilante which was literally designed to listen to police scanner broadcasts, alert users of crimes in their area, and encourage them to go...be vigilantes. The app was immediately shut do...

Two complete strangers planned out an elaborate 3-year prank on a 19-year-old guy that would change his life forever. In August of 2003, Kolin Pope - known as Velocity Gnome on the Internet - got a knock at his door. It was a man from the future named Zane Figiam who handed him a scrapbook that foretold that Kolin would one day become to savior of all mankind and the leader of the Resistance army...

The Dating Ring was a service that flew single women from New York City to go on blind dates with tech bros in Silicon Valley. It didn't go well. In the early 2010s, dating startup The Dating Ring got into the Y Combinator program and worked for several months trying to develop a successful business model. They cycled through many different ideas, the founders fighting and struggling to feel confi...

An airport owner in the 1950s created a weird story about time machines and aliens to get more business. It ended up becoming a religion. In the late 1950s, George Van Tassel was running a small airport in Giant Rock, California. One day, out of nowhere for this seemingly normal clean-cut business owner and family man, Van Tassel started peddling a story about how he'd been visited by an alien who...

They started off as a religious cult in the 1980s, but turned into a smaller cult that literally worships guns. In the 1980s, The Moonies were a very popular hyper-religious cult. Now, the son of the leader of that cult, Sean Moon, has started his own smaller offshoot. And they worship guns. On this episode of Deep Cuts, we delve into the bizarre and terrifying world of the Church of Guns. -- Pick...

He claims to fight extraterrestrials on his ranch in Arizona on a daily basis, and to have killed 19 of them with a sword. John Edmonds and his wife bought Stardust Ranch in the late 90s so they could retire on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. However, quickly after moving in they discovered that the place was swarming with aliens from another world. Or so they claim. Edmonds says that dozens of...

In the 1950s, he dressed up like an apocalyptic storm trooper and robbed banks. Nobody remembers him. Forest Ray Colson was ex-military and an ex-cop. He'd gone on tour during World War II without ever seeing combat, and he was fired from two different police stations for improper conduct. But he wanted power and he wanted to be respected. And so, in the early 1950s, he started dressing up in a te...

He created some of the most inventive films in history, but his continued struggles with Hollywood would lead to a dark, self-destructive spiral. In the early 2000s, a software engineer from Texas decided to spend $7,000 making an independent film about time travel called 'Primer.' The movie would go on to win at the Sundance film festival and become a huge cult hit. He would go on to spend the ne...

He created some of the most inventive films in history, but his continued struggles with Hollywood would lead to a dark, self-destructive spiral. In the early 2000s, a software engineer from Texas decided to spend $7,000 making an independent film about time travel called 'Primer.' The movie would go on to win at the Sundance film festival and become a huge cult hit. He would go on to spend the ne...

In the late 90s he got breast implants to win a $100k bet. 20 years later he still has them. In 1996, Brian Zembic, a somewhat eccentric gambling addict, entered into a wager with a fellow gambling friend that he would get breast implants for an entire year for $100,000. He did it, but then after that year he kept the breasts, and has basically crafted his entire life and personality around having...

He created the Metal Gear franchise and became one of the world's only mega-famous video game designers. And then his company tried to erase his legacy. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Hideo Kojima crafted some of the most interesting, as well as most successful video games in the world. He created the Metal Gear franchise, which experienced massive critical and commercial success over the last three...

He murdered and ate someone, but was set free and became a Japanese national celebrity. Throughout his childhood growing up in the 70s and 80s, Iseei Sagawa harbored a dark secret. He craved human flesh. While in college in France, this dark desire finally resulted in him murdering and eating a fellow classmate. However, due to weird legal technicalities, he wasn't put in prison for his heinous cr...

It's one of the most truly strange films ever made, and we are going to delve into how it came to be. Throughout the late 70s, an idea was cooking in the minds of writer and musician Earl Mac Rauch and writer/director W.D. Richter. It was for an episodic multi-film adventure franchise about a half American/half Japanese scientist/rockstar/race car driver fighting a legion of evil aliens across mul...

A Thai production company licensed Ultraman for one movie, but they'd try and illegally build a bootleg empire with it. In the 1970s, a production company in Thailand was given permission to produce a single film utilizing characters from the popular Japanese series, Ultraman. However, instead of just doing the one movie, the company decided to just act as if they'd been given partial ownership of...

He was a meme created for an Internet photoshop contest. A few short years later he would drive two young girls to stab their friend 19 times. In the early 2000s, Slender Man popped up as a ubiquitous Internet meme on platforms such as YouTube and the various forums that power the underbelly of the Internet. Much lore was created about the origins of the mysterious tall man in a black suit with no...

Shin Sang-Ok was the most famous film director in South Korea in the 1970s, until he was kidnapped by North Korea and forced to make a Godzilla ripoff. Throughout the 60s and 70s, Shin Sang-Ok created a massive reputation for himself making highly successful films in South Korea. However, in the late 70s his ex-wife went missing - seemingly kidnapped by the North Korean government. Sang-Ok went lo...

The creator of McAfee Antivirus attempted to overthrow the Belizean government with his own private army and likely brutally murdered two men. In the early 90s, John McAfee launched the company responsible for the McAfee Antivirus software that was basically preinstalled on every computer throughout the 90s and 2000s. But he quickly sold his company and used his massive wealth to live a life of se...

He was a brilliant illustrator who basically invented comics AND animation. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Winsor McCay was one of the most prolific artists and illustrators in the world. He drew lavish editorial illustrations for the biggest newspapers in the country, had several ongoing comic strips where he defined a lot of the rules of the entire comics medium, and he was one of the first peo...

A mysterious bird-like creature that is able to predict future tragedies has lived in the peripheries of our imaginations for decades. What is it? In the mid-60s, four people ran into a mysterious flying creature with glowing eyes while driving through the woods in the middle of the night. They reported the encounter to the media, and from that point on, any time a tragedy would occur, somebody wo...

You've heard of this children's group, but did you know about their crazy rise to power? The Wiggles formed in the early 90s and had a meteoric rise to fame that is more fascinating than you'd ever imagine - with triumph, tragedy, pain, death, and illness. And they've risen above it all to be one of the most strangely enduring music group for preschoolers in history. -- Get the official Deep Cuts...

Disney World was originally supposed to be a futuristic city, but it still has its own creepy corporate government. In the mid-1960s, Walt Disney was bored with his animation studio and frustrated and dissatisfied with the creative freedom he had with the 160 acre Disneyland theme park he had just built a few years prior. So he set his sights on something bigger. He was going to buy up a massive p...