Rogues Gallery

On this episode, we're investigating Stanton Carlisle's rise and fall in all three versions of Nightmare Alley : the original novel, the 1947 movie, and Guillermo del Toro's 2021 adaptation. Topics include: the eerie way in which William Lindsay Gresham's book almost foreshadowed his own demise, the incident in del Toro's past that made him connect so deeply with the source material, notable diffe...

When you consider all of the obstacles it was up against, it's sort of a miracle that Coraline even exists. Stop-motion animation was considered a dead art form, the director's previous film was a notorious critical & commercial failure, and there were concerns that the subject matter was too dark for kids and too tame for adults. And yet... Like the Neil Gaiman novella it's based on, Coraline was...

When describing the reaction to Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel American Psycho , the word "controversial" seems hilariously inadequate. The backlash to this transgressive tale of a Wall Street stockbroker who moonlights as a sadistic serial killer was intense . So when the film adaptation hit theaters in 2000, it was anticipated with a great deal of trepidation and skepticism. As it turns out, dir...

Well, we did it. We made it to the very last Friday the 13th movie ever! Kudos to everyone involved for going out on a high note instead of overstaying their welcome with a conveyor belt of sequels. Jokes aside, the fact of the matter is that The Final Chapter is still a pretty significant entry in the franchise. In fact, a lot of fans would argue it's the best one (including one of your hosts). I...

Get in losers, we're going podcasting! We've been to Elm Street, Crystal Lake, and Haddonfield, but this week we're visiting the most terrifying location of all... high school. No one's more surprised by the success of Mean Girls or the scope of its pop culture imprint than the people who made it. So we wanted to go back to the beginning and investigate how a modest teen comedy based on a self-hel...

The marketing campaign for Sam Raimi's 1990 action/horror movie tantalized moviegoers with the question: "Who is Darkman?" But from the studio's point of view, the bigger mystery was probably what is Darkman? From pre-production all the way to release, there was quite a bit of confusion over the tone Raimi was aiming for. As a result, the film found itself in a tug-of-war between a director who wa...

Back in the early aughts, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were enjoying an overwhelming level of success. They decided to use their clout to launch an ambitious cinematic experiment - each of them would direct one half of a double feature designed to pay homage to the exploitation flicks they grew up watching. The result was 2007's Grindhouse and the response to it was... largely apathetic....

The Dream Master is sort of the dividing line between the first six films in the Elm Street franchise, but the question is: which side does it fall on? Is this the last good entry or the first bad one? Let's find out! Topics include: Wes Craven's original pitch for the film, how a writer's strike forced them to make a lot of this up as they went along, director Renny Harlin's incredible persistenc...

As controversial as it was influential, Taxi Driver remains an unflinchingly uncomfortable portrait of how one man's self-imposed loneliness spirals out into explosive violence. On this episode, we're taking a closer look at Rober DeNiro's iconic performance as Travis Bickle and investigating how he became one of cinema's defining antiheroes.   Topics include: the low point in screenwriter Paul Sc...

On this episode, we're heading to the idyllic town of Cradle Bay to investigate their mysterious Blue Ribbon program. Although its participants initially showed promising results, a few of them have recently been exhibiting some... Disturbing Behavior . But the more sinister story here might be what happened to this film in post-production. The director delivered a psychological thriller in the ve...

We're not quite ready to put Halloween behind us, so we decided to take a look at a story about one that seemingly never ends. On this episode, we're opening up a case file on The Holiday Killer from Batman: The Long Halloween and investigating the origins of this seminal comic book and the recent animated adaptation.   Topics include: the previous collaborations between writer Jeph Loeb and artis...

The final moments of Halloween II had been intended to kill off Michael Myers for good, but the film's box office success all but guaranteed another sequel. The only way creators John Carpenter and Debra Hill could be lured back for another entry was with the promise that they could come up with an entirely new story that had no ties whatsoever to the previous films. Unfortunately, their attempt t...

The popularity of occult horror had been on the rise since the late 60s, but it was the success of The Exorcist in 1973 that led to a slew of other films attempting to cash in on that craze. One of the more notable efforts was Richard Donner's debut feature The Omen . On this episode, we're investigating how Donner took a slightly garish horror script that no studio was interested in making and tr...

In some ways, this entire podcast is built around the idea that a hero is only as good as their villain. Looking at the original RoboCop through that lens, it's easy to understand why it's still held in such high esteem. There's A LOT to gush over in this film (and we do), but Kurtwood Smith's performance as Clarence Boddicker is unquestionably one of its highlights.   Topics include: our introduc...

"The Infected" from Danny Boyle's post-apocalyptic horror film 28 Days Later aren't technically zombies, but the movie is definitely operating within the confines of that sub-genre. In fact, its popularity helped lead to such a strong resurgence of interest in zombie-related media that we're still seeing the effects of it two decades later. Topics include: tracing the film's origins back to a scre...

Basic Instinct was a box office hit in the spring of 1992, but its success was matched by the level of controversy it generated. At the center of it all was a star-making performance by Sharon Stone, who gave us one of cinema's most iconic femme fatales and one of the most famous scenes in movie history. On this episode, we're opening up a case file on Catherine Tramell and investigating the heyda...

Steven Spielberg's 1975 adaptation of Jaws is arguably one of the greatest films ever made. That feat is even more impressive when you take into consideration the multitude of problems this production was plagued with. On this episode, we're investigating the legendary story of an up-and-coming director who began shooting a movie with no script, no cast, and no shark... and wound up with a bona fi...

The horror genre was experiencing an interesting transition in the late 90s/early aughts. The resurgence of teen slashers that had been kicked off by Scream was fizzling out and in its place were films that placed more of an emphasis on supernatural scares. It was during this time that the production company Dark Castle Entertainment was formed with the goal of producing glossier remakes of classi...

It just wouldn't be summer without a trip to Crystal Lake to see what our old pal Jason's been up to. On this episode, we're continuing our investigation into the Friday the 13th franchise and taking a look at one if its most seminal entries. Topics include: the much different premise they almost went with and how it might have set this series off down a very different path, why the decision to sh...

When The Babadook was released back in 2014, there was a lot of hype about how terrifying it was. Heading into it with those expectations may have colored our initial impressions of it. Now that some time has passed, we're going back to see if we can give this one a more objective analysis. Topics include: Jennifer Kent's unlikely path to becoming a director, how her short film Monster set the sta...

For a lot of us, The Conjuring almost seemed to come out of nowhere in the summer of 2013. It stood out amidst the usual slew of sequels & remakes and its success not only cemented James Wan as a modern master or horror, it also helped breathe new life into the genre. Of course, The Conjuring is now a major franchise itself with numerous sequels and spin-offs in its orbit. In some ways, those have...

It's time for a summer vacation, so we're packing up the RV and heading to the town of Nilbog for an investigation into the best worst movie ever made - Troll 2 ! Topics include: how each of us discovered this film, its devoted cult following and how that led to the documentary Best Worst Movie , the language barrier between the actors and the filmmakers, why sincerity is an essential ingredient f...

Nothing is quite what it seems in Spider-Man: Far From Home , including Peter Parker's enigmatic new ally Mysterio. On this episode, we're pulling back the curtain on his heroic facade and examining this film's dual identity as both an epilogue to the dour events of Avengers: Endgame and a more lighthearted high school romp. Topics include: Mysterio's comic book origins and how he was updated for...

The level of fandom surrounding Boba Fett always seemed a little disproportionate to what he actually does on screen. The costume certainly makes an impression, but the way The Empire Strikes Back seemed to be building him up made his unceremonious sendoff in Return of the Jedi feel so perplexing and anticlimactic. For decades, the only place to turn for more substantial Boba Fett stories was the...

There was probably no one more surprised by the success of Stephen King's novel Carrie than King himself. He'd only made it a few pages into his original manuscript before throwing it into the trash. Even after his wife dug it out and urged him to push forward, he was convinced he was writing something that there was no audience for. But Carrie was a breakout hit and one of its fans was director B...