Discover the Horror

From Hell it Came (1957), The Oily Maniac (1976), Cry Wilderness (1987) It's Turkey Time once again here at the podcast! And in this one, we have 3 wonderful titles to serve up to you, each one with a different flavor to appease a variety of tastes! As we've mentioned many times before, a "turkey" is not a bad movie. It's not an intentionally made bad movie. It is a film where the creators did the...

One of the things we continue to preach on this podcast is learning about the people that are involved with the films we love. It helps you see more and understand more, about the person, as well as the final product they are involved with, whether they are an actor, makeup artist, or director. Author Joe Maddrey's recent book,  The Soul of Wes Craven , from Harker Press, does just this, digging d...

The Legend of Hell House (1973), Hausu (1977), The Abandoned (2006) In older small towns, there is usually some old house on the outskirts of town, maybe someone lives there, maybe not. But it is one that young kids dare themselves to go up to. And if you do dare to enter this dwelling, you'll find creaking boards, dust covered items from furniture to knick-knacks, and a lot of cobwebs. And any no...

Four decades on, and Fangoria is still one of the leading voices of horror culture.  But in it's heyday in the 1980s, it was the gold standard. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say that Fangoria was the most important part of horror culture at that time.  On this episode of Discover the Horror, we take a trip through Fango's history and discuss how it shaped out love of the genre, as well as spe...

The Vampire Doll (1970), Lake of Dracula (1971), and Evil of Dracula (1974). In the annals of Japanese horror cinema, this vampire trilogy from director Michio Yamamoto seems to be close to escaping into obscurity. In fact, try finding much more than a passing mention of these films in any reference books. But thanks to Arrow Video, all three of these films are at least saved from fading away in t...

Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986), and Dagon (2001) Bringing the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft to the screen is not an easy task. Much of the horror Lovecraft talked about wasn't described or explained too much, leaving it up to the reader. But when director Stuart Gordon, producer Brian Yuzna, and writer Dennis Paoli got together to adapt Lovecraft's 1922 story "Herbert West - Re-Animat...

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). We've decided to take on a little twist here, doing an on-going series that we're calling Twice Told Tales. This is where we are going to compare two films, an original and its remake. This is not to say which one is better, but to highlight the positives of both, what we feel works, and the differences between them....

Mother's Day (1980), Madman (1981), Pieces (1982), and Evil Dead Trap (1988) When you're talking about horror films with most non-horror fans, they usually are thinking about the slashers which they seem to encapsule all of that genre. But when us fans start to dig into that sub-genre, that's when the questions arise, parameters seemed like they have to set, even though plenty of the films go out...

Films discussed: Satan's Sadists (1969), Brain of Blood (1970), Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) From the mid-60's until the late 70's director Al Adamson and producer Sam Sherman made some of the most memorable low-budget horror and exploitation pictures to slide across American drive-in and grindhouse screens.  Together they made films that not only exemplified genre, they also often transcend an...

In the realm of low budget filmmakers, Al Adamson, along with his partner, producer Sam Sherman, are gods among men. They created a wide variety of pictures, in just about every sub-genre out there, and made with more love than money. But they were entertaining, and always memorable. Perhaps their most memorable (and successful) film was 1971's Dracula vs. Frankenstein, in no small part thanks to...

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Golem (1920), and Waxworks (1924). In the very beginning of cinema, it was the German filmmakers who took cinema to the next level, even when it was still in its infancy. Creating strange angles, weird landscapes and buildings, and bizarre stories, these filmmakers gave audiences something completely new and different. It made such an impact, that it would i...

In the mid 1950's an overzealous witch hunt took place in the United States focused on the corrupting effects of comic books on young people, which ended in horror comics being banned from the shelves by a draconian comics code.  But why? What did those comics contain that got people so riled up? Well, it depends on who you ask.   WE asked Dr. Dan Yezbick, a comics scholar, and he sparked a lively...

Them! (1954), The Deadly Mantis (1957), and The Black Scorpion (1957) The decade of the 1950s gave horror fans a ton of different giant monster flicks, but usually taking something seemingly harmless, such as ants or grasshoppers, but somehow, someway, are mutated into growing into gigantic proportions! We had giant spiders, praying mantis, mollusks, and anything these creative filmmakers could co...

Splinter (2008), Thanatomorphose (2012), and Contracted (2013) When discussing films that deal with body horror, David Cronenberg and his work usually come up in the conversation. How can he not, when so many of his earlier films all dealt with some sort of body horror, mutations, and transformations? But there are plenty of films that go above and beyond (and even below) Cronenberg's impressive g...

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Revenge of the Creature (1955), The Creature Walks Among Us (1956). And now, we come to the end of our Universal Monster episodes, having made our way through all the Dracula, Frankenstein, Invisible Man, Mummy, and the Wolf Man films, we now take a dive into the Black Lagoon! Coming out a little less than a decade after the last Universal Monster film (no, I...

Obviously, many of us film fans see movies in theaters througout the year, whether it be at a national chain or at an independent, arthouse theater - or both. Some of us are even hitting film festivals, special screenings, and for the truly unhinged cinephiles, film marathons. For these kind of events to happen though, there have to be some mad geniuses behind the scenes. Those people are film pro...

The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (1964), Crowhaven Farm (1970), and Cruise into Terror (1978) With this being our 3rd episode covering these little television terrors, one would get the idea that there is a lot of teleplays, or TV-movies, out there that deserve our attention. And you would be correct! From the '60s into the early '80s, there was a plethora of amazing features being made for the little...

During conversations with serious film collectors, you might hear terms like inter-positive, or first negative, or even OCN, and have no clue to what they actually mean. Don't feel bad because a lot of us are in the same boat. These are some of the many terms used when discussing the preservation and archiving of films, not to mention the amount of work that goes into doing just that. Plus, we're...

Chained (2012), Honeymoon (2014), and Relic (2020) With over 60 episodes so far in our podcast history, we realized that in all that we covered, we had never covered anything by a woman director. We knew we needed to change that. Going through the history of women directors, we realized that not only wasn't something new, but have been working in the industry since the beginning of film. And in th...

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), and House of Dracula (1945). Some say that the monster rally films marked the end of the Universal creature features, which could partially be true, but we feel it is for different reasons than the actual films themselves, and they still have a lot of merit to them. While the studio heads might not of cared too much about gettin...

This truly is a great time to be alive as a crazy cinephile. Just about every day, new amazing looking releases of some of our favorite films are announced, as well as some almost forgotten films brought back from the edges of obscurity for a whole new generation of fans to enjoy. And one of the companies at the forefront is Severin Films, who continues to amaze us fans with the quality of their r...

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), The House that Dripped Blood (1971) and Tales from the Crypt (1972) Amicus Productions was most known for their anthology films, even though that was a small percentage of the types of films they did make in over the years. But because of the quality of the films, the power of the stories they were based on, and the incredible cast of actors they would hire, t...

Bigfoot (1970), Creature from Black Lake (1976), and Abominable (2006). Tales of a mysterious, giant beast that wanders the wooded areas of the U.S., has never really proven to exist, but even to this day, is believed by many to really be out there, still hidden from mankind. Starting with Bigfoot in 1970, our furry giant became the subject of many movies and documentaries, and even on TV shows, s...

Satan's Slave (1976), Prey (1977), and Terror (1978) There are a lot of directors out there that might not have a huge filmography, or even be that well known to the general population of film fans, even in the horror genre. So there is always room to discover them! In this episode, we take a look at three films by British independent director Norman J. Warren, who didn't make a lot of films, but...

Another year ending means another Wrap Up episode where we go over our top picks for the year, as well as discussing some other titles we've seen in 2023. While most of the films we do cover here as our favorite viewings for this year are from the last few years, they are not all from 2023. But as we've pointed out many times before, if you're watching it for the first time, no matter when it was...