Split Tooth Media

Jason and Jim have broken their vows of silence to break some news that'll break your brain. Don't worry, they're holding tight to their vows of poverty. BREAKING CINESTHESIA BREAKING NEWS BREAKING FURIOUS The Cinesthesia boys have checked their egos and donned their checkered suits to check back in with Rob Christopher, who they last spoke to on a very cinesthesic episode of Split Picks comparing...

Rose Trimboli’s You Know What You Are is remarkably ambitious for a microbudget debut feature, even if it isn’t obvious from the offset. The film’s initial setup is one that feels familiar to many a post-collegiate mumblecore classic, that of the lonely young Faith (Eloise Lola Gordon) trying to start over in a small beachside town where she doesn’t know anyone. If the inherent alienation of such...

Aidan Leary and C.R. Thompson were given two weeks to write a horror script, three months to prepare it, and 11 days to shoot it. What resulted is an uncanny look behind the curtain of a sinister public-access children’s show. When I interviewed Joe Swanberg a few months back, he was in the midst of releasing five independently produced horror films, each made back-to-back using the same crews — n...

Banfitch’s second foray in found footage finds him exploring the darkest corners of the subgenre and questioning if art can be a coping mechanism after the loss of a loved one. I have long struggled to come up with an answer when asked “What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?” My shorthand in high school was Halloween or Insidious, before graduating to more prestigious yet equally common picks...

Since 2018, Joe Meredith has been crafting an elaborate series of short films set in a post-apocalyptic world overtaken by the fictional “Havoc” virus. Each film explores the lives of those affected by the virus, whether they be mutant creatures, half-assimilated humans, or the unsuspecting victims of both aforementioned groups. When Meredith began releasing the films, loosely referred to as the “...

“Nobody can tell you how to make your movie, and you’re the only one who can make it happen at the end of the day. So, stop waiting around for other people to give you permission because they never will.” These were the parting words filmmaker Tess Nealon Raskin left me with during our conversation some weeks ago, and she seems to be practicing what she’s preached. Having released two short films...

Order Split Tooth's new double zine with Joe Swanberg's interview as a cover story: https://ko-fi.com/s/5df933982d Twenty years ago, Joe Swanberg completed his first rough cut of Hannah Takes The Stairs at 6 a.m. His blog post from August 19, 2006 on the film’s official website reads, “I'm going to watch it tonight, make some tweaks, and then step away from it for a while, let it sit, then come ba...

Jacob Gregor’s sophomore feature is a scathing deconstruction of what being terminally online can do to one’s psyche, establishing him as a vital filmmaking voice in the current divisive climate. A man (Matt Calhoun) sits alone in his room watching a motivational YouTube video on his laptop. He has just returned home from doing push-ups in a desolate Aldi parking lot. The video preaches of taking...

Split Tooth Media has done extensive coverage of Michael Glover Smith’s body of work over the years. Our own Bennett Glace has interviewed him three times — once when his film Mercury in Retrograde (2017) streamed as part of the Gene Siskel Film Center’s “Film Center From Your Sofa” series, and again after the release of his feature film Relative (2022). A third interview was conducted to follow a...

Aidan Cronin explores the things that confuse him. Like so many artists, he is on the often frustrating but sometimes freeing journey for answers to what very well could be unanswerable questions. Unlike a lot of artists, he doesn’t restrict himself to just one medium. He explores these questions through poetry — as seen in the stanza above and the ones throughout this piece, ripped directly from...

Make More Movies is a podcast where Aaron Bartuska asks DIY filmmakers what keeps them creating. This episode is with guest Anthony Leroy. Anthony Leroy turned 30 earlier this year. In a post commemorating this milestone while simultaneously promoting his newest film, the filmmaker said that he had never really felt sure of himself as an artist until the past year. Now that he has found his voice,...

A new podcast from Split Tooth Media about independent filmmakers where Aaron Bartuska interviews various DIY filmmakers about what keeps them creating. In this episode, we dive deep into Avalon Fast's career, covering topics like what happens after your film sees festival success and why warm weather is overrated. If you were to stumble upon Avalon Fast’s website knowing nothing about the filmmak...

From The Norwegian Drillbit Massacre through Oslo Terror, Xposure Video's debut release collects Møller's films together for the first time. At age 15, Jon Christian Møller and some friends created a shot-on-video splatter film about a power-tool-wielding zombie's murder spree called The Norwegian Drillbit Massacre (1988). The short is full of stomach-busting practical effects and a firecracker-lo...

Frank Henenlotter is no stranger to capturing misfits, oddballs, and mutated figures on film, but he always manages to find the humanity in each of them. His unique avant-gutter exploitation cinema has resulted in memorable characters and brutal moments, but he embraces the deadly and unpredictable sides that his creations offer. Duane and Belial, the once-conjoined twins who shocked Times Square...

Split Picks reemerges to sift through two classic SOV horrors from director Gary P. Cohen. A mysterious tape left in a small town video store's dropbox leads to the shop's owner becoming immersed in an underground ring of homemade murder tapes in Gary P. Cohen's Video Violence (1987). The town's love for violence only grows more outlandish in the 1988 sequel, Video Violence 2. The chief killers, H...

Rather than bore listeners with the details of their miraculous escape, Bennett and Jim share their end-of-season reflections and rankings of the entire first season of Showtime's Masters of Horror. Created by Mick Garris, Masters of Horror was a two-season series on Showtime that challenged genre legends to create an hour-long horror film. Follow along as Bennett and Jim are forced to spend no mo...

It’s an undead orgy on this fun yet frivolous episode which sees John McNaughton fill in for George Romero in the director’s chair. The penultimate episode of Season 1 finds 'Masters of Horror' looking more like “Goosebumps for adults” than ever. Its title character finds himself confronting horrible truths about the ways love and lust can endure after death.  Bennett and Jim wonder what the Haeck...

Imprint scared Showtime’s censors enough to pull it from the release schedule. Even our seasoned podcasters have to admit it’s pretty grim. Takashi Miike is back to his old tricks with Imprint. It’s got gore, grotesqueries, and all sorts of torture. Bennett and Jim also found it far more atmospheric than your average Season 1 episode.  As with last year’s look at Miike on Split Picks, our hosts ad...

Split Picks is back to venture into dream worlds and nightmares from one of the modern master of horror's great franchises. Well, Split Picks aimed to record an episode every month this year. But things got busy, OK? So Jim Hickcox is once again in the host throne to field Split Picks' first international call. Terry Chiu (Open Doom Crescendo and Mangoshake director), and Mark Hanson of the Bay St...

"Pick Me Up" isn’t just a great episode of TV, it’s an underrated gem that Bennett and Jim both recommend highly to all genre fans. Michael Moriarty delivers a performance for the ages in Larry Cohen’s final directorial effort, the high-concept thrill ride, 'Pick Me Up.' Moriarty is one of two roving killers who menace a bus full of passengers before trailing our final girl (The Waterboy’s Fairuza...

An unusually sweet episode of Masters of Horror with two eccentric central performances wows your hosts. Don’t let all the goop, slime, and creepy critters fool you, Lucky McKee’s 'Sick Girl' is remarkably tender for an episode of 'Masters of Horror.' Angela Bettis returns from Mckee’s 'May' (2001) in a superficially similar story of an eccentric loner searching for love. Here, she’s an entomologi...

The podcast enters a stretch of top-notch episodes with William Malone’s visually distinct and genuinely creepy installment. Throughout the season, the boys have made plenty of jokes at the expense of directors like William Malone. “Really, he’s a master of horror?” Like feardotcom and House on Haunted Hill, The Fair Haired Child proves that William Malone definitely deserves that distinction.  Wi...

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em! The boys are lighting up and taking a drag on the latest episode as they discuss John Carpenter’s first contribution to Masters of Horror. If you’ve seen one episode of Masters of Horror, it’s probably this entry from the master himself, John Carpenter. It’s often regarded as the best and the presence of Udo Kier in the cast goes a long way in helping establish its atmosp...

One of the most acclaimed Masters of Horror installments, Joe Dante’s political satire takes Jim and Bennett back to the 2004 election Jim and Bennett are reporting for duty on the latest (pod)Casters of Horror to discuss Joe Dante’s acclaimed entry in Masters of Horror’s first season.  Slain servicemen rise from the grave in Homecoming to cast their ballots against an unnamed (and poorly imitated...

John Landis’ horny horror-comedy indulges many of the series’ worst impulses with its tale of a seductive cryptid. Max Landis earned his first screenwriting credit with his father’s entry in Masters of Horror’s first season. It’s an auteurist effort in the worst sense, blending plenty of misogyny into its tonal soup.  Bennett offers a hot take for the ages about the genre mashups and the boys weig...