Blood and Black Rum Podcast - A Cult Film / Horror Podcast

We're over halfway through our So Creepy It's Carpenter series and we're tackling another surprisingly great Carpenter film with Body Bags . Shot for Showtime and meant to lead into an anthology TV series, Carpenter provides three very different stories in this 90 minute film, bookended by a great framing story starring Carpenter himself. Carpenter directs two out of the three, with Tobe Hooper pr...

This is one of Ryne's favorite Carpenter movies, and we give Prince of Darkness some good treatment on the show by covering the score, the creepy factor, the overwhelming foreboding elements, and a whole lot more. Is it so good, so bad, or so creepy? Listen to the episode to find out! We're also drinking Captain Lawrence/Snyder's of Hanover's Snyder Bier Pretzel Marzen! Approximate timeline 0:00-8...

Continuing our So Creepy It's Carpenter Halloween series, we tackle a surprisingly successful offfering from Carpenter, and also one of the best Stephen King film adaptations: Christine . This is a tough story to adapt for the big screen because of its limited scope and with the primary antagonist being an inanimate object. However, we talk about the successful use of emotional stakes and tension...

Hey, we knew we'd have to do the crappy stuff too when we were doing a Carpenter series for Halloween. That brings us to Ghosts of Mars , probably Carpenter's worst film. It has a lot of poor decisions that lead to a really boring, awful movie - and quite possibly the lowest rating Ryne has ever given on the show. We talk about the wipes and fades (you know what we mean), the terrible neo-noir dia...

Continuing our Halloween season spent with John Carpenter's filmography, we turn to the moody mistiness of 1980's The Fog , one of Carpenter's better films and yet still falling somewhere in the middle of his best output. We're disappointed with the lack of Tom Atkins mustache; we query whether Jamie Lee Curtis or Adrienne Barbeau tops the hotness meter; we dish out some fire at the founders of An...

All Halloween season we will be bringing you the So Creepy It's Carpenter series, a look at John Carpenter's filmography including both the good and the bad. For our first spotlight, we start right in the middle of that divide with Vampires from 1998, one of Carpenter's better late-career movies. We talk about the KNB effects, James Wood (an asshole), the Carpenter western-tinged soundtrack, the l...

Red Hot '80s Action summer is sweating along and we are taking a look at Reb Brown's masterpiece, his opus, Strike Commando . If you've never seen the film, think First Blood: Part II but with a lot lower budget and with some extremely interesting dialogue choices. We're having a laugh at the whole plot, admiring Reb Brown's muscles, and yelling "JAKODAAAA!" a lot. Expect some good fun at the film...

On our new episode for Red Hot '80s Action Summer, we are talking about the inestimable Chuck Norris in one of his classic terrorist shoot-em-up films, Invasion U.S.A. We touch on the sheer ridiculousness of the film, Chuck's fabulous red mullet, the inferiority of the US National Guard, and the homoerotic undertones at play here. We're also drinking Ommegang's Sleeveless Tea! Approximate timeline...

Continuining our hot '80s action summer, we're taking a look at perhaps Jackie Chan's finest film Police Story - subbed, not dubbed! Here, we marvel at Chan's ingenuity with the stunts while also commenting on the simplicity of the film's plot. We talk Hong Kong drugs, the various stunt sequences, rate our favorites, and also comment on the odd inclusion of some misogyny in Chan's character. Also,...

We're starting our Red Hot '80s Action Summer off with a jungle-tinged bang! Arnie's quotable film Predator is on the docket, and as we rewatched this John McTiernan action/sci-fi/slasher hybrid we couldn't help but feel disappointed with our rose-colored glasses view of this nostalgic classic, because it just doesn't hold up as well as we thought. We talk about those criticisms and joke about the...

It's summertime, and of course we need to visit the island of Summerisle for a quick jaunt to a cult led by Christopher Lee. We talk about the excellent casting in the film, the heavy religious themes, Britt Eklund's booty dance, the missing deleted scene, Lee's hair(piece?), and the shocking finale. We're definitely fans of this crazy slow-burn movie, and I think you can hear in this episode. Let...

We've done every other Saw film (1-7 in a marathon), so it was inevitable that we'd have to head out to the theater to see Spiral: From the Book of Saw. And for the most part, we liked this one okay - it's definitely better than Jigsaw , though its writers are the same, and Chris Rock is really doing the best he can with what he's got. The traps are cool, but there are still some major issues. Lis...

We're back! We took a long hiatus, but one thing helped us decide to come back: the new Mortal Kombat reboot. Being one of Martin's favorite franchises, we just had to take a look at the new R-rated film from director Simon McQuoid. Expect some nostalgic waxing about the original games, discussion on the film's storyline, groaning about this being more like an introductory lead-up to a sequel, and...

Our finale for Festivus Series 2020 comes with a caveat: it's a bad movie. The 1997 slasher movie Jack Frost does just about everything wrong, and it's not even so bad it's good; it does have, though, a quick Shannon Elizabeth nude scene, so that's something. We talk about the really lazy snowman design, the bad snow, the ridiculous genetic material science, and a whole lot more. We're also drinki...

Sorry our episode is a little late, we had remote technical difficulties due to weather. We're talking the Christmas classic Scrooged for this episode, A Christmas Carol for the '80s which sort of acts as a metacommentary for the Charles Dickens tale. We talk about Bill Murray's asshole character, Bobcat Goldthwaite as a disgruntled employee, our favorite ghost, and of course the value of 5 pounds...

We had meant to cover this last Christmas and for multiple reasons, it just didn't work out. But on this episode we take a look at the most controversial remake of Black Christmas, the Sophia Takal version released by Blumhouse in 2019. This film got a lot of hate from the people that it criticizes: straight white males. It's no surprise, since it wears its feminist leanings on its sleeve, but thi...

It is Festivus time once again! We've got four weeks of... ahem... great films on the way, and to start things off, we finally get to end our longstanding marathon of the Silent Night, Deadly Night series with the loose remake Silent Night! This is definitely not the same film as the original though it has a number of references. We talk about the poor man's actors within the film and the surprisi...

Our intention was to do a Thanksgiving movie for the special occasion, but First Blood ain't it. Instead, it's more of a Christmas-adjacent film, but we're not going to let that stop us from enjoying this Stallone classic. We talk about the bike chases, the PTSD, the Stallone memeable monologues, exposition dumps, and a conservative's worst nightmare. We're also drinking Druthers' Apple Cranberry...

As a tribute to Sean Connery, we decided to tackle our first James Bond movie for the show, and Martin decided that the best one would be From Russia with Love. We talk about the spy plot, this Bond caper's tendency to lean serious rather than over-the-top, its context in the history of the Bond series, and a whole lot more! On this show, we're drinking Saranac's new Winter Warmer. Approximate tim...

We complete our Reanimated series by going full circle with zombie films. We've tackled the serious types of zombie films out there, and now we're taking a look at a parody of a zombie film with Shaun of the Dead. A classic in every sense and oft-quoted from our school days, the film effectively encapsulates a loving ode to zombie films by playing up their ridiculousness. We're talking our favorit...

We're throwing things back for a classic zombie film in this episode of the Reanimated series! We're talking about the first official zombie film White Zombie with Bela Lugosi, and of course we have to talk about the zombie/slave element, the acting, how the film holds up in contemporary context, and a whole lot more! Also, we are drinking Dogfish Head's Campfire Amplifier stout! Approximate Timel...

We've already covered fast-moving infected for the Reanimated series, but this time they can actually be defined as zombies in Train to Busan. This Korean blockbuster from 2016 passed by both of us when it released, so we get to experience this one for the first time. We talk about the rules of the infection in the film, the comedy and emotional elements, the naivety of its characters, zombie effe...

We finally tackle the namesake of our Reanimated series as we take a look at Re-Animator, the 1985 horror black comedy from Stuart Gordon that took H.P. Lovecraft's original idea and gorified it up. We talk about the history of Lovecraft's works, the comedy elements that work in the film, the depths of scientific madness, Barbara Crampton (!!!), and of course the special effects. We're also drinki...

This time, we're talking things that aren't quite reanimated; in 28 Days Later, the film borrows a lot from zombie films but technically its threat aren't zombies but rage-infected humans. We discuss the nuances of that decision, what inspirations the film has and what it also inspired, the effect of the early-00s filmmaking techniques, and a whole lot more. We're also drinking Mean Max Brew Works...

Our zombie film coverage continues on with Reanimated Part III featuring Return of the Living Dead . Something of a parody of the zombie genre, Return of the Living Dead features an almost metacritical look at zombies while also redefining  the genre with its undead's insistence on eating brains. We talk about  the gore, the punks!, the great performance from Clu Gulager, and a lot &nbsp...