Essential Scares

Taking it allllll the way back to 1977, we have the cult classic Japanese Horror film House (1977)! This film is bonkers, it is at the same time incredibly serious but also entirely off the wall goofy. Sometimes it even finds ways to blends those two elements into some wonderful moments of horror comedy. All in all this movie just doesn't seem to care about how off the wall it gets, so long as...

The infamous review that has followed Allen all this time. We need no further waxing poetically, here's our thoughts on the wonderful film Raw (2017). ************************************************** TIMECODES 0:00 - Intro 1:04 - Spoiler Warning 2:26 - Synopsis 3:36 - Discussion 43:16 - Final Review 51:11 - Is it essential? 59:36 - Socials, Suggestions, Sign Off *****************************...

On the show today we have Bobby and Allen's thoughts on the absolute classic that is Ringu (1998). Most of you know of The Ring, the 2002 remake of this film. Ringu is 100% worth your time regardless of if you have seen the Ring or not. Ringu fundamentally is different in how its horror is structured compared to the American version. It is absolutely better for it as well. Just because a movie...

Suspiria (1977) is one of the most well known pieces of International Horror, and it absolutely earns that respect from the moment you start the film. This has been a bucket list movie for us to cover, and we are happy to finally give you our thoughts on this beautiful film. ************************************************** TIMECODES Coming Soon **************************************************...

In a futuristic Tokyo the Police force has been entirely privatized and the glorification of self harm is EVERYWHERE! What world are we in? The World of Tokyo Gore Police (2008) of course! This film takes the viewer down a much longer than necessary gory flick with little substance to say the least. Now, in this episode we have a LOT of fun discusses this film but I cannot stress highly enough jus...

We just cannot seem to escape Wes Craven and his brilliance lately. Today we give our thoughts on The People Under the Stairs (1991), a film that on its surface may appear to be nothing more than just another slasher flick from Wes. However, everything in this movie is so intentional that the message Wes is conveying would have to be willfully ignored by an audience goer. With some of his best ant...

The next entry in the Insidious franchise has arrived and we knew we had to jump on covering it immediately. We have called this franchise many things in the past. Baby's first horror movie, the movie where the music does a lot of the work, Darth Maul Goblin. Taking place 9 years after the events of Insidious Chapter 2 we are greeted with a down on his luck Josh Lambert due to fallouts from th...

Wrapping up Episodes 41 through 99 we bring the conclusion to the 100th Episode Spectacular! Thank you all so much for coming along on this wild ride here's to 100 more! ************************************************** ************************************************** Rate and subscribe!  Follow us below for more from us and join our Discord for a chat.  We're always open to suggestions...

The 100th Episode spectacular must be split into 2 separate episodes because frankly we WAY under estimated how long it would take to comb through the past 99 episodes of this show. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much for listening to our nonsensical rambling about our love/hate of horror movies. This show is a perfect excuse for 3 buddies to sit down and shoot the shit for an hour or...

Wrapping up the lauded Basket Case Franchise, we present our thoughts on Basket Case 3: The Progeny! Why is it that this film has a subtitle that is never referenced at all in the film? This thought has kept gnawing at our brains for days now. We finally see just how ridiculous this franchise can be when Duane is let out of his shell and allowed to be fully out of his mind. How well does letting h...

Continuing on with the Basket Case Franchise we have the sequel Basket Case 2! There are more baskets and there are more questions as to what is in the basket. This time around though both 8 years and 8 days have passed depending on what is gong on in the film at the time. Belial and Duane find a way to get into another round of shenanigans leading to horrible horrible things happening around them...

WHATCHA GOT IN THAT BASKET KID?!?!?! So Basket Case (1982) is an oddly charming movie until it very much isn't near the end of the film. One massive part of this film that is historic is the moment in time it captures from New York City in the early 80's. This movie through and through looks and feels VERY New York City. While there is a plot there is no point to speak of it hear due to th...

We finally made it. The end of the franchise is here and does it go out with a bang? Nope, not really. Missed opportunity is the name of the game when it comes to Nightmare 2010. There are bits of this film that do really bring some new life to the franchise, however it is certainly too late and the sheer amount of missteps outweigh any possible good that could have come from this franchise. Was t...

Wes Craven's New Nightmare is a little odd. It plays with this whole idea of a meta slasher before it really existed. Wes himself would fix that a few years later. Were does that leave us with this film in the context of Freddy Kruger. Well its both brilliant yet stunted. This style of horror hasn't been done yet, but this certainly was a solid first outing. This film takes a VERY differen...

We have finally gotten here. Freddy's Dead, that's it the franchise is done...for now. Can the "finale" of the Nightmare franchise reach the heights of entries like the first film? Is the Nightmare Franchise as a whole essential? Do we need to have multiple essential discussions on this franchise? All this and more in today's episode of Essential Scares. *********************...

The decline in this franchise is frankly shocking. A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5: Dream Child (1989) follows its predecessor in a massive downward spiral. Is it worse than the previous film? Probably not, however the sting of the franchise's failure is becoming more painful as the awful entries continue. As usual this film does have the expected elements, but it finds a way to meander so mu...

How the mighty have fallen my friends. This film just does not live up remotely to the level that Dream Warriors set. Dream Master is a film that is filled to the brim with an incredibly boring story with occasional bits of wonderful practical effects. This might be one of the biggest examples of a franchise dropping in quality so steeply compared to the previous entries. We here on Essential Scar...

DREAM WARRIORS!!!!!!!!!!! It's hard to avoid being overly positive on certain films that we cover for this show. Dream Warriors by most accounts is this franchise truly making a name for itself that is entirely unique within the Slasher genre. However, there seems to be a disturbance in the podcast, we do not have complete universal praise of a classic film. Who is the dissenting opinion this...

Corbin is away again, so that means its a Bobby and Allen special! To make sure that we can have the full crew here for Dream Warriors next week, Bobby found a little known Wes Craven film Shocker (1989)! This strange 3 in 1 film extravaganza HAS to be intentional, right? This movie really does grip the audience in a strange way compared to other films. It is this gory, potentially forgettable, sl...

WAY back on episode 17 we covered the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. With the new format of the show charging through franchises we felt it was best to revisit Freddy in his sophomore outing. Panned for years, Nightmare 2 was shockingly good all things considered. It is a very different kind of Nightmare film since a large amount of the calling cards of the franchise have yet to really be est...

Often times a sequel finds ways to miss the entire point of giving us more of the franchise. AvP Requiem is the opposite of that. This movie 100% understands the assignment and just gives us so much more of Aliens and Predators going at it. There are PLENTY of throwaway characters to be fodder for the two alien lifeforms, fixing a major problem from the first movie instantly. For context, we watch...

THE TRIFECTA IS BACK! It was Corbin's turn to pick and franchise and he chose one near and dear to his heart. Alien vs Predator (2004)! Some say this movie hasn't aged well, some say it is one of the worst examples of PG-13 Horror, and some even say this movie is aggressively mediocre. These statements are all objectively correct; however they don't explain just how weird of an experie...

In the final episode of the Corbinless arc, Bobby and Allen break down just how purely mediocre See No Evil 2 (2014) truly is!  Make no mistake it is CERTAINLY a better movie than its predecessor, however that is a hilariously low bar to pass.  I'm potentially being a bit too harsh, but this film does not need to exist at all.  Is it better?  Yes.  Did we enjoy it more? &n...

In a week where Bobby and Allen have been given the reigns to the show while Corbin is off galivanting in Disney World the show basically goes off the rails without Corbin's guiding presence.  Dear listener we knew this would happen so we filled these two weeks of Corbinlessness with a duology that does not need to taken seriously in any capacity, See No Evil.  This movie is one of the m...

The time has come dive fully into over the top Christ like metaphors. Today we wrap up the Hell House Saga with Hell House LLC 3 Lake of Fire (2019) .  We have had an absolute blast coming back around and finishing this series off, which was not exactly what we expected.  Found footage horror has a hard time capturing the magic of what makes it scary and intense, yet these 3 movies have...