Half Price Horror

This is a podcast about horror, but it's been a long time since a scary movie--especially a haunted house movie--genuinely freaked out your horror host. But 'Terrified' proves it can still happen, and HPH is here to explain to you exactly what makes this movie about a whole damn haunted neighborhood so magnificently horrifying to its audience.

All good things must come to an end, and so it's time to bid farewell to intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak and his monster-hunting adventures with two final episodes, "The Youth Killer" and "The Sentry", that feature immortal demigoddesses and giant lizard monsters and of course Tom Bosley. Plus, a special appearance from Blast Hardcheese!

Time to take another deep dive, this time into 2020's disaster horror flick 'Underwater'! But will things go swimmingly, or is the final release from 20th Century Fox all washed up? Let's find out in another wet and wild episode!

Time for another peek into the life of Carl Kolchak, news reporter and reluctant monster slayer, as he helps Erik Estrada with a pesky Aztec cult, whips a suit of animated armor into shape, and closes the books on a corpse-possessing succubus! It's just another day at the office for Kolchak, so let's dive in and see what makes it all so much fun!

It's the 200th episode of Half Price Horror, and naturally there's only one movie big enough, important enough, and profound enough to qualify for such a momentous occasion! But instead we covered 'Satan's Cheerleaders', so jump in for a discussion of 70s exploitation movies, schlock producer Greydon Clark, and more old Hollywood stars than you can shake a stick at!

Time to take another trip back to the 70s and find out what's going on in the world of intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak--and it looks wild back there, with insta-grow ape men, witchcraft in the fashion industry, and... is that a young Robert Zemeckis? Face it, true believers, this one has everything!

"Welcome to Potters Bluff". It's an odd thing to say to someone right before you kill them, but then again Potters Bluff is no ordinary town. It's a town with a horrible secret at its heart... and Sheriff Dan Gillis is going to wish he'd never discovered it. But we can find out together, in another episode of Half Price Horror!

The Kolchak train rolls on, with energy devouring bear gods, shapeshifters from Hindu legend, and androids looking for books on tape to complete their programming! Time to continue our look at this 70s cult classic with "The Energy Eater", "Horror in the Heights", and "Mister R.I.N.G."!

In the wake of 'Land of the Dead' and its somewhat disappointing box office performance, Romero had nowhere to go but back to the beginning. So he went small-scale, with a mockumentary based on the first days of the zombie apocalypse filled with raw footage taken by an amateur camera crew... and how successful was he? Give a listen and find out!

Spanish moss, Satanic politicians, and messy cultural appropriation--this one's got it all, as we take a look at three more episodes of 'Kolchak: The Night Stalker'. This time out, it's "The Devil's Platform", "Bad Medicine", and "The Spanish Moss Murders", each of which gives our intrepid reporter another chance to clash with editor Tony Vincenzo...

Two thousand, zero zero, party over, oops, out of time, so Godzilla started the Y2K fun early in December of 1999! The big guy dukes it out with aliens attempting to drain the entire Internet of data so they can learn how to build the perfect body for themselves, and unsurprisingly it ends in a big fight in the middle of downtown Tokyo! Join HPH for a fun discussion of the most Hollywood of Japane...

Do you love vampires? Werewolves? Sinister spectral doppelgangers and spontaneous human combustion? Then join Half Price Horror for an exploration of a classic 70s TV series that embraces the paranormal, the New Age, and all those classic monsters we adore so much!

Paul Verhoeven's 'Hollow Man' hit at the exact transition between the post-Cold War euphoria of Bill Clinton and the nasty hangover that was the Bush years, when we were just beginning to realize how difficult it was going to be to pry misogyny loose from the hands of entitled white dudes. But is this film a critique of sexist men, or a depiction of them? Let's dive in and find out...

The 70s were a gestational era for cult fiction, the incubator that gave birth to every kind of fascination from UFOs to Jack the Ripper to voodoo. So it's not surprising that a series like "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" would come around, and it's not surprising that it would become a foundational text for Chris Carter, JJ Abrams, and everyone in between. But what were the origina...

"Shark attack". Is there any phrase more thrilling to the horror fan's spirit? There's a never-ending bonanza of shark movies out there, but this one is notorious for its use of real sharks and the real-life Australian incident that inspired it. So join HPH for a deep dive--no pun intended--into crafty no-budget thriller 'The Reef'! (Not to be confused with 'The Ref&#...

When audiences found out they were going to get a movie about aliens from Jordan Peele, a lot of people jumped to a lot of conclusions about what they were going to get--but nobody imagined a heady, action-horror-Western that serves as a meditation on the exploitative nature of Hollywood and a joyous celebration of the power of cinema. Join HPH as we do our level best to dig into all the messages...

It's time to finish our tour of the Conjuring Universe, as we return to Valak the demonic nun and her sworn enemies Frenchie and Irene! Get ready for Wan and Safran's version of 'The DaVinci Code', with a lost relic and an ancient mystery and a third act surprise demon goat, as we put this franchise to bed once and for all.

It may not get as much discussion as it did seventy years ago when it first premiered, but 'Les Diaboliques' (or as it was known in America, 'Diabolique') is one of the most profoundly influential thrillers in cinematic history. So let's dig in for a discussion of the plot twist you've probably seen a dozen times the way it was done originally, by Hitchcock's French riv...

It's the final installment of the main Conjuring franchise (for now) and a case that tests the very limits... of Peter Safran and James Wan's ability to spin the Warrens' nonsense into a supernatural horror story. Can they take the tale of a guy who got drunk and committed manslaughter into a courtroom drama about demonic possession? Or will they have to cut away before the judge gets...

What do you get when you take the gothic, queer romance sensibilities of Anne Rice and filter them through hit-making director Tony Scott and arthouse actors like Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie? You get a unique vampire movie that blends beauty and horror in equal measures, with bold and experimental stylistic choices, and you get a whole episode of HPH discussing it! Let's...

We’re in the home stretch now for the Conjuring Universe, with just one film from each franchise left to go! But it turns out Annabelle the haunted doll doesn’t want to be put away for good—so let’s see whether the third time’s the charm for this spinoff franchise with 2019’s “Annabelle Comes Home”!

When Steven Kostanski announced a follow-up to 'Psycho Goreman' that promised more of that same weird, day-glo 90s aesthetic combined with the outrageous prank-filled attitude of the 80s "little monster" subgenre, it was almost a foregone conclusion that his film was going to wind up on this podcast as soon as possible. And that's today! So lucky you, you get to hear about al...

What do you get when you take an authentic Mexican folk legend and give it a thick coat of whitewash? You get the latest "unofficial" Conjuring spin-off, complete with lots of jumpscares, plenty of tracking shots, and all the cultural appropriation you could ever want and then some! Join HPH for a deep dive into everything that makes this film so problematic.

Mario Bava is a legend, an icon both as a director and as a special effects artist, but he didn't work in science fiction very often. So when he did, is it any real surprise that he made a movie that put its stamp on everything from 'Alien' to 'Event Horizon'? Join HPH for a deep dive into his cult classic, the low-budget but immensely clever movie 'Planet of the Vampires'! (We'll even explain why...

And nun too soon, we arrive at a movie that is second to nun! If nun of you have seen it before, then you'll be familiar with nun of the scares and nun of the surprises - but is there even a single part of this latest Conjuring spin-off that's any good? I'm not going to say there's absolutely nun, but let's take a look and find out where they could have made a few improvements.