Movie Oubliette

Dan and Conrad are invited to join Roddy McDowall's live action role play of 'Donkey Kong' – complete with homicidal primate and princess at the top level – as they check out  Shakma (1990), thanks to our patrons' choice nomination! In it, McDowall plays a professor who experiments on baboons with mind-altering substances by day, but stages elaborate LARP-ing sessions with his students in the coll...

We're back at last! And what better way to start the year than being reunited with FilmJoy's Mikey Neumann and Zoe Wells for another Kevin Costner apocalypse movie? This time it's 1997's  The Postman – the tale of a travelling one-man-and-one-mule Shakespeare company who, after his acting partner is killed and turned into paste by a roving fascist militia, accidentally starts a religion around a b...

Happy holidays! Writer Dan Wells joins us for our festive finale for the year to discuss the adaptation of his novel  I Am Not a Serial Killer . The film stars Max Records as John Wayne Cleaver, a serial-killer-obsessed teenager who works in his mother's mortuary and has been diagnosed with sociopathy, and Christopher Lloyd as Bill Crowley, John's gentle old neighbour... who harbours a dark secret...

Isaac Sutton guest co-hosts with Dan (while Conrad is on vacation!) to talk all things underworld related in Highway to Hell (1991). We follow lovers, Charlie and Rachel, as they try to escape the clutches of the merciless Sargeant Bedlam, grotesque girlfriend doppelgangers and Ben Stiller's entire family. It's a movie for the whole family! Strap in for Anarchy, Armageddon and Annihilation with th...

Dan and Conrad resurrect an ancient wizard from a screaming coffin of tomato soup, hoist their triple-bladed shootin' sword and set off for the swashbuckling, headsplitting adventure of  The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) – the late Albert Pyun's directorial debut, featuring Lee Horsley, Kathleen Beller, Simon MacCorkindale, Geroge Maharis and Richard Lynch. It's your standard orphaned son of a mur...

Chris McKay, director of the thrilling horror comedy  Renfield , joins us for our Halloween special for a tour of one of his favourite haunted house movies:  The Legend of Hell House , which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. It features a rag-tag group of psychics and physicians investigating a notoriously evil abode once inhabited by a deranged megalomaniac whose hobbies included bestial...

Serge Bodnarchuk of Cold Crash Pictures joins us for a spooky season double-whammy spectacular. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the late William Friedkin's classic horror The Exorcist (1973) and the release of David Gordon Green's apprehensively anticipated rebootquel, The Exorcist: Believer (2023), we've scrabbled around in the oubliette and fished out not one but two Exorcist prequels: Renn...

In this Patron's Choice episode, we're venturing into the territory of sword and sorcery master Robert E. Howard's  Solomon Kane (2009), M. J. Bassett's largely forgotten action adventure film starring James Purefoy as the brutal privateer turned Puritan avenger on a quest to rescue a young pilgrim girl from an evil sorcerer. This one vanished without a trace after a bungled release in the US, whe...

We're revisiting the big budget adaptation of Stephen King's  Dreamcatcher at long last! Not only is the film celebrating its 20th anniversary, it's also a movie Dan's been wanting to cover since he started reading the book 5 years ago when we started this podcast! He's finally finished it, despite a canine mishap midway through, so here we are... And what a spectacle it is. An isolated snowy land...

The incredible Vincenzo Natali, director of Cube ,  Splice and In the Tall Grass , joins us to explore Paul Verhoeven's final Dutch-language film before he launched his Hollywood career:  The Fourth Man (1983). It's a visually stunning, darkly erotic thriller, with a Hitchcockian blonde, eye-popping and leg-crossing effects, and some subversive religious imagery. But is this hard-to-find tale of a...

Dan and Conrad find themselves itching compulsively while padding around in a tinfoil-covered motel room searching for aphids. Yes, we're revisiting  Bug (2006), the late William Friendkin's adaptation of Tracy Letts' play starring Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Lynn Collins and Harry Connick Jr. It's an intense psychological thriller set largely in a single room focusing on two lonely outcasts who...

Melinda Mock of RetroBlasting and Dreamland guest co-hosts and, while Dan is away, leads Conrad into the weird fairytale horror of Troll (1986), Empire Pictures' second-highest-grossing b-movie, which has since been overshadowed by the internet memes of its largely unrelated and famously awful sequel. Featuring Noah Hathaway (The NeverEnding Story), Michael Moriarty (The Stuff), Julia Louis-Dreyfu...

Manika Dulcio of the 'I've Been Meaning to Watch That' podcast visits us with a dusty old board game from 2005 called  Zathura: A Space Adventure , and before we know it, we're thrust into a wild sci-fi adventure with meteors, dinosaur aliens and frozen older sisters! Jon Favreau's first big effects movie has been eclipsed in popular culture by the first adaptation of a Chris Van Allsburg children...

Avast, ye space mateys! Con and Dan haul anchor and set sail for the 80s yet again for a slice of semi-spoof space operatics in the form of  The Ice Pirates (1984), which stars Robert Urich, Mary Crosby, Michael D. Roberts and features early appearances from Anjelica Houston and Ron Perlman. Set in another galaxy far, far away, where water has become a rare commodity, the film starts out as a heis...

Dan and Conrad join the ranks of the best and the brightest (and bored billionaires) as they blast off into low Earth orbit with Kate Capshaw, Lea Thompson, Tate Donovan, Larry B. Scott, Kelly Preston and a Leaf-like Joaquin Phoenix (yet to fully bloom in this early role). Yup! Our Patreons forced us to sign up for SpaceCamp (1986), the sci-fi adventure whose release was timed to capitalise on the...

Film critic and Horror Queers co-host Joe Lipsett joins us to explore the body snatching invasion thriller The Puppet Masters (1994), an adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 sci-fi novel starring Donald Sutherland, Eric Thal, Julie Warner, Keith David, Will Patton and Yaphet Kotto. Astonishing practical effects abound as parasitic manta rays from space leap merrily onto the backs of unsuspectin...

Writer, actor, comedian and all-round wonderful human being Mary Jo Pehl joins us as we try to untangle the twisted tale of Brian De Palma's  Sisters  (1972). Starring Margot Kidder (of Superman and The Amityville Horror fame) in the dual roles of demure French Canadian model Danielle and her psychotic, groin-stabby twin Dominique, and Jennifer Salt as the hard-boiled investigative journalist dete...

Conrad and Dan discover the 1995 sci-fi fantasy drama Powder cowering away in the oubliette basement and drag it whimpering into the sunlight to see if it's the sort of baby you want to immediately disown in the maternity ward, or a misunderstood marvel that's "too beautiful for this world". The tale of a mysterious young man with a whiter-than-white complexion who seems to have supernatural power...

Dan and Conrad explore the late George A. Romero's personal favourite and, until now, most elusive film,  Martin (1977), courtesy of Second Sight Films, whose stunning 4K remastered edition of the available to order in the UK now . It bears some narrative similarity with  Vampire's Kiss (1988), the topic of our previous episode, in that its central character believes they are a vampire... but migh...

Writer, director and actor Lars Henriks returns to help us through another odd 80s film featuring fangs and eccentric performances:  Vampire's Kiss (1988). That's right! Long before Nicolas Cage portrayed the most famous vampire of them all in this year's horror comedy Renfield , he played Peter Loew – a yuppie literary agent who becomes convinced he's a bloodsucking creature of the night after a...

One of our Patreons nominated Eddie Murphy's notorious 2003 sci-fi action 'comedy'  The Adventures of Pluto Nash for this episode, which on paper should have been promising. Its star was coming off a string of family-friendly comedies like  The Nutty Professor ,  Dr. Dolittle and  Shrek.  Its supporting cast includes Randy Quaid, Rosario Dawson, Joe Pantoliano, Jay Mohr, Pam Grier and John Cleese....

A new  Dungeons and Dragons movie arrives in theatres this month, so we thought we'd take a look back at the very first attempt to bring the beloved role-playing phenomenon to the screen. As two first-level novices, Dan and Conrad needed an expert Dungeon Master to guide them through this early 2000s CGI-fest, so the sage-like Michael French of RetroBlasting joins them. At least, he does until his...

Conrad and Dan are down under again, celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Spierig Brothers first feature film,  Undead , a chucklesome zombie-and-alien-visitation action extravaganza made on a shoestring budget with a "she'll be right" attitude. This 50s B-movie made in 2003 has wit and inventiveness galore, a vivacious ensemble cast and a score so cheesy it should come with a lactose-intoleran...

Conrad and Dan find themselves in the Arizona wilderness, watching the genre-defying, fast-and-furious road racing, sci-fi fantasy horror revenge thriller  The Wraith (1986). It features Charlie Sheen as new boy in town Jake, who just may or may not be the reincarnation of murdered local hero Jamie and may or may not be the alter ego of a mysterious black-clad racing driver who's picking off the m...

Dan and Conrad venture into the Forbidden Zone in stunning 80s 3D for this episode, with only a 14-year-old Molly Ringwald as their guide,Peter Strauss as their store-brand Han Solo hero and Ernie Hudson as... I dunno... someone who is also there? It's 80s b-movie sci-fi at its finest, as the world-weary bounty hunter Wolff (with two 'f's) drives across a desert planet to rescue three supermodels...