Movie Oubliette

Dan and Conrad slip into some chunky knit sweaters and go underground to explore  City of Ember (2008), a post-apocalyptic science fantasy starring Harry Treadaway, Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray and Tim Robbins. Based on a popular series of novels by Jeanne DuPrau, which became the focus of an intense bidding war when it came time for the film adaptation, the film seems to presage...

Matt Swaford of the Endless Bullets: The Action Movie Podcast  joins us for this special Iconicon 2022 crossover event, and brings with him a buddy cop zombie action movie we've never heard of: Dead Heat (1988). It stars Treat Williams, Joe Piscopo, Lindsay Frost and Vincent Price – yes, you read that right – is directed by legendary editor Mark Goldblatt (The Terminator) and written by Terry...

In a childhood nostalgia special, Dan revisits  Johnny Mnemonic  (1995) – the  other cyberpunk action thriller Keanu Reeves made in the 90s after hitting the big time in  Speed (1994). It's the one everyone forgets. Maybe our cybernetic implants were loaded with more than 320GB of data, like Keanu's black market data courier, Johnny? Directed by artist Robert Longo in his debut...

Melinda Mock of RetroBlasting  joins us to revisit one of her teenage favourites: Wes Craven's  Shocker (1989) – a bizarre attempt to create a new slasher franchise with The X-Files' Mitch Pileggi as psychotic serial killer Horace Pinker, who gains supernatural possession abilities after being executed in the electric chair. Future director Peter Berg plays a college football star player...

Dan and Conrad were spelunking in the oubliette's indoor pool and resurfaced M. Night Shyamalan's  Lady in the Water (2006), a fairy tale for adults starring Paul Giamatti as a melancholy caretaker in an apartment building who discovers a 'narf' in the community swimming pool. That might sound like a euphemism for something revolting, but it turns out to be an ethereal nymph-like creature pla...

For our 101st episode, we're covering our oldest film yet: 1955's  Conquest of Space , the speculative science fiction adventure from the producer/director team that brought us the seminal  War of the Worlds two years before. It's widely thought that George Pal and Byron Haskin's depiction of the first manned mission to Mars – crucially brought to the screen 6 years before we got off the...

We celebrated our 100th episode with a special livestream extravaganza where, for the very first time, we review a film that one of us worked on: The Witches Hammer (2006), a no-budget British vampire action movie starring Stephanie Beacham and graced with Conrad's music. And if that wasn't enough, we were joined by two wonderful special guests: Isaac Sutton, who brings the infectious joy to the M...

Conrad and Dan strap on asbestos leggings and propel themselves back in time to 1991 for the nostalgic family action/adventure  The Rocketeer.  Set in the Art Deco glamour of 1938 Los Angeles, it stars Bill Campbell as the daredevil pilot who stumbles upon a prototype jetpack and puts himself and his partner, Jenny (the breathtaking Jennifer Connolly), in the crosshairs of a mob gang lea...

Heather Wixson, Managing Editor of Daily Dead and author of Monsters, Makeup and Effects – Volume 1 , joins us on a tour of Clive Barker's sophomore film  Nightbreed , a dark fantasy horror film based on his novella Cabal and starring Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, director David Cronenberg as a suave serial killer (!), Hugh Quarshie and Doug Bradley. The film notoriously flopped on release in 19...

Dan and Conrad don their tightest neon cycling outfits and strap themselves into a gyroscope to celebrate the 30th anniversary of  The Lawnmower Man . Directed by Brett Leonard and starring a pre-Bond Pierce Brosnan as a neuro-scientist and Jeff Fahey as his gardener and unwitting lab rat, the film is most definitely  not based on anything written by one of the most famous horror authors...

Dan and Conrad retreat back to their comfort zone of 80s cheese, only to be confronted by the relentless exuberant strangeness of W.D. Richter's  The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984). It has an incredible cast. Peter Weller stars the titular Buckaroo – a daredevil neuroscientist particle physicist new romantic rock star and secret agent – with none other than Jeff Gold...

We're delving into new territory, thanks to our Patrons' nominations of a wide selection of pre-80s films! In this episode, we're looking at Crypt of the Vampire – a 1964 Italian/Spanish gothic horror movie based on Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novel  Carmilla  and starring the iconic Christopher Lee in a fetching dressing gown. It's got castles, thunderstorms, suits of armour, drippy candles...

Director Mark Pellington joins us to mark the 20th anniversary of the release of The Mothman Prophecies, a quietly disturbing supernatural thriller starring Richard Gere as a grief-stricken journalist who finds himself in a small West Virginia town helping a local police officer, Laura Linney, investigate a series of escalating unexplainable events. Based on a true account of a tragic disaster in...

We're celebrating the New Year with literal fireworks, re-igniting the smouldering embers of  Firestarter (1984). It stars a very young Drew Barrymore as a pyrokinetic super child on the run with her psychic 'pusher' dad (David Keith... definitely not to be confused with Keith David). They're trying to escape shady government types like Martin Sheen, reprising his role from  The Dead Zon...

Duncan Skiles, director of The Clovehitch Killer , returns for our special festive episode, in which we review a yuletide tale of a plucky kid who uses booby traps to repel a home invasion. No – not  that one! It's the French horror/thriller  Deadly Games (1989) – also known as  3615 code Père Noël  and about a dozen other titles. It was released a year before  Home Alone...

What if the classic fairy tale were laced with complex psycho-sexual drama between the king, the stepmother and the child cosplaying as her dead mum? What if the dwarves were mostly full-sized, scarred outlaws fleeing religious persecution? What if it starred Sigourney Weaver and Sam Neill and was full of 90s gothic intensity? We're about to find out as we explore 1997's Snow White: A Tale of...

In a special Patrons' Choice episode, we take a look back at  Starman (1984), John Carpenter's romantic sci-fi fable starring Jeff Bridges in an Oscar-nominated role as a visiting alien and Karen Allen as the widow whose husband he impersonates. Kicking off with a disturbing alien birth sequence that showcases the combined talents of Rick Baker, Stan Winston  and Dick Smith (yes, you rea...

Dan and Conrad are swept away by the 1993 science fiction mystery  Fire in the Sky , which is based on Arizonan logger Travis Walton's personal account of an alien abduction experience in 1975. Starring D. B. Sweeney ( Memphis Belle ), Robert Patrick (the T-1000 in  T2 ), Craig Sheffer  (Nightbreed ), Peter Berg (Wes Craven's Shocker ), Henry Thomas (Elliott from  E.T.  no...

Happy Halloween! Emmy-nominated actor Michelle Ang (The Tribe, Outrageous Fortune) joins us as we celebrate the spooky season with a look back at The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014), a found footage possession thriller directed by Adam Robitel ( Escape Room ). In it, our guest plays a student, Mia, who gets more than she bargained for when she tries to make a documentary focusing on Deborah Logan (...

Meagan Navarro – Head Critic and Chief Content Creator for Bloody Disgusting – returns with a special treat for us to explore: the 1986 haunted house monster zombie horror film  Spookies . With three directors, two separate casts, a reshoot that accounts for more footage than the original film and a plot that defies explanation, it's fair to say the story behind the movie is more compelling t...

Director Bernard Rose joins us for a look back at his first theatrical feature film, the dark fantasy  Paperhouse (1988). It features Charlotte Burke as a British schoolgirl who, while bedridden with glandular fever (or 'mono' for those across the pond), finds herself experiencing recurring dreams in which she visits an isolated house she drew herself. She soon discovers that she can add addi...

Conrad and Dan are doing battle with dragons again, but this time it's in London during the fateful futuristic year 2020. Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale and Gerard Butler – possibly the manliest of manly line-ups cinema could produce in 2002 – are joined by ace helicopter pilot Izabella Scorupco in Reign of Fire . It's a post-dragon apocalypse and mankind is reduced to living in castles, ridi...

John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars  is celebrating its 20th anniversary today, and we're lucky enough to be joined by its producer, Sandy King-Carpenter of Storm King Productions, for a look back at the master of horror's sci-fi horror action extravaganza. It's got a kick-ass cast of Natasha Henstridge, Pam Grier, Clea DuVall and Joanna Cassidy, plus Ice Cube and a very young and strangely hairy...

Serge Bodnarchuk of Cold Crash Pictures joins us to explore... New Zealand! Yes, Dan's homeland – but it's a bizarre alternate universe version of NZ, and not just because it's 1985. Zac Hobson wakes up naked in a motel bed to discover he may be the last man on Earth. He gets to engage in a few fantasies: driving a train, moving into a mansion, running rampant through a church wearing a nightie an...

Space botanist Bruce Dern murders his crewmates and hijacks his spaceship on a joyride through Saturns rings after he finds out his gardens are scheduled for destruction in Silent Running (1972), an eco-sci-fi film directed by special effects mastermind Douglas Trumbull. But will Dan and Conrad slip into a comfortable bathrobe and enjoy digging into this 70s cult classic, or will Joan Baez's vibra...