Saturday Night Freak Show

Michaela beings to question everything about the world she's living in after watching  Serenity  (2019). You might wonder how this alleged "sexy noir" thriller qualifies as a Freak Show candidate but we can only tell you it does, a bizarre trainwreck of a movie with an A-list cast that runs right off the rails of both sanity and good taste before it's over. Listen as we ponder the metaph...

Holly discovers aliens have turned a small seaside town into a fast food human buffet in Peter Jackson's  Bad Taste  (1987), a virtuoso splatstick comedy from the director/writer/cinematographer/editor/makeup effects/star. Listen as we get recall experiences with DIY filmmaking, nearly barf thinking about aliens drinking barf, and get closer to mastering the technical hurdles of social d...

Sean ventures into the rainforest and comes back as a big, scaly monster in  The Relic  (1997). Said creature gets shipped back to Chicago's Field Museum where it decapitates 25 people and is hunted down by the bulk of the metropolitan police force while scientists try to decode its genome, ad nauseum. Listen as we question the wisdom of shooting an entire movie without lighting, wonder...

Colin forgets one of life's most valuable lessons: never stop at a backwoods  Tourist Trap  (1979)! Friendly proprietor Chuck Connors shows off a wax effigy of his wife to young travelers in his off-road "museum" while his telekinetic brother runs around in a creepy mask, encasing beautiful women in plaster. On this episode you'll hear about mannequin orgies, hearts bursting in frig...

Michaela has a premonition of bad things to come after watching  Final Destination 3  (2006), aka the one with the rollercoaster. Mary Elizabeth Winstead suffers survivors guilt after her friends are killed and then tries to save the rest from the machinations of Death itself. Listen as we explore death by tanning bed, the therapy of yelling at bears, Choose Your Own Adventure DVDs, and...

Holly is lured in by the promise of watching Donald Pleasance, Jack Palance and Martin Landau together in a slasher movie with  Alone in the Dark  (1982). During a citywide blackout, a quartet of psychos escape from a mental hospital and lay siege to the home of their therapist. Listen as we contemplate bizarre dream sequences, punks against nuclear power, and Jack Palance's lung capacit...

Sean wonders if 10 years may have softened the pain of witnessing 2010's  A Nightmare on Elm Street  remake. Once upon a time, Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes set about to remake every sacred horror movie classic, this time casting Oscar-nominee Jackie Earl Haley as pederast child killer-turned-dream demon Fred Krueger. Listen as we heap scorn at the feet of creatively bankrupt Hollywood mo...

Colin says you'll "buy a bag, go home in a box" of  Popcorn  (1991), a slasher film set in a movie theater where lovingly-crafted throwbacks to William Castle-style 50's "gimmick" movies play on screen during an all-night horror movie marathon. Listen as we recount uncomfortable 4D movie theater experiences, explore death by mosquito proboscis, and encounter the terror of crusty cor...

Michaela couldn't wait for Sean to get around to showing us his brand new Blu-ray of  Tammy and the T-Rex: The Gore Cut  (1994), a new version of a video store staple which reinstates a bunch of bloody sequences into formerly "family-friendly" sci-fi comedy. Denise Richards stars as a cheerleader who's jock boyfriend (pre- Fast and the Furious  Paul Walker) is killed by bullies and...

Holly says she'd take a job babysitting a haunted doll after watching  The Boy  (2016). Lauren Cohan, from TV's  The Walking Dead , stars as an American nanny who relocates to a spooky English manor house to watch over an eccentric couple's "son," who turns out to be a porcelain doll. Strange occurrences ensue. Listen as we discuss reverse hauntings, giant British billiard tables, a...

Greetings, boils and ghouls! Sean tries to resist temptation, survive the night and save the world with  Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight  (1995)! The popular 90's HBO TV series gets a big-screen upgrade as seven unlucky souls find themselves in an apocalyptic last stand between scruffy paladin William Sadler and a demonic cowboy (Billy Zane) with a coterie of demons in tow. L...

Colin supposes Dario Argento is the godfather of the slasher film after watching  Deep Red  (aka Profundo Rosso aka The Hatchet Murders, 1975). An English pianist in Rome witnesses a murder and must discover who the black gloved killer is before he becomes the next victim. Listen as we compare the Italian giallo to the American slasher, find direct correlations between  Deep Re...

Michaela supposes that every celebrity's worst nightmare is  The Fanatic  (2019), in which a movie star-obsessed fan named "Moose" (John Travolta) suffers a series of humiliations at the hands of his screen idol (Devon Sawa), setting the feeble-minded fellow off on a quest to be acknowledged by his hero, at any cost. Listen as we chat about the directorial prowess of Limp Bizkit frontman...

We wrap up Listener's Choice month with our most requested title:  Creepshow  (1982), as George Romero and Stephen King team up to pay homage to EC's horror comics of the 1950s. Prepare yourself for five jolting tales of terror, featuring ghouls, monsters, creepy crawlies and revenge from beyond the grave, all on this week's exciting episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mo...

Listener's Choice month continues as we move on to our 2nd most requested movie,  Sleepaway Camp  (1983). Honestly, it's strange we haven't already covered this (although we did watch the sequel,  Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers ). Odd duck Angela and her cousin Ricky spend a summer weekend at Camp Arawak where, almost immediately, people begin dying one by one. What beef does th...

We're watching movies you voted for this month, and coming in at #3 is  John Carpenter's The Fog  (1980). The seaside hamlet of Antonio Bay is haunted by a 100 year old curse as a supernatural fog descends, bringing with it the ghosts of angry shipwrecked sailors! Listen as we tremble in awe at the power of Tom Atkins' un-mustached upper lip, our fear of being turned inside out, pirate g...

We're spending January 2020 watching movies you voted for, kicking off the celebration with #4:  Jaws: The Revenge  (1987). Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) discovers this time it's personal as a Great White shark sets out to kill every member of her family, presumably in retaliation for its brethren destroyed in the first set of movies, and even follows her from Long Island to the Bahamas to...

It's that time of year again, as we gather 'round the bar to make our picks of the  Best and Worst Movies  we saw in 2019! Will your favorite make the cut? As always, thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy it!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Holly burns rubber with John Carpenter's  Christine  (1983), based on Stephen King's novel. High school nerd Arnie becomes obsessed with restoring an old '58 Plymouth Fury, and gradually, as Christine comes back to life, Arnie gains a new self confidence. But who is killing off the high school bullies who tormented him? Listen as we discuss creepy car salesmen, teenage rebellion, au...

Sean finds out that what goes on in the baby's room isn't for kids in  The Baby  (1973)! A new social worker forms and unhealthy obsession with her latest client, a grown man with the maturity of a baby, who's kept in a giant playpen my his peculiar mother and sisters. Listen as we collectively cringe at all the diaper changing, breast feeding, cattle prod-wielding weirdness on this week...

Colin proclaims that "Satan was an acid head" and proceeds to freak out with  I Drink Your Blood  (1970), a notorious gorefest in which a vengeful tot poisons meat pies with rabies and feeds them to a group of satanic hippies, who then go on a blood-soaked rampage. Listen as amplified lip-smacking sends Sean and Michaela into a paroxysm of disgust, while we learn about Walt Disney's...

Michaela thinks dressing up as Santa Claus might prove hazardous to her health in  Don't Open 'Til Christmas  (1984), in which a psycho slasher prowls the streets of London, killing Father Christmas wherever he finds him! Two lovebirds and a Scotland Yard detective try to run down the Santa killer before he slays again. Listen as we mine the shallow subgenre of British slasher movies, Ke...

Holly winds up a reanimated ghoul after aliens enact  Plan 9 From Outer Space  (1959). Infamously described as "the worst movie ever made", director Ed Wood's sci-fi opus brings aliens to Earth to bring the dead back to life in an effort to conquer the planet. Listen as we expound on the career of Ed Wood, Bela Lugosi's posthumous guest starring role, and generally get a bunch of trivia...

Sean mounts the head of Sylvester Stallone atop the Saturday Night Freak Show Wall of Fame with  Eye See You  (2002), the closest the Italian Stallion will ever get to being in a horror movie (outside of Cobra). Stallone is a despondent FBI agent who gets shipped off to a cavernous detox center in the wintry wilds of Wyoming and discovers one of the patients there is a killer. But which...

Colin emphatically declares "It's not cranberry sauce!" while surveying the crimson carnage of the holiday slasher  Blood Rage  (1987). Terry and Todd are identical twins. One of them is a psychopathic killer. After escaping from a mental hospital on Thanksgiving, he of them heads back home to bring a nightmare to the tenants of the Shadow Woods apartment complex. Listen as we talk about...