Saturday Night Freak Show

Holly takes on cocaine-fueled, motorcycle-riding ninja warriors with the power of rock n' roll with  Miami Connection  (1987), purported to be one of the best worst movies ever made. Evil Miami ninjas threaten the peaceful existence of Tae Kwon Do-practicing Orlando, and the chosen warriors of the band Dragon Sound are called upon to take them on. Listen as we recount tales of how a bad...

Sean takes his love of ornithology to new heights as he soars like a California Condor over Wes Craven's  My Soul to Take  (2010), which finds bird-loving teenager Bug (Max Theiriot) -- along with six of his friends, who are all celebrating the same birthday -- wondering if he is possessed by the spirit of a serial killer, known as the Riverton Ripper, who allegedly died on the same day...

Colin swears an oath to join the Count Dracula Society and summons the prince of darkness with  Dracula A.D. 1972 , a late-cycle entry into Hammer Films' Dracula series. The sinister majesty of Christopher Lee's Count is paired with the unflappable determination of Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, with the action updated into the silliness of Austin Powers-era swinging London. Listen as we talk a...

The Internet Radio Superstars take a Freak Show Field Trip to go see the newest Michael Myers' stab-a-thon,  Halloween  (2018), which brings back 5-time series regular Jamie Lee Curtis, still suffering from the trauma of his Halloween night homecoming 40 years ago. Listen as we dive into a spoiler-heavy, nuts and bolts discussion of what we thought worked and what didn't, and we each ran...

Michaela proposes 'The Night Stocker' might be a better title for  Intruder  (1989), a slasher movie set within the confines of a grocery store. Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi, and Bruce Campbell all appear in this gory tongue-in-cheek thriller which finds a late shift crew killed off one by one by a homicidal maniac. Listen as we relive the trauma of our retail job experiences, revel in the gory...

Holly hopes she doesn't get thrown in with  The People Under the Stairs  (1991), Wes Craven's social comment on class warfare between a ghetto-born kid named Fool and a couple of wealthy weirdos, played by Twin Peaks alumni Everett McGill and Wendy Robie. To keep from being evicted, Fool and Co. break into the ridiculously fortified, booby-trapped house of their landlords and finds break...

Sean discovers what is perhaps the only 80's British slasher movie,  Slaughter High  (1986). It's set in the USA but filmed in England, with British actors faking their way through American accents as they recount the tale of a tormented nerd, disfigured by his classmates, who returns to stalk and kill them at a high school reunion. Listen as we get the theme music stuck in our heads, ad...

Colin hits the road with the Shogun's executioner and his son in  Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril  (1973), the fourth in a series of cult Japanese samurai movies that follow the exploits of the deadliest father/son duo in the history of mass slaughter. Together they cut through an endless supply of hypertensive ninjas and tangle with a topless, tattooed female assassin. Listen as w...

Michaela thinks  Catwoman  (2004) is the purrrfect way to prove that no matter how bad you think comic book movies can get, they can always get worse. Oscar winner Halle Berry stars as a meek graphic designer who becomes possessed by an immortal housecat, which leads her to dress like a stripper to get revenge on the evil cosmetics company who wronged her. Listen to the dismay in our voi...

Holly scales to the height of adventure with Sylvester Stallone's  Cliffhanger  (1993), which finds the action star as a rescue climber crawling over mountains at the command of super-villain John Lithgow (and his phony English accent) in pursuit of three suitcases containing $100 million. Listen as we marvel over the film's stuntwork, twirl our mustaches with over the top villainy,...

Sean suffers a parental nightmare when kids start reading minds and killing people with their thoughts in  John Carpenter's Village of the Damned  (1993). After an unexplained blackout, women in a small, isolated village awaken to find themselves pregnant; the children grow up to be emotionless, blonde automatons who all share a collective consciousness and ultimately want to enslave hum...

Colin tries to rescue the Summer of Cannon with the Charles Bronson-starring slasher hybrid  10 to Midnight  (1983). The flick finds cop Bronson squaring off against a coed-killing psycho who strips buck naked to stalk and kill his quarry; he eventually bends the law to keep his nursing student daughter (Beverly Hills Cop's Lisa Eilbacher) safe from the killer's clutches. Listen as we ta...

Sean would prefer not to spend the winter tied to a couch with  The Thing  (2011), a remake of John Carpenter's seminal 1982 sci-fi/horror classic that's disguised itself as a prequel. Here, we get to find out what happened to that ill-fated Norwegian team before Kurt Russell and co. discovered it, only this time we're lead into battle by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Listen as we give the po...

Holly goes chumming for a giant prehistoric shark in the action-thriller  The Meg  (2018), a tale of a hungry megalodon, which has survived for thousands of years at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, that gets loose thanks to some meddling deep-sea scientists. Man-of-action Jason Statham is called in to track and kill the fearsome beast before it can make lunch out of hundreds of Chinese...

Michaela might like to live next to  The Boy Next Door  (2015), as long as he doesn't turn out to be a raving psychopath! Unfortunately for Jennifer Lopez, she doesn't have that kind of luck. Teacher J Lo has one night stand with the 19-year-old next door neighbor/student and quickly comes to regret it as he turns out to be a unhinged nutball. Listen as we pine for the return of the erot...

Kolin kontends with  Killer Klowns from Outer Space  (1988)! In this pastiche of 1950's-era alien invasion flicks, clown-like creatures from space arrive in a small American town and begin luring and trapping the citizenry using circus-inspired gags including cotton candy cocoons and lethal popcorn guns, while two lovebirds try to get the authorities to believe and assist them in stoppin...

Michaela parts the continents, brings down the wrath of the gods, and tosses bears into space alongside  Hercules  (1983), starring Lou ("The Incredible Hulk") Ferrigno as the musclebound hero. In this unholy alliance between Cannon Films and Italian genre cinema,  Starcrash  director Luigi Cozzi guides Hercules through his 12 labors, complete with power swords, laser beams, ro...

Holly tries to cast out the Devil (and his junior partner Abalam) using  The Last Exorcism  (2010). A documentary film crew follows a charismatic preacher who has fallen from grace and now intends to expose exorcism as hokum; but, of course, the remote farm he's summoned to may be home to real demonic evil after all. Listen as we dive in to the Freak Show's first found-footage movie...

Sean uses the word "nostalgia" one time too many in his review of  I Know What You Did Last Summer  (1997) as a quartet of Hollywood up-and-comers, including Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar, appear in this Scream-style "diet" slasher movie in which they are each stalked by a killer in a fisherman's getup as payback for a murder they covered up the year before. Li...

Colin discovers there really are giant alligators living in the sewers in the monster movie  Alligator  (1980), which finds cop Robert Forster hunting down the 25 foot long beast that ate his partner. Said gator had been down in the sewers eating disposed of test animals from a pharmaceutical company, and all hell breaks loose when it comes above ground and starts chomping its way throug...

Holly thinks the only actor good enough to star opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme is Jean-Claude Van Damme in  Double Impact  (1991), which finds the action star stretching his acting muscles to play two brothers - separated at birth - who meet up in Hong Kong to get revenge for their parents' murder. Listen as we talk about Hollywood's history of actors acting opposite themselves, the weir...

Michaela's chases her Cannon Films fixation directly into a chainsaw duel against  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2  (1986). It's 13 years later and the cannibalistic clan of psychos prowl the back roads of Texas, selling their own brand of BBQ and stalking a radio DJ while a vengeful ex-Texas Ranger named "Lefty" pursues them in order to meet out his own brand of justice. Listen as we pond...

Sean gives up on life and happiness by subjecting himself and to the Italian-made  Aliens/Terminator  ripoff  Shocking Dark  (1989). Borrowing so liberally from James Cameron's films as so we're sure there was a lawsuit involved, a group of soldiers get trapped in a tunnel underneath futuristic Venice where slimy creatures are out to get them. And, there might be a Terminator....

Colin celebrates the 30th anniversary of the practical effects monster movie The Blob (1988). A meteor falls to earth carrying a sentient, gooey substance that grows larger by absorbing living organisms and soon grows large enough to threaten a small town. Only The Lesser Dillon and that girl from the  Saw  movies stand between humanity and a killer glob of alien goo in this sci-fi remak...

Michaela finds the soul for getting down to  Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo  (1984) a Cannon-produced cash-grab sequel with one of the most memorable titles in all of filmdom. In this musical adventure, our heroes Special K, Ozone and Turbo find that an evil corporate developer wants to install a shopping mall (gasp!) on the site of their community performance hall. What can be done to sa...