Saturday Night Freak Show

Colin conjures up the 1982 fantasy film Sorceress, a campy flick from the post-Conan, 80's fantasy movie craze. An evil sorcerer searches for his twin girls (Playboy's Leigh and Lynnette Harris), warrior women who were raised as boys, and who now team up with a barbarian, a satyr, and a dwarf, to stop him from conjuring an evil deity to enslave the world. Listen as we name drop as many 80's fantas...

Holly tries to find "The Glow" of Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon (1985), Motown's first (and only) motion picture production. A kung-fu movie by way of MTV music videos, this blacksploitation flick centers on a martial arts student, Bruce Leroy (Taimak), who seeks to become master of his discipline, which can only be achieved by defeating both the Sho'Nuff - the Shogun of Harlem - and a slimy corpo...

Sean takes a look back at a movie that terrified him as a sensitive 15-year-old: the Corey Haim vehicle Watchers (1988). Based on a novel by Dean R. Koontz, Watchers is the story of a super-intelligent, genetically engineered dog who has a psychic link with another, more beastly creature. When both of them escape from a government research facility, they somehow end up putting 80's teen heartthrob...

Travis takes us back to the height of ninja popularity in American pop-culture with Ninja III: The Domination (1984), in which an aerobics instructor (Lucinda Dickey) - who moonlights as a telephone repairman - becomes possessed by the spirit of an evil ninja and starts hunting down the cops who killed him. Join us for full-on ninja-skills dissection of an absolutely insane 80's gem, plus we try t...

Colin proves you don't have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre with Pieces (1982), a camp-classic splatter opus. A child hacks his mother to death after she catches him assembling a naughty jigsaw puzzle; forty years later, a black-gloved serial killer starts carving up coeds at a Boston university with a chainsaw. Could they be related? Is the killer trying to assemble a human jigsaw puzzle?...

Sean takes us ringside for the cleavage vs cleavers experience that is Sorority House Massacre II (1990), not to be confused with Slumber Party Massacre II, although this is a sequel to Slumber Party Massacre. Got that? Nubile sorority girls buy a former murder house - in the hope of transforming it into their new sorority house - and then inexplicably summon the killer's spirit with a Ouija board...

Travis takes a trip back to the filmic heyday of New York's 42nd Street with his pick of Basket Case (1982), in which a man and his murderous, deformed Siamese twin stalk and kill the doctors responsible for separating them. Listen as we revisit the infamous days of grindhouse theaters, reminisce about renting horror movies on VHS tape, read viewer mail, and more on this week's exciting episode! H...

Colin tries to find the science behind the spooks in Quatermass and the Pit (1967). In this Hammer Films production, work on a London tube extension uncovers a 5 million year old object which may not be of this earth. Intrepid scientist Bernard Quatermass is called in to investigate once ghosts and hobgoblins start being seen by nearby residents. Do aliens, the origin of man, and an apocalyptic ba...

Travis wants to be Pinhead's right hand man in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), the third of nine (nine!) movies (currently) in the series following Clive Barker's groundbreaking 1987 original. Here, a TV news reporter is tasked with sending Pinhead, newly released upon the earth, back to hell. Listen to what we're going to end up referring to as The Hellraiser Episode, as we discuss the enti...

Colin dons his black gloves and indulges his obsession with Italian gialli and Dario Argento's Tenebre (1982). An American writer in Italy begins receiving threatening messages from a serial killer who murders his victims according to methods described in the author's books. Listen as we deep dive into the stylish horror subgenre of "giallo" films, looking back at their beginnings in lurid paperba...

Sean looks in a mirror and summons the Candyman (1992), director Bernard Rose's adaptation of Clive Barker's "The Forbidden". Relocating the action from an London slum to Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project, the movie tells the story of a graduate student, researching urban myths, who finds more than she bargained for when she conjures a specter known as the Candyman. Listen as we talk about t...

Travis finds himself lost In the Mouth of Madness (1994), John Carpenter's apocalyptic homage to H.P. Lovecraft. Insurance investigator John Trent (Sam Neil) is hired to find missing horror author Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow) but finds his grip on reality slipping as the twisted reality of Cane's works begin to threaten reality as we know it. Listen as we lose our minds discussing the stories of...

Colin takes us into dark fairy-tale territory with the cult film Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973). Also known as Lemora: Lady Dracula and The Legendary Curse of Lemora, the film follows virginal, Prohibition-era choir girl, Lila Lee (Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith), into the grim world of a lecherous lady vampire who has designs on initiating her into the world of the undead. Listen as...

Sean celebrates the 20th anniversary of Scream by watching... Scream 2 (1997). In what should be known as Scream: The College Years, poor Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) takes the entire small town of Woodsboro with her to university, where a Ghostface-masked copycat killer tries to outdo the murderers of the first film. Listen as we celebrate the legacy of director Wes Craven, examine the Scream...

Travis takes us back to high school with Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987), an in-name-only sequel to the 1980 Jamie Lee Curtis slasher, in which the ghost of vengeful, murdered prom queen Mary Lou Maloney returns to Hamilton High to for bloody revenge. Listen as we look back at this colorful mashup between Carrie and A Nightmare on Elm Street, reminisce about USA's Up All Night TV show, and de...

Colin takes us on a paranormal investigation into The Legend of Hell House (1973), in which a group of psychics and scientists (featuring Roddy McDowall and Pamela Franklin) venture into the "Mount Everest of Haunted Houses" in hopes of proving, conclusively, whether or not there is life after death. Of course, they get more than they bargained for when the restless spirits of the house begin to s...

Sean dons the red, white and blue with Captain America (1990), the first attempt to bring Marvel's comic book character to the big screen. Imbued with super powers in a secret WWII experiment, Steve Rogers (Matt Salinger) teams up with the daughter of his one-time love to track down the villainous Red Skull (Scott Paulin), and stop a villainous plan to take over the United States. Listen as we tal...

Travis takes us on a spiritual journey with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984), a Japanese fantasy set in a post-apocalyptic future. A princess has to stop an aggressive neighboring kingdom from using a powerful weapon to eradicate a toxic jungle of giant insects. Listen as our good intentions snowball into absolute confusion, chaos and incoherence as we try to decipher this acclaimed film,...

Jenny gets lost in the Bermuda Triangle with her pick of Triangle (2009), which finds Melissa (Alias, 30 Days of Night) George experiencing what we refer to as the "Groundhog Day effect" (only with much bloodier consequences) while aboard an adrift ocean liner. This podcast is marked S for SPOILERS as we dive deep into the temporal mechanics of writer/director Christopher Smith's ocean-set mind be...

Colin uses his black belt to combat black magic as he summons The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) on this week's show. Genre stalwart Peter Cushing travels to China to aid villagers under siege from the titular undead plague; he's assisted by 7 kung fu-wielding brothers (and their 1 sister) in this bizarre co-production between Britain's Hammer Films and the Chinese Shaw Brothers studios. D...

Brent swims us out to The Beach (2000), as Leonardo DiCaprio discovers a paradise on a tropical island off the coast of Thailand, then discovers that the only threat to perfection is man himself. Listen as we talk entitled youth, shark attacks, hippie communes, mercy killings, forbidden romance, and bear witness to Travis' tirade against "liberals" on this week's exciting show! Hosted on Acast. Se...

Sean was having a good day until every machine on the planet went into Maximum Overdrive (1986), horror author Stephen King's first (and only) directorial effort. Earth passes through the tail of a rogue comet which imbues all machines with sentient life. Their first order of business: exterminate mankind! A bunch of murderous semi trucks converge on the Dixie Boy truck stop and only Emilio Esteve...

Travis becomes the night with a look at Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993), a big screen edition of the Batman: The Animated Series TV show, which finds Batman (Kevin Conroy) dealing with the appearance of a new costumed vigilante in Gotham, and battling conflicting emotions stirred up by the re-appearance of the girl who got away, Andrea Beaumont (Dana Delaney). Listen as we track the evolution...

Jenny celebrates her birthday with a re-visitation of the childhood staple The Princess Bride (1987), a sweet-natured spoof of fairy tales directed by Rob (Misery, A Few Good Men) Reiner. Is one of the most beloved movies of all time beloved by the Internet Radio Superstars of the Saturday Night Freak Show? You'll have to listen to find out! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informat...

Colin tries to make sense of Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives (2013), in which Ryan Gosling stars as a psychologically damaged drug smuggler, living in Bangkok, who plows a path of revenge after his brother is killed. Things get complicated with the arrival of his monster of a mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) and a seemingly supernatural policeman. Listen as we analyze the meaning of symbolis...