Saturday Night Freak Show

We try not to get cleaved in half by troglodytes wielding a Bone Tomahawk (2015), the final pick of the 2025 Listener Choice Month! Four unlikely allies ride out from a small frontier town after one of their wives is abducted in this horror-Western. Listen as we talk throat whistles, pull-a-part humans, and our odds of our surviving in the Old West on this week's exciting episode! Hosted on Acast....

If Frank Henenlotter had directed Death Becomes Her it might approximate The Substance (2024). Demi Moore gives a career defining performance as a fading star who takes an experimental substance that promises to create a younger, better version of herself. Listen as we applaud the decade's loopiest, nakedest, goriest body horror splatter opus from the new wave of French Extremism on this week's ex...

We're getting gory with killer clowns and watching Terrifier 2 (2022) because you demanded it! Art the Clown continues his blood soaked rampage, aided and abetted by a supernatural Pale Little Girl, and the only person who stands in his way is a teen Valkyrie! Listen as we explore the appeal of Damien Leone's splatter saga on this week's exciting episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...

We'll be friends 'til the end after revisiting Child's Play (1988), the definitive killer doll movie from Fright Night director Tom Holland, the movie that gave us the first introduction to Chucky and launched one of the longest running movie series in the history of horror. Listen as we talk about 7th Heaven , Cabbage Patch Kid chaos, sequels, shows, and more on this week's exciting episode! Host...

We look back on a year in film with our massive Best and Worst of 2024 episode, with each of us spotlighting the five best and one worst movies that we've seen this year. Grab a bucket of popcorn and settle in for the wildest ride yet that includes honorable mentions and silliest fun time at the theater we've had all year long! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Holly does her first giallo shot with the Italian whodunnit The Fifth Cord (1971), starring Django 's Franco Nero as an alcoholic reporter who finds himself a prime suspect in a series of slayings committed by a gloved madman. Listen as we puzzle over red herrings galore, fawn over Italian fashionistas, and get slap happy with suspects on this week's exciting episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.co...

Sean watches a hiss-terical WWE throwdown between an alien cat and a junkyard mastiff in The Cat (1992), a film from the director of the equally bizarro Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. The cat is part of a trio of intergalactic visitors are just looking for a way home, but in the meantime they have to deal with a shapeshifting alien menace that threatens mankind. Listen as we discuss body melting, gr...

Colin digs up corpses in snowy Wisconsin and invites them to the dinner table because he's Deranged (1974)! Bob (Black Christmas) Clark produced this unofficial Ed Gein biopic, which features a memorable performance by Roberts (Home Alone) Blossom and gore effects by a young Tom Savini. Listen as we talk grimy 70s horror movies, Ryan Murphy's serial killer obsession, and horrible ways to die on th...

Michaela finds a cybercult of killers on the dark web who murder anonymous women and call them Kristy (2014). Star Haley Bennett is left alone at college over the Thanksgiving weekend and has to escape and survive a quartet of maniacs led by Ashley Greene. Listen as we identify the hallmarks of the nihilistic survival horror genre, call b.s. on college security and maintenance practices, and get t...

Holly discovers that mixing laced marijuana and tainted turkey can turn anyone into a Blood Freak (1972), a no-budget anti-drug monster movie about a guy who imbibes the aforementioned cocktail and wakes up with a giant turkey head. The only thing that can sate his monstrous hunger: the drug blood of addicts! Listen as we struggle to interpret the signs and portents and learn key life lessons on t...

Sean's "got to dig" because a ghost commands it with Stir of Echoes (1999), a working class ghost story set in Chicago, in which Kevin Bacon's doors of perception are blown open after he volunteers to be hypnotized and a specter from beyond the grave attempts to make contact. Listen as we discuss unfair comparisons to The Sixth Sense , creepy kids, horror legend Richard Matheson, and more on this...

Colin scrambles to escape from the fish people who worship Dagon (2001), director Stuart Gordon's long gestating adaptation of HP Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." A shipwrecked couple end up running from their lives after seeking help in a rainy, Spanish seaside town that holds a terrible secret. Listen as we chant "Ia! Ia! C'thulhu Fh'tagan," squirm from tentacled monsters, and are lucky...

Michaela trains to become a cyberhacker on a night when all crime is legal with The Purge: Anarchy (2014), a sequel that takes the action out onto the mean streets of Los Angeles during the annual dystopian holiday. Listen as try to survive the night with action star Frank Grillo providing defense, all the while dreaming up scenarios for future Purge movies and TV shows, like Seinfeld Purge, Pirat...

Holly wanders into an underworld just as real as ours, but not as brightly lit with Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990). The spiritual third Creepshow movie boasts stories by George Romero, Stephen King, and Arthur Conan Doyle, and includes mummies, cats from hell, and lovetorn gargoyles. Listen as we tally off screen cat deaths, eat the rich, and get our brains pulled out through our noses...

Sean tries not to lose his head while visiting the haunted hamlet of Sleepy Hollow (1999), which recasts schoolteacher Ichabod Crane as a police inspector investigating murders committed by a headless horseman. Listen as we delve into the big screen version of America's first ghost story, witness Christopher Walken's first on-screen kiss, and visit a bog witch on this week's exciting episode! Host...

Colin dances with the body-and-wife-swappin' Devil in The Mephisto Waltz (1971), in which Alan Alda plays a pianist who's body is taken over by a dying Satanist and his wife doesn't care who's in that body - she just wants more! Listen as we talk horny housewives, suburban black magic, Shakespearean dog acting, aging backwards, and blue goo on this week's exciting episode! Hosted on Acast. See aca...

Michaela says 'Do your thing, cuz!' and cheers on her cannibal cousin Leatherface with Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper's horror classic which finds statuesque Alexandria Daddario inheriting a plantation manor with a chainsaw-wielding psychopath hidden in the basement. Listen as we imagine Clint Eastwood beaming with pride at son Scott's first major role, and learn we can't...

Holly thinks we all go a little mad sometimes with Psycho II (1983), a belated sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's classic shocker that brings Anthony Perkins back to the Bates Motel, supposedly cured... but is he? Listen as we talk the path from Psycho to Halloween to Psycho II, honoring a horror classic, and overbearing mothers on this week's exciting episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...

Sean goes on a limb-from-limb ripping rampage to get back the Body Parts (1991) that were stolen from him in an unethical medical experiment! Jeff Fahey is the unlucky recipient of one appendage after losing an arm in a horrifying car wreck; he soon begins experiencing the dreams and nightmares of a serial killer. Listen as try to determine the physical location of evil, talk about haunted arms, a...

Colin returns from the dead to tap at your window, begging to be let in with Salem's Lot (1979), Tobe Hooper's classic adaptation of Stephen King's small-town vampire story as a writer who returns home and finds the arrival of two mysterious antique dealers presaging a bloodsucker apocalypse. Listen as we talk picket fence drama, childhood traumas, and a love for practical fog on this week's excit...

Sean goes batty for Bats (1999), a late 90s eco-horror flick that turns a cloud of genetically engineered killer bats loose on an unsuspecting town, and it's up to sheriff Lou Diamond Phillips and bat scientist Dina Meyer to stop them. Listen as we fawn over puppet bats, discuss the best potato bats in cinema history, and react in horror as we find ourselves up to our chests in bat guano on this w...

Holly uses fairy magic to battle an evil bog witch in Eyes of Fire (1983), in which American settlers follow an adulterous preacher away from civilization and into a haunted woodland where they are bedeviled by evil spirits. Listen as we learn about dirt you can eat, get chased by naked mud covered ghosts, get our souls sucked into trees and more on this week's exciting episode! Hosted on Acast....

Sean conducts unethical medical experiments and tries to turn Holly into a snake with Sssssss (1973), in which crazy herpetologist Strother Martin tries to do just that to his unwitting lab assistant. Freak Show wall-of-famer Reb Brown co-stars as a football meathead who ends up confronting a Black Mamba in the shower. Listen as we relate tales of our real-life snake encounters and imagine better...

Colin opens the atrocity exhibition that is The Crow: City of Angels (1996), a cynical cash grab that followed the original monument to Goth/Industrial subculture. This time, a mechanic is resurrected to get revenge on the goons who killed him and his son. Listen as we talk about the lost art of "crowfitti," detail uncomfortable moments in a peep show booth, and light our initials on fire in the s...

Michaela claims she cried three times witnessing Godzilla Minus One (2023), Japan's latest but Oscar-winning entry in the 70 year old monster series. It's really about a cowardly kamikaze pilot who finds a reason to complete his mission after the Big G threatens those he loves. Listen as we contemplate Godzilla's cat-like appearance, question black-and-white re-releases, and contemplate erectile d...