Saturday Night Freak Show

Holly wants to see if she's got what it takes to be Best of the Best (1989), by representing Team USA in a Korean martial arts tournament. James Earl Jones is the coach, and the team of karate superdudes consists of Eric Roberts and Christopher Penn. Send prayers! Listen as we explore the dubious methods of winning gold in the high-stakes world of Tae Kwon Do championships on this week's exciting...

Sean takes us to the beach so we can grow Old (2021) together, since vacationers who visits said beach never leave. Instead, they age rapidly, children grow to adulthood, psychological and biological medical conditions bloom, and Abbey Lee wears a swimsuit. Listen as we put Benjamin Button on the island, overexplain the plot until we're blue in the face, and consider M. Night Shyamalan a Secret Ge...

Colin sees psycho killers in double double after watching Wicked, Wicked (1973), the world's first movie presented in Duo-Vision (that's "split screen" to you). A murderer is preying upon statuesque blondes at a seaside resort and it's up to the hotel detective to stop him before he targets the hotel's new lounge singer. Listen as we split our attention between two screens, find people living in t...

Michaela won't let anything stop her from being a Hollywood star, following in the footsteps of Ti West's antihero, Maxxxine (2024). Porn star Maxxine Minx tries to go legit with a role in a low-budget horror film but events from her past and the Night Stalker's murder spree threaten to derail her career. Listen as we talk scrotum skewering, cocaine geese, neon slime, and more on this week's excit...

Holly's not sure if she she may have photographed a murder with Blow Up (1966), a movie set in "mod," Swinging London, about an easily distracted photographer trying to find something to stimulate him out of his boredom. Listen as we give legit film criticism the old college try as we surround ourselves with a gaggle of "far out" and "groovy" models and work to figure out if a murder was committed...

Sean celebrates our 600th episode with a rewatch of Tango & Cash (1989), the adult action cartoon that partners Sylvester Stallone with Kurt Russell's hair, about two wrongly accused rivals who have to take down the syndicate that set them up. Listen as we break out our measuring sticks in the prison shower, send rats through a desktop maze, and visit the Q branch of the LA police department o...

Colin thinks just by wearing a hockey mask he can call himself Jason, since it was so easy for a guy named Roy to do it in Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985). Listen as we yell "He hurt me, ma!" while riding our motorcycles in circles, serenading each other with renditions of "Ooh Baby" and cursing "those damn enchiladas" as we trot to the outhouse on this week's exciting show! Hosted...

Michaela cuts the cake while surrounded by corpses of her friends, and finds herself singing Happy Birthday to Me (1981)! Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Sue Anderson is a prep school student plagued by repressed memories and blackouts as members of her rich-kid clique are murdered by a black gloved killer. Listen as our brains explode from over-processing a overly complicated plot on thi...

Holly becomes a fire whisperer with Backdraft (1991), Hollywood's ode to firefighters, with Highlander / The Prophecy scribe Gregory Widen pitting two adversarial Irish brothers against each other and a serial arsonist who's been terrorizing Chicago. Listen as we turn to a Hannibal Lecter stand-in to gain psychological insight on the anthropomorphic monster on this week's exciting episode! Hosted...

This week, we took a Freak Show Field Trip to see In A Violent Nature (2024), a indie Friday the 13th-style slasher shot almost entirely from a 3rd person perspective of it's Jason-like monster. Listen as we go stomping through the woods turning campers into curly-Qs in an effort to determine if the movie is having a go at us as a deadpan comedy sendup of F13 flicks on this weeks' exciting episode...

God created Sean, but science turned him into a god after getting programmed by The Lawnmower Man (1992), the best remembered 90s cautionary tale about the horrors of virtual reality. Simple-minded Jobe becomes a tyrannical terror after he's given VR brain chemistry enhancements by unscrupulous scientist Pierce Brosnan. Listen as we discuss how well VR is going in the present day, trip out to the...

Colin kneels at the throne of Stirba, the werewolf queen of Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985), following Freak Show man of action, Reb Brown, into battle alongside werewolf hunter Christopher Lee into deepest, darkest Transylvania to infiltrate an orgy of punk lycanthropes. Listen as we discuss full moon sex rituals, monkey wolves, and threaten to hang the editor on this week's exciting...

Michaela wishes to explode over the local ruffians as a gelatinous mutant after watching X-Men (2000), the movie often credited with kick-starting the Marvel movie takeover. Listen as we reminisce about a simpler time when wire-stunts and small scale disasters were the order of the day, have nightmare flashbacks of cramming for the high school exam, and go out as swamp goblins on this week's excit...

Holly finds all the boys think Nicole Kidman is To Die For (1995) playing a narcissistic, media obsessed weathercaster who seduces an idiot teen (Joaquin Phoenix) into killing her husband (Matt Dillon) in Gus Van Sant's fictionalized version of the Pamela Smart case. Listen as we discuss true-crime documentaries, 90s TV talk shows, and discover we're complicit in the ongoing media takeover on this...

Sean tries to catch the invisible sex predator at large in Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man (2000), which casts Kevin Bacon as a narcissistic scientist who discovers invisibility allows him to pursue his darkest impulses. Listen as we discuss invisible peen, God complexes, science battle montages, and more on this week's exciting episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Into the light I command you," Colin exclaims, drawing out the occult investigator Constantine (2005). Keanu Reeves plays the very American version of the DC Comics exorcist, caught up in a battle between angels and demons on the streets of Los Angeles. Listen as we learn shocking things about intelligent crabs, the TV series "Lucifer," and debate if Keanu is a good actor on this week's exciting...

Michaela says she will never ever drive on a highway again after witnessing the catastrophic calamity that opens Final Destination 2 (2002), the movie that did to road trips what Jaws did for swimming in the ocean. Listen as we learn about Sean's real-life horror movie cat scare, challenge each other to build a red-string evidence board, and philosophize on the life of death on this week's excitin...

Holly waits for the Blood Moon to bring the return of the "Dark Stranger" from the ocean's depths with Messiah of Evil (1973), in which a woman goes searching for her missing artist father in a seemingly abandoned seaside town where residents await the fulfilment of a centuries old curse. Listen as we revisit the first film from the Howard the Duck-Indiana Jones writing team of Willard Huyck and G...

Sean creates ripples through time and fractures his mind with the time-travel mind-bender The Butterfly Effect (2004), in which childhood friends experience a catalog of traumas that one of them tries to fix as an adult when he discovers his power to warp time by uncovering repressed memories. Listen as we rate the Misery Index as "High" on this one, discover that worms' memories are the key to hu...

Colin gets caught in the middle of warring factions of angels battling it out on Earth in The Prophecy (1995), with Christopher Walken having the time of his life as the archangel Gabriel, searching for "the darkest soul" to lead his army against heaven. Listen as we wonder what an angel smells like, suck souls out of corpses, experience apocalyptic visions, and more on this week's exciting episod...

Michaela downloads the latest in high tech CD-ROM interactive horror, Brainscan (1994), in which Edward Furlong gets immersed into a virtual murder simulator emceed by a big-hair Freddy Krueger wannabe named The Trickster. Listen as we discover our mail demon's secret Hollywood history, normalize mutual window peeping flirtations, and realize (with horror) that sometimes we agree with movie author...

Holly stares into the sun at close range and gets space madness in Sunshine (2007), Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's follow up to 28 Days Later and The Beach, which fires a crew of scientists toward the dying sun in hopes of rekindling it with a nuclear device. Listen as we find dozens of new space travel related anxieties, reduce humans to dust, worship the almighty sun god and more on this week's...

Sean's head explodes fighting the good fight against the evil telepaths of Scanners (1981), David Cronenberg's first real hit about a mind reader sent on a covert mission to infiltrate a group of other ESPers and kill their leader. Listen as we link our nervous systems, polish our holes, eat Hot Pogo Dogs, apologize for our "O" faces, and more on this week's exciting episode! Hosted on Acast. See...

Colin studies up on the occult to do battle with the Goat of Mendes in The Devil Rides Out (1968), in which Christopher Lee and friends discover Satanism is being practiced by a wealthy cabal of astronomy geeks and their best pal is in danger of losing his soul! Listen as we attend summonings, conjurings, woodland revels, step into protective circles and ward off the Angel of Death himself on this...

Michaela warns that if you create a sexy feminine creature in your lab you should not have sex with it with Splice (2009), a movie that stars Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley as scientists in Cronenbergland who do exactly that. Listen as we talk about tongue flowers, sex in the proximity of children, mommy issues, and science run amok on this week's exciting episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pr...