Split Tooth Media

To ring in the holidays, Snow Lietta hosts a special new series on Christmas horror films. Up first is a look at two contemporary films about demon Santas. An old-world Santa emerging from an ancient mountain grave. An Americanized Krampus summoned by lost hope. Who will win in this Christmas monster match-up? Snow Lietta is joined by filmmaker and Cinesthesia host Jim Hickcox to discuss 'Krampus'...

Tripping through the witching hour, stumbling out of the pre-dawn aura, Jim and Jason wandered into the yard at Split Tooth headquarters. Chocolate smeared across their faces, staring into the middle distance, they started talking. And they wouldn't stop. They said something about aging and death, desire and pain. And Cronenberg. They chewed through our landline and they sealed our cell phones ins...

To close out the series on Japanese Horror, Spit Picks looks at a director known for testing the limits of violence on film. Takashi Miike is best known for three things: He is prolific, versatile, and is no stranger to using extreme gore. With 115 directorial credits listed on his IMDb page (at time of publishing), he has made films in just about every genre imaginable. But from blood-soaked epic...

Split Picks looks at an absolute masterwork of horror and a later haunted romance from Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Split Picks continues its special October series on Japanese Horror with a look at two films from Kiyoshi Kurosawa. After a string of seemingly unrelated murders with undeniable similarities, Detective Takabe begins to link the odd details of the killings together. It leads him to Mamiya, a man...

What happens when a US studio remakes a Japanese film with the original director still behind the camera? After an extended talk about Takashi Shimizu's 2002 breakout film, Ju-On: The Grudge, the Split Picks crew — Bennett Glace, Jim Hickcox, Frankie Vanaria and host Craig Wright — picks up with The Grudge franchise making its way to the US. After the US remake of Ringu (as The Ring) became a glob...

For this year's Split Picks horror series, we look at some of the finest horror films and director's that Japan has to offer. Each year for October Horror, Split Picks takes a virtual field trip to a different country to find some of the best horror films and directors from around the world. In 2021 we started at home and looked at what we determined to be the Mt. Rushmore of American horror with...

Ahead of Things We Like’s premiere, director Adi Jahic joins Split Picks to discuss his debut feature and an underseen classic from a beloved character actor. Writer-director Adi Jahic spoke with Split Tooth back in February about his excellent debut film,Things We Like, which he also edited and features him on screen in a crucial second act role. Early in the conversation, Jahic noted that he’s r...

What's a classic horror movie without an inferior remake or two? After discussing Bob Clark's immortal Black Christmas (1974), Bennett Glace, Jim Hickcox, and Snow Lietta join Craig to talk through both the 2006 and 2019 remakes/adaptations. Whereas Glen Morgan's 2006 version elevates the story's most gruesome elements to unnecessary extremes, Sophia Takal's 2019 adaptation approaches the source m...

Split Picks gets into the yuletide spirit with an episode devoted to Bob Clark's holiday horror classic 'Black Christmas.' One of the finest horror films America has ever produced (and not just in Canada!), Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974) was his first timeless holiday classic. Released during the same year as Deathdream, his Vietnam-era reimagining of The Monkey's Paw, Black Christmas capped o...

Jim and Jason slept for nine months so that they could stay up all night getting born again in a baptism of blood... a Bay of Blood, that is, along with Baron Blood, Blood and Black Lace, and more. That's right, the boys got Bava'd! All month, Split Tooth has brought you podcasts about the greats of Italian horror, and they saved the best for last. Come wander through the kick-lighted mist-world o...

Split Picks' Italian horror series wraps up with a classic Martino giallo and a controversial cannibal film. The finale of Split Picks' Italian horror series has arrived, and it closes out with one of our favorite horror directors: Sergio Martino. Martino is another jack-of-all-trades who has worked across genres and in various roles behind the scenes. But his greatest imprint will always be for h...

Split Picks chose to focus on Italian horror directors for this year's October Horror series mainly because of their penchant for convincing practical gore effects. That's where Lucio Fulci comes in. Known as the "Godfather of Gore," Fulci's films relish every drop of blood, pierced eyeball and regurgitated organ. Fulci is best known for his films Zombie, The Beyond, and the Gates of Hell trilogy...

Following last year's series talking about the American titans of horror — Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and George A. Romero — Split Picks centers in on another country renowned for its horror films: Italy. First up is Dario Argento, a master of giallo, gore, and guts. Argento has directed some of the most iconic films, scenes and shots in all of horror. His most famous works include S...

Following last year's series talking about the American titans of horror — Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and George A. Romero — Split Picks centers in on another country renowned for its horror films: Italy. Here is the second episode discussing Dario Argento, a master of giallo, gore, and guts. With Bennett Glace and Steve Collins, Split Picks voyages into the caves to talk about Argen...

Split Picks wrestles with an all-time great concert film from Neil Young and a comedy with a complicated history. When he's not behind the camera, director Bernard Shakey spends his time as a Canadian-born rock 'n' roll star who goes by the name Neil Young. Split Picks returns to look at two films directed by Shakey, with Breanna McCann stopping by for the first time, and Bennett Glace returning f...

Split Picks is back with two of David Lynch's most diametrically opposed films:Wild At Heart (1990) and Lost Highway (1997). What links these films together is author Barry Gifford, who wrote the source novel for Wild at Heart and co-wrote the Lost Highway screenplay with Lynch. Cinesthesia's Jim Hickcox steps in to host the show and brings along... his Cinesthesia co-host Jason Michelitch. They’r...

Hark! Could it be? The long-lost Cinesthesia New Years '21 episode has been located! Jim's and Jason's return finds them belatedly ringing in 2022 (and Book TWO) in spectral fashion. Just in time for the holidays, Jim and Jason settle down in front the hearth to roast their chestnuts, toast some champagne, and boast with chutzpah. As 2021 comes to a close, Cinesthesia is the only podcast with the...

To celebrate Split Tooth Media's fourth birthday, Split Picks looks at the evolution of late-career Jim Jarmusch. Robert Delany, a devout Jarmusch fan, brings The Limits of Control (2009) to the Split Picks arena, while Bennett Glace, a skeptic who once rated Down By Law a measly two stars, leads a reevaluation of the star-studded zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die (2017). The conversation centers o...

Clint Eastwood has cut an iconic on-screen figure for longer than almost anyone. The lean, sneering Western star made his name in front of the camera on TV’s Rawhide, and as The Man With No Name for Sergio Leone. His second career as a director, often directing himself, has made Eastwood an icon twice over and seen him helm more bonafide classics than almost anyone. On the latest episode of Split...

What's that on the air? Did you hear the baying moan of something almost human in the distance? Did you catch the scent of woodsmoke and viscera, dancing on the wind? It's time again for all that you most fear to rise up in your path. But hold fast — fear is the mind killer. Or so we heard somewhere. Didn't somebody say that? Was it Shakespeare? Kierkegaard? Dick Van Patten? Well, no matter who sa...

Split Picks concludes its series on the American horror greats with two early films by George A. Romero. Each week in October, Split Picks has dedicated an episode to the four titans of American horror directors — Tobe Hooper; John Carpenter; Wes Craven — and for the final episode, we turn to the Zombie Father Of The Dead, George A. Romero. Bennett Glace returns for his third horror episode and Sn...

Bennett and Jim reenter the Split Picks arena to stand up for two of Craven's oft-forgotten horror films. With Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter in the books, Split Picks shifts to Wes Craven and his three horror epoch-shifting films, his greatest successes and shortcomings as a director, and two films with plots far too complex to explain here. But in their talk of Incubi and a channel-surfing mass...

Split Picks continues its look into the four American titans of horror. After discussing Tobe Hooper last week, John Carpenter takes his turn in the spotlight. Filmmaker Steve Collins and actor John Merriman join Craig to talk about Carpenter in the '90s. Steve brings In The Mouth of Madness (1994); John brings John Carpenter's Vampires (1998). They talk about Carpenter's attraction to distilled e...

Split picks kicks off a special series devoted to four iconic American horror directors by examining two should-be-classic Hooper films. Bennett Glace and Jim Hickcox help Craig kick off a special new series for October Horror about the four most iconic American horror directors, or Mount Rushgore, if you will. We begin with Tobe Hooper, best known as the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,...

Split Tooth Media's October Horror series returns Monday, Oct. 4. All month we will have essays about some of our favorite horror films all the way from the House of the Devil to the shores of Party Beach. This year Split Picks will examine the works of four canonical American horror directors — John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, and George A. Romero. Tune in every Friday for new episodes ab...