The Projection Booth

Mike talks with author Mark Edlitz about his latest deep-dive into superhero history, Look Up in the Sky: The Forgotten Superboy Series. The book uncovers the behind-the-scenes story of the short-lived Superboy TV show (1988–1992) — a fascinating chapter in the Superman legacy that’s often overlooked. Edlitz explores how the series evolved across its four seasons, the creative battles that shaped...

George A. Romero trades zombies for suburban malaise in Jack’s Wife (AKA Season of the Witch, Hungry Wives), a spellbinding portrait of domestic despair and occult liberation. Jan White stars as Joan Mitchell, a disenchanted housewife drifting through a fog of loneliness and repression until she finds power--real or imagined--through witchcraft. Rahne Alexander and Father Malone join Mike to dig i...

Filmmaker and frequent Projection Booth co-host David Kittredge returns to the show to talk about his stunning new documentary Boorman and the Devil (2025). Premiering at the Venice Film Festival and recently screened at the Brooklyn Horror Film Fest, the film examines the making—and unmaking—of John Boorman’s unfinished masterpiece The Heretic, a project that became both a creative obsession and...

Buckle up for one of the wildest rides of the year—Mike talks with Alex Phillips, the audacious filmmaker behind Anything That Moves, a gleefully transgressive, genre-bending erotic thriller that skids into the underbelly of Chicago’s gig-economy sex trade and emerges with something unexpectedly sincere. Phillips bridges the sleaze of 1970s exploitation with the high-concept perversity of modern i...

Shocktober 2025 spirals into demonic delirium with Juan López Moctezuma’s Alucarda (1977). This feverish blast of Mexican Gothic horror follows Justine (Susana Kamini), a sheltered orphan who finds herself drawn to the wild, otherworldly Alucarda (Tina Romero) within the stone walls of a convent that’s anything but holy. What begins as innocent friendship erupts into a blood-soaked storm of posses...

Mike White dives into the making of Vindication Swim with writer-director Elliott Hasler, whose ambitious period drama brings to life the extraordinary true story of swimmer Mercedes Gleitze, the first British woman to swim the English Channel. Set in the 1920s, the film follows Gleitze’s struggle for recognition and the grueling endurance required to overcome both physical and societal barriers....

Mike White sits down with journalist and author Clark Collis to talk about his latest deep dive into the world of fear and fascination, Screaming and Conjuring: The Rise of Modern Horror Franchises. Collis explores how films like The Conjuring, Insidious, and Paranormal Activity revived mainstream horror, spawned cinematic universes, and redefined the genre for a new generation. From haunted house...

Shocktober 2025 sinks its teeth into Raw (2016), Julia Ducournau’s visceral coming-of-age horror. Garance Marillier stars as Justine, a sheltered vegetarian entering veterinary school, where a brutal hazing ritual ignites her taste for flesh—both animal and human. Co-hosts Suzen Tekla Kruglnska and Beth Accomando join Mike to explore Ducournau’s blend of body horror and female awakening, peeling b...

Ego Fest XV cracks open The Projection Booth once again as Mike faces a barrage of listener questions from the devoted and the deranged. From the mysteries of the long-teased 2001: A Space Odyssey episode to favorite decades of filmmaking and the highs and lows of a year’s worth of interviews, nothing’s off the table. Mike talks shop on balancing multiple podcasts, favorite co-hosts, and whether a...

Shocktober continues with Marina de Van’s unnerving and unforgettable In My Skin (Dans ma peau, 2002). Written, directed by, and starring de Van, the film follows Esther, a successful marketing executive whose accidental leg injury opens a darkly intimate portal to obsession and self-discovery. As she becomes fixated on her own wound, Esther’s relationship with her body—and reality itself—begins t...

Crispin Hellion Glover discusses his long-awaited directorial effort, No! YOU’RE WRONG. or: Spooky Action at a Distance. Nearly a decade in the making, the surreal 35mm odyssey stars both Crispin and his father, Bruce Glover, in multiple roles that span generations, myth, and madness. Shot primarily on sets built in Glover’s Czech stables, the film weaves together science, symbolism, and the uncan...

Shocktober 2025 begins with Sutton Roley's Sweet, Sweet Rachel (1971), the eerie TV movie that launched The Sixth Sense series. Written by Anthony Lawrence, the film stars Stefanie Powers as Rachel Stanton, a glamorous woman whose husband dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving her caught in a web of supernatural intrigue. Alex Dreier play Dr. Lucas Darrow, a psychic researcher who, along wit...

Czechtember 2025 wraps with Jan Švankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), a delirious, dialogue-free plunge into fetish and surrealism. Mike teams up with filmmaker Jim Vendiola and critic Samm Deighan to unravel the tangled lives of six Prague eccentrics whose private obsessions—ranging from papier-mâché contraptions to elaborate role-play—collide in hilariously unsettling ways. The result is...

Czechtember charges ahead as Mike, Spencer Parsons, and Emily Barney dive into Otakar Vávra’s Romance for Bugle (1967). Vávra adapts František Hrubín’s celebrated poem into a lyrical love story set in the Czech countryside. Terina (Zuzana Cigánová), a young Roma woman, ignites passion in Vojta (Jaromír Hanzlík) and Viktor (Štefan Kvietik), pulling the two men into a tense triangle of longing and r...

We knew it would happen and here it is! It's the return of our short-lived ZAZ show, From the Files of Police Squad (In Color), where Mike White, Mark Begley, and Chris Stachiw discuss the 2025 reboot of The Naked Gun franchise with... The Naked Gun! The film stars Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. and Paul Walter Hauser as Ed Hocken Jr., with Pamela Anderson along as the love interest, Beth Davenpo...

Filmmaker Brooke H. Cellars sits down with Mike to discuss her audacious feature debut The Cramps: A Period Piece (2025). This blood-soaked, campy horror-comedy transforms menstruation into a monstrous force of nature, gleefully smashing taboos and splattering stigma with buckets of style. The film leans into outrageous gore, wicked humor, and a feminist bite. Mike and Brooke dig into the film’s c...

Mike welcomes Emirati filmmaker Majid Al Ansari to discuss The Vile (2025), his long-awaited return to the director’s chair after nearly a decade. Known as Hoba in Arabic, the film is a psychological horror story about Amani, a wife and mother whose world collapses when her husband brings home a second wife with seemingly supernatural powers. Drawing on myths and superstitions surrounding polygamy...

Czechtember gallops forward with Oldřich Lipský’s madcap musical parody Lemonade Joe (1964). Adapted from Jiří Brdečka’s novel and play, the film stars Karel Fiala as the squeaky-clean pitchman of Kolalok Cola who rides into town to clean up the Wild West. Standing in his way is Miloš Kopecký as the dastardly Horác Badman—better known as Hogofogo. With tinted black-and-white visuals, slapstick inv...

Blue hearts, high school dreams, and one unforgettable rock anthem — we’re diving into Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Linda Linda Linda (2005). The film follows a group of teenage girls in a Japanese high school who form a last-minute band to play the Blue Hearts’ classic “Linda Linda” at their school festival, with a quiet Korean exchange student unexpectedly stepping in as their lead singer. Mike White is...

Czechtember 2025 kicks off with Cosy Dens (AKA Pelíšky), Jan Hřebejk’s bittersweet 1999 coming-of-age dramedy adapted from Petr Šabach’s novel Hovno Hoří (Shit on Fire). Written by Petr Jarchovský, the film unfolds between Christmas 1967 and the Prague Spring of 1968, chronicling the warmth, absurdity, and heartbreak of two neighboring families caught between tradition, rebellion, and history itse...

Buonopalooza wraps up with Howard Morris’s caper comedy Who’s Minding the Mint? (1967). Jim Hutton stars as Harry Lucas, a hapless Treasury worker who accidentally swipes $50,000 and scrambles to replace it before he’s caught. To pull off the fix, he enlists a motley crew of oddballs, including Dorothy Provine’s Verna Baxter, who’s more interested in perfecting her brownies than in breaking and en...

Mike talks with writer Katharine Coldiron about her new book, Out There in the Dark (Autofocus Books). Blending film criticism, memoir, fiction, and experimental forms, the collection uses movies as prisms to explore truth, kindness, the female body, the American West, war, and more. From The Sound of Music to Apocalypse Now, Coldiron examines how cinema shapes memory and myth. Praised as “thought...

Buonopalooza rolls on with Robert Aldrich’s Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Following the massive success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Aldrich re-teamed with Bette Davis for another Southern Gothic nightmare. This time, Davis plays Charlotte Hollis, a reclusive woman haunted by whispers of murder and locked in a decaying Louisiana mansion where secrets fester and madness simmers. The fi...

Buonopalooza rages on with Victor Buono front and center in The Strangler (1964). One of his rare leading roles, Buono embodies Leo Kroll, a smothered man-child whose repressed rage against women spills into murder. Loosely modeled on the Boston police department’s profile of the Boston Strangler—and hitting theaters mere months after Albert DeSalvo’s confession—the film walks a fine line between...

We’re kicking off a month devoted to the inimitable presence of Victor Buono — though in our opening pick, “starring” might be generous. Let’s say “featuring,” and featuring with impact. Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) stands as the grand dame of “Hagsploitation” — or “Psycho Biddy,” if you prefer — with Joan Crawford and Bette Davis locked in a barbed-wire sister act as B...