The Really Awful Movies Podcast

The original Blair Witch Project was a cultural juggernaut, an explosive hit right out of the gate and on a minuscule budget. The movie put found footage horror on the map, and the conceit has survived to this day in various guises – adopted by indie filmmakers because they’re incredibly cheap to produce compared with conventional film. Blair Witch (2016) is  It is the third film in th...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we get back to our action roots with this, an oddball half action, half sci-fi horror flick, Silent Rage. We get a prologue, that cheesy staple of 80s horror movies. In it, our antagonist Kirby, a pill-popping lunatic, grabs an axe and goes on a rampage. Chuck Norris is a sheriff deputy in a small Texas town, who rushes in with backup, and single...

Some 90s horror for your listening pleasure this episode: Ice Cream Man . This Clint Howard starrer is an odd duck, and is about, not surprisingly, a killer ice cream man. A neighborhood kid goes missing. Suddenly, all signs point to the local oddball eccentric, the man in the white uni who brings treats to all the kids. Ice Cream Man also features Jan Michael Vincent as a cop, in as lazy a perfor...

Welcome to John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London , a very fine (and very timeless) piece of lycanthrope cinema. Two American backpackers are sightseeing in some far-flung reaches of Yorkshire. Tired and hungry, they come upon a pub called The Slaughtered Lamb, whose denizens are not the most welcoming sort. In fact, our heroes David and Jack, feel like they really don’t belong, a...

This John Lithgow-starring, Brian De Palma-directed thriller is set around Valentine’s day. On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, a take on this “demented, deranged, deceptive” De Palma flick, Raising Cain . Lithgow portrays multiple characters/multiple personalities. He is a child psychologist, Dr. Carter Nix, who is kidnapping kids to use for nefarious purposes (n...

On this special bonus episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, Valentine’s Day Horror Films. Today is a day to reignite your passions and tell loved ones they’re loved. But also, there’s no better occasion than to dive into what we love: horror movies! Horrors are oft-known to be set around holidays, whether it’s New Year’s Evil, Silent Night, Deadly Night, April F...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, Jean Claude Van Damme’s epic kickboxing tournament movie, Bloodsport . This flick was one of Van Damme’s first starring films and showcased his formidable kicking and flexibility, and dare we say it, charm. The “Muscles from Brussels, aka, JCVD plays U.S. Army Captain Frank Dux (as in, “put up your dukes” and not “ge...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast we turn to another regional horror, this time from the state of Louisiana. This one is called Mountaintop Motel Massacre (the massacre bit was added later when Roger Corman bought the movie to get it distributed). And boy are we glad he did, as this one is a total hoot. It’s not often you get to see an elderly lady in a mediocre 80s slasher...

Death Ship is a disaster movie, and a horror film (and some would maybe insert the words “of a” between “disaster” and “movie”). In our books, this one’s super-fun and we thought it’d make excellent podcast fodder solely because of the poster and the cast. A mysterious rusty freighter is sailing the high seas. There’s a cruise ship in the dista...

On this special episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we delve into a Netflix series that’s making waves: YOU . Guess you could say, this episode’s all about you. Joe is a bookstore manager in Midtown Manhattan. He becomes obsessed with a budding writer and MFA student, Guinevere Beck, aka Beck. The two of them quasi hit it off at his place of work, before things take a more sini...

Jeffrey Combs portrays Colin Childress, a cartoonist we’re introduced to in the film’s prologue. He meets an untimely end drawing a beastly creature, and we flash forward 30 years to a present-day (1988) artist retreat/colony. This week on the Really Awful Movies Podcast: a monster movie! This one is a charming shoestring budget creature feature, Cellar Dweller . Whitney is an arts gra...

Humanoids from the Deep is one of our favorite creature features. Exploitative, Roger Corman-produced uber-trash, this one follows the typical Jaws template of a besieged fishing village whose inhabitants are trying to come to terms with something that’s pure evil. Featuring some genre favorites like Doug McClure and Vic Morrow, you won’t help but fall for this movie. After all, &#8220...

Most Likely to Die …a modern slasher film starring, Perez Hilton. If that doesn’t get your motor running, well. Luckily, Heather Morris (Glee) provides a bit of acting talent to a film where it’s in very much short supply. There’s a 10-year high school reunion. An assemblage of tedious 20-somethings who look 30 + and beyond, get together to reminisce about the good times Al...

Mexican Santa Claus  as it’s known colloquially (sometimes known as  Santa Claus vs. the Devil ) is a  wild and woolly 1959 Mexican fantasy Christmas sci-fi film directed by Rene Cardona and co-written with Adolfo Torres Portillo. The Cuban-born Cardona was a hugely influential figure in the so-called Golden Age of Mexican Cinema (but of course, fellows like us know him for the stupendous, ...

On this week’s episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, a look at the Oregon regional horror, Unhinged . Undoubtedly one of the more obscure films to end up on the Video Nasties list, Unhinged (1982) is a really solid, very low-budget effort from the Pacific Northwest. Three college co-eds are on a road trip through the back country, when a dispatch comes on the radio about…traffic...

A Killer Crocodile creature feature, that’s Italian to boot? No need to say that twice. We’re there. As straightforward a concept as you could possibly devise, this one is about…you guessed it…a killer crocodile (lest you thought this was a rom-com about a shy teacher who meets a beau in fin-du-siècle Paris). In an undisclosed location (wherever was cheapest to film in 1989...

A Disney movie where Ben Stiller runs a fat camp? What’s this movie called, “Box Office Poison”? (to quote an infamous Norm MacDonald appearance on Conan O’Brien). It’s hard to believe someone actually green-lit Heavyweights (or Heavy Weights as it’s sometimes known). This 90s-era comedy came and went with little fanfare. Like many flicks that are not successful...

So, here we are. Suspiria 2018 is a remake of the all-time great Dario Argento 1977 film. The Argento one is one of our mutual favorites. It’s definitely in our Top 15 Horror Films of All Time, if we were to make such a list (to get a sense of our sensibilities, the other entries would include Maniac, Martyrs, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, to cite a few). So, we faced this one...

Part artist, part huckster, William Castle is a name a lot of people know in the horror world. He produced Rosemary’s Baby (and would’ve directed too, were it not for health issues) but he’s best known for the gimmicks he deployed to promote the living heck out of his movies. The Tingler , starring the legendary Vincent Price (check out our interview with his daughter, Victoria P...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast we tackle a Canadian classic, David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers . Twin gynecologists, the Mantle brothers (based on the true-life demise of monozygote physicians, the Marcus brothers) share 100% of their genetic material. They also share scientific discoveries, and women. In a tour de force performance by the incredible Jeremy Irons, we get a...

Finally, we get around to tackling one of the most infamously bad movies out there, Reefer Madness . A dim-bulb overly melodramatic propaganda film (Snarky Editors’ note: like Forrest Gump or Titanic), this 1936 crap-show suggests that “men die for it.” A middling morality tale about the supposed dangers of weed, the film is now (of course) watched ironically. Recreational mariju...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, Spookies . Spookies is a 1986 American indie horror flick that has a lot of fans, despite its total ineptness. The film was directed by Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran (and probably several others). The plot, such as it is, follows a lost kid and a group of folks looking to party. They find an abandoned, sprawling mansion and decide to explore....

He’s back…Michael Myers is hunting Laurie Strode again in this new Halloween film. Forty years have passed. “The Shape” has been confined to a mental hospital. Not only have forty years passed, Dr. Loomis has has well. In his stead, Dr. Sartain (a name, as forgettable as many elements of his film). The doc allows two Brit investigative journalist/podcasters to see if they c...

Not heralded upon release,  A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child was a film we deemed worthy of a revisit to see how it’s aged. So, is this the Tom Cruise of sequels? Or is this an installment that needs to be shot full of Botox? Interestingly (and this came as a shock to both hosts of the Really Awful Movies Podcast), this one is not only not half-bad, it’s actually a very wor...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, a sensational, Italian-style hard-horror coming to us from of all places, Turkey. Baskin debuted at TIFF’s Midnight Madness and caused a bit of a stir. And rightly so. Now, Turkey is known for a spate of rip-off movies. There’s a Turkish Star Wars, Star Trek, E.T., Superman, Exorcist, Death Wish, and they’re all unbelievably bad. But...