The Really Awful Movies Podcast

Whoa. This is one for the ages. The Baby is another strange duck, a piece of 70s exploitation that’d be impossible to make today. A family, the Wadsworths, are raising their 20-something son as a baby. Known only as “The Baby,” (or “Baby”) he’s clad in diapers and left to crawl around the family home in a state of deprivation. Ann Gentry is a social worker pokin...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, Johnny Gruesome . This is the latest offering by Greg Lamberson, who brought us what is essential viewing if you’re into urban scum/exploitation horror flicks, Slime City. It’s a site favorite here, along with Street Trash. In this one, Johnny Grisholm is a long-haired drug-fueled hell-raiser. He’s perpetually wasted, and is the...

House . Here we go. We’re back to the 80s on this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast. It’s House, which stars three stalwarts of the TV world:William Katt, George Wendt, and Richard Moll (The Greatest American Hero, Cheers and Night Court). Katt portrays a novelist, Roger Cobb, who needs a place of quiet contemplation to get some writing done. You’ve heard that one before...

What would you do if you had 24 hours to live? If you were in the 1950 film noir, D.O.A. , you’d get down to the business of solving your own murder. What? Yes, that’s the incredible can’t-miss premise: an every-man accountant stumbles into an LA police precinct to report he’s been poisoned. And there’s no antidote. That man is Bigelow. And he has roughly 24 hours to...

Animatronic country music-playing bears in a movie based on a Disney attraction. How could this go wrong? Or another question, How is this even possible? On the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we pride ourselves on tackling all sorts of disparate different genres, so hot on the heels of talking about C.H.U.D., here we are yakking about The Country Bears . Haven’t heard of it? You’re not a...

C.H.U.D. is a weird one. For reasons unexplained, the film’s left quite the pop culture legacy, referenced everywhere from  Aqua Teen Hunger Force to Clerks II, and of course, in The Simpsons. Why is this? Hard to say…It’s possible because while the 50s was the height of the monster movie craze, the similarly-themed C.H.U.D. was a definite outlier during the stalk-and-slash 80s....

Another Video Nasty! On this week’s episode, the unusually arty low-budget slasher, The Driller Killer . Actually, calling it a slasher is a bit of a misnomer. It’s more of a character study of a brooding artist’s breakdown. This is a weird beast, and not what you’d entirely expect given the era, the budget, and the cast of amateurs involved (save for auteur, Abel Ferrara,...

We’re optimists when it comes to cinema. Despite the (often ironic) title of our podcast, we strive (whenever possible) to see the good in everything. However,  Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band pushed us to the brink. This is the musical equivalent of C-SPAN: long, dull stretches of banality. And that’s shocking as the source material comes courtesy of arguably the greatest...

People lost in the woods. Common fodder for horror, right? It’s a terrific conceit, and we as Ontarians have a particular affinity for it as there are thousands upon thousands of kilometers of remote green-space in our gorgeous and at times dangerous, province. Backcountry , like any self-respecting horror film, exploits these very real, visceral fears. Around these parts, the wilderness its...

We’re used to titles summing up horror movies. The likes of Hospital Massacre, Sorority House Massacre, etc, don’t leave much to the imagination, and little of it is apparent in the finished product. The Incredible Shrinking Man,  while not a horror film in the traditional sense, is pretty darn horrifying. An obvious title that lays bare the plot, belies a very interesting, thoughtful,...

One Tough Bastard , aka, One Man’s Justice is yet another three-word lunkhead action film. And boy, is it a hell of a lot of fun. Starring one of our faves, Brian Bosworth, this one involves a corrupt FBI man (Savak) who is overseeing an illicit weapons trade, procuring arms from corrupt US Army types. Bosworth (as John North, as good an action name as we’ve heard), is a drill sergeant...

The House on Sorority Row ! A den mother walks in on a sorority girl, doin’ the horizontal boogie with her beau…this causes a big to-do at Phi Kappa Beta Gamma Alpha Delta Epsilon, whatever. The vengeful co-ed, in cahoots with her gal-pals, decides to freak the old lady out with, what else? A prank. And you know how these things turn out…especially when there’s a loaded wea...

On this bonus episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast….a comparison of the original Friday, with its reboot, Friday the 13th (2009). How do the movies compare? What does the new flick have to do with the canonical movies? Tune in, and of course, subscribe to the Really Awful Movies Podcast.

When a Stranger Calls …the movie is infamous, most notably for being one-of-a-kind and for being aped by Wes Craven in the original Scream’s opener. Based on an urban legend, the one about a guy calling and harassing a babysitter (from inside the home, as determined by police tracing the call), is a classic. It’s as well-known as the guy with a hook for a hand, but arguably even...

What would a party be without a Ouija board? Fun? Har. Har. OK, wags, admit it…you gotta love the ol’ Ouija board. What better way is there to contact the spirit world? Witchboard is a fun 80s flick about that very phenomenon. The director is the same guy behind site favorite, Night of the Demons, so you gotta figure this one has the same goofy aesthetic. And you’d be correct. Vi...

On this special episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, Scary Imaginary Friends. Why are they so prevalent in horror? There’s something disturbing about seeing things others can’t. That’s why ghosts are so successful in horror. Similarly, typically children (but not always) manifest an imaginary friend. These are used to wonderful effect in movies, some good, some bad.  

From London, England, recorded from the confines of our hotel in Kensington. On this episode of the show, we talk about our visit to Whitechapel, East London and discuss the lesser Hammer film, Hands of the Ripper . Jack the Ripper has fascinated people for a century + and will do so for years to come. As the original serial killer, Saucy Jack terrified Londoners at the end of the 19th century, hu...

What does the monomyth have to do with horror? You may have heard Dr. Jordan Peterson lecture about it, or maybe read something by Joseph Campbell. Anyway, it’s all about a hero’s journey. The heroes in our list here, aren’t from antiquity though. They’re stars in horror movies. We have a tendency to focus on the antagonists, and why not? Horror movie villains are numerous...

The House That Dripped Blood is a horror anthology. The word “anthology” is derived from the Greek for “flowers,” (anthos) and “collection” (logia). And everything’s coming up roses in this Amicus production which co-stars Denholm Elliot, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing (each in different segments). It was co-written by Robert Bloch of Psycho fame. In Me...

A furtive lab experiment. In a basement. On today’s episode, the fun, smart and occasionally gory 1980s creature feature, The Kindred . The Kindred is a fairly obscure 1987 American horror film directed by Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter. Are two directors better than one? Not generally. Here, not bad! Obrow also produced the film and co-wrote it along with Carpenter, Earl Ghaffari and J...

Killer Condom ! The title is pretty self-explanatory. Leave it to Lloyd Kaufman, one of our heroes, to pick this thing up for North American distribution so that people on these shores could be Troma-tized by the film. A German language comedy horror set in New York City, Killer Condom does what few comedy horrors have managed to do, and that is successfully mix horror and comedy in equal measure....

You’ll never get a more straightforward title: 47 Meters Down . What could this possibly be about? Claire Holt and Mandy Moore portray sisters who are on vacation in Mexico. One of them is moving on from a recent, difficult breakup. And they go on a deep sea diving expedition and swim around with the fishies in a cage. Unfortunately, things go south…Guess you could say. The winch that&...

“Mutilate” is one of the more frightening verbs in the English language. So, here we come to The Mutilator . The poster is enticing: “by sword, by pick, by axe, bye bye.” For some reason, they neglected to mention “by outboard motor.” So yeah, The Mutilator is a bit gross. But the poster and the occasional gory death belies its utter goofiness. This is a movie t...

Just when we’ve thought we’d seen it all…another turd floats our way. Longshot is, wait for it…a movie about foosball. Of all things. With the Champions League and the World Cup, soccer is on a lot of people’s minds, and always is. After all, it’s the world’s most popular sport. But foosball? The dopey, loud, largely unsatisfying bar/rec room/basement parl...

On this special episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, Musical Performances in Horror Movies ! Much has been said, and much ink has been spilled about horror movie soundtracks and the like…your Tubular Bells from The Exorcist, the ba-dum…ba-dum…ba-dum from Jaws…but there’s an interesting, overlooked bit of fun in horror movies: Horror movie musical performances!...