The Really Awful Movies Podcast

Head of the Family! Who doesn’t like a low budget exploitation horror? Especially one with an obvious double entendre like that. This episode of the podcast is all about the legendary Charles Band, a man responsible for a huge swath of the movies we’ve binged for years and years, and who directed this cheap and cheerful mid-90s hybrid sci fi zombie horror. On this episode, a breakdown...

This week, a documentary turn: This is Gwar chronicles the three decades-long history of the infamous rock band, though countless iterations and many a rubber monster suit. A Shudder exclusive, the movie is must-see material for fans of Some Kind of Monster, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, and This is Spinal Tap. Truly inspirational filmmaking. Subjects discussed in this episode: “Gimmick”...

On today’s episode of the podcast, Summer Camp Nightmare . Don’t be fooled, folks. This is not a stalk-and-slash 80s horror. In fact, it’s got smarts. There’s a wack of political/historical context, and it punches above its weight for what you’d expect from a small, largely overlooked film. A bunch of counsellors in training (CITs) and the usual cadre of summer camp w...

Two very different movies on the podcast this week. The first, is a low budget British horror called The Barge People. It’s about, of all things, creatures that lurk about near canals and torment canal boaters. Hey, there’s something for everyone in horror, apparently. Two couples get together for a weekend getaway…floating down canals in the English countryside in what’s k...

We have covered regional horrors here, Offerings, Unhinged, The Legend of Boggy Creek, etc. And now, Hayride, lensed in Alabama on a shoestring budget. This one featured an escaped lunatic on the loose, unsuspecting townies, and of course, a hayride. This is a Halloween-set flick, spirited, amateurish, somewhat fun… Tune in, folks. And subscribe!

On this episode of the podcast, the sequel to the excellent POV horror, Creep – Creep 2. This flick is a 2017 found footage psychological horror film directed by Patrick Brice and co-written by Brice and Mark Duplass, also the co-star. The film follows Aaron, the eponymous creep, and his efforts to get his story told by a struggling documentary filmmaker, Sara. On this episode of the show, t...

On today’s episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, Stuart Gordon’s Dolls. On today’s show, delving into the director’s work, including From Beyond and Re-Animator. Also, the global village of horror. Hotbeds of horror from around the globe, including Poland, Japan, Germany, France, Asia.

This week on the Really Awful Movies Podcast, the often compelling imaginary friend horror film, Daniel Isn’t Real. Luke is an undergrad plagued by trauma and anxiety. As a coping mechanism, he revivifies a childhood imaginary friend, Daniel, in part through the encouragement of his psychologist/therapist. Where things go from there, is seriously haywire. Set in Brooklyn, Daniel Isn’t...

This week on the podcast, Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker. Young baller Billy, is looking for a hoops scholarship to the University of Denver. In his way, an overly doting aunt who is a bit of a nutjob, it turns out. When Billy’s relationship with his coach gets closer, teammates start asking questions. When the coach’s male lover is murdered, that gets the police involved, and pointin...

On this episode of the podcast, a British Film Board Classification censor gets caught up in the work of an exploitation director. Here we are with Censor, a period piece set in 1980s London, during the peak of moral panic and the world of Video Nasties, so dubbed because they were deemed excessively violent. This 2021 British psychological horror film was directed by Prano Bailey-Bond, and create...

On this week’s podcast, Virus: 32 . It’s a zombie/outbreak movie that’s lensed in Montevideo, Uruguay. So that’s a first, though this reviewer has seen Argentinian horror movies, and this is a co-production. It tells the story of a mom, Iris, who is irresponsible, young and a boozer who has a young daughter and shares custody with the dad, Javier. When the outbreak happens,...

On this episode of the Podcast, the Soska sisters’ reimagining of the Cronenberg classic, Rabid. So, does it succeed? Given how low the bar is set for remakes, the answer is yes…but not a resounding yes. In fact, this is a very very flawed flick. Tune in, take a listen, as we contextualize the film with a contrast to the iconic, Montreal-lensed original from 1977.

Today’s podcast is Gutshot Straight. We are on the Strip in Las Vegas. And Jack is a degenerate gambler, whose losses are mounting to the point where he can’t pay his bar tab. Uh oh. We’ve all been there. He’s hooked up with a mover and shaker, Duffy, who offers him wagers of increasing magnitude. And soon…well, things go south. An intriguing plot, right? Plus, Vinnie...

This week on the podcast, the small, quirky indie horror, Hellbender. Does the movie live up to the hype? The Guardian, NY Times and others have checked it out, so take that with a grain of salt. After all, those media types only really accept supernatural horror as worthy of exploring.

The 2022 Scream. Another unnecessary remake, or something worth your while? Surprisingly, the latter. Tune in this week for a discussion of the iconic Ghostface-led franchise. You’ve got a new cast of characters, familiar old faces, a lot of meta humor, lots of jocularity, and some good storytelling. In an era when most remakes or reboots fail spectacularly, nice to see something made with a...

Titane (Titanium en Englais) is a 2021 body horror film written and directed by Julia Ducournau and is a French and Belgian co-production. And it concerns a young girl who is involved in an automobile accident, and has a metal plate put in her head, above her ear. Years later, she’s an auto show model and really, really into cars (and vice versa). She’s also a serial killer on the lam,...

This latest horror franchise reboot is the talk of social media, as everyone’s tuning into Netflix to perhaps hate-watch it or even, bizarrely, enjoy it. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an updated version of the 1974 classic, ignoring events of the countless interceding sequels, and tells the story of influencer/investors coming to buy up a sad, abandoned town, Harlow Texas. What they find there,...

Step right up folks, right this way. Take in the incredible, the stupendous, the monumental, the astonishing…feats of courage, strength. Be amazed! It’s carnival time, Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood, to be precise. What’s this you asked? It’s an obscure early-mid 70s effort, directed by Christopher Speeth. And it was largely forgotten, until Arrow gave its fortunes a b...

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. What a title, right? This is a wonderful, cheeky, low-budget effort that’s a creature feature and based around the infamous short story, The Monkey’s Paw. Some nerds and some sorority pledges have to bust into a bowling alley to steal a trophy to prove their mettle. While inside, they encounter an imp, but not just any imp: a wish-granting i...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we head across the pond to London, but also seaside England for two different, though in some ways similar productions Last Night in Soho and Saint Maud. Last Night in Soho is about a sheltered wallflower who is accepted into design school in London, leaving her quaint bucolic confines to tackle big city life and all its pressures. Finding she ca...

On this week’s episode of the Really Awful Movies podcast, a bit of a departure: modern exploitation. Ya’ll wanna hear a story? It’s hard to categorize Zola , a 2020 American black comedy crime film directed by Janicza Bravo and written by Bravo and Jeremy O. Harris. It is based on a strange idea that absolutely, positively should not work: a viral Twitter thread from 2015 by Azi...

On this episode of the podcast, venturing into giallo territory with Knife of Ice . Il coltello di ghiaccio, as it’s also known, is directed by site favorite Umberto Lenzi, who gifted us Nightmare City, Cannibal Ferox and many others. In this one, there’s the conceit of a mute character, a woman who is traumatized by the death of her parents in a train crash and who cannot speak at all...

Two wholly different subgenres of horror, two totally different films. On this week’s episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, Wendigo and Psycho Cop . The former is a supernatural offering from the early 2000s, inspired by Indigenous legends. It’s directed by genre actor and stalwart, Larry Fessenden. A family of three goes to a rural New York state home to get some respite from wo...

On today’s episode, a demonstration of just how diverse the horror genre is. You can’t get any different properties than The Brain, a low-budget sci fi creature feature horror and Dark Night of the Scarecrow, a from beyond the grave revenge thriller that has more in common with Of Mice and Men than it does with say, The Changeling. If you love horror like we do, you love all kinds of h...

Imagine being trapped in an underground parking garage with some lunatic? Horror movies, of course, exploit fears of all stripes. And for women, particularly, clutching keys in the dark trying to find your car…well, that’s what director Franck Khalfoun (Maniac) has envisioned and positioned his horror film around in P2 . Angela is working long hours in her midtown Manhattan office, you...