The Really Awful Movies Podcast

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we’re back in animal attack / natural horror territory. And why not? It’s our favorite place to be. There is a wealth of animals-ran-amok movies, and practically every species in the animal kingdom is represented. Listeners can go WAY back in our catalog to check out Night of the Lepus , for example, a little movie that could about ki...

Welcome, New Year! Happy 2020 everyone. We are back with a new episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, focusing on the Ari Aster effort, Midsommar . It’s an off kilter member of the folk horror subgenre (define that one how you wish, we get into that here), it’s a pretty engaging tale of anthropologists heading to Scandinavia to study a strange subculture. On this episode, we talk...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, 2007’s Murder Party . A lonely traffic cop is strolling home to his crappy basement New York City apartment on Halloween, when he comes across a strange invitation lying on the ground. He picks it up, and it has a time and an address on it, and says “come alone.” (not really much of a chance there’d be a +1 for this guy, t...

Not to be confused with Malcolm X, we’re turning our eyes to Jason X ! After all, it’s Friday the 13th folks. This one features the Butcher of Camp Crystal Lake, Jason Voorhees, out in space. Why? Why not? (or more accurately, because someone in the studio green lit an absolutely godawful idea, that’s why). This film has a lot of detractors. But in recent years, some of us have d...

Lucio Fulci is one of our favourites. With Touch of Death , however, he’s not exactly in his finest form. Still, lousy Fulci is a bit like lousy pizza: it’s still pretty darn good. Lester Parson is a cannibal psychopath (uh oh!) who abducts and mutilates women in the Tuscan hills, eating certain cuts and disposing the rest in his back yard to his pigs. And he thinks the radio is talkin...

On this week’s episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, The Last Shark ! Also known as Great White, this is a poorly constructed bargain basement contractor version of Spielberg’s iconic Jaws. But hell, that’s not so bad…as eco-horror animal attack movies are among our absolute favorites to discuss. This one has a town…and there’s an important windsurfing reg...

The Ritual is a UK lost-in-the-woods horror, set in Sweden and filmed in far cheaper Romania. A group of laddish UK fellows are mulling over different vacation options while guzzling pints in a pub. They consider the usual suspects – Vegas, Amsterdam – and settle on hiking in Scandinavia. Unfortunately, one member of the group, after a night of boozing, is victim to a convenience store...

Kirk Hammett is best known, of course, as Metallica’s lead guitarist. However, fewer people know that the man has been collecting horror and sci fi memorabilia – posters, lobby cards, artwork – for nearly 30 years. It’s Alive! Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art from the Kirk Hammett Collection is on at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. For genre fans, and especially for Universal h...

It’s giallo time on the Really Awful Movies Podcast! That’s right, that sub-genre of horror devoted to all things black-gloved, and lurking about in the bushes amidst gorgeous Italian vistas. This week, we are tackling Seven Blood-Stained Orchids by Umberto Lenzi (we waxed poetic about his hilarious Nightmare City on an earlier episode). Many folks don’t know that U.L. was a gial...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, the excellent Motel Hell ! This is a hicksploitation classic from the 80s, smack dab in the middle of the Golden Era of horror (at least in our estimation, and we hope yours too). Rory Calhoun stars as Farmer Vincent, whose farm produces “Farmer Vincent Fritters,” which are sourced from mystery meat (you shouldn’t have to take t...

What would you do if you were trapped in a hotel room for 15 years? Would you make sure you get room service comped? Would you be enthralled by Cinemax for about a month or two before losing it entirely? Oldboy (( Korean :  올드보이 ;  RR :  Oldeuboi ;  MR :  Oldŭboi ) is a Korean action flick par excellence. It’s simply amazing, and even with a premise like the one described above, it&#8217...

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast: Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave , starring Christopher Eccleston, Kerry Fox, and Ewan McGregor. The “what to do with a body?” scenario is oft-played in film noir films. This is a tribute to those kinds of films. Three flat-mates are seeking a fourth roommate to share their grand-looking apartment in Glasgow, Scotland. They put a bun...

A casting director’s dream of a movie, Little Shop of Horrors features Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Rick Moranis, John Candy, and Christopher Guest. It’s a creature feature with songs, but in this case…the creature in question is a plant, the incomparable Venus Fly Trap, Audrey II. This is a fun one, with a showstopping scene involving a sadistic dentist (is there any other kind?)...

Cold. Calculating. American Psycho is an infamous flick adapted from an even more infamous book. On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, a deep dive into the 2000 feature, starring the incomparable Christian Bale. He plays Patrick Bateman (a surname allusion to Hitch’s Psycho). He’s a narcissistic manipulator enjoying the high life in Manhattan. We chat about the book&#8217...

Mickey Rourke. Faye Dunaway. Frank Stallone. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, a little impromptu discussion about the pisstank movie, Barfly . This one is one of the more unlikely Cannon Films productions you’ll ever see, a distributor best known for cheesy action and kung fu flicks. Here, it’s a screenplay by the skid row hero and novelist, Char...

Is this a necessary sequel? No. Is it particularly gripping? Not especially. But what it does have is the one and only Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates…so really, what else is required? On this week’s episode of the podcast, Psycho IV: The Beginning , director Mick Garris’ exploration into the myth, the man, the matricidal legend himself, Norman “Is that you, Norman?”...

On this week’s podcast, a young boy mourns the death of his father in… Making Contact, aka, Joey . Then, under the covers and with a flashlight, he’s caught (no, not that!) communicating with the spirit world. His mother walks in, and notices that young Joey is babbling on as if pops was still on this terrestrial sphere, instead of being worm food. Soon, the local school bullies...

Not so much a shaggy dog story as an angry dog story, Man’s Best Friend is a forgotten 90s New Line Cinema release that has an attack dog, Max, who has escaped from a top-secret laboratory run by the always excellent Lance Henriksen. And you know when good ol’ LH is in a horror flick you’re in for some top-notch grimacing (and a healthy, heaping dose of menacing too). Ally Sheedy...

On this week’s episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, some 70s kung fu styles with this effort, Mystery of Chessboxing . The film’s notoriety is twofold: 1) it inspired Wu Tang’s Da Mystery of Chessboxin, a great song by the Wu with RZA and ODB production and a Method Man chorus and 2) it introduced the world to The Ghost Face Killer, a massive eye-browed grey-maned old-time...

Ah, another cheap product cash-in. We love our oddball movies, and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is certainly that. As tonally off as any movie we’ve discussed on the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we were nonetheless thrilled to visit this bizarre late eighties entry. The plot: a kid, Dodger, is being bullied. He seeks the sagely advice of the owner of an antique shop, who also happens to have...

We are not in flavor country, we are in Bava Country. And on this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, Mario Bava’s fun giallo, Hatchet for the Honeymoon . The film was lusciously shot in Barcelona and Rome with the working title Un’accetta per la luna di miele.  And Bava completed shooting in October 1969. The setting is wonderful: a sprawling villa with immaculately kept groun...

In this installment of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, the hosts do a side-by-side comparison of these two indelible horror genre films, the 1989 vs the 2019 Pet Sematary . So, what’s the fuss all about? The original, while not a runaway hit, has its backers as well as detractors. While the remake has a whole slew of detractors. Perhaps it’ll take a while for people to warm to it, but...

A monster movie set in New York City? That’s enough to hook us in that’s for sure. With the passing of noted horror/genre director Larry Cohen, we decided to take a look at one of his lesser-known efforts with Q The Winged Serpent . Produced and directed by Larry Cohen and starring the awesome Michael Moriarty, Candy Clark, and the incredible David Carradine, and Richard Roundtree, thi...

It’s coming up on April Fool’s Day folks. And to celebrate the auspicious occasion, we delve into this 1986 slasher that is an under-the-radar near-classic. The plot couldn’t be more deceptively simple: a group of college coeds getting together to blow off some steam. That’s the premise of about 1000 horrors during the slasher boom. But April Fool’s Day gives us plent...

What a title! For that reason alone, it’s worth checking out Attack of the Giant Leeches . This is a Corman production, but not Roger. No, it’s the other Corman brother (from the same mother). And that’s Gene Corman. Rising from the depths of hell, to kill and conquer. And all because of NASA space launches from Florida? Well, that certainly counts as a unique deus ex machina. A...