Trauma Box

This week on the Box we've got working artists Kari Cholnoky and Dante Lentz on board, and we're unwrapping 1988's Phantasm 2. The dream-like logic of Don Coscarelli's legacy-spawning OG remains intact, but numero dos delivers More Guns, More Balls, and More Explosions. The 1980s were a heck of a time, no? We also take detours into the world of videogame rentals, cosmic horror, goo, and Star Wars...

Trauma Box invites our buddy, musician Beau Wanzer on board for an extra spooktacular affair. While Beau is beloved for his chugging industrial beats - equal parts terrifying and absurdist - he's also a renown connoisseur of horror cinema, and he serves as our guide to the surprisingly fun Frankenhooker, Frank Henenlotter's 1990 cult classic. Frankenhooker delivers more slyly subversive laughs tha...

Spooky season continues unabated, and here at the Trauma Box we're teetering on the Edge of the Axe! The VHS box presents José Ramón Larraz's 1988 flick as typical slasher fare of the era, but the movie turned out to be a strangely brooding downbeat giallo, much closer in spirit to films of the 1970s. We also talk about cinematic depictions of car washes, jangly Californian country rock, Mike Tyso...

'Tis the season for scares, and our Trauma Boxers are going gory this month in celebration of the Hallows and their eve. We're kicking off the spooks with a long-time favorite VHS box: CARNOSAUR. This 1993 jammer is Roger Corman's attempt to siphon off some of the tremendous juice that Jurassic Park was generating. But outside of the dinos and the presence of Laura Dern's mother Diane Ladd, the si...

This week, to ring in October, star of stage and screen Sam Pancake graces the Traume Box with his presence. We regretfully watched the 1991 made for tv version of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, starring the luminous Redgrave sisters as two codependent hags jockeying for dominance in an empty Hollywood mansion. The experience was as disquieting as it sounds, but there were lots of fun diversions...

What is a mausoleum but a box of trauma? This week, Tyler and Shawn exhume 1983's Mausoleum, a magnificent piece featuring the bountilful gifts of Bobbie Bresee and MARJOE GORTNER. Marjoe, for the uninitiated, was an ordained Evangelical preacher at age 4, who came to reject the church in his teen years, and the man's unusual talents are not wasted in the gutters of early 80s trash cinema. We've a...

Tyler and Shawn welcome Chris Miller aka Gunnar Haslam aka La Synthese Humaine (AND aka Shawn's co-host on the Base Camp Beta podcast) onto the Trauma Box this week for a treacherous dive into James Bond's verboten-era with License to Kill. Sometimes described as the "Cannon Group Bond" film, License to Kill sees the heritage franchise floundering with a brand of charmless, post-Temple of Doom nih...

Tyler and Shawn ring in their *twentieth* episode with a celebration of American Ninja! This absolute stone-cold staple of the video store shelves had somehow evaded both of our watchings over these many decades, and let us tell you, this omission was a real joy to shore up. We talk trash film history via Golan and Globus's Cannon Group, the ninja craze of the 1980s, Michael Dudikoff's sexy broodi...

The Trauma Box drives Tyler and Shawn to the steamy streets of Two Moon Junction, Zalman King's (of Red Shoe Diaries notoriety) directorial debut. We're no longer in the land of the erotic thriller or the erotic comedy; Two Moon Junction is a film that can only be described as *erotica.* Expect sexy carnies with Fabio-grade pecs, a saxophone-rich soundscape, excessive Freudianisms, excessive-exces...

Tyler and Shawn return to the nebulous space-time of the peplum, also known as the sword & sandals flick, a glorious cinematic domain that, typically, casually muddies grimdark Medieval tropes and Orientalist fantasy with a dash of magic and a dose of absurd masculinity. These films were essential VHS store shelf-fodder - unfortunately, Deathstalker 2 deviates from genre form with a heaping dollop...

Tyler and Shawn fall into The Dead Pit this week, Brett Leonard's (of later Lawnmower Man fame) ham-fistedly Freudian asylum-centric zombie flick. It's a real hoot, and we talk about Italian aesthetics in American films, cinematic portrayals of mental health facilities, and the puzzles of digital reverb. Listen on Apple Music and Spotify, and check out our Patreon at www.patreon.com/traumaboxpodca...

The Box goes bawdy again with Candy Stripe Nurses, a Julie Corman-produced sex comedy romp from 1974. This VHS box has haunted us for decades, and it delivers the goods in era-appropriate style with sass and grass galore. We talk American film history, LA culture, 70's sex-positivity, *and more*! Tune in at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc.

It's Ghoulies time! Perhaps *the* ur-frightening VHS box, few of our generation made it through the 80s without confronting the terrifying image of a ghoulie popping out of a toilet seat. Michael Guggino - musician, sound technician, and cousin-of-Shawn - joins us to plumb these depths, and we talk about farting on Ghost Hunter, the myth of the primal father, and of course, plenty of childhood tra...

Giallo-horror master Lucio Fulci makes a visit to the Trauma Box with his 1984 headscratcher Murder Rock. This Flashdance-indebted (?) giallo features more murder than rock, and it doesn't have all that much murder, but Tyler and Shawn roll with the many confusing punches. But really, what's not to love here? Hop into the Trauma Box this week for stylish interiors, sexy Italians, bizarrely inappro...

For our thirteenth episode - lucky as ever - Tyler and Shawn tuck into the Osterman Weekend, legendary director Sam Peckinpah's final film. Its iconic VHS box - which features the feline Meg Foster wielding some kind of cyberbow - has plagued our Boxketeers for decades, and let us tell you, this one delivers the goods. And by goods, we mean bads. It's a muddled mess torn between the aesthetics of...

Today we recruit friend of the pod Aerin Ercolea, musician, poet, and intrepid Trauma-Spelunker. She brings her past to the present via the greatest presence of the past: motherfuckin' DINOS. "Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies" is a dollar bin compilation of 1950s and 1960s monster movie trailers that was foundational to her childhood mythology. Sadly, it's a bit scant on the actual dinos, but hey...

Trauma Box takes our first peek into the vast world of Albert Pyun with a visit to his first feature, 1982's The Sword and the Sorcerer. Pyun is a figure that many Trauma Box listeners will be familiar with, if not by name then certainly via the iconic VHS boxes of his innumerable direct-to-video offerings. Pyun's ouevre typically evinces a fascination with martial arts and cyborgs, as seen in fil...

This week, in announcement of the launch of our Patreon, Trauma Box deviates from our standard-issue format to discuss one of Shawn's Foundational Childhood Texts: Darby O'Gill and the Little People. This quirky 1959 Disney flick features sumptuous production, ponderous pacing, and a smirking, decidedly-not-Irish young Sean Connery. Join for our in-depth discussion of generational Disney aesthetic...

This week, the Trauma Box pops open with Skin Deep, a 1989 offering from the senescent Blake Edwards. Beauty is, as they say, only skin deep, and apparently so are bad movies. Skin Deep's legendarily ribald VHS box proves misleading, as the film contained therein lies much closer to Leaving Las Vegas than Revenge of the Nerds. Consider it a cautionary tale, with the moral being: never cast John Ri...

Trauma Box goes bawdy this week, as Tyler and Shawn get tackled by Summer Job, Paul Madden's neon-swathed sex comedy from 1989. An unremarkable but admirably good-humored cast slog through third rate gags pulled from Police Academy and Porky's, and we're right there slogging through it with them. As if that wasn't decadent enough, we even get a performance from former ELO members moonlighting as O...

Our Boxketeers become three this week, as artist Arthur Peña joins Tyler and Shawn to discuss one of his childhood video traumas: Killer Klowns from Outer Space. We dive deep into this foundational classic of VHS terror, covering oft-neglected topics like klown physics, confetti ontology, and, of course, alien sex. Inevitably, we will raise more questions than we can answer, but that's the name of...

This week, our intrepid Trauma Boxers brave Breeders, erotic auteur Tim Kincaid's 1986 direct-to-video grime-fest. The man behind Mutant Hunt, Robot Holocaust, and LA Tool & Die brings us seventy-odd minutes of unhinged post-C.H.U.D. NYC nightmare. It's a gross and grim affair, but oddly joyous in a Brecht-meets-Waters kind of way. At Trauma Box, we brave the bottom of the trash bin so you, dear l...

Tyler and Shawn explore a different corner of the Trauma Box this week with 1985's Tomboy. A staple of video store shelves of yore, Tomboy's iconic cover had wedged itself in the psyches of both hosts. What did we discover upon viewing? It's Flashdance with none of the heart meets Porky's with half the wit - that is to say: it's pretty good! Join us this week for a bawdier-than-usual breeze throug...

The Trauma Box bites back this week with Xtro, Harry Bromley Davenport's offering from 1982, an impossibly grim and upsettingly British ode to ooze. Why do we keep watching horrific films with dead/absent fathers and animated toys? What the hell is our problem? And, more pressingly, what drugs was Harry Bromley Davenport on?

Once again Tyler and Shawn open up the Trauma Box to investigate one of the great sources of childhood horror: the Ventriloquist Dummy. Is there anything scarier than an evil talking puppet? With 1985's Making Contact, Roland Emmerich (yes - the director of Independence Day) answers that question in a truly chilling fashion: by presenting us with a *German* evil talking puppet. A nightmarish perve...