Video Monsters

Despite being in the middle of a pandemic, the Chattanooga Film Festival was still able to bring a scary good time to Chattanooga (and beyond!) on Halloween weekend with the virtual edition of the Frightening Ass Film Fest!!  As we have mentioned countless times on Video Monsters, part of what makes film festivals so special (beyond just the great films, that is) is the ability to interact with fi...

Our Halloween 2020 coverage continues with special guest, and friend of Video Monsters, Brian Salisbury!!  We are major fans of Junkfood Cinema here at Video Monsters, so we are ridiculously excited that Brian was able to join us for a frighteningly lively (and puntastic) discussion of The Frighteners!!  This family-friendly(ish) R-rated horror comedy beautifully blends an incredibly dark tone wit...

We have such sights to show you as we continue on with our Halloween 2020 coverage!!  Tonight, we are joined by special guest and friend of Video Monsters, Kyle Kuchta, for our review of Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth!  Unlike typical slasher franchises that can play things safe by just putting the slasher into a new group of unsuspecting college kids with overactive libidos, the Hellraiser franchi...

Our Halloween 2020 coverage continues with special guest and friend of Video Monsters, Mike Wolfe!  Before unmasking just how much we love Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, we start things off with a quick update about the Knoxville Horror Film Fest, some highlights of the lineup of the Frightening Ass Film Fest, and a bit of a discussion of the short films and creative projects tha...

Our Halloween 2020 coverage continues with special guest and friend of Video Monsters, Matt Mercer!!  In preparation for tonight's episode we saw a film and then worked on conjuring up what to say, without sounding too much like dummies.  That's right, tonight's episode is about Dead Silence!  While we certainly do not think that this film deserves the hate that it has received, we...

Halloween has always been one of our favorite holidays here at Video Monsters - and our love of the Halloween season has grown exponentially over the past few years as we have made it a habit to attend the Knoxville Horror Film Fest and the Frightening Ass Film Fest (in Chattanooga).  And while living in a pandemic royally sucks and is sadly (ridiculously sadly) preventing us from being able to at...

Our Halloween 2020 coverage continues with a truly batty 90s horror gem from the director of some of the greatest films of all time... Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula! This film is a gorgeous, gloriously weird throwback to the early days of genre cinema. We discuss the allure of sexy Gary Oldman, Coppola’s commitment to pulling off the film’s many stunning special effects in-camera, h...

On tonight's episode, we continue our Halloween 2020 coverage and our 90s/00s horror series with a family friendly horror movie that absolutely draws you into its web:  Arachnophobia!!  Frank Marshall clearly learned from working with the best, as Arachnophobia is packed with characters that feel genuine, humor, and just enough subtle scares to give you the creeps the more that you think about the...

We kick off our Halloween 2020 coverage in tonight's episode with some announcements about Knoxville Horror Film Festival, Frightening Ass Film Fest, and Chattanooga Film Festival ....then, we sink our teeth into one of the most deliciously terrible movies of all time - Troll 2!!  This movie is an absolute mess... and sheer enjoyment from start to finish!  While generally considered to be one of t...

Continuing our year-long theme covering the history of cinema, today's episode covers films from the 1970s!  Following the civil unrest of the 60s, cinema in the 70s took a much more cynical view of the world, exposing the rough edges of humanity with the "gritty realism" that defined movies from that decade.  While not every movie from the 70s hated the world in which it was born, the i...

Holy infrequent podcast, Batman!!  The Video Monsters signal has gone up and we have answered the call - turning our "Joely" into "SchumAugust" to bring you our heartfelt reviews of two of the lesser-loved films in the cinematic world of Batman.  Well...lesser-loved to most.  Here at Video Monsters, we recognize the flaws that these films have...but who cares!!  These movies are popcorn fun with a...

Even though we got a very (very, very) late start, the theme of July at Video Monsters is Joel-y, in which we are paying respects to the passing of Joel Schumacher by covering some of his more notable films.  And we are kicking things off with one of the most beloved films in Schumacher's filmography, The Lost Boys!  Along with discussing all of the obvious things about this film that have made it...

Continuing our year-long theme covering the history of cinema, today's episode covers films from the 1960s!  With an increase of morally grey "protagonists", anti-heroes, sexuality, and critiques of establishment, the increasing counterculture was abundantly clear in the cinema of the 1960s!  This counterculture critique of establishment is also part of what contributed to significant social chang...

Tonight's episode is about The Droving (2020) - a story of loss, grief, trauma, revenge, and the role that one's belief has in how they cope with their suffering.  Without giving too much away, this film is essentially a cult movie without the cult.  The Droving has many of the tropes of a cult film (mysterious disappearance, traditional festival, folklore, discrepancy between the mundane aspects...

Tonight's episode focuses on Butterfly Kisses (2018), a mockumentary/found footage mashup about a filmmaker's journey attempting to prove the authenticity of evidence of an urban legend, caught on the tapes of a couple of film students for their final project.  While most found footage films rely too much on the "found footage" gimmick as an attempt to draw the audience more into the story (withou...

Continuing our year-long theme covering the history of cinema, today's episode covers films from the 1950s!  While I can understand why some people might not want to watch movies with social commentary because they view movies as pure escapism, the 1950s serve as a pretty strong rebuttal to people who say that movies should never include any social commentary.  Cinema in the 1950s was packed full...

The Chattanooga Film Festival was held virtually this year on 5/22 - 5/25.  Despite the obvious limitations of not being able to attend a film festival in person, the Chattanooga Film Festival did an amazing job of translating the festival experience into a virtual format and we, once again, had an amazing time watching films and interacting with fellow film lovers!  The change in format this year...

The virtual Chattanooga Film Festival is set to begin in just a few short hours and this year's CFF includes a presentation of the CFF Lifetime Achievement Award to the incomparable Joe Dante!!  The presentation will be Saturday at 7:00pm, but we wanted to get the celebration started a little early...so, tonight's episode is a discussion of Matinee - a heartwarming tale of the impact that movies c...

Anyone who has ever listened to even a single episode of Video Monsters probably knows just how much we love the Chattanooga Film Festival!!  The love of cinema of everyone involved always shines through with all of the hard work and sacrifices they put into making CFF happen each year.  And this year, there has been an extra dose of hard work and sacrifices as CFF had to shift from its usual form...

Continuing our year-long theme covering the history of cinema, today's episode covers films from the 1940s! The 1940s were a very dark time in America (coming out of the Great Depression only to go into WWII) and that abundantly clear from the movies that were released that decade.  But, despite the heavy tone, the 40s also graced us with some of the most iconic movies in cinematic history......

Anyone who has listened to the podcast for even just a little bit knows that we like having a theme for our episodes each month (whether or not we are able to always stick to that theme is a different story...but, in general we like themes).  The theme for April was supposed to be Chattanooga Film Festival coverage, but (like everything else) it had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  S...

Continuing our year-long theme covering the history of cinema, today's episode covers films from the 1930s!  While there are countless amazing movies from the 30s that we could have focused on, as well as some tremendous advancements in cinema (such as "talkie" pictures and technicolor), this episode primarily turned into a discussion of Universal Monsters and The Marx Brothers (two of Nathan's pe...

In preparation for the world premiere of Fangoria's remake of Castle Freak at the Chattanooga Film Festival (April 16-19), today's episode is about the original Castle Freak from 1995, directed by Stuart Gordon and staring Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Jessica Dollarhide, and Jonathan Fuller as the title character (the castle freak, that is).  Castle Freak is drastically different in tone from...

Continuing our year-long theme covering the history of cinema, today's episode covers films from the 1920s!  As a reminder, these History of Cinema episodes will not be a comprehensive coverage of every single movie that was released that decade. It isn't even necessarily going to be the "top" movies from the decade.  Instead, it will be more of a broad discussion of some of the advancements, them...

If you've been listening to the podcast for a little while, you've realized that we generally like to do themed months.  This year, along with the themed months, we will also be doing a year-long theme covering the history of cinema.  We will be covering a decade a month, starting with the early days of cinema (ok, so this first episode is a bit more than a decade...) and going right up to present...