Watch This With Rick Ramos

John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate  On this week's episode of WatchThis W/RickRamos, Mr. Chavez & I sit down to discuss a classic of Cold War, Political Cinema, John Frankenheimer's groundbreaking 1962 The Manchurian Candidate . Based on the 1959 novel by Richard Condon, Frankenheimer's film would captivate audiences with a paranoid and chilling story of American soldiers brain-washed b...

Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man 2026 finds us digging into the Beautiful, Strange, and Challenging filmography of auteurs unafraid of being misunderstood or the offensive nature of the stories and images they deliver. It would be difficult to find a film that challenges it audience more than Shinya Tsukamoto's 1989  Cyber-Punk Classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man . There is no simple way to descri...

Akira Kurosawa's Ran  Happy New Year WatchThis Fans. Depending on Your Perspective, 2025 was a horrible year or the beginning of a grand awakening, returning America to its rightful place as Leader and Benefactor of the Unwashed Ignorant Masses. There are many ideas of what 2026 can and will be. We here at WatchThis W/RickRamos believe that Akira Kurosawa's 1985 masterpiece, Ran , is a film that o...

Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow & James Foley's After Dark My Sweet  This week Rick Ramos flies solo for a new episode of WatchThis W/RickRamos and the last new episode of 2025. After a heartfelt look at the past year, dreams, the job, and making sense of the art, we look at two Noirs that have been criminally overlooked: Robert Wise's 1959 Classic Odds Against Tomorrow and James Foley's After...

Scott Sanders's Black Dynamite  We're finishing out the month of December - two more weeks left in 2025 - and having a great time exploring the world of Cult Cinema and Midnight Movies. This week we take a look at one of the best comedies of the 21st Century . . . a film that should have been exactly the definition of Midnight/Cult Movie. In 2009 Director Scott Sanders and Writer/Star Michael Jai...

Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain This week we continue our love for Midnight and Cult Movies. For this episode we return to the great Chilean-French filmmaker, Alejandro Jodorowsky. A Visionary Artist and Poet of the Cinema, Jodorowsky has created some of the most beautiful and challenging images and concepts ever conceived. Problematic, Polarizing, Poetic, and Personal, Jodorowsky's films...

Mike Judge's Office Space  Recorded some time ago, we've been holding onto this episode until the right time. As we move into our second month of Midnight & Cult Movies it is clear that Director Mike Judge (creator of Beavis & Butthead , Idiocracy , and King of the Hill ) is a director whose filmography is almost entirely cult films and television shows. In 1999 he was approached by 20th Century F...

Robert Aldrich's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Not a "Midnight Movie" but certainly one of the great Cult Classics, 1962s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was an audience's dream pairing. The coming together of Oscar winners Bette Davis and Joan Crawford - two of the greatest stars the medium has known - created a film that has captivated film lovers for decades. The story of two sisters - volati...

Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!  If you allow it to do so, Cinema will take you to strange, hypnotic, and brilliant places. For close to forty years I have known about Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) and have assiduously avoided it. Cinematic Snobbery stopped this podcaster from one of the strangest and - seemingly - sexist and self-indulgent exercises in moviemaking....

David Lynch's Eraserhead This week we continue our look into Midnight/Cult Movies. One of the earliest films to find an audience (and build its directors career) was 1977s Eraserhead . A film that baffles description, this weeks episode takes the angle of describing the "feelings" and memories that have followed our initial viewings of this brilliant debut film. Brilliant Black & White cinematogra...

Jim Sharman's The Rocky Horror Picture Show Cinema is art, Viewing Cinema is an artistic experience. We sit in the theater and drift into the beauty of a story that either entertains, explains, or enlightens. Sometimes all of these and even more. In 1975 20th Century Fox would distribute a film that would fail miserably with mainstream audiences, but would survive box office death and be reborn on...

Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark  This year Halloween fell on a weekend . . .  We've come to the end of the Halloween season. Two months of Vampire movies finds us ending on a cult favorite from the 1980s. In 1987 Kathryn Bigelow would direct her first solo-outing by re-imagining the Vampire film as a Neo-Western centered around a young couple and the family of vampires that haunt and terrorize a moder...

E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire Sometimes it's simply a thrill to watch one your favorite actors let loose and have a great time. F.W. Murnau's 1922  Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is widely - and deservedly - considered one of the greatest films of all time. A mythology has formed around the making of the film including the idea that its star, Max Shreck, was an actual vampire. With thi...

Carl Theodore Dreyer's Vampyr If you dig deep enough, Cinema will unleash great treasures. The Silent Era ended in 1927 with the release of The Jazz Singer . . .  Movies would never be the same. A number of filmmakers would utilize the new technology in innovative, imaginitive, and groundbreaking ways. Fritz Lang's M comes to mind. Musicals became a reality and would astonish audiences. Storytelln...

Adrien Beau's The Vourdalak If you dive into the depths of World Cinema you will often discover magic. You may not know that you're viewing something exceptional while you're watching it, but you will find yourself realizing the power of the image, the power of ideas from different corners of the world. This week Mr. Chavez & I find Adrien Beau's 2023 French "Folk" Tale The Vourdalak, a film of nu...

Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot From time to time movies slip through the cracks. Although Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot is considered a television classic, it is a film that your movie podcaset host has somehow missed these 46 years. Adapted from Stephen King's 1975 best-seller, this 1979 adaptation features David Soul from TVs Starsky & Hutch,  as well as future Mrs. Holly McClane, Bonnie Bedelia. What co...

Park Chan-wook's Thirst One of the great thrills of the past ten-plus years is the discovery of new, exciting, and challenging films. On this week's episode of WatchThis W/RickRamos , Mr. Chavez & I dive into the cinema of South Korea's Park Chan-wook for 2009s Thirst . It's fascinating to watch stories we believe we understand and are sure we have witnessed every variation. Park Chan-wook's Vampi...

John Landis's Innocent Blood  There are times when you have to take what you can get from a project. This week Mr. Chavez & I look at John Landis's 1992 Horror/Mob/Vampire/Comedy, Innocent Blood . With a talent such as Landis, the strokes are broad and without nuance. Innocent Blood is no exception. There are definitely the seeds for an exceptional Horror/Comedy hybrid, however this film is servin...

Samurai Dhampir - Yoshiaki Kawajiri's Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust What an incredible find! This week Mr. Chavez & I return to the world of Japanese Anime with this discussion of Yoshiaki Kawajiri's 2000 Dark Vampire Fantasy, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust . Coming fifteen years after Toyoo Ashida's Vampire Hunter D , what Kawajiri creates is breathtaking. Simply put, Japanese Anime expands the bounda...

Fanged Housemates - Taika Waititi & Jermaine Clemente's What We Do in the Shadows This week Mr. Chavez & I dive into the World of Reality Cinema with Taika Waittit & Jermaine Clemente's 2014 mockumentary, What We Do in the Shadows . A comical look at the undead that misses more often that it hits, Waititi & Clemente take a reality television approach to the vampire legend, both literary and cinema...

Someone To Die For: Ariane Louis-Seize's Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person The title alone may put off some audiences, however to do pass on this film would be a mistake. The rare film that explores genre with an intent to experiment, open up, and entertain, Louis-Seize's French-Canadian co-production is an exciting and beautifully realized look at a coming-of-age story wedged in...

Mamuwalde Unchained: William Crain's Blacula  Well Boys & Girls, this week Mr. Chavez & I begin our yearly dive into Horror, returning to the genre with a search for lesser-known, less-discussed titles in the Vampire sub-genre. Over the next two months we will be traveling to Korea, Canada, the American Southwest, a post-apocalyptic Japan, and New Zealand. This week we start in Transylvania and tr...

Pilot Going Down: Robert Zemeckis's Flight This week we close out our Denzel Washington Love Fest with - arguably - one of his best performances. In 2012 Mr. Washington would team with Director Robert Zemeckis for  Flight , a film that is rarely discussed, but that has powerfully affected this film watcher. For this episode, Mr. Chavez & I sit down to watch, examine, and discuss this incredible pe...

Battle for the Conn: Tony Scott's Crimson Tide You can never get enough Denzel Washington. This week Mr. Chavez & I sit down to talk the first of five collaborations with director Tony Scott, 1995s Crimson Tide . This first collaboration of Washington and Scott would fall almost directly in the middle of Scott's career and would be the fourth collaboration between Scott and the Don Simpson/Jerry B...

Denzel Wandering the Wasteland: The Hughes Brothers' The Book of Eli There are few great actors who can also be considered movie stars. Denzel Washington is certainly on that short list. A few weeks back we discussed his crowning achievement,  Malcolm X . In 2010 he would produce and star in the Hughes Bros. directed, The Book of Eli . The rare instance of an action film with a purpose beyond mere...