Episode 118 - Traumatizing Horror Movies
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Horror films are a unique genre because they can have a profound effect on the viewer. They can literally change lives, leaving such a strong impression that something shifts in the psyche. Whether it makes someone afraid to go in the water, uneasy around bugs, frightened by Frankenstein’s creature, or just generally on edge, these films can have a lasting impact. They are meant to scare us, but for some, they remain harmless entertainment. For others, certain films reach much deeper, lingering in the mind long after the credits roll. And yet, we keep coming back for more. Do these films...
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Episode 117 - 1950s Giant Monster Movies
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It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), The Monster that Challenged the World (1957), and The Giant Gila Monster (1959) There is something special about this decade, one that gave us so many sci-fi / horror films, with plenty of incredible monsters, whether they came from outer space, or right here from our backyard. And thanks to atomic energy, those monsters tended to be big ones! In fact... GIANT ONES! Just imagine a creature, from bugs to animals, and I'm sure someone in the 1950s made a movie about them- one where they were bigger and angrier! In this episode, we take a look at three...
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Episode 116: Corman / Price / Poe
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House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964) In the beginning of his career as a producer / director Roger Corman was known for cranking out cheap and fast black and white pictures that always made money. He worked in all genres, but it was mainly the horror and sci-fi pictures in the mid to late '60s he was known for. All that changed in 1960, when he convinced AIP to let him adapt a story from Edgar Allan Poe, but in color, with a bigger budget, and longer shooting schedule. That started a new phase of Corman's career, which also made an even...
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Episode 115 -New French Extremity
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In My Skin (2002), Inside (2007), and Martyrs (2008) While the French aren’t widely known for their horror films, when they do enter the genre, it’s often something special. A perfect example is Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960). With its stark realism and dark themes, it established a tone of discomfort and unease that still feels powerful today. In the early 2000s, a new wave of younger filmmakers took that sense of unease and pushed it much further, deliberately testing the limits of what audiences could tolerate. These films were often graphic, sometimes over-the-top, and...
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Episode 114 - Deadly Spawn's Ted A. Bohus
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The Deadly Spawn (1983) & Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor (1990) A cult fan favorite of the 1980s low-budget monster boom, The Deadly Spawn is best remembered for one of the era’s most distinctive creature designs. Its semi-sequel, Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor, is a scrappy and underrated follow-up that’s still a lot of fun, and long overdue for a proper Blu-ray upgrade. Behind both films is Ted A. Bohus, a true multi-man of independent genre cinema. Beyond producing and directing, Bohus has also been a vital chronicler of film history and technique through his magazines SPFX and...
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Episode 113 - 2025 Wrap Up
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Another year in the books, which means it is time for our annual Wrap Up, where we not only go through our personal favorites of the year, but also some other standout films, as well as some others that came out in the last 12 months. For the second year in a row, it is astounding at some of the high quality pictures that have been getting released. From ones going straight to streaming services, to other wide release pictures, there have been plenty of fantastic titles out there. It really is a great time to be a horror fan. It's a long episode, so make sure you have a pad and pen, because we...
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Episode 112 - Twice Told Tales: Maniac
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Every now and again, the horror genre produces a film that becomes a bona fide classic. In 1980, director William Lustig and co-writer and star Joe Spinell teamed up to make what may be the defining film of the 42nd Street grindhouse era: Maniac. The film has it all, a serial-killing protagonist who scalps women while sobbing about his mother, buckets of gore from an early-career Tom Savini, and all the usual suspects of late-’70s Times Square: hookers, drugs, and utter despair. A remake, directed by Franck Khalfoun, written by Alexandre Aja, and starring Elijah Wood, arrived in 2012. This...
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Episode 111 - Paul Naschy
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Count Dracula's Great Love (1973), Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973), Panic Beats (1983) We're finally back to discuss the wonderful cinematic world of Paul Naschy! Back in episode 21, we covered three different entries in Naschy's werewolf films. So this time out, we are covering three of his NON-werewolf titles. It's important to remind fans that while he was known for his Waldemar Daninsky werewolf films, he made plenty of other films, incorporating a bunch of different kind of monsters. And if you are familiar with more of his work, then what better time to revisit some of them,...
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Episode 110 - Turkey Day 2025
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Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), Terrorvision (1986), and Uninvited (1988). That's right, folks! It's Turkey Time again, and we are celebrating our 5th episode dedicated to those wonderous missteps in cinematic history. They aimed for the stars, but dropped like frozen turkey chucked off a building! But as we always say, the only bad movie is a boring one. And these films are definitely not boring. Because once the credits roll, if you've been entertained, then how could it be considered bad??? So sit back and enjoy this episode, where we discuss giant telepathic crabs, a ravenous space...
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Episode 109 - Hammer Frankenstein Films with Peter Cushing Part 2
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Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) Continuing our quest to get through the rest of Hammer's Frankenstein films which starred Peter Cushing, we cover the last three titles that Hammer made. Cushing loved to play this character, and he's done it like no one ever had, or ever has. Along with the screenwriters, Cushing made this character his own, and really made him the real monster in this series. While these films might be well covered by others, sometimes we forget just how good some of these are, as well as...
info_outlineThere have been many horror writers that have been important to the genre, but few have had the outsized impact of the one and only Chas. Balun. Whether it was his work in Fangoria, Gorezone, or his own magazine Deep Red, even if you didn’t see his name at the head of the article, you knew it was him within a few sentences, by either by the tone of the writing, or maybe the films he was covering. Chas’ style was humorous and more than a little confrontational, but he was always waving the flag in support of movies that he felt were important and hadn’t received enough attention. Sure, they tended to be on the gory side, but for Chas. it wasn't just about the gore.
Not entirely, anyway.
While the three of us knew his work and the impact it had on us personally, for this very special episode, we felt we needed to talk with other folks who were just as impacted by him, and also knew him personally. In the second half of the show, you'll hear from John Szpunar, author of Xeroxferox: The Wild World of the Horror Film Fanzine and Blood Sucking Freak: The Life and Films of the Incredible Joel M. Reed; Art Ettinger, editor at Ultra Violent magazine; and finally Shawn Lewis, creator of Rotten Cotten and Eibon Press. They all share their own stories of Chas, and we all discuss the profound the impact Chas. had on us and on the horror genre in general. Don’t miss this one!
Films mentioned in this episode:
Abomination (1988), Bad Taste (1987), The Beyond (1981), Beyond the Darkness (1979), Blood Sucking Freaks (1976), Blue Velvet (1986), Braindead (1992), Bug (1975), Cannibal Holocaust (1980), City of the Walking Dead (1980), Dellamorte Dellamore (1994), The Exorcist (1973), Friday the 13th (1980), Guinea Pig 2: The Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985), Hell of the Living Dead (1980), Last House on Dead End Street (1973), Last House on the Left (1972), Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell (1987), The Nest (1987), Night of the Demon (1980), The Omen (1976), Pieces (1982), Splatterfest Exhumed (2024), Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972), Zoltan: Hound of Dracula (1977), Zombie (1979)