Discover the Horror Podcast
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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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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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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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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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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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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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...
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The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), and The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) What can you say about the Hammer Frankenstein films that hasn’t been said before? Well, a lot, actually! In 1957, a relatively small, mostly unknown studio made a film that would forever change horror and kick off a cycle of sensual, bloody, and atmospheric fright flicks that would dominate the genre for around twenty years. To say that The Curse of Frankenstein is a classic is almost like saying that water is wet, but it is also a film that lives up to it's reputation. It and its...
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No matter what kind of horror fan you are, there's a good chance that you love the monsters. Whether it’s from the Universal Classics, Hammer’s colorful reinterpretations, the amazing creatures from Ray Harryhausen, to the no-classic aliens in Star Wars, monsters are a backbone of cinema, and arguably, are the backbone of horror. It’s one of the things that we horror fans rally around, and love to discuss: from our favorites, to how some are designed, how they move, and everything in between. Oscar winning special makeup effects artist Howard Berger and author Marshall Julius have a new...
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The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), Quatermass 2 (1957), Quatermass and the Pit (1967) Everyone knows the name Hammer Films (at least, we hope they do!) but most people associate it with gothic horror, particularly their reimagining of the Universal classic Frankenstein in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957). Yet Hammer had been around long before Peter Cushing breathed life into that first stitched-together corpse. Founded in the 1930s as a distribution company, the studio gradually moved into producing films, often adapted from popular TV and radio series. In 1953, the BBC aired a six-part serial,...
info_outlineIn 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 frequently dealt with disturbing subject matter that lingered even when the violence or gore wasn’t shown onscreen. Often, it wasn’t what you saw that was hardest to watch, but the subject itself and the way it was presented.
In this episode, we take on three titles that demonstrate the range of this movement, from deeply subversive and uncomfortable subject matter to films that push gore to extreme levels, while still challenging the viewer intellectually and emotionally. These are films that don’t just shock in the moment, they can leave you unsettled for days after they end. That’s powerful filmmaking.
Films mentioned in this episode:
Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), Calvaire (2004), Dark Touch (2013), Diabolique (1955), Eyes Without A Face (1960), Frontier(s) (2007), Get Out (2017), High Tension (2003), The Horde (2009), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), In My Skin (2002), Inside (2007), Irreversible (2002), I Stand Alone (1998), Martyrs (2008), The Phantom of Liberty (1974), Raw (2016), Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom (1975), Scream (1996), The Shining (1980), The Tall Man (2012), Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Them (2006), Trouble Every Day (2001)