Category: Episodes

084 – Vile Pervert: The Sequel and Guilty

Jen and show MVP Mike Rosen dissect some disgusting works by a disgusting person, Jonathan King. That’s right, he won’t go the fuck away! Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!

If you can stomach it, here are our earlier episodes about Jonathan King’s revolting outsider works: we looked at the original Vile Pervert in episode 009, and the unasked-for sequel in episode 38!

083 – Verotika

Jen and Tim rewrite Glenn Danzig’s stupefying horror anthology, Verotika! Only Glenn could give us dialogue like “Your titties are looking at me!”

Verotika may be viewed on the Shudder streaming service.

“Yeah, I got A Rebours, The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, The Night Circus…all the spookiest shit.”

For more head-scratching horror, listen to our episode about Canadian micro-budgeter Things!

080 – Into the Night

Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer in John Landis' Into the Night (1985)

We dissect John Landis’s first flop, Into the Night from 1985, with returning guest Sean Morris.

If you can get your hands on a copy, you must read Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego and the Twilight Zone Case by Steve Farber. Farber provides a definitive case of the infamous Twilight Zone movie disaster. Try your local library!

For more of Sean, listen to our episode on the weirdest hit of 1998, Bulworth!

078 – The Doomsday Machine

You know how sometimes a movie just sucks and is lazy and stupid and sexist? That’s The Doomsday Machine, all right! Mike Rosen joins us to discuss!

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!

You can watch The Doomsday Machine in its entirety on YouTube, but why would you? Try the very funny Cinematic Titanic version instead!

This is actually the second movie starring Bobby Van (a favorite actor of Jen’s) we’ve covered on the show. The first was lumbering musical Lost Horizon—listen to our episode about it here.

077 – Hudson Hawk

Tim and Jen revisit everyone’s favorite dad-joke heist movie: the unfairly reviled (to some) Hudson Hawk!

Bruce Willis mugging in Hudson Hawk (1991)
Doing an comedy

The entertainment media subjected Hudson Hawk to an unusual amount of negative attention during production. This poor publicity appears to have had a detrimental affect on the box office returns. However, enough time has passed that a nonzero number of people (who aren’t Tim!) will defend it. One of those pieces appeared at the Guardian:

The action scenes are fun, particularly one sequence where Willis is riding a hospital bed down the Brooklyn Bridge (“How am I driving? 1-800-I’m-gonna-fuckin’-die!”) 

Oliver Macnaughton

For another movie that became synonymous with “flop,” try our very first episode, where we discussed Ishtar.

076 – Jacob’s Ladder

Jen and Tim bring you another extra-stuft episode! This one’s about a haunting psychological thriller that 100% blames the US government: Jacob’s Ladder!

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!

To see Joel Peter Witkin’s remarkable photographic work, view this gallery at Artnet.

For more cult horror, listen to our episode about John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness!

075 – The Day After and Special Bulletin

Tim and Jen return to the fevered nuclear paranoia of the 80s! We look at one of the most important TV events of the era, The Day After. We also stick to the show mission statement by highlighting a lesser known nuclear horror telefilm: Special Bulletin.

Subscribe to HYST on Patreon to hear the full episode and get two bonus episodes every month!

You can watch Special Bulletin in its entirety here. We recommend it! Also: David Clennon, if you’re out there, come on the show, king.

Michael Madsen in a small role in Special Bulletin (1983)
Hey, this guy who has a bit part in Special Bulletin…does he have a sister?

Following the broadcast of The Day After, ABC aired a panel discussion moderated by Ted Koppel on nuclear proliferation. If you would like to see absolute ghouls like William F. Buckley Jr. and Henry Kissinger argue for “robust defense,” check it out. But really, we watched it for the much-missed Carl Sagan.

For discussion of a movie that makes The Day After look like an episode of Steven Universe, listen to our episode about landmark British telefilm Threads.