Tag: horror

167 – The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

Tommy Rettig in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953)

Jen and Tim talk about a truly weird musical fantasia from the mind of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss— The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 80 other bonus episodes!

So much of this episode wouldn’t exist without the superlative work of Seuss biographer Brian Jay Jones. His book Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisl and the Making of an American Imagination highlights Geisl’s creativity and enduring legacy in popular literature. Jones talked in depth about the life of Dr. Seuss on the Our American Stories podcast (listen to our show first though lol).

The charming animated short Gerald McBoing-Boing may be viewed on YouTube.

Jen mentioned the Australian child murderer (and worse) Mr. Cruel— see the legitimately terrifying police sketch of the suspect at Wikipedia, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.

And yes, we highly recommend that calendar Rifftrax short we mentioned, whether you like to laugh, or if you’re just genuinely confused about how to use a calendar!

165 – I Know Who Killed Me

A Sphynx cat wearing a blue collar at the top of a staircase. It has very prominent testicles.
this is the most important shot in the movie

Jen is defeated by the ostensible low point of Lindsay Lohan’s onscreen career, I Know Who Killed Me, while Tim cuts right through the Gordian knot that is the movie’s storyline. Also Jen vents her disappointment over a director she actually likes(?), sorta.

Hear the whole thing at our Patreon for a pledge as low as $5/month and get access to 80+ bonus episodes!

Someone actually tracked down the screenwriter, Jeff Hammond, and got him to open up a little about the production: 

I avoided reading most of the reviews; however, it was impossible not to be aware of the negative consensus. I forced myself to read the ones that mentioned me by name (linked from Google notifications). That made for a handful of ugly reads. It’s a difficult thing for a writer to be accused in print of being tone-deaf. 

His account is interesting, but there’s no revelatory info about the “themes” or “story,” because these things are about as one-dimensional as you might have guessed.

Charles Bramesco also made a case in the Guardian for the movie. You can probably chalk that up to personal preference more than a love of great cinema.

164 – The Night Stalker

Darren McGavin in character as Carl Kolchak
king

Tim and Jen host steadfast friend of the show mugrimm to talk about a pervasively influential TV movie that spawned the cult series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Also, in this episode you can learn more about Pervy the Clown…if you dare.

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon for as low as $5/month and get access to more than 70 other bonus episodes!

If you love Kolchak’s sad little hat, you can get one!

The Slate article quibbling about Fletch (the 1985 film starring Chevy Chase) may be read here, if you enjoy the Slate brand of whiny crap.

For mugrimm’s previous appearance on the show, check out our episode on the M.A.N.T.I.S. TV movie! 

156 – Halloween III: Season of the Witch

A child claws at the pumpkin mask he's wearing in a scene from Halloween III: Season of the Witch

They just can’t stop witchin’! Tim and Jen continue the unending spooky season with a franchise entry that pleased no one, Halloween III: Season of the Witch!

Hear the whole thing at our Patreon and get access to 75 other bonus episodes!

Chris Evangelista defended the movie over at SlashFilm, as part of that site’s The Unpopular Opinion series.

Let’s all thank Sean for his partial preservation of hotep public access show Spearman’s Addiction.

Watch Barbariana on Youtube! 

155 – Season of the Witch

In a frame from George Romero's 1973 film SEASON OF THE WITCH, actress Jan White sips from a cocktail while rocking frosty eyeshadow and an astonishing beehive hairdo
Female self-actualization = giant hair

Jen and Tim attempt to purge the lingering memory of a certain occult-y art film with a viewing of an early George Romero work, Season of the Witch.

Hear the whole episode and dozens of others for only $5/month!

In case you had no idea what he was getting at, Tim’s latest thing is calling Chantal Akerman’s feminist classic Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles “the Jean Teasdale movie.” 

Marxist art critic John Berger’s analysis of western media, Ways of Seeing, is available on YouTube. He casts a critical eye on the depiction of the female nude in European oil painting in the second episode. 

Men dream of women, women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at. Women constantly meet glances which act like mirrors, reminding them of how they look, or how they should look. Behind every glance is a judgement. Sometimes the glance they meet is their own, reflected back from a real mirror.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

154 – Found Footage Horror Party

A video shot of an empty yellow room with multiple exits, also known as the creepypasta staple the Backrooms

Your hosts range widely and freely on the topic of horror: specifically, found footage horror. The films discussed are The McPherson Tape, The Blair Witch Project, Backrooms, and Horror in the High Desert.

Watch The Backrooms short we talked about here on YouTube.

Director Dean Alioto talked with the Found Footage Critic about UFO Abduction and Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, aka The McPherson Tape:

In 1989 Dean Alioto shot his first film, UFO Abduction, for a meager budget of $6,500—the master copy of the film was subsequently destroyed and thus the movie was never widely released. Ten years later Dean Alioto pitched UFO Abduction to Dick Clark Productions, who picked up the idea and gave Dean Alioto a $1.2 million budget to shoot a remake for television. In 1998, the remake was released entitled Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (a.k.a. The McPherson Tape).

Over the years the names of these films has resulted in a great deal of confusion. Even to this day, both UFO Abduction and Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County are referred to as “The McPherson Tape.”

Found Footage Critic

An explorer named Tom covered the tragic story of the Death Valley Germans at his blog, OtherHand.

153 – The Love Witch

Samantha Robinson as the titular character in The Love Witch (2016)
she’s got piss jars / she knows how to use them

Tim and Jen are dumbfounded by a universally praised and vacantly pretty auteur statement, The Love Witch!

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon!

Rotten Tomatoes shows The Love Witch to be a darling of critics with a rating of 95% (audiences were more lukewarm, with their rating sitting at 61%). One of the few negative reviews calls it “dawdling, hollow and kind of awful, really:”

Some of the movie comes close to camp or just falls in, as when Elaine is assaulted by former friend Trish (Laura Waddell in the film’s only genuine performance), whose husband Elaine has stolen. “Skank! Whore!” Trish yells, slapping Elaine while wearing a wig cap — the movie helpfully provides its own drag-show re-enactment. A sequence in which Elaine is confronted in a bar by a mob of superstitious goofballs (“Burn the witch!”) is frankly terrible and staged with incredible clumsiness. The Love Witch will be worshipped as a fetish object by a certain breed of film nerd who luxuriates in its DIY retro aesthetic, but it isn’t really a movie — it would have to move first, and the pacing is leadfooted. The plot’s pairing Elaine with a stolid detective (Gian Keys) just leads to a handfasting scene at a local ren faire that seems to go on for six, maybe seven years.

-Rob Gonsalves

Vomit TAG!

151 – Return to Oz

Tim and Jen start spooky season early with a shockingly dark release from Disney, Return to Oz.

Jen forgot to mention that the main reason the film does not resembles the MGM film from 1939 apart from the Ruby Slippers™ is because all of the trappings of the MGM version were and are copyrighted. In fact, Disney had to shell out to use that plot device in the film. Hence, while Walter Murch’s desire to make a movie closer in spirit to the L. Frank Baum material is admirable, it most likely played second fiddle to the demands of copyright law.

Additionally, the movie finally made a profit from a 1949 re-release, not “like twenty years later” or whatever Jen glibly claimed.

Animator Doug Aberle made a video where he talks about his process for animating the demise of the Nome King. Plus, he includes interviews with the late Will Vinton.

If you want more details about the drama between Sarah Polley and Terry Gilliam, you can read an excerpt from her memoir here.

136 – 50 States of Fright

Rachel Brosnahan in "The Golden Arm"
bury me with my out-of-context viral video clip

Tim holds forth on the mind sickness that led to short-lived streaming service Quibi before diving into a review of short-form horror anthology 50 States of Fright. Jen just tries to keep up!

This AV Club article is pretty emblematic of the unkind response to the first episode of the series, “The Golden Arm.”

Watch Tim’s video work over at YouTube! Hit Like and Subscribe!

Oh I almost forgot to post the funny dog fart video

For more anthology horror, check out our episode on Hammer House of Horror!

135 – It!

Deceptive promo art for It! (1967)
This monster isn’t actually in the film, I just thought the art was sick

Have You Seen…All Possible Worlds?! Tim and Jen team up with Josh and Brian of The Worst of All Possible Worlds podcast to discuss a wretchedly stupid British horror film starring Roddy McDowall called It! No, not that one. This one came out in 1967 and involves a golem that looks like a wet trash bag.

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

Listen to The Worst of All Possible Worlds wherever you listen to us, or at their website! 

Atlas Obscura has an article about the Metropolitan Museum forgeries evoked in the film. 

Dennis Bartok and Jeff Joseph’s A Thousand Cuts: The Bizarre Underground World of Collectors and Dealers Who Saved the Movies is a fascinating read about the days of analog movie bootlegging, a must for any film buff. Read an excerpt about the Roddy McDowall film piracy case over at ScreenAnarchy (you can also buy the book directly from University Press of Mississippi). And yes, to answer Josh’s question from the episode, the MPAA (now the MPA) was one of the driving forces behind the crackdown as a proxy for the major film studios.

The documentary Jen failed to remember the name of is Recorder, which is the story of an activist named Marion Stokes who obsessively taped the news 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and thus amassed a library of 70,000 cassettes.

For a discussion of a much, MUCH better ersatz Hammer film, try our episode about Horror Express!