Bloody Birthday (1981)

Back before the 50s sci-fi horror craze took off, Universal was trying to find something to do with all those classic horror actors they had lying around with no Universal Monsters to play. And they figured, why not try a swashbuckling period piece? So strap on your rapier, grab your twin flintlock pistols, and get ready to face the crocodile pit as we meet Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Junior, and the horrors of being buried alive in 'The Black Castle'!

One of the great truths of art is that sooner or later, every Universal Monsters property gets a remake. And in 2010, it was the Wolf Man's turn. But there were a lot of stumbles on the way from script to screen, a lot of creative differences and personnel changes and reshoots... but did this hurt the finished work, or is this an underappreciated gem that deserves its due? Listen to this episode and find out!

Everyone knows about the age of atomic horror in the 1950s, filled with science fiction movies about giant lizards and giant ants and giant grasshoppers and giant tarantulas and giant men and giant women. But one film took a very different tack, creating a tiny universe of terror for one Scott Carey... and as you're about to learn, there's more than one way to make a spider look big. Come check it out!

After a brutal preproduction that saw both leads departing the series, a change in director, and numerous ancillary controversies, 'Scream 7' finally came out with Neve Campbell back as the main actor and Kevin Williamson behind the director's chair. What happened, and what kind of movie did it result in? Give this episode a listen and find out!

Another year has gone by, another trip around the calendar concluded for your humble host, and of course it wouldn't be a birthday without once again featuring a birthday-themed horror movie! This time out, the problem is a trio of kids born under a solar eclipse that blocked their moral compass, leaving them as pint-sized sociopaths turning the suburbs into their own personal hunting ground. Can Joyce and her little brother Timmy stop them? Will they ever even figure out who's responsible? Listen to this episode and find out!

It's been featured in Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments, it's been discussed by Stephen King in his book on the genre 'Danse Macabre', and yet somehow there are a lot of people who know very little about this 1967 classic. So let's dive into ableism, confidence tricks, and a heroin-stuffed MacGuffin with Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin in this underseen but brilliant film!

Time to close out the original Amityville trilogy with a movie that more or less fully abandons the "based on a true story" conceit in favor of a number of 3-D gimmicks, a plot that only really gets going in the last fifteen minutes, and... is that Meg Ryan? It's definitely a strange movie, but one that's worth discussion so let's dive in!

'The Illustrated Man' slipped past the studio gatekeepers during the very end of the Warner Brothers/Seven Arts era and the beginning of New Hollywood, and as you might expect it's an experimental film. But did the experiment succeed, or did the anthology stories wind up collapsing under the weight of late-60s pretentiousness and a queer subtext the movie was afraid to fully explore? Give this episode a listen and find out!

And so we conclude our Alien and Predator series... for now... with another absolute triumph from Dan Trachtenberg. The Yautja are ruthless, brutal, uncompromising lone wolves... but doesn't that make it even better to give them an awesome found-family narrative with plenty of cool action sequences and a badass final boss fight? Listen and find out!

Time to dive back on in to the world of horror parodies, with a movie from a classic comedy franchise in the UK that's tackling a classic horror genre - the Hammer Horror film! Can Detective Bung and his sidekick Slobotham unravel the mystery of who's abducting young women? Is there a sinister secret behind all the shop dummies showing up in ladies' clothing stores? How many times can I reference Doctor Who in one podcast? The answers are all here!