Frankie Freako (2024)

What do you get when you take the gothic, queer romance sensibilities of Anne Rice and filter them through hit-making director Tony Scott and arthouse actors like Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie? You get a unique vampire movie that blends beauty and horror in equal measures, with bold and experimental stylistic choices, and you get a whole episode of HPH discussing it! Let's dive in.

We’re in the home stretch now for the Conjuring Universe, with just one film from each franchise left to go! But it turns out Annabelle the haunted doll doesn’t want to be put away for good—so let’s see whether the third time’s the charm for this spinoff franchise with 2019’s “Annabelle Comes Home”!

When Steven Kostanski announced a follow-up to 'Psycho Goreman' that promised more of that same weird, day-glo 90s aesthetic combined with the outrageous prank-filled attitude of the 80s "little monster" subgenre, it was almost a foregone conclusion that his film was going to wind up on this podcast as soon as possible. And that's today! So lucky you, you get to hear about all the shotgun traps, dials of doom, and gun colleges in 2024's future cult classic 'Frankie Freako'!

What do you get when you take an authentic Mexican folk legend and give it a thick coat of whitewash? You get the latest "unofficial" Conjuring spin-off, complete with lots of jumpscares, plenty of tracking shots, and all the cultural appropriation you could ever want and then some! Join HPH for a deep dive into everything that makes this film so problematic.

Mario Bava is a legend, an icon both as a director and as a special effects artist, but he didn't work in science fiction very often. So when he did, is it any real surprise that he made a movie that put its stamp on everything from 'Alien' to 'Event Horizon'? Join HPH for a deep dive into his cult classic, the low-budget but immensely clever movie 'Planet of the Vampires'! (We'll even explain why it has that title.)

And nun too soon, we arrive at a movie that is second to nun! If nun of you have seen it before, then you'll be familiar with nun of the scares and nun of the surprises - but is there even a single part of this latest Conjuring spin-off that's any good? I'm not going to say there's absolutely nun, but let's take a look and find out where they could have made a few improvements.

Why 'Terror of Mechagodzilla'? Why not 'Terror of Mechagodzilla'? It's the last film in the Showa era, the last film made by Ishiro Honda, it's got one of Godzilla's most iconic foes, and all Godzilla is good Godzilla. So let's dig in and see how kaiju were living in the Me Decade!

Sadly, there's no warm and comforting narration to explain how this toy is made - but there are orphans in danger, killer scarecrows, and yet another movie about the origins of Annabelle the haunted doll! Let's dig into it together and see how the next installment in the Conjuring Universe fares.

Long before 'The Crying Game' and 'Interview With the Vampire', Neil Jordan made a splash with a dark, sumptuous retelling of Little Red Riding Hood based on Angela Carter's feminist interpretation of the text. It's been a cult classic ever since... but what is it saying about werewolves, and what is it saying about people for that matter? Time to dig in and find out!

Almost buried in the footnotes to the Conjuring Universe is this little non-supernatural spin-off of a spin-off that retells the Manson killings, albeit with a lot of historical liberties and a cameo appearance from one of the characters in 2014's 'Annabelle'. Is it worth digging this deep into the strata of intellectual property exploitation to find that last little nugget of Conjuring content? Listen and find out!