Fright Club Podcast

Oh, siblings—our closest friends and the bane of our existence. Horror movies know that, which is why both sibling rivalry and sisterly bonds populate so many worthwhile flicks: Sisters, Excision, Mama, Only Lovers Left Alive, Kiss of the Vampire. Too many to count, really, but that’s exactly what we plan to do: count down the five best.

The film community lost another of its greats, and we want to celebrate the wonderful and the weirdly watchable of Tobe Hooper. Hooper’s ability to pervert social expectations, his unsurpassed gift for creating terrifying atmospheres among America’s backwoods folk, and his nonchalantly visceral presentation made every film an experience worth attempting. Not every one paid off, but those that did left a nasty mark.

How is it even possible that we’ve recorded 109 Fright Club podcasts and we have not covered German horror yet?! It’s high time we remedy that situation, and we do so with the help of Fright Clubber #1, John Dean. Germany has an incredible history in this genre, from some of the earliest and most memorable horror films through the contemporary indie gems that will become the next generation of classics.

So many vampires – so many! And then there are all these other guys who may or may not be. Sometimes it’s hard to say. Sure they drink blood, but do they really need to? Let’s explore.

If you watch much of horror, there’s something you might notice. People lose a lot of limbs in these movies. Naturally, we decided to look into this. We spent some time with the tragic (or maybe deserving) amputees of Audition and American Mary and others, but there turned out to be so many badasses who only get cooler once the limb is missing that we decided to hang out with them.

A ripe topic for the genre, serial killers. There’s not much more terrifying than that. And while most films on that theme tend to be police procedurals, plenty of horror movies contend with that loner who thirsts for his (or her) next kill. Some are done with humor – The Greasy Strangler and Sightseers among the best. Some (Peeping Tom, for instance) give us sympathetic villains. Some (Wolf Creek among them) do not. Others exploit the killers’ exploits for the sake of exploitation. We’re looking at you, Man Bites Dog and The Last Horror Movie. All those mentioned above are required viewing, but what are the best of the best? Glad you asked!

Who’s crazy, who’s not? Whose perspective can you believe? Why can’t I look in the basement? All fine questions that have been asked in film since around 1920. We sifted through all the loonies and the asylums to generate a list of the best and nuttiest available. Thanks to Senior Lunatic Correspondent Dr. Neil McRobert – affectionately known as NakMac – for returning, hangover and all, to help us count down the best horror films in set an asylum.

Horror has not always treated the mentally ill very well. Many filmmakers twist notions of “crazy” into varying degrees of evil, but rarely with any real thought to the pathology behind it. Some films and filmmakers make an attempt to examine illness and mine it for both humanity and fear, since nearly all illnesses of any kind are marked by both. Here are our five (OK, maybe six) favorite films dealing in mental illness.

We are halfway through 2017 already – whew! It’s been a sucktastic year in many respects, but not when it comes to horror movie output. The young year has already seen so many great flicks that we had to leave some real gems off this list, but we’re pleased to say that Senior Filmmaking Correspondent Jason Tostevin returns to keep us honest.

From The Omen‘s Mrs. Baylock to Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s domestic and handyman, you’ll find questionable help aplenty in horror (and not quite horror). Chan Wook Park’s The Handmaiden explored the dual sized anxiety of having a stranger living in your house – or being the stranger living in someone else’s house. Good horror directors know how to pick that scab, because having a stranger inside the household is unnerving, but being that stranger can be even worse.

Who’s idea was this? Because this was super fun. Horror filmmaker can get positively inspired by what they find in a tool box or garden shed. But where to even start? Every Friday the 13th movie, every Sleepaway Camp – basically, every camping movie. Plus, some films really give it away with their title: Driller Killer, Toolbox Murders (both), Saw (all of them), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (all of them). It’s a good beginning. To narrow down the list of best horror scenes using tools, we started by categorizing.

Everybody has their rituals, and that’s all fine and dandy. But we aren’t looking for fine and dandy, are we? Hell no – we’re looking for the kind of rituals that generally includes goats heads and/or black candles and/or virgins and/or special meat preparation. Where will we find these? In some great horror movies. Check it.

You want to know the fears and anxieties at work in any modern population? Just look at their horror films. There are certain anxieties that plague us no matter the era. It Follows, for instance, brilliantly brought horror’s long obsession with underage promiscuity into modern focus. Unfriended, #Horror, Rings, The Den and dozens of others touched on our loss of control in a digital age. You could even read The Witch as a comment on the power of radicalization. What horror films had their fingers most firmly on the elevated pulse of their respective times?

Film lost one of the great character actors earlier this year. Bill Paxton – forever reliable, always memorable, often quotable – died in February at the age of 61. Gone far, far too soon, he’s the horror icon-of-sorts we pay tribute to today. The man made a lot of films, many of them horror: The Colony, Impulse, Future Shock, Club Dread, Deadly Lessons, Mortuary. Sure, these are bad movies, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t enjoyable. We want to spend most of our time with the horror films that are really worth seeing. Three of them are even quite good!

Who loves horror? We do, you do, and that’s probably why homage horror is so satisfying. Filmmakers take a self-referential approach to draw attention to the tropes of the genre they – and we – love. It’s not a spoof, not a satire, it’s a loving ode to the genre. It’s like a big, bloody bear hug, and we are in!

Few figures in horror are more familiar, no matter your age, than Vincent Price. With more than 100 films to his credit, not to mention the Scooby Doo episodes and Thriller rap, the iconic voice and face of evil (and sometimes comedy) left an impression. Whether it’s his hapless scientist in The Fly (1958), the sole survivor of a zombie/vampire epidemic in 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, or his murderous supervillain in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), Price put his voice, his height, his hair and pencil-thin mustache to evil use with a panache few could match. With the help of Phantom Dark Dave, we take a look at the best Price had to offer.

From Truffaut’s Day for Night to Burton’s Ed Wood and countless others, films frequently take the setting of filmmaking as their playground. For horror, the meta-possibilities seem endless. What if a serial killer hired a documentary crew to capture him as he lived the tropes of the slasher? I give you Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Or what if a horror veteran reinvigorated a dying genre by creating a horror film where life imitated art – a serial killer struck a small town using all the slasher cliches in his arsenal – just as a horror film was being released about that town? Oh Wes Craven, you genius. The options are numerous, but today we focus on those films that use filmmaking as a backdrop to explore both horror and filmmaking, all the while entertaining and horrifying us all.

It is that time again – the time of year where the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honors the best of the best, and we honor the worst of those best. Yes, Skeletons in the Closet: Oscar Edition is back. It’s the day we dig around in Oscar nominee closets to find those low budget, horror bones hiding behind the fancier schmancier stuff. And we can always find them. The great Viola Davis wasted her talent in the Rear Window/Fright Night knock-off Disturbia. The also-great Michael Shannon spent some time early in his career in the actually quite decent Dead Birds, while Ryan Gosling co-starred in the intriguingly titled Frankenstein and Me. Meanwhile, Octavia Spencer slummed it up in Pulse. But there’s worse – and yet, somehow better – material to discuss. Here are our favorite not-good horror hiding in these A-listers’ closets.

Everybody’s first experience with horror is a nightmare – their own bad dreams. Surreal horror manages to recreate the anxiety, confusion and dreamlike quality of those nightmares. In fact, it’s such fertile ground for horror that there are dozens of excellent possible films to celebrate – beginning with Bunuel and Dali’s 1929 head trip Un Chien Andelou to Bergman’s 1968 film Hour of the Wolf, Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s fantastical 1989 fantasy Tetsuo, the Iron Man to Turkey’s latest foray into the genre, Can Evrenol’s 2015 head trip Baskin. All of these films are required viewing for horror fans, but something had to be set aside.

So much great horror in 2016! We may not have had that much to be happy about last year – besides the Cavs national championship (hooray!!) – but at least we can celebrate one outstanding 365 days of horror. Joined by Killumbus Horror’s fearless leader Bridget, we argue about what is and is not horror – and whether Neon Demon thrills or disappoints – plus a few words on scissoring.