A horror movie suggestion for each day of October courtesy our own Crazy Train Jonathan Bolick
26 Oct 2021
Body Horror, Fear Street Trilogy Review
Train and Seth return for the (as of now) only NSFW podcast in the Geekville Radio family.
0:30 – Introduction: It’s Halloween!
Every October we adopt a Halloween theme for all our shows. Examining The Dead is a natural fit for Halloween.
2:00 – The Coroner’s Report
Chucky premiered to critical praise. It has the distinction of being shown on two separate stations simultaneously, USA and Sci-Fi.
Victor Miller vs. Sean Cunningham lawsuit over the Friday the 13th franchise Seems to finally be over. We covered the lawsuit resolution a few years back (https://geekvilleradio.com/19/). https://geekvilleradio.com/19/ (https://geekvilleradio.com/19/)
Halloween Kills finally opened and scored big at the box (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/2021W42/?ref_=bo_wey_table_2) office even though it was readily available for streaming on Peacock as well. Unlike Marvel’s Black Widow (https://geekvilleradio.com/292-2/), the home streaming ability didn’t seem to affect the box office performance. Venom: Let There Be Carnage has also opened to big success, currently sitting at $290 million worldwide. If there are people who think Venom isn’t horror, be reminded that in the comics one of Venom’s gimmicks was eating brains. Addams Family 2 has grossed $60m as well.
Finally, Ghostbusters: Afterlife hits theaters in a couple of weeks.
25:45 – The Gruesome Twosome Threesome
RL Stine’s Fear Street series of books were adapted into a trilogy of films (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fear_Street_Trilogy): Fear Street Part One: 1994, Fear Street Part Two: 1978, and Fear Street Part Three: 1666. Unlike traditional movie trilogies which are released over years, these movies were released within weeks of each other. This effectively makes the movie feel much more like a three-part story than separate films.
Beware that the review contains a whole bunch of SPOILERS but all three films are highly recommended!
25:00 – Into The Crystal Ball
Body Horror according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_horror) is “a subgenre of horror (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film) that intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body”
Arguably the first example of body horror is the original Frankenstein novel by Mary Shelley. More modern examples include films by David Cronenberg such as Videodrome and The Fly.
One of Train’s picks: The Fly (1986) perhaps the most mainstream example of body horror as a man slowly morphs into a giant insect.
Seth’s Pick: Doctor Who and the Ark in Space, (1975) where a human slowly morphing into a giant insect is depicted using green bubble wrap…
16 Jun 2021
Examining The Dead #29
Examining The Dead returns for the summer of 2021! Train and Seth talk about the release of A Quiet Place 2 and The Conjuring 3. Plus game news in Diablo II: Resurrected. The latter half of the show is devoted to the “found footage” genre of horror movies.
Examining The Dead #29
2:20 – The Coroner’s Report
* A Quiet Place Part II opened to a pandemic record-setting $50 million (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt8332922/) opening weekend. It was originally set for an opening in March of last year. It is now set for an Ultra-HD Blu-Ray release around Halloween.* The Conjuring 3 – The Devil Made Me Do It, the latest in a shared universe with The Nun, opened to a $24 million (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt7069210/) opening weekend. It is also available on HBO Max. * A Toxic Avenger Remake is in the works starring Kevin Bacon and Peter Dinklage* Halloween Kills is rescheduled for October 15th. It was originally set for release last year but was postpones cuz COVID.* Ned Beatty passes away* Resident Evil Village was released on May 7th to mostly positive reviews (https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/resident-evil-village). Most of the criticisms were about how the game has gone more into an action/RPG style game as opposed to the puzzle-oriented style of the originals. Seth believes this may be due to a mix of trying to appeal to a broader demographic as well as more complex game engines that didn’t exist in the 1990s.* Blizzard Entertainment is releasing Diablo II: Resurrected (https://diablo2.blizzard.com/en-us/) this fall. It is a 20th Anniversary Remake of the game with a very eye-catching trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DttPBtsZ5fc).
32:25 – The Gruesome Twosome
* The Blair Witch Project (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/) jumpstarted a genre of “found footage” horror stories when it was released in the summer of 1999. In those days, there were no Wikipedia or fact-checking sites to easily debunk whether something was real or not. In fact, many people were fooled into thinking the footage used in the film was legitimately lost footage. Fans pondered for years over what the ending of the film truly meant, even though the filmmakers intentionally left the ending to be ambiguous.* The Blackwell Ghost (https://www.amazon.com/Blackwell-Ghost-Ruth/dp/B072Z62L22) is a modern take on the genre. While the movie is not made of “found footage” it is filmed and edited like a self-made documentary. Since it was listed on Amazon as a documentary, people were easily drawn to believe it was legitimate filming of haunting when, like Blair Witch, it is a clever way to tell a ghost story on the cheap. It has since spawned four sequels.
58:40 – Into The Crystal Ball
The “found footage” genre is actually nothing new. In fact, it could be argued that classic horror literature such as Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula which were written in the form of personal notes and journals were inspirations for modern media takes.
Orson Welles’s famous radio take on War Of The Worlds (https://archive.org/details/OrsonWellesWarOfTheWorlds10301938) fooled some people into thinking the world was under alien attack.
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