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A rare behind-the-scenes photo from a recording session of The Projection Booth podcast in which host Mike White (center) is flanked by guest co-hosts Heather Drain (L) and Samm Deighan (R) |
As I take humble stock of the ways in which I
and my fellow university media studies professors try to deepen our collective
understanding of popular culture, I am obliged to remind students, readers,
and fans that academic writers are never the first group
of critics to appreciate, analyze, and understand the subtlety, artistry, and
complexity of the lower-prestige (and often lower-budget) films belonging to
the “body genres” of the tearjerker melodrama, the sci-fi anime feature, the
martial arts movie, the horror picture, and the sex film.
Instead, this task has fallen to obsessive members
of media subcultures, viewers and critics comprised of autodidactic fans and
collectors who provide an initial appraisal and categorization of entire groups
of films that most “respectable” critics and moviegoers mistakenly assume are
stale, formulaic, and interchangeable.
The initial curation and canonization of key works by these intrepid
enthusiasts provide a roadmap that successive generations of both fans and academic
critics rely upon in their exploration, appreciation, and elucidation.
In the U.S., there is a direct and unbroken
line of brilliant commentary on popular movies stretching from urban gay male
audiences of the 1940s-1960s who flocked to Hollywood melodramas and women’s
pictures, often shouting comments back at the screen to deconstruct the movies’
presentation of gender and power, to hippie underground newspapers publishing
mocking and/or celebratory political analyses of movies shown at drive-ins and
grind houses. In the 1980s, this continued in the “zine” phenomenon in which fans and collectors
would send Xeroxed, stapled copies of their essays on films through the mail to their compatriot obsessives, and these DIY "publications" often carried ads for post office box-based sources of grainy,
wavy, multiple-generation VHS dupes of the films under discussion.
The brilliance of the zines continues in the current internet-based culture of fandom and criticism found online in discussion boards, blogs, and podcasts. While some media academics have entered the horror / cult movie podcast field, we have done so late, and our work can never match the groundbreaking and continuing excellence of work done by non-academic, self-taught fan critics from zines, blogs, and now, podcasts.
The brilliance of the zines continues in the current internet-based culture of fandom and criticism found online in discussion boards, blogs, and podcasts. While some media academics have entered the horror / cult movie podcast field, we have done so late, and our work can never match the groundbreaking and continuing excellence of work done by non-academic, self-taught fan critics from zines, blogs, and now, podcasts.
The approaches of these critics in the podcast
form usually fall into one or more of the following categories: (1) The hosts and guests take on the imagined personae of the movies’ intended audience, namely barely-literate, sexist, voyeuristic, “NEET” (look it up) young adult white males. They praise films based on their body count, bloodletting, and undraped female bodies on display, and they seem to mock efforts of other critics to find anything of value in the films apart from their salacious spectacle. In my experience, this anti-intellectual and philistine perspective is almost always a completely artificial construction. (2) The dominant tone is one of nostalgia in which a viewer’s initial response to movies seen years before at an earlier stage of their psychosocial development is fetishized and preserved in amber. Some of these critics can get quite defensive when new, “revisionist” approaches to their favorite movies are proffered by younger critics or when films are remade. Others in this group find the new responses of successive generations of fans and viewers a source of endless fascination and amusement. (3) The hosts interview stars and filmmakers who are either currently active orwho played a major role in making acknowledged
“classics” or “turkeys” of the past. (4) Discussions of the films focus on long-range
developments of key motifs in the genre over different periods and cycles of
popularity. (5) Movies are discussed in
terms of their engagement with social issues of their time and over time. In these last two modes, there is often an
overlap with issues of great interest to academic critics. The very best horror movie podcasts often shift
seamlessly in and out of three or more of these registers, often with
remarkable wit and verve.
So here is a list of my favorite podcasts
likely to be a source of insight and delight to those studying horror movies
and seeking deeper sources of engagement with them.
Not exclusively devoted to horror, this is
nevertheless far and away, by leaps and bounds, the very best English-language
podcast on movies. Host Mike White
covers the entire history of world cinema, both high and low, and his co-hosts
and guest interviewees on each episode treat the movie in question in great
depth and breadth from its conception and production through its reception and
the place that it has assumed in movie history.
Some of the episodes can run over two hours and are packed with wit,
insight, and the stories of people who were there. It’s been my pleasure to be Mike’s guest on a
few episodes and offer my thoughts on 1960s Czech cinema, low-budget horror,
American film comedy, film noir, and porn.
You Must Remember This
Writer, producer, and host Karina Longworth has
put together a stellar movie podcast devoted to “exploring the secret and/or
forgotten histories of Hollywood's first century,” and this Panoply program has
won almost every major award for which a podcast treating media and the arts is
eligible. Previous seasons have focused
on “Star Wars,” the careers of Hollywood performers and filmmakers in times of
war, The Hollywood Blacklist, “Dead Blondes,” and the many-faceted career of
iconic star Joan Crawford. The podcast
website is full of rare photos and links to online resources, and Longworth
also maintains a very discussion forum and book club. This season, horror fans will be delighted on
Karina’s six-part series Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and their crucial role in
the history of the American horror film.
Daughters of Darkness
Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan, co-editors of
the great horror magazine Diabolique, explore the sweet spot of
international genre cinema where horror, exploitation, and erotic movies
intersect with literary adaptations and works by art-cinema auteurs. Daughters of Darkness episodes often
cluster into multi-part discussions of broad trends in international genre
cinema, such as the lesbian vampire in movies and literature, or they treat a
series of movies and directors drawn from key book-length studies of genre film
criticism such as Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs’ Immoral Tales: European Sex
& Horror Movies, 1956-1984 or Stephen Thrower's Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents.
Kat and Samm are funny, irreverent, and possess an encyclopedic knowledge of
cinema and literature which would put many tenured university professors to
shame.
Castle of Horror
This podcast has a completely unique perspective
because it is hosted not by seemingly detached fans or critics but by a group
of creative artists active in music, graphic novels, illustration, and game
design who integrate elements of horror film history into their current
artistic work. Host Jason Henderson and
co-hosts Drew Edwards and Tony Salvaggio understand not only the repetition and
variation of horror motifs throughout film history but, as creative artists
themselves, have a deep insight into the successful (and sometimes not-so-successful)
logic of their selection, recombination, and transformation. “Color commentary” is provided by brilliant
civil-rights attorney Julia Guzman, who is married to host Henderson and often
serves as the witty and hilarious contrarian voice of the recent convert to
horror fandom who patiently endures the manic, testosterone-fueled fanboy
geekery into which she has married and in which she is being asked to
participate.
Folks interested in the Universal and RKO /
Lewton horror films will be delighted to jump in with both feet to the richly
detailed, dramatic, and informative podcast The Secret History of
Hollywood. The podcast is written, produced, and narrated by
Adam Roche, an obsessive and passionate fan of studio-era Hollywood films who
has no formal education in film history and in fact, earns his living as -- get
this -- a professional chef.
Shadows, Adam's most
recent season, is a six-part (so far) series devoted to the life and career of
Val Lewton.
In a previous series, Adam takes us through
Universal's invention of the horror genre in the 1930s and recounts the huge
impact monsters had on the fortunes of both that studio and rivals who
attempted to copy their success with horror movies throughout that decade and
into the mid-1940s.
Although this and other early episodes of Secret History of Hollywood are not widely available for download or listening, Adam was so excited to hear about our interest in Hollywood horror movies of the 1930s and 1940s that he shared this download link to his (SEVEN-hour long, richly-detailed and captivating) episode:
Although this and other early episodes of Secret History of Hollywood are not widely available for download or listening, Adam was so excited to hear about our interest in Hollywood horror movies of the 1930s and 1940s that he shared this download link to his (SEVEN-hour long, richly-detailed and captivating) episode:
This guy is "one of us" and
completely on fire. Check it out!
Cinema Psyops
This is one of my very favorite “smart movie
fans pretending to be sleaze movie dolts” podcasts. Hosts Matt and Cort have a great repartee
with Matt as the genre movie obsessive and Cort as the seemingly-coerced
co-participant in his obsessions, and each of them tell stories about their
supposed basic life ineptitude outside of the media room where they watch
horror movies and exploitation films.
Their ability to turn a movie discussion on a dime from how a movie
character is like this guy they once knew to a detailed and informed insight
into a film’s aesthetic or social engagement is very deft and entertaining, and
they really know how to plum the depths of cinematic gore, sex, and tawdriness.
Okay, here’s a great horror movie podcast
hosted by two university academics, feminist media scholars Alexandra West and
Andrea Subissati. Their multiple
award-winning podcast treats everything from current trends in horror and
movies currently in release to classics and forgotten / neglected gems, and
their discussions shift entertainingly in tone from their own personal
responses to films, often expressed in salty and euphemism-free Canadian style,
to highly nuanced interpretation and analysis of movies in their historical
context. They are particularly adept at
discussing how their experience and perceptions of particularly movies have
changed over the years through rethinking and repeat viewings. Every fan of extreme gore or anyone who takes
horror seriously will not want to miss Alexandra’s essential, recently-published
book, Films of the New French Extremity:
Visceral Horror and National Identity.
Host Rod Barnett is in many respects the finest
exemplar of the Baby Boomer-era horror fan / scholar. He has spent decades watching and re-watching
key films and TV programs from the post-World War II era, and he has explored
in great depth the literary sources, contemporary reception, fan cultures, and
influence the horror genre of the 1930s to the 1960s continues to exert on all
aspects of popular culture. His own
analyses of films as well as his discussions with guests talk about his (and
their) initial encounter with these movies and his response to them - great
information for historians to have documented - but his ideas are always
changing, and there’s never a sense of pining nostalgia for older or
discontinued trends in the genre. Rod
can move with clarity and purpose from a Hollywood studio-era film made under
the strictures of the Production Code one episode to an insightful and
appreciative discussion of a “gag-a-rabid-dog-off-a-gut-wagon” Italian zombie
splatter fest and back again.
Monster Kid Radio
As you would guess, another Boomer-era focused
podcast, and host Derek M. Koch has won numerous awards for his superlative
retrospective view of the multi-media culture of horror and monster fandom that
exploded in the U.S. after the 1957 release of Universal’s 1930s horror movies
to television. He and his guests
discuss movies, monster-related ephemera, theater promotions of horror movie
premieres, and the careers of both stellar and lesser-known horror personalities. The show notes for each episode at the
Monster Kid Radio website are particularly rich with online links to novelty
songs, digital scans of vintage newspaper ads and magazine articles, and
theatrical trailers for horror movies of several decades’ duration. Derek and his guests are particularly generous
and open-minded as they integrate younger fans’ perceptions and responses to “canonic”
or “classic” movies into their discussions of how horror films speak in
different ways to succeeding generations of viewers.
But really, do we even need to watch the movies
at all? What if we spent two hours just
listening to the music from genre cinema from all over the world? Lyrical Italian romantic themes from
soft-core sex films, jangly synth scores from 80s slasher flicks, Bollywood
psychedelia, and driving jazz funk from violent 70s Eurocrime dramas all get a
great treatment from hosts El Diabolik and Lord Thames, who lead us through the
sonic landscape of cinema scares and sleaze.
Put this on at a party and you’ll find out fast who your real
friends are.
Hosts Andrew Lynford and Matt Belvilacqua,
inveterate lifelong gamers and horror movie fans, explore decades of film
masterpieces in the horror genre from all over the world with wit, irreverence,
insight, and passion. One of my absolute
favorite horror podcasts, and episode for episode, they seem to treat more of
the films that I have come to value over the years than most other folks talking
about horror movies on the web. They are
also masters of the “fake gamer slacker” personae and can pivot effortlessly from
discussing what seem like outdated elements of the movies they are discussing
to zero in on moments of timeless brilliance in horror movies from virtually
anytime and anywhere. They seem to have
a particular sensitivity and fondness for East Asian horror cinema in both its
excessive and understated modes. Matt is
also author of the decidedly non-academic but completely nuts and brilliant
book All Godless Here: The Golden Age of Horror, 1930-1939, available on
Amazon Kindle.
Part of the same family of horror podcasts that
includes Derek Koch’s Monster Kid Radio, 1951 Down Place is the
epicenter of Hammer Films fandom and discussion in the podcast world. Hosts Derek, Casey Criswell, and Scott Morris
provide exhaustive analysis, commentary and background on movies from the
British film studio that revolutionized horror cinema in the 1950s and 1960s.
Hours and hours of commentary and analysis on
horror, exploitation, sleaze, Poverty Row programmers from Hollywood’s studio era,
fifties sci-fi programmers from the 1950s, and other lowbrow goodies. The podcast's originator and host Vince Rotolo passed away in 2016, but long-running co-host Nic Brown has kept the show going strong for the last two years. B-Movie Cast also has a great discussion board,
links page, and swag available at their amazing website. This is pretty much a one-stop shopping run
to examine the cultural detritus that prevented your film professor from every
being able to hold down a legitimate job.
It’s really that great.
Mostly focused on post-1980s franchise / sequel-based horror with a
relatively high gore content, but our hosts, “Blood Brothers” Danny and Scotty
Bohnen, never lose a sense of historical perspective and includes classics
from masters of the genre such as William Castle, Wes Craven, and George
Romero. This is by far the best horror
podcast which discusses the repetition and variation of motifs and mythos over
the course of a horror franchise’s many installments.
So when you tear into those Blu-Rays brought to you under the tree, in your stocking, or by a spin of the dreidel, have a listen to what some of these smart, witty, and perceptive critics have to say about both your new acquisitions and the full range of horror movies already in your collection!
So when you tear into those Blu-Rays brought to you under the tree, in your stocking, or by a spin of the dreidel, have a listen to what some of these smart, witty, and perceptive critics have to say about both your new acquisitions and the full range of horror movies already in your collection!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS, Y'ALL!
