Movie Oubliette
Intrepid film fans Conrad and Dan review obscure and forgotten horror, sci-fi and fantasy movies to decide whether they should be set free or thrown back into the oubliette to be forgotten forever!
Dreamcatcher
We're revisiting the big budget adaptation of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher at long last! Not only is the film celebrating its 20th anniversary, it's also a movie Dan's been wanting to cover since he started reading the book 5 years ago when we started this podcast! He's finally finished it, despite a canine mishap midway through, so here we are... And what a spectacle it is. An isolated snowy landscape, an alien invasion, possession, red fungal infections, a group of friends …
The Fourth Man (with Vincenzo Natali)
The incredible Vincenzo Natali, director of Cube, Splice and In the Tall Grass, joins us to explore Paul Verhoeven's final Dutch-language film before he launched his Hollywood career: The Fourth Man (1983). It's a visually stunning, darkly erotic thriller, with a Hitchcockian blonde, eye-popping and leg-crossing effects, and some subversive religious imagery. But is this hard-to-find tale of a drunken writer encountering a sultry widow of not one but three husbands a mischievous treasure... or a fever dream best forgotten? …
Bug (2006)
Dan and Conrad find themselves itching compulsively while padding around in a tinfoil-covered motel room searching for aphids. Yes, we're revisiting Bug (2006), the late William Friendkin's adaptation of Tracy Letts' play starring Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Lynn Collins and Harry Connick Jr. It's an intense psychological thriller set largely in a single room focusing on two lonely outcasts who go crazy in love... literally. Or maybe they really are the focus of a giant conspiracy involving medical experiments, child …
Troll (with Melinda Mock)
Melinda Mock of RetroBlasting and Dreamland guest co-hosts and, while Dan is away, leads Conrad into the weird fairytale horror of Troll (1986), Empire Pictures' second-highest-grossing b-movie, which has since been overshadowed by the internet memes of its largely unrelated and famously awful sequel. Featuring Noah Hathaway (The NeverEnding Story), Michael Moriarty (The Stuff), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (!) and Sonny Bono (!!!), it tells the story of the young Harry Potter Jr. – yes, you read that right – discovering a …
Zathura: A Space Adventure (with Manika Dulcio)
Manika Dulcio of the 'I've Been Meaning to Watch That' podcast visits us with a dusty old board game from 2005 called Zathura: A Space Adventure, and before we know it, we're thrust into a wild sci-fi adventure with meteors, dinosaur aliens and frozen older sisters! Jon Favreau's first big effects movie has been eclipsed in popular culture by the first adaptation of a Chris Van Allsburg children's book, Jumanji – with which it bears a striking resemblance – but …
The Ice Pirates
Avast, ye space mateys! Con and Dan haul anchor and set sail for the 80s yet again for a slice of semi-spoof space operatics in the form of The Ice Pirates (1984), which stars Robert Urich, Mary Crosby, Michael D. Roberts and features early appearances from Anjelica Houston and Ron Perlman. Set in another galaxy far, far away, where water has become a rare commodity, the film starts out as a heist caper, then takes a weird left-turn into castration …
SpaceCamp
Dan and Conrad join the ranks of the best and the brightest (and bored billionaires) as they blast off into low Earth orbit with Kate Capshaw, Lea Thompson, Tate Donovan, Larry B. Scott, Kelly Preston and a Leaf-like Joaquin Phoenix (yet to fully bloom in this early role). Yup! Our Patreons forced us to sign up for SpaceCamp (1986), the sci-fi adventure whose release was timed to capitalise on the teacher-in-space excitement of the Space Shuttle Challenger's 10th mission... but …
The Puppet Masters (with Joe Lipsett)
Film critic and Horror Queers co-host Joe Lipsett joins us to explore the body snatching invasion thriller The Puppet Masters (1994), an adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 sci-fi novel starring Donald Sutherland, Eric Thal, Julie Warner, Keith David, Will Patton and Yaphet Kotto. Astonishing practical effects abound as parasitic manta rays from space leap merrily onto the backs of unsuspecting cast members, turning them into mindless drones bent on world domination. Their only giveaway? They have no interest whatsoever …
Sisters (with Mary Jo Pehl)
Writer, actor, comedian and all-round wonderful human being Mary Jo Pehl joins us as we try to untangle the twisted tale of Brian De Palma's Sisters (1972). Starring Margot Kidder (of Superman and The Amityville Horror fame) in the dual roles of demure French Canadian model Danielle and her psychotic, groin-stabby twin Dominique, and Jennifer Salt as the hard-boiled investigative journalist determined to prove the murder she witnessed from her apartment window, Sisters is at once a delirious Hitchcockian fever …
Powder
Conrad and Dan discover the 1995 sci-fi fantasy drama Powder cowering away in the oubliette basement and drag it whimpering into the sunlight to see if it's the sort of baby you want to immediately disown in the maternity ward, or a misunderstood marvel that's "too beautiful for this world". The tale of a mysterious young man with a whiter-than-white complexion who seems to have supernatural powers, Powder could be a religious allegory or a heartwarming fable. But given that …