Questions of Horror #4: Is It Horror?

Apart from Howard (he says hello), the gang’s all here as Stella, Kirsty and Ian join Dan to discuss how far the horror genre might stretch to include action, disaster and sci-fi films, with specific reference to The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Jaws (1975) and Aliens (1986).  Beware: spoilers for The Poseidon Adventure – please note the timecodes below if you wish to avoid.

00.00.00 Intro and news

00.09.10  The Poseidon Adventure discussion

00.31.08 Jaws discussion

00.43.53 Aliens discussion

Relevant Links:

The new edition of Hammer and Beyond can be ordered for £10 from Manchester University Press

Also, happy birthday to our music maestro, Greg Hulme!

DASHCAM: Interview with Gemma Hurley & Jed Shepherd

Ian, Stella and Kirsty do their best without Dan’s guidance (he’s away on holiday, the slacker) and dig into Dashcam, Rob Savage’s eagerly anticipated follow-up to Host, with a spoiler-free and spoiler-full discussions, plus an interview with Dashcam screenwriter Gemma Hurley and its producer Jed Shepherd.

PODCAST TIMELINE
1’52 Trailer followed by spoiler-free discussion
22’00 Interview with Gemma & Jed
45’03 – TO END Spoilerific discussion – DO NOT LISTEN UNTIL YOU’VE WATCHED THE FILM.

To hear our previous interview with Gemma for ‘Host’ click here

To hear our previous interview with Rob Savage for ‘Host’ (with spoilers) click here

All soundtrack and music clips are used for the purposes of criticism under Fair Use (US law) and Fair Dealing (UK law).  No copyright infringement intended

Film Stories’ Podcast of the Week!

We were honoured to be selected by the esteemed Em McGowan of Film Stories magazine and the Verbal Diorama podcast (if you don’t read or listen to either, you should, they’re fantastic) to be the Film Stories website’s featured British Movie Podcast of the Week last week. We’re incredibly grateful to Em for the glowing write-up which you can read here. (And if you haven’t tried Film Stories yet, there’s currently a great subscription offer open – 3 issues for £1!)

Revisitations #5: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) with Catherine Bray

It’s time to talk Tolkien, and specifically the more horrific elements of the Middle Earth canon.  Peter Jackson’s 2001 film instalment The Fellowship of the Ring (featuring the ever-forbidding Christopher Lee, of course) has long given Ian, Stella and Dan the collywobbles, but Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated version is also memorably nightmarish.  Joining them to enthuse about these films is the brilliant film journalist, podcaster and producer Catherine Bray, co-host of the highly recommended new podcast Not Another F*cking Elf: A Lord of the Rings Character Guide.

00.00.41 Intro and news

00.06.04 The Lord of the Rings discussion

Relevant links

Not Another F*ucking Elf (@notanotherelf on Twitter) is available on Apple Podcasts and YouTube and so far includes episodes about Gollum, Boromir, Legolas, Bilbo Baggins and Tom Bombadil, with five more episodes due to follow this season

John Ezard’s 2001 Guardian article on Tolkien can be read here

Tickets for the 27th May cinema screening of Horror Express (1972) in Manchester can be booked here and the film is also currently streaming on BBC iPlayer.

Feasting on Hannibal #2: Season Two (2014) with Dr Lori Hitchcock Morimoto & Dr Rebecca Williams

AKA: ‘Another Hannibal Love-In’…

We return to the world of Hannibal, Bryan Fuller’s majestic TV remix of the works of Thomas Harris.  As with our Season One discussion last year, Kirsty and Dan are joined by very special guests Dr Lori Hitchcock Morimoto of the University of Virginia and Dr Rebecca Williams of the University of South Wales for an in depth aca-Fannibal chat, and then by Stella (our very own Dr) and Ian for their take on the show.

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS for the first and second seasons of Hannibal.  If you’ve never seen the show, DON’T LISTEN TO THIS.  Go and find our Season One episode (which is spoiler-free) and if you like the sound of it watch the show up to Season Two, then listen to this.

In the UK, Hannibal is free to stream via My5 (Season One only) or to Amazon Prime subscribers (all seasons).

00.00.41 Intro with Dan

00.05.25 Dr Rebecca Williams & Dr Lori Hitchcock Morimoto with Kirsty & Dan

01.14.10 Stella & Ian with Kirsty & Dan

All soundtrack and music clips are used for the puposes of criticism under Fair Use (US law) and Fair Dealing (UK law).  No copyright infringement intended.

Patreon Extract: 100 Years of Nigel Kneale

Nigel Kneale in 1955, on the set of the BBC’s Quatermass II.

The date this episode drops, 28th April 2022, would’ve been the 100th birthday of Nigel Kneale, the great pioneer of SF/horror TV and film, who died in 2006.  Here, in an extract from our forthcoming episode on Kneale’s film version of Quatermass and the Pit (1967), renowned horror author Simon Clark tells Dan the story of how he found the script books of Kneale’s 1950s Quatermass serials in a second-hand bookshop and why they are so important to him.

To hear the full version of this interview, in which Simon discusses in detail not just the three script books but also Kneale’s other literary works, sign up to our Patreon page.

To tide you over until our full Quatermass episode is released, check out our earlier Kneale-themed content: our Missed Classic on Beasts: During Barty’s Party (1976) and our Halloween Retrospective on Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), and Dan’s written appreciation of The Woman in Black (1989).

Revisitations #4: Martin (1977) (or: Educating Ian)

It’s April Fool’s Day, so perhaps it’s appropriate to admit our own foolishness in failing to put out our March episode actually in the month of March.  Here it is instead, and you’ll get a proper April episode in due course…

David Edwards, former film critic of the Daily Mirror and old mate of Ian’s, is a great fan of and expert on George A Romero’s unique 1977 vampire movie, Martin.  He joins Ian (who is watching the film in its entirety for the first time) and Dan (who is rediscovering it after seeing the film when he was in his teens) to discuss this powerful movie in both spoiler-free and spoiler-detailed fashion.  They also discuss the prospect of the recently-discovered extended version of the film.

Kirsty and Stella sadly couldn’t be involved in this episode, but they’ll be back!

00.00.41 Intro

00.04.22 Trailer and spoiler-free discussion

00.24.22 Background to the forthcoming extended version

00.39.37 Spoiler discussion

Recommendations

Ultraviolet (1998) is available to stream in the UK via All4

All film and music clips are used for the purposes of criticism.  No copyright infringement intended.

Mini Reviews #1: Sister Tempest (2020)

Now that the major episodes of the podcast have moved to a monthly schedule, we’ll be dropping occasional mini episodes in between, including reviews of new movies.  Here is the first, as Kirsty and Dan sink their teeth into director Joe Badon’s surreal dark comedy, Sister Tempest.

Relevant links:

Order Sister Tempest on Blu-Ray

Rent Sister Tempest to stream on Vimeo

Also – if you want to help the situation in Ukraine:

Donate to the DEC Ukraine Appeal (the UK government will match donations up to £20million)

Donate to the Red Cross Ukraine Appeal

Revisitations #3: Nosferatu (1922)

Max Schreck as Count Orlock. Yes, he looks a bit like Reggie Nalder on our website front page. That isn’t really a coincidence.

It’s 100 years since the premiere of FW Murnau’s Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horror).  Although not quite the first screen adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, it’s the one by which all others are measured – a masterpiece of German Expressionist cinema that marks the beginning of modern screen horror.

For years Kirsty has been passing on her love of this classic to her students, and on such an important anniversary, Dan was more than happy revisit it with her.

Elsewhere, the two hosts discuss the trailers for the forthcoming films from Jordan Peele and Alex Garland, and there’s a message from Howard.

Relevant links:

The music-free version of Nosferatu is public domain and can be easily found online, and a scored version is available on Amazon or DVD and Blu-Ray 

1922: The Birth of Now, including an episode focused on Nosferatu, can be heard at BBC Sounds

All trailers and music clips are used for the purposes of criticism in the spirit of Fair Dealing (UK law) and Fair Use (US law).  No copyright infringement is intended

Scream (2022) – Should they have called it SCREAMS?

Dan spent quite a while thinking up the title for this episode…

Yes, having graduated from high school (or ‘left secondary school’ as we tend to say in this part of the UK) just as Wes Craven’s seminal slasher comedy Scream (1996) first hit UK cinemas, Stella and Dan are franchise fans and wouldn’t dare miss the latest in-no-way-confusingly-titled instalment, Scream (2022).  Kirsty thought it looked fun too, and Covid allowed them all to get to the cinema to see it.  Hear them chat about it.

Oh, and the answer to the question posed in the title of this episode is: no.

NB. Apologies to anyone who downloaded this episode within its first day of release as there were some editing problems we failed to spot.  These have now been fixed.

00.00.00 Intro and Scream franchise chat

00.30.20 Scream (2022) review (non-spoiler)

01.01.30 Scream (2022) – spoiler thoughts

01.06.32 Recommendations

Relevant Links

Archive 81 is currently available to stream via Netflix in the UK

The X Files is currently available to stream via Disney+ in the UK

All trailers and music clips are used for the purposes of criticism in the spirit of Fair Dealing (UK law) and Fair Use (US law).  No copyright infringement is intended