Tim holds forth on the mind sickness that led to short-lived streaming service Quibi before diving into a review of short-form horror anthology 50 States of Fright. Jen just tries to keep up!
This AV Club article is pretty emblematic of the unkind response to the first episode of the series, “The Golden Arm.”
This monster isn’t actually in the film, I just thought the art was sick
Have You Seen…All Possible Worlds?! Tim and Jen team up with Josh and Brian of The Worst of All Possible Worlds podcast to discuss a wretchedly stupid British horror film starring Roddy McDowall called It! No, not that one. This one came out in 1967 and involves a golem that looks like a wet trash bag.
Dennis Bartok and Jeff Joseph’s A Thousand Cuts: The Bizarre Underground World of Collectors and Dealers Who Saved the Movies is a fascinating read about the days of analog movie bootlegging, a must for any film buff. Read an excerpt about the Roddy McDowall film piracy case over at ScreenAnarchy (you can also buy the book directly from University Press of Mississippi). And yes, to answer Josh’s question from the episode, the MPAA (now the MPA) was one of the driving forces behind the crackdown as a proxy for the major film studios.
The documentary Jen failed to remember the name of is Recorder, which is the story of an activist named Marion Stokes who obsessively taped the news 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and thus amassed a library of 70,000 cassettes.
“The Windigo is sick because it’s cut off from its roots. It’s a ghost with a heart of ice. It eats everything in sight. Its hunger knows no bounds. When there is nothing left to eat, it starves to death. When it sees something, it wants to own it. No one else can have anything. This illness feeds on a spiritual void. Canada and US are presently in an advanced stage of the ‘Windigo Psychosis.’”
Jen and Tim host Bitter Karella, who is a witch, to discuss a very witchy cult horror movie, Eyes of Fire! Also, if you were dying to know Jen’s thoughts on Midsommar, they’re in there.
If you’re not familiar with Zatoichi, the blind swordsman, just watch!
The 17th century samurai, philosopher, and artist Miyamoto Musashi is considered a kensei— a “sword saint”— in Japan. Read a short Bruce Eder essay on the first installment in the Samurai trilogy of films, in which Toshiro Mifune played Musashi.
Jen and Tim enlist favorite guest Bitter Karella to explicate the inexplicable Dan Aykroyd/Gene Hackman buddy cop comedy, Loose Cannons!
Not to get all fact check dot org on you all, but the Dissociative Identity Disorder website has science-based information on what was misrepresented as “multiple personality disorder” in the movie.
Busy Inside is a compassionate documentary about people with DID.
Tim confused God Bless America with Red State (and Jen did not catch the error, shame on her) — the other movie from 2011 with a divisive title and middling reviews about a gun-toting ingenue.
We didn’t get a chance to talk about the film’s writer, Alan Sharp, who said his own screen work embodied “moral ambiguity, mixed motives and irony.” Matthew Asprey Gear describes the protracted gestation of Night Moves and illuminates some biographical details about Sharp in an article for Bright Lights Film Journal.
For more Melanie Griffith, check out our episode on Roar, the absolutely wrong-headed movie project inflicted on her by mom Tippi Hedren and stepdad Noel Marshall.
In 2005, Dr. David Pilgrim wrote a powerful essay about the collection that became the foundation of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. In “The Garbage Man: Why I Collect Racist Objects” he reflects on the emotional toll collecting exacted on him, as well as the anger and sadness the objects still inspire and the lingering stain of anti-black bigotry in the United States.
