Castle Of Horror Podcast

This week we kick off a Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde retrospective with the 1931 film Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde starring Frederic March.

In this interview: Trapped in the 80s is the brand new “Pick Your Own Quest” book from Connor Hoover, who’s released a whole slew of interactive books aimed at kids, including Escape from Minecraft and King Tut’s Adventure. This time you, the reader, take a wrong turn and find yourself stuck in the pre-digital, pre-Internet, pre-cell phone world of the 1980s.  Connor lives in Austin, Texas and has a video game machine with 410 retro video games including Ms. Pac-Man, Frogger, and Connor’s personal favorite Q*bert. You can find out more about Connor at www.connorhoover.com.

This week we have a special holiday episode discussing the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special,which Lucasfilm has tried to bury from the beginning. What lessons can be learned from a show that makes one mystifying misstep after another? Hosted by Jason Henderson, writer of the upcoming Young Captain Nemo: Quest for the Nautilus, with attorney Julia Guzman of Guzman Immigration of Denver. 

Hangout episodes are less-structured episodes that come during breaks between our main, structured episodes. In each one we choose two movies to discuss in free-wheeling conversations. This episode, Tony Salvaggio, tech director at Rooster Teeth, chose low-budget, surprisingly engaging SF movie Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965) and writer Jason Henderson chose the grimy, trashy, thrilling Spanish horror The House That Screamed (1969). Along the way we also touch on how picking on bad movies is less fun than enjoying hidden treasures, and what we think of the 1980 Golden Turkey Awards. (Episode 284)

This episode we’re chatting about the new Dark Shadows Audiobooks of classic Dark Shadows novels from Paperback classics. We’re talking to Kathryn Leigh Scott, a novelist, nonfiction writer, and of course actress who played Maggie on Dark Shadows and now reads the classic gothic Dark Shadows novels of the 60s. Then we talk to Steve Smith, publisher of the new Paperback Classics imprint of Oasis Audio, who is heading up the effort to bring lost classics like the Dark Shadows book series and vintage Flash Gordon adventures to audio.

This episode we’re chatting with Tara Westwood, who stars in Sony’s new reboot of THE GRUDGE. The film will release in theaters on January 3rd and is a new take on the 2004 film of the same name which itself was based on the 2002 Japanese original Ju-on. The film-- which Westwood calls "a simulquel"-- is directed by Nicolas Pesce and produced by Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Taka Ichise.

This week we bring our 2019 season to an end with the holiday-themed Dutch film Saint, about a murderous St. Nick raining terror on modern-day Amsterdam. (Episode 283)

This week we’re chatting with Adam Egypt Mortimer, director and co-writer of Daniel Isn’t Real, which is about a Troubled college freshman Luke (Miles Robbins) suffers a violent family trauma and resurrects his childhood imaginary friend Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger) to help him cope. Charismatic and full of manic energy, Daniel helps Luke to achieve his dreams, before pushing him to the very edge of sanity and into a desperate struggle for control of his mind -- and his soul. The film also features Mary Stuart Masterson as Luke’s mom, who suffers from mental illness and Sasha Lane as Luke’s new artist girlfriend . Samuel Goldwyn Films will release the horror/thriller DANIEL ISN’T REAL in theaters, on digital and on demand December 6, 2019.

This week we continue our Stephen King retrospective with a look at the 1987 film A Return to Salem’s Lot directed by Larry Cohen. (Episode 282)

This episode we’re chatting with Mary SanGiovanni about her new book Beyond the Gate from Kensington Books. Ms. SanGiovanni is the Bram Stoker-nominated author of the Kathy Ryan novels Beyond the Door and Inside the Asylum, and numerous other novels, novellas and short stories. BEYOND THE GATE stars her character occult security consultant Kathy Ryan, who has been called to look into the disappearance of scientists who have discovered a portal to another world, and the mysterious Dead City in the world on the other side.

Actress Nicole Tompkins talks about her role in Antrum, a remarkable horror film that opens with a documentary telling us we're about to see a lost, cursed film from the 70s about a brother and sister who go into the woods to perform a ritual to rest the spirit of their beloved, recently dead dog. 

For our two-hundred-and-eighty-first movie review episode we have a special experiment. With regular castmates Drew and Julia out for the Thanksgiving holiday, Tony and Jason relive their days in Austin with a gabfest about a double feature of two films each selected by the other from their recommendations from Amazon Prime's algorithm. Tony's selection was the 1966 monster-sf-bondian spy mashup Terror Beneath the Sea starring Sonny Chiba, and Jason's is the 1970 groovy-coeds-summoning-witches movie Mark of the Witch. (Episode 281)

This week we’re chatting with Cory Doctorow about a topic that just fascinated Doctorow—enough that he wrote the amazing novella The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow—and fascinated host Jason Henderson: the Walt Disney World attraction Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress. We talk about futurism, the optimism of the past, and whether forgotten midcentury fears are a match for modern fears of climate collapse.

This week we continue our Stephen King retrospective with a look at the 2004 miniseries Salem’s Lot starring Rob Lowe, Andre Braugher  and Rutger Hauer.

This week we’re chatting with Leanna Renee Hieber whose new book A Sanctuary of Spirits comes from Kensington/ Rebel Base Books. An enthusiastic public speaker about the history of the Gothic novel, she loves nothing more than a good ghost story and a finely tailored corset, wandering graveyards and adventuring around New York City. Find Leanna at Twitter @leannarenee and Facebook.com/lrhieber. More information as well as free reads, author resources, links to her art and Etsy store and more can be found at leannareneehieber.com.

This week we’re chatting with Roger Corman, because Friday November 15 premieres a new series from Shout Factory TV Cult-tastic: Tales From The Trenches with Roger and Julie Corman. Heralded as “the Pope of Pop Cinema,” Roger and Julie Corman pull back the curtain on the Cormans' lifetime of innovative genre filmmaking in this never-before-seen docu-series. The Cormans open up about their iconic pool of collaborators such as James Cameron, Joe Dante, Penelope Spheeris, Pam Grier and more, as well as their notoriously bare-bones production philosophy that created some of film’s most memorable special FX sequences in science-fiction, fantasy and other cult favorites.

This week we continue our Stephen King retrospective with DOCTOR SLEEP, directed by Mike Flanagan and starring Ewan MacGregor as Danny Torrance, the boy who escaped the Overlook Hotel at the end of The Shining.  

Tonight we’re chatting with Frank Sabatella, writer and director of THE SHED. The Shed is a new movie in which bullied young man Stan (Warren) and his best friend Dommer (Kostro) discover a murderous vampire living in Stan’s shed. Seeing the bloodshed and destruction the monster is capable of, Stan knows he has to find a way to destroy it - but Dommer has a much more sinister plan in mind. It’s directed by Frank Sabatella and stars Jay Jay Warren (“Bosch”), Cody Kostro (“City on a Hill”), Sofia Happonen (Woman of a Certain Age), Frank Whaley (Pulp Fiction), Siobhan Fallon Hogan (Men in Black) and Timothy Bottoms (The Last Picture Show).  THE SHED comes to theaters and VOD and Digital HD on Nov. 15, 2019.

This week we return to the world of Stephen King with the 1997 miniseries written by King based on his own novel, The Shining directed by Mick Garris and starring Steven Weber and Rebcca De Mornay.