Castle Of Horror Podcast

This week as the weather grows colder we turn to gothic horror with the 1960 film Brides of Dracula directed by Terence Fisher-- one of the most important gothic horror films of all time. 

This week wrap up our retrospective on Godzilla (for now) with the old-school Godzilla movie Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla (1974).

DALE BERAN's new book IT CAME FROM SOMETHING AWFUL, How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump Into Office (All Points Books/Macmillan) is here and it explores the toxicity of the online culture that bred the alt-right and wonder what could have gone differently. We chat about the origins of online trolls and why it's difficult for everyone else to understand the culture. Hosted by Jason Henderson, author of Young Captain Nemo from Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan Children’s Books.

This week we look at The Return of Godzilla, also known as Godzilla 1984 or, in the US, as Godzilla 1985, complete with a serious, at times poetic performance from Raymond Burr reprising his role from the original 1956 American release of 1954's Godzilla. Also, a few words on Once Upon a Time in America and The Haunting of Sharon Tate.

This week in the Godzilla Retrospective, Godzilla meets the strange, visor-wearing, buzz-saw bellied cyborg monster Gigan! Plus, cockroach aliens.

This week we continue our retrospective on Godzilla with 1973 movie Godzilla versus Megalon. It's a controversial film for its use of stock footage and the clear "backdoor pilot" introduction of giant robot Jet Jaguar, but we have a lot of fun discussing it.

We continue our Godzilla retrospective with Monster Zero, in which Godzilla is hauled to another planet to face King Ghidorah, the three-headed monster introduced in the previous film. 

We kick off a new summer retrospective on Godzilla movies with Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)-- discussing what people get wrong about Godzilla and why we love these movies. (Encore Re-post 06-28-19)

This week we continue our retrospective on Godzilla with 1964 movie Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster. We discuss how absolutely bonkers the 60s Godzilla movies were. Join us!

Head Count is a horror film from Elle Callahan that premiered at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, where the pic won a special jury prize for actor Ashleigh Morghan. It hits theaters and digital on June 14 and we're lucky enough to talk to Ashleigh, who talks about how she approaches her craft. Hosted by host Jason Henderson, editor of this Summer's Castle of Horror Anthology featuring fiction from David Bowles, Dark Shadows' Lara Parker, Kevin J Anderson, Leanna Renee Hieber and more.

Aminah Mae Safi is the author of the new novel Tell Me How You Really Feel, which comes out this month and which Bustle already called "the queer hate-to-love story you've been needing in your life." Tell Me How you Really Feel is her second novel after 2018's Not the Girls You're Looking For. Safi was the winner of the We Need Diverse Books short story contest, and that story appears in the anthology Fresh Ink. We talk about writing gay romances for teens, the importance of representation and process.

Boy, is The Cleaning Lady disturbing-- the story of a lovesick woman who befriends her badly-scarred cleaning lady, only to become the object of her new friend's dangerous obsessions. Jason chats with Alexis Kendra, who co-writes and stars, and Jim Nelson, Executive Producer, on playing obsession and the slow burn.

We wrap up our discussion of the Bloodthirsty Trilogy with the amazing 1974 film Evil of Dracula, a perfect mesh of Britain's Hammer and Japanese folklore.  Plus: Be sure and pre-order The Castle of Horror Anthology, Volume 1, coming in July!

We continue our series of 1970s vampire horror with Lake of Dracula (1971) and then spend a special segment on a spoiler-filled discussion of Avengers: Endgame. Also: don't forget to order the Castle of Horror Anthology today!

We kick off a brand-new retrospective on the Bloodthirsty Trilogy, a tryptic of supernatural horror films from Japanese director Michio Yamamoto. This week: The Vampire Doll, about a girl who goes looking for her missing brother at a spooky mansion haunted by a murderous vampire ghost.

We discuss the 1968 science fiction film The Green Slime directed by Kinji Fukasaku, which was shot in Japan with a Japanese director and film crew, but with the non-Japanese starring cast of Robert Horton, Richard Jaeckel and Luciana Paluzzi. After destroying a huge asteroid that was on a rapid collision course with Earth, a group of astronauts discover they have accidentally returned to their space station with an alien slime creature that feeds on radiation and can reproduce rapidly from its own blood.

David Gregory has made documentaries about a slew of films and filmmakers, most notably 2014’s terrific LOST SOULS, which detailed director Richard Stanley's travails on his big screen adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Now his subject is Dark Shadows, which starred Canadian actor Jonathan Frid as vampire Barnabas Collins and inspired the 2012 film of the same name. The film features interviews with cast members like Lara Parker, John Karlen and David Selby, famous fans like Whoopi Goldberg, partners of producer Dan Curtis like Barbara Steele, and is narrated by Deadwood’s Ian McShane.

Charles Rutledge is the author of Dracula's Revenge: A Jennifer Grail/Carter Decamp Novella that mashes up hard-case-style crime with gothic horror.  Rutledge is the coauthor of three books in the Griffin and Price Crime/Horror series, Blind Shadows, Congregations of the Dead, and A Hell Within, all written with James A. Moore. We talk about the rebirth of novellas and gothic, and how to keep writing consistently.

Mike McBeardo McPadden is the author of TEEN MOVIE HELL: A Crucible of Coming-of-Age Comedies from Animal House to Zapped!, an extensive look at the pre-internet era of teen comedies. We talk about why there's no longer such a thing as a teen sex comedy, and why some people think Ferris Bueller is the worst.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate directed by Daniel Farrands is a new movie  that tells a fictionalized story of the final days of actress Sharon Tate and her friends, including  celebrity stylist Jay Sebring and coffee heiress Abigail Folger. Jason chats with Jonathan Bennett and Lydia Hearst, who play famous stylist Jay Sebring and coffee heiress Abigail Folger.