Castle Of Horror Podcast

Welcome to the new home of the California Tiki Podcast!  Hosts Adam Foshko and Jason Henderson will be discussing Tiki Culture in the runup to the release of our new book California Tiki from the History Press. What is California Tiki? After World War II, suburbs proliferated around California cities as returning soldiers traded in their uniforms for business suits. After-hours leisure activities took on an island-themed sensuality that bloomed from a new fascination with Polynesia and Hawaii. Movies and television shows filmed in Malibu and Burbank urged viewers to escape everyday life with the likes of Gidget and Hawaiian Eye. Restaurants like Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic's sprang up to answer the demand for wild cocktails and even wilder décor. The culture--a strange hodgepodge of idols, torches, lush greenery and colorful drinks--beckoned men and women to lose themselves in exotic music and surf tunes. Authors Jason Henderson and Adam Foshko explore the state's midcentury fascination with all things

Gary Rhodes talks about his new book culled from thousands of primary sources and long-unseen illustrations, The Birth of the American Horror Film. The book  explores the influence of horror-themed literature, theatre and visual culture in America, and how that context established a foundation for films produced between 1895 and 1915. Exhaustively researched, bridging scholarship on Horror Studies and Early Cinema, The Birth of the American Horror Film is the first major study dedicated to this vital but often overlooked subject. 

We look at a film that set the vocabulary for paranoid film from its release in 1956 to today: the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers starring Kevin McCarthy.

We cover the paranoid SF movie with the strange name, I Married a Monster from Outer Space-- a movie rife with subtext about homophobia, gender roles, and the claustrophobia of small-town America. 

We kick off our new series on Atom Age Horrors, from Big Bugs to Teenage Monsters, with Them!, a well-made, high-budget-for-its-time 1954 story about giant ants threatening America.  Then we have a spoiler-filled discussion of Avengers: Infinity War, because we've been aching to compare notes.

Jason and Drew chat with Larry Blamire, creator of affectionate, keen parodies like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, The Lost Skeleton Returns Again and Dark and Stormy Night, among others. 

We chat with Cutter Wood, author of Love and Death in the Sunshine State: The Story of a Crime from Algonquin Books. A gripping piece of creative nonfiction in the tradition of Capote's In Cold Blood, Wood's book tells the story not just of the murder and its three suspects but of his own journey in telling the story. We chat about nonfiction, true crime, and writing.

We talk about Larry Blamire's knowing ode to 1950s low-budget sci-fi films like Plan 9 From Outer Space, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. We ask, what is this movie? Is it camp (deliberately bad) or parody (good, observing the bad?) 

RS Belcher is known for the urban-legends-based horror novel The Brotherhood of the Wheel, which has been optioned for TV and compared by The Wall Street Journal to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Belcher's new book is The Night Dahlia, new from Tor, a noir fantasy about Laytham Ballard, a modern mage hired to find the missing daughter of a faery mob boss. To find Caern Ankou, Ballard will have to confront old enemies, former friends and allies, and a grisly cold case that has haunted him for years. We chat far and wide about noir, writing, and daring prose.

Chris Pardal co-stars in the new film CORBIN NASH, as the partner of a rogue detective (Dean S. Jagger of  Game of Thrones) who is murdered and reborn as a demon-hunting vampire. Chris was a professional dancer before becoming an actor, and we talk acting and making it in the professional scene.

On Friday, April 13, 1984, the world saw the release of a movie Roger Ebert called "an immoral and reprehensible piece of trash"-- Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. That's enough to get *us* interested in looking once more at this film, which features Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover.

This week's discussion is on the 1972 thriller FRENZY directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film, about a serial killer at large in London and an unlikable jerk framed for the murders, is daring, clever and sometimes very hard to watch. TRIGGER WARNING for those who are sensitive about violence against female victims.  Then we wrap it up with a conversation about Ready Player One-- the book, the movie, the success and the backlash. 

We discuss the strange, disturbing 1963 Toho horror film The Attack of the Mushroom People (AKA Matango), which is basically Gilligan's Island if the island were overcome by a deadly fungus.

Jason chats with Jamey Bradbury, author of The Wild Inside, a new horror/YA novel about a girl who works with racing dogs in Alaska and begins to develop horrific powers.

We discuss Guillermo del Toro's best-picture-award-winning The Shape of Water.

Queen of Blood is a 1966 color science fiction-horror film directed by Curtis Harrington, that stars John Saxon, Basil Rathbone, Dennis Hopper, and Judi Meredith. The film is based on the screenplay for the earlier Soviet feature film Mechte Navstrechu (A Dream Come True). A strange, green-skinned female is found alive aboard an alien wreck. As the rescuer ship heads back to Earth, the crew begin to die, drained of their blood. Featuring David Bowles, author of the Garza Twins novels!

RACHEL STAVIS is a screenwriter for film, television, and video games. She has published four horror novels under the name R. H. Stavis. She is also an exorcist, doing her work pro bono and without advertising her services. Her new book is Sister of Darkness: The Chronicles of a Modern Exorcist from Dey St/ William Morrow. As a secular exorcist, Rachel H. Stavis has worked with thousands of tormented people, from small children and Hollywood moguls to stay-at-home moms and politicians. The book is a unique look at demonology removed from religious dogma.

We wrap up our Carrie retrospective with a look at the most recent Carrie, the 2013 version starring Chloe Grace Moretz.

Connor Hoover wanted to be a wizard and wanted to time travel, but when that didn’t work out, Connor wrote about time traveling wizards instead. It’s actually pretty fun. Connor lives in Austin, Texas with a couple of entertaining kids, a couple of crazy but cute dogs, and a couple of everlasting tortoises. You can find out more about Connor at www.connorhoover.com .

MIDNIGHTERS (premiering Friday 3/2) is a layered, enigmatic thriller set in the Gothic backwoods of New England, where a young couple’s marriage faces the ultimate test after they cover up a terrible crime and find themselves entangled in a Hitchcockian web of deceit and madness. The movie is  the theatrical debut of director Julius Ramsay, who is known for his work on AMC's "The Walking Dead” and Syfy’s upcoming Superman prequel “Krypton.” The film was written by his brother Alston Ramsay, who was inspired to write MIDNIGHTERS after seeing a disturbing real life news story in the LA Times about a woman who drove home someone she struck with her car and kept him in her garage.   Midnighters premieres Friday 3/2 on VOD and in theaters in LA, New York and elsewhere.