100 Horrors

When you're as ultra-conservative as the lads at 100 Horrors are, all bongs are evil. Weed. Marijuana. Pot. Mary Jane. Call it what you like, we still call it The Devil's Lettuce and will do until we go to our hardline Christian graves...

Nah, smoke em if you got em, just not to the point where you don't realise your friend has died and is sat bloating on the sofa in the living room like the guys in Charles Brand's Evil Bong do. Released in 2006, it's surprising how many people consider this one a staple in the stoner horror diet. Part Pineapple Express, part Basket Case, Evil Bong combines the worst in both the horror and comedy genre and gives you a generous scoop of female nudity in the process. With cheeky cameos from Tommy Chong, Brandi Cunningham and Bill Mosely of House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 fame, Evil Bong is entertaining to say the least, but does that mean it's actually any good? You'll just have to tune in to find out duuuuude.

Jordan Peele is a director with a problem. In 2017 he released his debut feature film after spending the majority of his career working in comedy, and it was surprisingly BRILLIANT. Get out - a film you can hear us review somewhere in the back catalogue - is a perfect film, and it quite rightly launched Jordan Peele's name past the pile labelled "up and coming" and onto the wall where most horror directors can only dream of finding their names carved in stone. Oddly though, therein lies the problem. The pressure to make sure that any and all future releases hold up to Get Out (and it's critically acclaimed follow up, "US") must be monumental. It really comes as no surprise then, that for film number 3, Peele segwayed out of horror and into Sci-Fi.

Moving to Sci-Fi (or at least a Sci-Fi / Horror hybrid) surely helps avoid instant and unfair comparisons to his prior two films, but the shift to science fiction also clearly challenges Peele as a film maker and writer. I won't lie, there's a sense that he's not quite worked out how to make the genre work for him the way he has with the horror genre. UAP and UFO culture is a fascinating one because, lets face it, there's a good chance that it is based entirely on misinterpretaing entirely normal arial phenomenon, and as a result, everything within the sci-fi genre is open to interpretation. What would an alien ship actually look like? Would it carry a sentience within or would the ship itself be sentient? How would the common man react to being stalked by a giant ribbon monster in the sky? These are all questions that Nope explores well, and the result is intriguing, but by no means does that mean that it's good.

With a budget of $68 million, Nope is a visually stunning film, but the lead character doesn't feel proactive, and the supporting actors feel too reactive, and the subplot about a chimpanzee called Gordy actually becomes the most intriguing story in the film. It's easy to feel that Nope is flawed, but hard to work out whether that is just due to comparison to Peele's earlier more solid work. Is it only flawed because it's not as good as Get Out? You'll have to watch it and decide for yourself. Let us know what you think lads.

Director Kyle Edward Ball cut his teeth on YouTube, making making terrifying visual accompaniments to the nightmares that people submitted to him across Reddit. After that, he pulled together the money to make Skinamarink, which for a mere $15,000 took the Tik Tok world by storm and gained huge noteriety before many had even had the chance to watch it. The film then made its way to Shudder, and then recommendations subsequently landed in our inbox from a lot of our listeners who insisted that we just "had" to see this movie.

I got excited. Rob got excited. Paul got drunk, and then he got excited, as is usually the way with him. And then we watched the film.

There is potential that Skinamarink is going meta, in that the act of watching a film based on nightmares feels like a nightmare. Maybe the true horror here is not the content, but the act of watching a film in which the viewer can only see the top of door frames, close ups of TVs and the occasional foot, but I have to admit, this eventuality seems very unlikely. There are fewer than 500 words spoken in this film, but does that mean that the film doesn't have much to say? It's very hard to know to be honest, but it is easy to dismiss this film as being vacuous - a little lacking in content - and I think people would be forgiven for thinking this.

This movie is not for everyone, but the people that it is for clearly LOVE Skinamarink. At the end of the day, Ball tries to do something new with the horror genre, and that absolutely has to be commended. Should you watch Skinamarink? I guess you could, or you could tune in to hear us talk about why we're not likely to watch it again.

Remember a time before it became cool to identify as a wiccan? Remember the time before it became the done thing to burn sage in your house, keep crystals in your pockets and collect tarrot cards like they had little Charizards on their reverses? Do you remember a time when witches stole babies, ground them up and used their guts to make their brooms fly? Thankfully, Robert Eggers remembers. Join us this week when we discuss the 2015 masterpiece, The VVitch.

This week we explore the second in what is likely to be a horror franchise that - like it’s terrifying antagonist - just won’t die. Seriously though, if you thought that Art being shot in the face five times was going to be enough to keep that particular clown down, you were sorely mistaken. You probably weren’t however, anywhere near as sore as Art’s victims are going to be by the time they meet their respective fates. Seriously, to say that this film is gruesome would be like saying the three people who made up the human centipede had a less than ideal diet…Tune in to find out just what was it was that even WE thought had gone a bit too far…

In Season 02 Episode 01 of 100 Horrors we discuss Damien Leone's Terrifier. Made for an ABSURD $35k, this film has arguably laid the foundations of one of the most talked about Horror franchises of the modern age, and it has established Art The Clown as a contender for the prestigious "spookiest clown aside from IT" title. What is truly terrifying about this episode though, is that you can now watch a video of us recording it. Just unlock your Spotify app and look. There we are! Aren't we 'orrible!? Seriously though, if you don't like looking at us, you can still just listen to the episode rather than watching it. We really don't mind!

In our final episode of season one, we (and around 55 of our friends!!) took over Off The Ground Coffee Shop in Middlesbrough to watch Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Released in 1980, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is based on the work of Steven King. Set in the Overlook hotel... ah you know what, who cares? WE MADE IT TO EPISODE 100 EVERYONE! THANKS FOR BEING THERE WITH US!!

We'll be taking a little break between now and the launch of season 02, which starts with episode 100 of Season 01. Confusing, I know. Check back on the socials to see when the next episode will be landing wherever you get your podcasts!

Doctor Jeckyll is a man obsessed by the notion that each of us is made of two parts. One part of us is good, caring and empathetic. The other is blunt, crass, violent and rude, fuelled by narcissism and a set of hedonistic base desires. He creates a potion that brings out the bad side, allowing it to fully take control of the whole person and run riot for an evening before retreating back into the whole by morning. Doctor Jeckyll could quite easily have saved a lot of lab time by simply necking four cans of Special Brew and a bottle of Lambrini, but I suppose the 30s were a different time...

Released in 1931, Doctor Jeckyll and Mr Hide, Rouben Mammoullian's film is a surprisingly good tale of good and evil. It was also released "Pre-Code" which means it's raunchy as, so do give it a watch if you get the time! 

TWO MORE EPISODES TO GO GUYS!