Dread, Fright & Brew Podcast

What a year of disappointing, frustrating, surprising and terrifying moments it has been! Pandemic, wildfires, political unrest and more have threatened to shut down Halloween. And now, as it winds every closer to our favorite holiday, we want to remind you that no matter how much things have changed…”The Party Ain’t Over!” To kick off our celebration, we each chose a favorite horror flick that features a party!

As we all share some amazing Hazy IPA from Springdale Beer Company, we go for a world record for how many times the word “trope” can be used, discuss the proper way to address the Wizard of Oz, compare the kill counts in our films, size up the killers from each movie, and discuss briefly the logistics of firing candy at children from a cannon.

So grab a pumpkin spice porter, light the jack-o-lantern and join us as we get our Halloween on!

Time to take a look at a beloved classic from the “Master of Suspense” Alfred Hitchcock! Choosing one of his movies to talk about is hard enough, but doing it justice is harder still. Academy Award nominated and Golden Globe winning, lauded by The American Film Institute and selected by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”; The Birds is quite simply a masterpiece of fright film-making. But it is so much more than that as well!

We discuss the character development, dialog, special effects and challenges of production; but also find time to raz Lee for having never seen it before, ponder what music we would like to be murdered to, enjoy another great beer from Skookum Brewing, give some shout outs to The Horror Movie Art of Rob Birchfield, play a rousing game of FMK with various characters from the film (human and avian) and just generally do our best to disrespect the source material as always!

Well…we’re back. Sorry in advance! This time around we cover a movie that we were all a little nervous about, but wound up enjoying quite a bit. “Like a Bad Horror Movie…Only Worse!” says the cover, but we seemed to disagree. More like a bad horror movie…only fun! Anyway, it stars Bill from Kill Bill, Negan from that zombie show that just keeps going, Ellen DeGeneres’ wife, Darry’s sister from Jeepers Creepers and a bunch of other people that make you say, “Oh, hey, it’s that dude!”

We also manage to talk a bit about one of our favorite breweries located right here in the Northwest, Barley Brown’s. While we sip lovingly on their Breakfast Stout, we also manage to go deep into Lee’s past and discover the exact moment 15 years ago that Barley Brown’s beer turned Lee against hoppy IPAs forever. Show us on the pint where the mean beer hurt you Lee!

And, because it is us, you will also be subjected to us discussing our bare liquor cabinets, whether or not male genitalia has taste buds, a disturbing turn to our love affair with In-n-Out burgers, and far more than the required amount of talk about bloody poops. So what are you waiting for?

First up, it’s disclaimer time! We recorded this episode back in February and attitudes were a little different about the impact that COVID19 was having and where we saw it going. We since thought about not releasing this episode in an abundance of caution for our listeners, but then realized that the horror community turns to horror to relieve the stresses of real life. Often times we find ourselves purposely submerged in the very places our fears reside, so that we can experience coming out on the other side.

Plus, 28 Days Later is just a damn fine virus movie…or is it zombie movie…or is it both?! We delve into this unresolved debate over a great collaboration beer from Brouwerij West and Humble Sea breweries. We dig into the various ways in which 28 Days Later was received by audiences upon its release just after 9/11 and learn that Juan might be the only one of us with a realistic idea of what we would all find ourselves doing in a post-apocalyptic environment.

Also, a reminder to join us in supporting your local independent cinemas during this time of social distancing and business closures. If you want to help ensure that we will have midnight showings, horror film fests, monster flick nights and artistic small screen releases…now is the time. Visit the following links for ideas on how to get involved!

The Scariest Things Podcast: Save our Cinemas

Horror Movie Talk Podcast: Support Local Cinemas

Dread, Fright & Brew Horror Podcast: Hope for Horror

We are turning it up to eleven and getting brutal with the only film that features death by weed-eater, death by engine block, death by dildo and a guy in corpse paint enjoying an ice cream cone on a park bench! Of course, we are talking about the insane New Zealand metal-head gorefest DEATHGASM.

What kind of film has IMDB keywords like “vomiting blood”, “demonic possession”, “sprayed with urine”, “stabbed in the ear” and “reference to Rick Astley”? This kind! Come get crazy with us while we fawn over this film, get on a hefty tangent or two and suck down the suds of a similarly insane brew from Abomination Brewing!

Yeah, yeah yeah. So we’re the last ones on the block to kick out a review for Black Christmas 2019…but here it is anyway! Not gonna lie; we didn’t like it. At all. In fact, all four of us hated it with a passion, but this passion led us to some of our most intense film discussion ever. We even dive into the heavy social inequality message of the film and weigh in on some hot topic issues.

Now, this IS Dread, Fright & Brew after all, and our Brewligans have come to expect a certain wandering of the minds. Have no fear, we still get derailed discussing putting candy in your popcorn, the dangers of signing onto a film before reading the script, Lee recently torturing us with what seemed to be 3 hours of Meatloaf songs (which is like 2 songs), Black Metal beer pairings, a ridiculously skewed and wildly juvenile discussion of nudity in horror films, and we still have time to invent multiple new words. Just what is “Atrocitorical” anyway? All this over some amazing brew from Nightmare Brewing.

The holiday’s can be rough for everyone and it turns out this year was especially daunting for some of the Dread, Fright & Brew gang! We managed to get together and craft an episode for this Julian Sands classic, but not without a few challenges along the way…

A recording window of a couple of hours, down a member of the crew, two Boston Terrier puppies left without supervision other than those of us at the table, exploding beers, technical difficulties and a bunch of other woes plagued the recording session like an agent of evil stood against us behind the scenes! What is left after all of that is a succinct look at this 1989 classic, some laughs with friends and most of all…a break from the Holidays.

Sorry to our listeners that it comes so late! Hope your Holiday season was as much fun as those couple of hours we had together talking about Warlock and drinking amazing Little Beast brew.

So Italy may have given us such masters of their craft as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo and Vivaldi…it also gave us maestros of Horror such as Argento, Fulci, Lenzi, Deodato and of course both father and son Bava. We have talked about some of our favorite giallo in past episodes, but we felt it time to recognize a staple of Italian horror…no matter how American they tried to make it…Demons!

Get on board as our Italian gondolla ride takes us through a discussion of pirate booze, the difference between a Dutch Oven and a Wagon Train, what exactly a “stone cold peepee” is, the particulars of snorting coke out of a can and a foray into the world of demon vomit. We even try desperately to class up this nonsense with the pairing of an insanely well crafted, award winning, Italian-inspired beer from Wayfinder Brewing.

It’s no secret that this is our favorite time of year, and once again we want to share some of that love with you! Each of us discusses a favorite horror film that just has to be part of our October viewing and offers up a seasonal beer to go along with it…but we, of course, find it ever so hard to stay on track.

Several of us find it oh so hard to talk about only one movie, Lee continues to under appreciate the majesty of great sour beers, Aaron takes on the challenge of editing out all the references to “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, Juan shares his distaste of certain hairstyles, we discuss what is and isn’t a slasher film and Grace gets pretty. darn. drunk.

In other words…business as usual! Happy Halloween to all of our Brewligans and remember that Fear Goes Better With Beer.

Well, three out of four of us agree that Hush is pretty damn good and give it a solid thumbs-up…and even the hold-out gave it a thumbs-sideways! While we talk out the good, the great and the so-so of this film, things manage to go a little sideways during recording as well!

Lee, known for his whimsical and often borderline-inappropriate drinking vessels sips this episode’s awesome Skookum Brewing beer from what he thought was a kingly chalice only to find out it is a piece of home decor. We also suffer an aggressive visit from Aaron’s two Boston Terriers who leave not one, but two, of our podcasters bloody and bruised (yes, literally!). Art is pain…join us as we suffer for ours!