Ghoul School: A Horror History Podcast

It's the most wonderful time of the fear! What's in your stalking? Killer santas! Moral panics! Warhol superstars! Multiple cast members from Rapid Fire AND The Haunting! And a startling yuletide masterpiece that could only be made by an American Southerner in Canada!

Andy invites his close friend and Look Good for the Boys co-host/producer, Philip Johnson, to get you all excited for the upcoming semester covering slasher films.

Taylor Gonda (These Things Matter podcast, the light of Andy's life) brings The Shining to school and Andy assigns Roger Corman's Poe-in-name-only "adaptation" The Haunted Palace from 1963 for a double feature of men being terrible partners by succumbing to the madness of patriarchal masculinity.

In this first-ever Ghoul School Halloween Special, Andy has an idea for a new episode format and asks writer and performer Rob Walker (The Hard Times, Victorian Cut-Out Theatre) to present a syllabus of key moments in television Halloween special history.

It’s a double feature of self-aware psychopaths and documentary film crews with questionable ethics as film programmer and Art House Rewind host (and friend of the show) Brian Oestreich joins us to discuss 1992’s edgy and bleak Belgian pseudo-doc Man Bites Dog and Andy assigns him the 2006 meta-slasher pseudo-doc Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Well, cut my hand off and call me Gramps! We got books of the dead and crystal skulls as we follow Keith Carey (Mean Boys, This is Not a Show) deep into a duo of disturbing domiciles decked with doors to demonic dimensions. It’s a double feature of the two Class of ’87 films from the La Casa series when Keith chooses Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, and Andy assigns House II: The Second Story.

For today’s Extra Dread-It assignment, Sean Farina of the Malcontent Media Network brings in Tobe Hooper’s relentless, undeniable classic of the New Horror Era: 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Andy thinks James Whale’s 1932 horror-comedy The Old Dark House is the perfect pairing for a double feature of post-war dysfunctional family terror out in the sticks.

It’s a one-two punch of FX-heavy low-budget fan-made love-letters to the genre we study as wrestling commentator/writer/comedian Erik Barnes brings in 1981’s splatter-fest The Evil Dead and is assigned 1970’s stop-motion-fest Equinox!

Friend and co-host of the Hollywood Crime Scene Podcast, Rachel Fisher, selects killer kid progenitor The Bad Seed (1956) and Andy pairs it with Val Lewton’s coming-of-age classic The Curse of the Cat People (1944) for a double-feature of true crime fascination, magical realities, and child psychology!

Andy talks with author, podcaster, and horror historian, S. A. Bradley (Hellbent for Horror) about various subgenres, finding community in horror enthusiasm, and his book, Screaming for Pleasure: How Horror Makes You Happy and Healthy.