Horror Business

Greetings new yearlings, and welcome back to Horror Business, the podcast that will surely be one of the few things in the likely radioactive wasteland that will be 2017 to be bring you joy.

This episode we look back on 2016 and what we liked and disliked about the state of horror cinema and weirdly enough it looks like horror movies were the one thing from 2016 that weren’t horrible!

We begin as always by talking about some of the recent horror films we’ve seen. While technically not a horror movie, we were lucky enough to catch Shin Godzilla. We discuss some of the more horrific aspects the franchise, what makes the new one stand out from the prior entries in the franchise, and Godzilla’s increasing amounts of screen time despite claims to the contrary. We move on to Evolution, a movie that Liam enjoyed but Justin was confused by. But it’s okay because Liam is soon confused by Justin’s comparison of Evolution to not understanding Primus! Justin successfully argues that Liam has actual taste in film while he himself does not and then rambles about the size of his Criterion collection. We briefly talk about catching a screening of The Autopsy Of Jane Doe in New York City with a Q & A featuring Brian Cox, Emile Hirsch, and director Andre Ovredal. Justin discusses his viewing of Rob Zombie’s 31 and the tragedy that is Rob Zombie’s inability to make good movies despite his rich pedigree and Richard Brake’s standout performance in the film. Liam briefly talks about his viewing of the Syfy series Channel Zero. Next we talk about how we were fortunate enough to be on a couple episodes of friend of the podcast Andrew Bergeron of Vincent Price’s Laugh other podcast What Did We Just Watch? to talk about Mulholland Drive and Moon. There is a brief derailment as Justin is egged into talking about his fear and hatred of the 1992 alien abduction film Fire In The Sky before we get back on track to talk about Andrew’s podcast and how it’s so organized and focused that it makes us look like a mess. We love you Andrew, but you have shamed us! Liam briefly talks about the films Always Shine, Under The Shadow, and The Monster. Justin talks about the 2014 film Black Mountainside, and how while it is a heavy handed tribute to John Carpenter’s The Thing nonetheless it was an enjoyable film that stands on it’s own. We talk about our deal with having listeners print out five of our fliers that the wonderful Justin Miller made and put them up and if you take a picture and send us five pictures we’ll send you a free Cinepunx t-shirt!!! We’ll put the flier up on our FB page and our Twitter feed. We talk about the Cinepunx Patreon page which you can find here

Justin’s top eleven list of horror films in 2016 is as follows. In no particular order after The Autopsy Of Jane Doe (which was Justin’s favorite of the year) :

The Autopsy Of Jane Doe 

The Witch

Green Room

Train To Busan

Green Room

Trash Fire

The Monster

The Conjuring 2 (which Liam hated)

Clown

Baskin

They Look Like People

 Honorable mentions are, again in no particular order…

The Shallows

Gateway

Mind’s Eye

Siren

Spectral

The Wailing

Beyond The Gates

Don’t Breathe

Evolution

 And finally a giant fuck you to the following movies for being horrible…

Lights Out

The Darkness

The Blair Witch

(We don’t talk about it fuuuuuuuck Phantasm: Ravager as well. No idea how that pile of shit slipped our minds this episode)

Here are some films that Liam had seen this year and was fond of…

Always Shine

Under The Shadow

We Are The Flesh

The Eyes Of My Mother

The Lovewench

      As always thanks to everyone and anyone who checked this episode out, or shared a tweet/shared a post on FB/gave us love by recommending us to someone. We love you forever for listening. Any questions, comments, suggestions for movies and guests, or if you yourself want to join us for a movie viewing or even an episode, can be sent to [email protected]. Thank you Andrew Bergeron for having us on his podcast! Thanks always to Justin Miller and Doug Tilley for their technical contributions and fliers, Mike Smaczylo for the awesome fliers, and also thanks to Josh “Dr. Zhivago” Alvarez for the theme song, and a HUGE thank you to anyone who sent in a best of 2016 list, retweeted us or shared something on Facebook that we posted. Follow us on Twitter at @thehorrorbiz666, like us on Facebook at facebook.com/thehorrorbiz66, and remember to rate, review, and subscribe to us on ITunes! Until next time…thanks!

Episode XIV: Destroy The Machines, or: Why, William Hootkins, Why?

Greetings cynics and outcasts, and welcome back to Horror Business, the podcast that desperately wants to be taught how to smash those metal motherfuckers to junk. We have one heck of an episode in store for you, our dear listeners, because we love you and strive to bring the best horror podcast we possible can.

This episode we deal with the concept of robotic horror, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Our films for this episode were 1990’s Hardware, directed by Richard Stanley, and 1994’s Death Machine, directed by Stephen Norrington.

We begin as always by talking about some of the recent horror films we’ve seen. Justin rambles on about 2016’s The Shallows and reveals his crippling fear of the ocean (and a near encyclopedic knowledge of Travis Walton’s supposed abduction by aliens in 1975) and is berated by Liam for his apparent weakness. He then talks about 2016’s The Monster and 2016 Green Room, at which point the latter film is dissected further in depth. Liam and Justin discuss their shared background growing up in the punk community and how the film’s Nazi antagonists struck close to home for them as punks in the late ‘90s in PA, and Justin discusses his views on the cheapness of the ‘kill the dog’ trope in horror movies. Liam then discusses finally seeing 1981’s Venom, and how the film blends an animal attack film and a kidnap film into something greater than the sum of it’s parts. We conclude this section by talking about the Letterboxd 2017 Cult Movie Challenge, the details of which we’ll post later on at the end.

The first film we discuss in this episode is Hardware. We begin by giving a brief synopsis of the film and how we were first exposed to the film. We spend a sizeable chunk of time dissecting the aesthetics of cyberpunk, its origins, our personal memories of the genre, and the travesty that cyberpunk birthed: steampunk. The concept of hard-edged sci fi and a ‘used future’ is touched upon. William Hootkins’ grotesque and profane character is briefly talked about. There is more discussion on the nature of cyberpunk and this leads into how Stanley paints a world that is grim yet hopeful. The special effects are discussed, with special attention being paid to the practical nature of the effects, and finally we discuss the pattern of storytelling used in this movie.

The second film in our episode is the 1994’s Death Machine. We open up this section by talking about Norrington’s background (he worked on, amongst other films, Hardware!) and how it is largely unimpressive. We then give a brief synopsis of the film, and then right away begin discussing how this film, while reaching for something noble, fails at delivering anything resembling any real substance. We proceed to pick apart the various failures of this movie, including its ham-fisted nods to horror movie history by naming the characters after famous horror directors. The inconsistency of what genre this films wants to be is discussed, in that there seems to be two movies in one with this movie: one involving Brad Dourif and one involving everyone else. There is a side discussion on the film apparently drawing inspiration from 90s mall punks and how utterly insane and weird Brad Dourif’s character is in this film.

We then move on to the film’s inability to reconcile simple problems in the plot without drawing things out and it’s repetitious and boring nature. The film’s falling back on the “power loader from ‘Aliens’ trope” and failing to use this in a satisfactory manner, it’s subtle racism i.e. a white actor portraying a stereotypical Asian character, and it’s ridiculous Rob Liefield aesthetics are all discussed at length, leaving both Liam and Justin exasperated and ultimately exasperated. We conclude our discussion by complaining about the film’s setting up gratuitous violence and gore and in the end failing utterly on delivering that.

As always thanks to everyone and anyone who checked this episode out, or shared a tweet/shared a post on FB/gave us love by recommending us to someone. We love you forever for listening. Any questions, comments, suggestions for movies and guests, or if you yourself want to join us for a movie viewing or even an episode, can be sent to [email protected]. Thanks again to Justin Miller and Doug Tilley for their technical contributions, Mike Smaczylo for the awesome fliers, and also thanks to Josh “Old Jerusalem” Alvarez for the theme song, and HUGE thank you to anyone who retweeted us or shared something on Facebook that we posted. You can check out the 2017 Cult Movie Challenge on Letterboxd here. Follow us on Twitter at @thehorrorbiz666, like us on Facebook at facebook.com/thehorrorbiz66, and remember to rate, review, and subscribe to us on ITunes! Until next time…thanks!

Greetings creepy people, and welcome back to Horror Business, the podcast that loves you no matter what. As always you are in for a treat!

This episode we’re joined by the one and only Joe Yanick of the wonderful Small Screen Cinema podcast to help us unpack the annual Exhumed Films Horrorthon, a twenty four hour horror marathon the weekend before Halloween in Philadelphia. In addition to discussing the movies with Joe, we were also lucky enough to talk to some people at the Horrorthon on various things, including but not limited to Alice Cooper and the eternal question of ‘Is Pumpkinhead actually any good?’ (Spoiler: yes. It is). I, Justin, unfortunately had to bow out about halfway through the ‘thon due to some personal issues, so there were some movies that played that I couldn’t offer any input on, but Liam and Joe pick up the slack with the movies I hadn’t seen. We apologize in advance for the rough sound quality and simply ask that you find it in yourselves to bear it out for us because we would do the same for you.

The theme for this year’s horrorthon was the golden decade of horror: the 1980s. The movies shown were, in chronological order, Motel Hell, The Boogens, Visiting Hours, Cujo, Eyes Of Fire, Night Shadows aka Mutant, Monster Dog, Scream For Help, The Mutilator, The Hitcher, Child’s Play, House, Rawhead Rex, and Society.

We were lucky enough to talk to some people at the Horrorthon about what they had seen so far and what they were excited to see the rest of the night, and at the end of the episode we have some of those short interviews for you guys.

As always thanks to everyone and anyone who checked this episode out, or shared a tweet/shared a post on FB/gave us love by recommending us to someone. We love you forever for listening. Massive thanks to the wonderful Joe Yanick for debasing himself enough to appear on this podcast and talk with us about the movies we saw. More of Joe’s delightful insight can be found at the Small Screen Cinema podcast, which is available on iTunes and Stitcher. Thanks to Exhumed Films and everyone involved for putting on the Horrorthon. More information on Exhumed can be found at www.exhumedfilms.com. Thank you to anyone we hung out/shot the shit with there, you are all amazing and it was a blast talking to you. As always thanks to Justin Miller and Doug Tilley for their technical contributions, Mike Smaczylo for the awesome fliers, and always thanks to Josh “El Guapo” Alvarez for the theme song, Any questions, comments, suggestions for movies and guests, or if you yourself want to join us for a movie viewing or even an episode, can be sent to [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter at @thehorrorbiz666, like us on Facebook at facebook.com/thehorrorbiz66, if you’re on Letterboxd check out Liam at www.letterboxd.com/liamface, and remember to rate, review, and subscribe to us on ITunes! Thanks!