Long Legged Beasties

What's a holiday celebration without the annoying in-laws, the last-minute mini-crisis averted, and -- oh, right -- the embodiment of ancient Austrian folklore hunting you down in the midst of a blinding blizzard? Krampus manages to nearly walk the same deft line perhaps first created by 1984's subline Gremlins. That isn't to say that the Michael Dougherty 2014 Christmas comedy horror isn't without flaws, but it is a wonderful bit of holiday horror.

Derided as a hodgepodge of mixed-bag dialog and a slightly scary, but not scary enough plot when it first hit in 2009, Jennifer's Body has - as of late - received a bit of redemption as a feminist horror classic of sorts. But not everyone agrees. Drop in and have a listen as we discuss the Diablo Cody-penned horror black comedy starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried. 

This week we fully embrace the holiday of the day (in the U.S. at least) with an ode to Thanksgiving via this sort of good, sometimes not-so-great horror flick Kristy. In it we see a college student, who decided to stay back for the Thanksgiving Day break, being hunted by a group of cybercult killers. Enjoy!

Billy Zane. Just let your eyes rest on that for a few seconds. Have you completely settled into the notion of Billy Zane, are you one with the Zane? Good, now, let's talk horror. Billy Zane -- there he is again -- stars in this often forgotten, typically maligned masterpiece of character-actor casting. In this episode, we talk about the Zane, about the people surrounding the Zane, and about the horror in which the Zane acts. It's a fun episode, about a fun movie, the horror-comedy ragbag that is Tales from the Crypt presents: Demon Knight.

Ba-ba-ba Dook! Dook! Dook! This week we are joined by Bernia Rao, director and writer of Killer Sofa, to discuss Jennifer Kent classic The Babadook. A wrenching tale of exhaustion, grief, and motherhood, The Babadook isn't just frightening, it is at times soul-crushing.

Trapped in the confines of a deserted gold mine town, women are paired up with bestial killers with names like Babyhead and RotFace in a sort of real-world battle royale for the super-rich. The Furies is a gruesome horror flick by Australian director and writer Tony D'Aquino and there's a lot to talk about. Join us!

There's something wonderful in the slapstick nature of Sam Rami's sort-of-remake of the original Evil Dead. Evil Dead II takes the same premise, the same horrific, creeping evil, and then injects not a little Three Stooges and Monty Python. The result isn't just groovy; it's glorious. Fortunately, we've got Josh Ruben, the talented writer, director, and co-star of Scare Me, onboard to help us walk through the genius in the gore.

They're here ... but this time they've brought along a friend. In this week's episode, we discuss horror classic Poltergeist with Chris Peckover (director of Better Watch Out). The movie -- which managed to scar an entire generation of children in the '80s -- isn't just Peckover's favorite horror flick, it also offers a masterclass in how to deliver scares without losing sight of character, setting, or storyline.

What happens when two Catholic school buddies grow up to run a reality exorcism show that is entirely faked? They get sucked into a real, nasty exorcism, that's what.  Director Damien LeVeck presents 2019's The Cleansing Hour, a clever take on the classic spinning-head, pea-soup-squirting demon-possession trope with a slow burn that delivers one heck of a twist. Join us as we break down the movie, how it works, where it fails, and -- most importantly -- into what category it should be dropped.

Ring (Ringu) has probably done more to shape the way people think about Japanese horror than any movie released before or after it hit the box office in 1998. In this episode, we discuss the Hideo Nakata classic, how it shaped horror, lead to a J-horror revolution, and why it still works so well.