Midnight Murderama

"Pod-Pod-Pod Cast-Cast-Cast" This week our hosts watch Friday the 13th Part 2, the sequel that finally introduced adult-sized Jason to the world (just not as hockey themed... yet). This film marks one of the definitive departures from slasher films as "mysteries", and establishes many of the tropes that would follow the genre through the decades. Looking at you, woman who just had to skinny dip!

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"We've got the podcast, and you've got the ears." This week our hosts continue digging into the slasher genre with 1985's A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, the black sheep of the Nightmare franchise. Originally dismissed for not following the format established by fan-favorite part 3, it has since been looked at with new eyes for its... less than subtle... subtext exploring teenage homosexuality. But does that mean it holds up as a film?

Be sure to check out Mark Patton's documentary Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street as well as the segment in Crystal Lake Memories for lots of crazy details in the making of this film.

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As they continue digging into the slasher genre, our hosts examine the 2014 film It Follows, a post-slasher film that lives firmly in the world of (80's? 90's? 00's?) slasher movies, but just never really gets around to the slashing. So, is It Follows a condemnation of teenage sex? A rumination on getting older? Or just an over-hyped snooze-fest?

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"This is your Emergency Broadcast System announcing the commencement of the annual Purge." This week our hosts watch The Purge: Election Year, the film that imagines a world where the U.S. politicians are lying to the public in order to screw over the poor. Could you even imagine such a thing?? The Purge series has been the 2010's closest equivalent to a recurring franchise, so how does the third entry in the series hold up? How does it push the conversation forward when viewed through the lens of the modern slasher film? Listen and find out!

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Do you like scary movies? No examination of the slasher genre would be complete without talking about Scream, a film that made horror "cool" again in the 1990s. Scream defined its own subgenre full of big named stars and snappy, self-aware dialog, and finally established a world in which the protagonists had watched a horror movie before. But after all these years, does it still hold up?

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GET TO THE PODCAST! This week our hosts watch Predator, the movie that sees how many muscular guys you can cram into a jungle before something explodes. It also does a great job of using the traditional slasher framework that had been growing in the 80s, but instead of having a superhuman killer descend on hapless babysitters, we're pitting it against a batch of paramilitary soldiers. It's an interesting look at how Hollywood views what changes when you swap the genders within a trope.

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This week our hosts continue to explore the slasher genre by looking at some of the outliers that slipped out of the slasher boom of the 80s. In this case it's Sleepaway Camp (1983), the film that starts as a derivative camp slasher but has an unforgettable ending. What does this film tell us about feminism and gender politics of the 80s? What does it tell us about the length of shorts on guys in the 80s? And most importantly: what does it tell us about Ricky's hat choices?

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You can't kill the boogeyman, but you can sure as hell poke him in the eye with a coat hanger! This week our hosts brave the suburbs to watch Halloween, the quintessential slasher movie from 1978 that spawned both a franchise and a genre. Not to mention it launched the careers of John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis. So how does a 40 year old film with minimal blood and body count hold up? Listen to find out!

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"We all go a little mad sometimes." This week our hosts watch Psycho, the movie that established horror movies didn't just have to feature Universal Monsters, and ushered in the era of the slasher film.

Does it live up to the hype? Will our hosts overcome the shock of seeing a toilet flush on screen? Will they see the fabled frame of nudity in the shower scene? (Spoiler alert: yes, no, and no)

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This week our hosts watch The Faculty, where they ask: “What if The Breakfast Club fought The Thing?” The answer is a strange blend of pro-drug, pro-conformity, Kevin Williamson-penned slice of 90s. But is this film actually a little more subversive?

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