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What if the scariest thing in a horror movie wasn't a monster, it was a drug? This week, Ambrose and Jessica are covering The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Wes Craven's wildly underrated Haitian zombie film based on real events. And yes, there is a real tarantula on a real open eyeball. We warned you.

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Episode Breakdown:

• The film's opening shot — a single tear rolling down a buried man's face. Sets up the entire movie's central terror before a single word is spoken

• Ambrose breaks down the real science behind zombie powder, Wade Davis's controversial ethnobotany research, and how tetrodotoxin can drop your vital signs to clinically dead

• The hosts debate Zakes Mokae's terrifying, ice-cold performance as Peytraud and why his stillness is scarier than any supernatural moment in the film

• Jessica loved the first two acts and hated the third. Ambrose gave it five coffins anyway, and they're not letting it go quietly

The Dead Letter is the free monthly horror newsletter that goes deeper than the podcast. Each issue includes Anatomy of a Scene, Cutting Room Floor, Casting Shadows, Whispers in the Dark, and Summoning Soon. It's the companion piece the show deserves. 

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It's 1979. A film crew rolls up to a Texas farmhouse to shoot an adult movie, and the ancient couple who owns the place has some... strong feelings about that. Ti West's X is a gonzo slasher wrapped around a genuinely sharp argument about desire, aging, and who gets to be seen. Ambrose and Jessica break down why this one hit so much harder than anyone expected.

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Episode Breakdown:

• Mia Goth plays both Maxine and Pearl — two women at opposite ends of desire — and somehow makes you terrified of one and heartbroken for the other
• The crew dissects the famous alligator kill, which West built using multiple practical puppets in a full Jaws-style production nightmare
• The hosts debate whether the film critiques society's discomfort with elderly sexuality or quietly reinforces it
• Ambrose rates it four and a half coffins, Jessica holds firm at four — and they both agree the lawnmower scene is exactly the right amount of unhinged

The Dead Letter: Want more horror between episodes? The Dead Letter is the free monthly newsletter from TheTHINGaboutFilms. Every issue comes packed with five sections: Anatomy of a Scene, Cutting Room Floor, Casting Shadows, Whispers in the Dark, and Summoning Soon. It's horror content you actually want in your inbox.

Sign-off: Thanks for listening — if you're enjoying the show, a subscribe or review goes a long way. We'll see you next week with something else that'll mess you up.

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It's Halloween 1977, and a desperate late-night host named Jack Delroy has booked the worst possible lineup for a live special. A psychic, a smug debunker, a parapsychologist, and a possibly-possessed teenage girl walk into a TV studio — and the ratings start climbing. Ambrose and Jessica break down why Late Night with the Devil (2023) is so much more than a horror gimmick, and why the scariest thing on screen isn't the demon.

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Episode Breakdown

• Ambrose and Jessica dig into David Dastmalchian performance and why the whole movie collapses without him.
• They unpack the film's two valid endings — Faustian bargain or grief-broken man — and why the movie refuses to pick one.
• The survival check gets real: Jessica changes the channel immediately, and Ambrose fully admits he'd keep the cameras rolling.
• Both hosts land on five out of five coffins — and yes, one of them was surprised by the other's rating.

The Dead Letter If you want to go even deeper into the horror, our free monthly newsletter The Dead Letter has you covered. Each issue comes packed with five sections: 

Anatomy of a Scene, Cutting Room Floor, Casting Shadows, Whispers in the Dark, and Summoning Soon. It's the perfect companion to the show and it lands right in your inbox every month.

Sign-off Thanks for hanging out with us for this one — Late Night with the Devil is a film that earns every bit of its reputation, and we hope you go watch it immediately if you haven't. Subscribe, leave us a review, and come find us on social at TheTHINGaboutFilms.

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Ambrose and Jessica climb into the irradiated wasteland of Alexandre Aja's 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes, and come out the other side genuinely changed. From the Scottish cannibal legend that started it all to the most brutal trailer attack in modern horror, this episode breaks down why this remake might be one of the most important horror films of the 2000s.

Episode Breakdown:

• Ambrose and Jessica trace the film's DNA all the way back to the 17th-century legend of Sawney Bean — and the real historical mirror that caught Wes Craven's attention.
• They dig into the punishing Morocco shoot: 130-degree heat, foam latex melting off actors' faces, and a fake American gas station that real drivers kept pulling into for fuel.
• The trailer attack sequence gets a full breakdown. Including why the unrated cut changes the entire psychology of the scene.
• Ambrose gives it five coffins. Jessica holds firm at four. The debate is exactly as heated as you'd expect.

Want more horror than one episode can hold? The Dead Letter is our free monthly horror newsletter built to go deeper. Each issue features Anatomy of a Scene, Cutting Room Floor, Casting Shadows, Whispers in the Dark, and Summoning Soon. It's a whole extra layer for horror fans who can't get enough. And the best part it's absolutely Free, and you can cancel anytime you want if you don't like it. No hard feelings.

Thanks for surviving this one with us. And if you're still showing up every week, do us a favor and hit subscribe. It helps more than you know.

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She's patient. She's possessive. And she remembers everyone who ever wronged her.

This week Ambrose and Jessica take a wrench to John Carpenter's 1983 cult classic Christine — the story of a 1958 Plymouth Fury that gets possessed, hunts down bullies, and looks incredible doing it. But there's a lot more going on under that cherry red paint than a killer car movie. This one is about obsession, toxic masculinity, the dark side of American car culture, and what happens when a bullied kid gets handed a two-ton weapon and decides to use it.

Plus — the real-life curse of James Dean's Little Bastard, the MPAA ratings battle that forced Bill Phillips to go back and stuff F-bombs into a finished script, and why Stephen King calling this movie boring is a fundamental misread of how cinema works.

What We Cover

• Why Carpenter took this job as a deliberate career rescue mission after The Thing flopped — and the wild parallel to Arnie buying a junker
• How the entire ghost mythology from King's novel got ripped out and rebuilt from scratch — and why Ambrose will die on that hill
• The casting battle over Scott Baio, Brooke Shields, and Kevin Bacon — and how Keith Gordon ended up being the perfect choice
• Arnie's wardrobe transformation as a masterclass in visual storytelling
• The "Show Me" regeneration scene: three weeks, hydraulic pumps, an upside-down camera, and the debris problem that almost blew the illusion
• Terry Leonard driving a flaming two-ton car down a dark highway through a painted-black windshield with a millimeter-wide slit to see through
• Christine's radio as her only voice — and why the sound design is criminally underrated
• The MPAA ratings problem: not enough blood, so they added profanity
• James Dean's Little Bastard — the real-world cursed car legend that gives this film its lingering chill

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A Nun throws herself off a balcony. The Vatican scrambles. And somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains, a demon in a habit is waiting. This week Ambrose and Jessica descend into the fog-soaked chaos of The Nun (2018) — the Conjuring universe's most divisive entry, and somehow its biggest box office hit.

We're talking real Romanian castles, a director who may or may not have shared a room with actual ghosts, and a marketing stunt so evil that YouTube banned it. Plus: why Valak sued Warner Brothers, the "nepo baby" casting drama, and two very different coffin ratings from the Crypt.

This week in the Crypt:

• The Hammer Horror DNA hiding in plain sight — and why Indiana Jones is in here too
• Taissa Farmiga, claustrophobia, and why being genuinely terrified on set might be a feature, not a bug
• The Romanian ghost story Corin Hardy told completely straight-faced
• Valak's real identity (hint: winged baby, two-headed dragon, absolute chaos)
• The YouTube ad that made people throw their phones across the room
• Why the Catholic Church in Lebanon said "absolutely not"
• Frenchie's dark secret and how it ties back to The Conjuring (2013)

The atmosphere is stunning. The story is barely holding together. And somehow, they can't stop watching.

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Your worst date. A remote cabin. An app that controls everything about your partner. And an electric wine opener that becomes the most satisfying kill in recent horror history.

Ambrose and Jessica break down Companion — the 2025 horror-comedy that's one part rom-com, one part slasher, and one hundred percent a takedown of men who think love is something you can order off a menu.

This episode covers:

• The Barbarian connection — and why director Zack Cregger handed the keys to first-timer Drew Hancock
• Trailer Gate: did the marketing actually spoil the robot twist, or does it not even matter?
• Sophie Thatcher's tightrope performance as Iris — and the one-eye crying thing that is weirdly perfect
• Jack Quaid weaponizing his nice-guy face as the most unsettling boyfriend in horror right now
• The "go to sleep" command, the Campbell's Soup font, the Goo Goo Dolls needle drop with a very specific meta layer
• What Companion is really about — control, commodification, and "nice guy" misogyny with a remote control
• That ending — and whether Iris deserves peace more than a robot revolution

If the answer to "would you want to control everything about your partner" is yes... this movie has something to say to you.

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So, you bought a ticket for a fairy tale. But you got a bone chisel.

This week Ambrose and Jessica (filling in for Kelly, who's recovering from surgery — get well soon!) crawl down into the Critic's Crypt to break down The Ugly Stepsister (2025) — Emily Blitchfield's debut feature that takes the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella and drags it straight into full-on body horror territory.

Think less glass slipper, more hammer and chisel. Less pumpkin carriage, more tapeworm extraction.

What We Cover

• Who is Elvira — and why she's the most relatable character in any Cinderella story ever made
• Why Agnes (Cinderella) is not the pure, helpless good girl you grew up with
• The rotting body in the spare room and what it says about money, class, and survival
• Dr. Esthetique's Institute — the procedures, the practical effects, and the foley work that will make you never eat celery again
• The tapeworm scene, the extraction scene, and the Sundance vomit incident
• The toe-chopping finale — and the tragically funny mistake that makes it worse
• How this compares to The Substance (and why this one is angrier and grimier)
• The Oscar-nominated makeup work and how they made a classically trained dancer look "aggressively average"
• What the film is actually saying about the beauty industry, eating disorders, and the economics of marriage

Content warning: graphic body horror, surgical procedures, eating disorder themes, blood, and a tapeworm extraction that one Sundance audience member did not survive emotionally.

Mentioned This Episode

• The Substance (2024)
• Raw (2016) — dir. Julia Ducournau
• Crash (1996) — dir. David Cronenberg
• Dead Ringers (1988) — dir. David Cronenberg
• Possession (1981)
• The Fly (1986)
• A Rose for Emily — William Faulkner
• Thelma & Louise (1991)
• William Castle (gimmick marketing legend)
• Jacques Joseph — pioneered modern rhinoplasty in the late 19th century
• The 1899 Paris trend of sewing hair into eyelids for "permanent" lash extensions (yes, it was real)

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In this episode of The THING about Films, Ambrose is joined by Jessica (because Kelly lost her voice and is officially on vocal rest 💀) for a listener-requested trip straight into John Carpenter’s brain-melter: In the Mouth of Madness (1994).

We’re talking Sam Neill as the world’s most stubborn skeptic, a horror author whose books don’t just scare people—they change people, and a “road trip” to Hobbs End… a town that feels like it was printed out of a paperback and stapled onto reality. Along the way, we hit the wild opening asylum setup, the “Do you read Sutter Cane?” moment, the looping-road nightmare logic, and why this movie still feels weirdly ahead of its time.

Spoiler note: This episode is not spoiler friendly. We get into the full story and the ending.

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In this episode of The THING about Films, Ambrose and Kelly head into the coal-dusted chaos of My Bloody Valentine (1981) and break down why it’s one of the most memorable slashers of the early 80s. They talk about what makes the setting feel so different from the usual “teens in the woods” formula, how the town’s working-class vibes shape the story, and why the killer design is still an all-timer.

They also dig into the real-world production story (including what it took to film in an actual mine), the long history of censorship and missing footage, and how the later uncut release changed the way people reevaluated the movie. Plus: favorite set pieces, what holds the movie back, how the 2009 remake compares, and a full Critic’s Crypt verdict with coffin ratings.

SPOILER NOTE: 

This episode does include some spoilers discussion of My Bloody Valentine (1981). The episode also includes talk about the 2009 remake.

CONTENT NOTE: 

Includes discussion of gore and violent set pieces.

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