Movie Oubliette

Isaac Sutton guest co-hosts with Dan (while Conrad is on vacation!) to talk all things underworld related in Highway to Hell (1991). We follow lovers, Charlie and Rachel, as they try to escape the clutches of the merciless Sargeant Bedlam, grotesque girlfriend doppelgangers and Ben Stiller's entire family. It's a movie for the whole family! Strap in for Anarchy, Armageddon and Annihilation with the Satanic Mechanic. You're in for a hell of a ride!

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Dan and Conrad resurrect an ancient wizard from a screaming coffin of tomato soup, hoist their triple-bladed shootin' sword and set off for the swashbuckling, headsplitting adventure of The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) – the late Albert Pyun's directorial debut, featuring Lee Horsley, Kathleen Beller, Simon MacCorkindale, Geroge Maharis and Richard Lynch. It's your standard orphaned son of a murdered king returns to avenge his father's death and restore freedom to the realm, except he's actually not bothered and only wants to shag the Princess who hires him. It has some shocking scenes of gore and copious amounts of unnecessary female nudity, which made it somewhat of a video rental treasure for pre-pubescent boys in the 80s... but does it stand up to scrutiny now? Find out!

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Chris McKay, director of the thrilling horror comedy Renfield, joins us for our Halloween special for a tour of one of his favourite haunted house movies: The Legend of Hell House, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. It features a rag-tag group of psychics and physicians investigating a notoriously evil abode once inhabited by a deranged megalomaniac whose hobbies included bestiality, necrophilia and "a gamut of sexual goodies". Based on a novel by Richard Matheson and directed by John Hough, this 70s take on The Haunting stars Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Clive Revill and Gayle Hunnicutt and features homicidal chandeliers, ninja cats and Roddy slapping a naked woman. But crucially, is it a spooktacular des res or a footnote in the haunted house listings? Find out!

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Serge Bodnarchuk of Cold Crash Pictures joins us for a spooky season double-whammy spectacular. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the late William Friedkin's classic horror The Exorcist (1973) and the release of David Gordon Green's apprehensively anticipated rebootquel, The Exorcist: Believer (2023), we've scrabbled around in the oubliette and fished out not one but two Exorcist prequels: Renny Harlin's The Exorcist: The Beginning (2004) and Paul Schrader's Dominion: Prequel to the Excorcist (2005). That's two for the price of one! Well, more accurately, two for the price of two disastrous box office bombs based on the same premise with largely the same cast on the same sets but with different directors. It's quite simply the weirdest situation to ever befall a major horror franchise. How the hell did this happen? What are the differences? And crucially, are either of them worth exorcising and releasing into the world? Find out!

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In this Patron's Choice episode, we're venturing into the territory of sword and sorcery master Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane (2009), M. J. Bassett's largely forgotten action adventure film starring James Purefoy as the brutal privateer turned Puritan avenger on a quest to rescue a young pilgrim girl from an evil sorcerer. This one vanished without a trace after a bungled release in the US, where it was held up by legal issues, so few genre fans had a chance to witness its glorious locations, gritty tone, bone crunching action and stunning stunts on the big screen. But does it stand the test of time, or is it an unremarkable addition to the post-Lord-of-the-Rings high fantasy boom of the noughties? Find out!

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We're revisiting the big budget adaptation of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher at long last! Not only is the film celebrating its 20th anniversary, it's also a movie Dan's been wanting to cover since he started reading the book 5 years ago when we started this podcast! He's finally finished it, despite a canine mishap midway through, so here we are... And what a spectacle it is. An isolated snowy landscape, an alien invasion, possession, red fungal infections, a group of friends with psychic powers... there's a lot going on in this one! And the pedigree of the artists behind it is astonishing: Lawrence Kasdan, the writer of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back, directs and co-scripts with Misery adapter and The Princess Bride scribe William Goldman, with a cast that includes Morgan Freeman, Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant, Thomas Jane, Tom Sizemore and Donnie Wahlberg. And special effects by ILM! What could possibly go wrong?! A lot, it turns out. But is it still worthy of freedom from the oubliette? Find out!

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The incredible Vincenzo Natali, director of Cube, Splice and In the Tall Grass, joins us to explore Paul Verhoeven's final Dutch-language film before he launched his Hollywood career: The Fourth Man (1983). It's a visually stunning, darkly erotic thriller, with a Hitchcockian blonde, eye-popping and leg-crossing effects, and some subversive religious imagery. But is this hard-to-find tale of a drunken writer encountering a sultry widow of not one but three husbands a mischievous treasure... or a fever dream best forgotten? Find out!

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Dan and Conrad find themselves itching compulsively while padding around in a tinfoil-covered motel room searching for aphids. Yes, we're revisiting Bug (2006), the late William Friendkin's adaptation of Tracy Letts' play starring Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Lynn Collins and Harry Connick Jr. It's an intense psychological thriller set largely in a single room focusing on two lonely outcasts who go crazy in love... literally. Or maybe they really are the focus of a giant conspiracy involving medical experiments, child abduction, genetically modified insects and one giant mother super bug. We picked this one out of the oubliette before the sad news of the director's passing, so this comes as an unplanned but timely retrospective on the film Friedkin called his most intense piece of work. Where does it sit in his legacy? Find out!

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Melinda Mock of RetroBlasting and Dreamland guest co-hosts and, while Dan is away, leads Conrad into the weird fairytale horror of Troll (1986), Empire Pictures' second-highest-grossing b-movie, which has since been overshadowed by the internet memes of its largely unrelated and famously awful sequel. Featuring Noah Hathaway (The NeverEnding Story), Michael Moriarty (The Stuff), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (!) and Sonny Bono (!!!), it tells the story of the young Harry Potter Jr. – yes, you read that right – discovering a world of magic and terror when his family moves into a new apartment building infested by the titular Troll. It has everything you'd want in a video rental: Sonny Bono turning into a quivering green turd, June Lockheart brandishing a spear and a singing magic mushroom. But is it any good? Find out!

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Manika Dulcio of the 'I've Been Meaning to Watch That' podcast visits us with a dusty old board game from 2005 called Zathura: A Space Adventure, and before we know it, we're thrust into a wild sci-fi adventure with meteors, dinosaur aliens and frozen older sisters! Jon Favreau's first big effects movie has been eclipsed in popular culture by the first adaptation of a Chris Van Allsburg children's book, Jumanji – with which it bears a striking resemblance – but it has a lot going for it. It features early appearances by Josh Hutcherson and Kristen Stewart, with Dax Shepherd and Tim Robbins as the responsible adults, some striking visuals and a captivating combination of practical and CGI effects. But did it deserve to fall into the memory hole, or should a new generation of kids give it a spin? Find out!

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