Saturday Night Freak Show

Holly squares off against the Red menace with her dope karate skills with No Retreat, No Surrender (1986) which finds perennial Freak Show favorite Jean-Claude Van Damme as the villainous Ivan Kraschinsky, a Russian enforcer for the New York Mafia, tasked with defeating an American kid who's been trained in the martial arts by the ghost of none other than Bruce Lee himself. Listen as we talk about spontaneous break dancing, garage dojos, sexy training techniques, missing reels, alternate cuts, and full contact karate tournaments on this week's exciting show! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Colin stirs the wrath of a horribly scarred, killer summer camp caretaker with The Burning (1981), a splatter flick from the genre's Golden Age that features gore and grue by legendary makeup FX man Tom Savini. A guy named Cropsey gets burned alive in a prank gone wrong and returns to camp five years later to murder every teenager alive, including Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens and Holly Hunter! Listen as we compare classic and modern slasher movies, the FX career of the Sultan of Splatter, and challenge you to try Malort, all on this week's exciting episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michaela dives deep into the bowels of the Earth on a caving expedition that uncovers mutant monster people in The Descent (2005), the second film from Dog Soldiers director Neil Marshal. Listen as we experience claustrophobia, nyctophobia, androphobia, discuss evolutionary biology, and the improbability of the hero neck snap, all that and more on this week's thrilling episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Holly wades through exploding hookers, severed limbs, and mad science with Frankenhooker (1990)! When his girlfriend is killed in a freak remote-controlled lawmower accident, Jeffrey Franken will stop at nothing to resurrect his lost love, even if it means sewing her head on the body parts of dead New York City hookers. Things go wrong when the resurrected ho-bag returns to her old Times Square stomping grounds. Listen as we analyze East Coast Horror, your dad's BBQ grilling shoes, and the dangers of smoking supercrack, all on this week's thrilling episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Colin dusts off the crucifix and holy water to deal with Dracula's soul brother, Blacula (1972). African prince Mamuwalde visits Dracula's castle and is cursed with vampirism. He later awakens in 70's L.A. and uses his supernatural charm to woo the reincarnation of his long lost love while leaving a trail of bloodless bodies in his wake. Listen as we chart the intersection of the modern day vampire and the Blaxsploitation genres, talk about the birth of Black horror films, find no love for Dark Shadows, and think Thalmus Rasulala might be one of the coolest names ever, all that and more on this week's exciting episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michaela thinks Spielberg could have a strong legal case against Mac and Me (1988), which follows an adorable, wart covered, pucker-faced creature from another world stranded on earth. He's taken in by a young boy and spends the movie getting into mischief while trying to get home to his alien family. Listen as our jaws gape at improbable physics, dangerous paraplegic stunt work, impromptu McDonald's musical numbers, and stomach-churning but friendly aliens, all that and more on this week's exciting show! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Holly charts the fall of a Hollywood icon with Malone (1987), which finds fading superstar Burt Reynolds playing a modern day Shane, here an ex-CIA hitman, who winds up intervening in a battle between a sinister corporate developer and the inhabitants of a small mountain town. Listen as we dive deep into the lore, the loves, and the life of the legendary Burt on this epic episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sean wants you to be his Valenine (2001), even if that means he has to dress up like Cupid and kill you to death! A masked murderer stalks a group of five girls who each turned down the advances of an awkward kid in 6th grade. Has he held a killer grudge against them for 13 years? Listen as we discover hot tub phobias, improbable ninjitsu serial killers, and improbable endings; all this and more on this week's exciting show! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We try to outrun the zombie apocalypse aboard the Train to Busan (2016), the last of our listener choice picks for the year. As a zombie outbreak threatens South Korea, a father and his young daughter join other survivors on a bullet train from Seoul to Busan, where they must overcome the terrors on board, both human and non. Listen as we discover Korean action heroes, punchable bad guys, do our best zombie impersonations, and that Sean would leave us all to the zombie horde, all this and more on this week's exciting episode!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Abracadabra! We experience all sorts of split personalities when we watch Magic (1978), the creepy ventriloquist dummy movie starring Anthony Hopkins as a stage magician whose grip on reality begins to slip when pressures in his life begin to mount up. Listen as we talk about creepy puppets, Jeff Dunham, the best method to dispose of a body, and more on this week's exciting episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Where's Wario? We may have plugged up the toilet and are in need of a coupla plumbers after watching Super Mario Bros (1993), the big-budget adaptation of the popular Nintendo game. Brothers Mario and Luigi are whisked into another dimension full of dino-people, ruled over by the evil King Koopa. Their mission: rescue Princess Daisy and a gemstone that could destroy the world. Listen as we talk about dystopian movies from the 1990's, magic plumber powers, and bleeding edge 1993 CGI and puppetry on this week's exciting show! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Can a movie drive its viewers insane? That's the warning label we're putting on Detention (2011), the first listener pick of the month! A slasher, UFO's, time traveling bears, and alien vegetable people disguised as Canadians collide in a high school obsessed with 90's pop culture nostalgia in an ADHD movie that defies rational thought and may have you reaching for the Ritalin. Listen as we try to keep up on this week's episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Gather 'round as we sum up the best and worst movies we saw in 2018 with our annual Best and Worst episode. Listen as we go around the table and attempt to distill a year in film down to our choices for the 5 best movies and the 1 we think was the worst. Will your favorite make the cut? Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Colin celebrates the New Year with a murder in each of America's four time zones with New Year's Evil (1980)! An L.A. radio personality receives threatening phone calls during her televised New Year's Eve bash from a psychopathic killer on a schedule to murder someone each hour, with her as the final target. Listen as we dissect the tropes of the American Slasher Film, early 80's New Wave music, and discover a movie where a bag of marijuana is used as a murder weapon: all this and more on this week's exciting show! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michalea chains herself to a tree to avoid going on a Bad Moon (1996) rampage! Thor is a German Shepherd who becomes agitated when werewolf Uncle Ted (Michael Pare) moves his trailer into his sister's picturesque Canadian Pine backyard. Listen as we talk about the movies of writer-director Eric Red, name five favorite movie werewolves, and talk wholesome family sex-and-gore movies, all that more on this week's episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Holly suggests that if you spend as much time daydreaming of Chuck Norris as Jonathan Brandis does in Sidekicks (1992), you may have a mental health problem! The Chuckster plays himself in a series of vignettes designed to play as a child's fantasy of adventure along side his favorite screen hero, while in real life the kid learns martial arts to take on school bullies and learn to rely on himself. Listen as we talk about mental disorders, ruin our childhoods by psychoanalyzing kids movies, and try to understand the inscrutable appeal of Chuck Norris on this week's exciting episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sean tries to find the killswitch for the Killbots of the 80's cult classic Chopping Mall (1986). A group of mall workers stay after-hours to have sex in a furniture store and end up getting locked in with the mall's state-of-the art security system, a trio of killer robots. Listen as we avoid the pitfalls of buying used mattresses, talk about 80's movie robot design, the career of schlockmeister director Jim Wynorski, and discover that a movie called Chopping Mall is all mall and no chop, all on this week's exciting episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Colin takes a trip back to the rain-slicked, neon streets of Hollywood Boulevard in the 1980's with Angel (1984), about a high school honor student by day who moonlights as a hooker by night. She's being stalked by a psycho who preys on streetwalkers while a virtuous cop and a colorful gang of misfits look out for her. Listen as we find out the correct way to eat a raw egg and bathe in the sewer of cinematic sleaze on this week's exciting episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michalea asks "Whatcha gonna do when the Hulkster runs wild on you?" and gets in the ring with Hulk Hogan in No Holds Barred (1989). Hogan, fittingly, plays a wrestler named "Rip" who is lured into the fight of his life in rules-free Battle of the Tough Guys tournament organized by an oily cable TV executive. Can better believe it, brother! Find out the meaning of life, the universe and everything as we review one of wrestling cinema's greatest achievements on this week's episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Holly takes on cocaine-fueled, motorcycle-riding ninja warriors with the power of rock n' roll with Miami Connection (1987), purported to be one of the best worst movies ever made. Evil Miami ninjas threaten the peaceful existence of Tae Kwon Do-practicing Orlando, and the chosen warriors of the band Dragon Sound are called upon to take them on. Listen as we recount tales of how a bad movie of this magnitude became a beloved cult classic while Michaela performs Jim's monologue, all on this week's exciting episode! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.