Haunted Picture Palace

Join us as we look at what it might be like to never grow up as we talk about what vampire metaphors can tell us about the nuclear family in suburban 1980s America, with a fair amount of chat about oiled-up musclebound saxophonists, and a bewildering amount about Batman Forever.

Recordeed when we had covid, a run-through of Harry Kumel's hallucinatory sapphic vampire film, teasing out feminist themes, horrible erotica and excellent threads,

It's been a while, but we are back with the first in a small series of Vampire Films - Neil Jordan's lush 90s take on Anne Rice's modern gothic classic.  We recorded this a wee while ago, so references to current events are a little out of date, but it's a 30 year old film about 200 year old people, so I reckon we're in the clear.

Something of a Christmas special as we look at a bit of 60s telly that one of us watches every year, and every year he's unnerved by it.  A canter through that includes digressions on ghosts, plus-fours and talking while eating.  So much wet egg.

It's Christmas, so we have lined up a festive episode with digressions on censorship, radio djs and Phoebe Cates' dress. Listen in the dark, don't get it wet and don't feed it after midnight.

A dip into the cinematic sewers this week for Pete Walker's exploitation trash that doesn't live up to its poster.  It's called The Flesh And Blood Show, but there's a lot more of one than the other.

Join us as we take a look at Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's shot in the arm for the slasher genre as it turns 25.  We look at potential suspects, what 'the rules' mean, and discuss the very worst t-shirt known to man, as well as talking quite a lot about Scary Movie.  You do like scary movies, right?

Join us as we venture up a tributary of the Amazon which somehow leads to a lagoon... a Black Lagoon! We look at the Universal horror classic discussing suitable footwear for a trip upriver, the correct terminology for spans of prehistoric time and the logistics of shooting a 3-d movie underwater in 1954.

Join us as we look at the film that made a star of Claude Rains, even though you can't actually see him. We talk about the how and the what and the why of James Whale's 1933 masterpiece The Invisible Man, looking at wayward accents, special effects we still can't quite work out and the latent eroticism of having your protagonist nude (but invisible) for a good cghunk of the running time.

We take a walk on the moors for John Landis's 1981 horror comedy as we take in symbolism of puffa jackets, the logistics of London hospitals and Saint Jenny Agutter. Join us, but don't cut across the park to that middle-class party...

Join us as we examine the dismembered criminal bits that make up Kenneth Branagh's 1994 blockbuster.  We do findit somewhat overripe for our tastes but discuss wigs, ethics and why everything is so darn flammable along the way

A spoiler-heavy runthrough of Kim Jee-woon's 2003 breakthrough horror hit, A Tale of Two sisters, where we talk about a lot of things I won't tell you about until you've seen the fim I'm afraid.  Watch it frst, then come back for this episode.

Real life has ripped up our release schedule good and proper, so here's a stopgap about Amelia's profession in film.

A late-night recording for us in which we meet Fred Krueger, spew out some facts about the blood - so much blood - and get momentarily confused about what pancakes are in an episode about a film that really scared one of us, and is a comfort watch for the other.

We brave the deep waters of our mindbrains to talk about films and similar that scarred us as children.

Join us in service to Imhotep as we look at the blockbuster late 90s Mummy revival, taking in anachronisms, age ratings and (h)airdos, in a film that was part of my childhood and is thankfully still enjoyable

An informal chat about films in which you want the baddies to win.  In the 70s my parents saw Star Wars at a midnight screening and the post-pub audience were all cheering Darth Vader and booing the Rebel Alliance.  That's a bonus anecdote for everyone that reads to show description, there.

Our first Hitchcock film is his only Best Picture winner and his second Daphne du Maurier adaptaion, the magisterial Rebecca. Join us as we make some unlikely comparisons, dig into the mess that is Maxim de Winter's psyche and disagree about the meaning of the phrase "making violent love behind the palm trees."

A short and lightly edited bonus chat about masks in films, following on from The Phantom of the Opera last week.

Join us for Rupert Julian's silent masterwork, filmed in 1925 then re-released in 1929 as a sound film, which was then lost, then restored as a silent again.  We crawl through the chambers of Lon Chaney's lair and look at The Phantom of The Opera.

We try to find some new things to say about one of the most storied and studied films ever made this week, as we take on William Friedkin's film of William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist.  Join us as we look at guilt, parenting and theology and profoundly disagree on the meaning of the ending. And since we forgot to say anything on the recording this time, give us a follow on our social media channels, ta.

We sidetrack into screwball comedy with a look at Norman Z. McLeod's 1937 film Topper, and discuss the logistics of ectoplasm, nighclubs you can only enter by slide, and how the censorship board are fine with nudity, as long as the girl is invisible.

We travel back to New England again and take in Tim Burton's 1999 gothic offering.  We discuss practical effects, elderly british character actors, magickal sigils and the method of acting when you're missing your head, so pull up a lavishly-upholstered chair and join us

This week we take a gander at Robert Wise's film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, where we examine what it is to be haunted, willfully speculate on characters' sexualities and appreciate staff who are dedicated to their routine.  Come on in, you're expected.

Join us for a story about growing up, a story about love, a story about a house that is a monster, Gil Keenan's 2006 animated feature Monster House!

We dissect David Cronenburg's modern classic of body horror and meet the human fly, spelt F-L-Y, talking about prosthetics (monster), aesthetics (interior decorating) and ethics (of splicing yourself with your pregnant girlfriend).  It's revoltingly gory so approach with caution, or in the words of the film "Be afraid, be very afraid!"

We travel to Cabrini Green for Bernard Rose's 1992 film Candyman, adapted from a story by Clive Barker.  Join us as we say "Haunted Picture Palace" 5 times in a mirror, and explore a film which has both a very serious examination of systemic racism and the power of myth and also bucketloads of gore and so, so many bees.

The queen of the fairies is a force to be reckoned with in Roddy McDowall's 1970 folk song adaptation The Ballad of Tam Lin.  Join us this week as we tackle love, games and a wardrobe that's quite literally to die for.

Join us for not one but two iterations of the haunted-tape franchise in an experiment unlikely to be repeated as we look at the original film and its Hollywood remake.  Expect digressions on urban legends, the dangers of technology and creepy children in a new take on the 'films to see before you die' idea.

"Welcome to Fright Night... for real!" Join us for Tom Holland's fun but surprisingly gruesome homage to the sort of horror movies every weird 80s kid watched when they should have been asleep, as we ponder  prostheses, sexual politics and the significance of a house chock-full of clocks, in part 4 of our vampire season, with Fright Night.

This week we walk the streets of Bad City, somewhere in Iran, for Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, the 'first Iranian vampire western.' Wear your shades.

Vampire Season continues with Catherine Hardwicke's much-maligned 2008 adaptation of teen vamp blockbuster publishing sensation Twilight.  He's 'the world's most dangerous predator'.... Honest.

We don capes and do rather more accents that we expected to exhume Tod Browning's truly iconic Dracula, the film that launched Universal's genre-defying run of 1930s horror and casts a menacing shadow even over today's cinema. 

This week on Haunted Picture Palace we look at a film that required special dispensation from the Swedish censors to be made, Victor Sjöström's pioneering 1921 proto-horror The Phantom Carriage.

This week we take a look at John Fawcett's year 2000 tale of the fightening changes that take place in your body when you hit puberty, and are bitten by The Beast of Bailey Downs.  Quelle Shocker!

We take our first trip into the world of Hammer Horror as we excavate Roy Ward Baker's 1967 film Quatermass and The Pit, taking in haunted buildings, space-arthropods and machines to read your brains!

Robert Eggers' 2015 feature-film debut The VVitch is now playing at Haunted Picture Palace! We look at faith, loss, temptation and goats as we join a puritan family, pitched against the harsh unforgiving landscape of 1630s New England. You cannot escape the wood.

Episode 4 of Haunted Picture Palace is an excursion into high Gothic as we take in the sumptuous sights and sounds of Allerdale Hall in Guillermo Del Toro's 2015 film Crimson Peak.  Don't drink the tea.

Episode 3 of Haunted Picture Palace and this time we're talking Snake-o-grams, the best in '90s fashions and made-up deities in The Craft (1996)!

Our second episode takes in Manichean dreams, occulted secrets hidden beneath sleeping fields, and the last pagan king in England, as we explore the haunted world of Penda's Fen, from 1974.

Tune in for our first Haunted Picture Palace episode where we take a film-fan deep-dive look at the themes, dreams and Satanic schemes in Rosemary's Baby.