Live At The Death Factory

Projector's broken, welcome to season 2. This episode's book is Heart-Beast by Tanith Lee 

We talk about Terrifier 2. Art was here.

We talk about Red Rooms, an unflinching, unforthcoming (meta???) scum classic about a woman who attends the trial of an internet murderer in Montreal. 

We talk about Alien Report, a great film about when people stand too close to you. 

The Scary of Sixty-First and Toolbox Murders, two films where the regular horror of having a landlord is compounded by moving into a building that lives as a summary of the rotten, putrid evil at work at the highest levels of power. 

We discuss, in great and deserved depth, two of the great demented peaks of 2000s horror cinema: House Of Wax and Orphan, both directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

In this episode we discuss the entire span of Rob Zombie's directorial career before focusing on the much-maligned Lords Of Salem. He's great. I don't expect you to watch Three From Hell or anything, that sucks, but if we sat there and figured out he was great then you should too. 

This episode we talk about two unclassifiable pieces of nightmare art from the darkest corners of the scum cinema cannon, both of which were released over a decade after the conclusion of principal photography when key members of cast and crew had long since died. It's an understandable struggle to imagine a film more strange and cursed that Andrew Getty's passion project The Evil Within but that's why it took a special kind of mind to imagine Flexing With Monty. 

This week we discuss Bette Gordon's 1983 film Variety which focuses on a woman taking a job in a porn theatre by way of kathy acker, jane jacobs, laura mulvey and, briefly, henry rollins. 

This week we talk about a whole bunch of Messed Up Guy In A Band documentaries, focusing primarily on Citizen Shane and Dead Hands Dig Deep. 

We take a look at a couple of SOV films we didn't enjoy so much and discuss the pitfalls of treating it as a genre instead of a format before a long-form discussion of SHATTER DEAD, a pretty incredible zero budget low-key post-apocalyptic film from 1994, haunted by a Messiah Of Evil atmosphere and dripping with Dell Abyss miserabilism.

We discuss unheralded member of the scum pantheon Singapore Sling in great detail after spending maybe ten minutes on White Marriage which, in our defense, has a similar vibe and a far better poster that it probably deserves. Live At The Death Factory has resumed full production.

Sean gives a quick update about the current state of the show (we're not putting out episodes for a while) before a rerun of an episode of another show in which he and Astrid discuss found footage classic Noroi

This week we examine 2011's chick tract writ large Megan Is Missing, one of the most truly evil films of the last several decades. Why has ever teenager seen this? What can a film do when it feels like it has the forces of good on its side? How much exponentially worse does this get once you discover behind the scenes details? What is the spell to destroy this film? What would Peter Sotos say?

When does the agony of self-realisation begins to warp reality itself? Afraid Of The Dark merciless portrayal of childhood isolation through illness and the degree to which that isolation can cause a loss of self. Penda's Fen is a devastatingly beautiful story of queer self-realisation through the embrace of England's pagan history and then dismantling of its flatulent and evil conception of its own patriotism. 

This week we look at SOV fraught homosociality shocker Venus Flytrap and journey into the worst of every kind of awkward silence of your teenage years in you-are-in-a-slint-song-right-now too-real teenage nightmare Bugcrush.

This week we discuss In The Dark, an adaptation of Richard Laymon's novel of the same name. This film was never officially released or distributed and wasn't screened other than in some festivals around 1999/2000. It's currently on youtube in full, though! It's a hidden SOV masterpiece, a deeply individual and confident adaptation that is shockingly underseen. We tell you to watch the film on Youtube, discuss the film strengths and then talk about when your perception of a film can wildly develop from that of the director. Also a shocking third act twist unveils what exactly Lil Nas X has to do with all this.

This week on LIVE AT THE DEATH FACTORY: Bloodsisters, a confrontational journey into dyke BDSM in the 90s, Daddy and The Muscle Academy, a deeply horny look at Tom Of Finland and The Lifestlye, get knee-deep in hetrosexual squalor with wife swapping boomer sex draculas

“Never knew how to be scared, just how to handle my infra-red. Love nothing: made my barber write a 'Fuck You' in my head." - Z-Ro An episode of Sean's old podcast during which he and Astrid spoke about the first three entries of the Female Prisoner Scorpion series

This week we look at two 1980s SOV films that chronicle a local scene by organising an appropriate narrative around some live footage. How successful are they? How much story does a scene need? Is Florida a real place? All these questions and more will be answered as we review  What Ever Happened To Susan Jane - 1982 - Marc Huestis and Twisted Issues - 1988 - Charles Pinion

This week we talk about Luigi Cozzi's deeply, committedly deranged 1989 hallucination The Black Cat. The Black Cat is an unofficial sequel to Dario Argento's Suspiria and Inferno and, more importantly, an inescapable vortex of gobsmacking gore logic, unrepentant fake-outs and guitar-instruction-VHS metal. 

This week: two psychodramas about the world of sex work, each demented in distinct directions. Astrid discusses the subtext of Crimes of Passion while Sean is somehow still talking about irish television. Then we discover that Guilty Of Romance has much better politics than you'd expect from something one could plausibly describe as "a timid housewife's wild plunge into the world of sexwork...and murder!" Crimes of Passion - 1984 - Ken Russell Guilty Of Romance - 2011 - Sion Sono

This week we cover three deeply grisly short films from Japan, listed below, that fall roughly into the Ero Guro category. What kind of transgressiveness links these films? What is a satisfying definition of Ero Guro in the first place, aside from the basic "Erotic Grotesque Nonsense"? Have you ever owned art you were reluctant to cross international borders with? What was revealed by watching a copy of A Garden Without Birds with subtitles when it seems to be commonly watched without them? How is the least explicit film the best fit for the category? Why did we watch Lucky Sky Diamond? Seriously, it was the longest one and it was terrible? Answers to all these questions and more this week.   Lucky Sky Diamond - 1989 - Izo Hashimoto The First Love -1989 - Mari Terashima A Garden Without Birds - 1992 -Akira Nobi

This week we discuss Kamikaze Hearts. Juliet Bashore's fauxumentary essays the eventual disintegration of a romance between two porn performers, Tigr and  Sharon Mitchell, on the set of a porn version of Carmen, filmed as their real life relationship was taking a similar trajectory. What counts as reality in a porn set and in a relationship? Can truth ever be reflected in a documentary? And how much will you enjoy this film if you fundamentally don't care? 

This week we cover James B. Harris' Cop (1988), an adaptation of James Ellroy's Blood On The Moon. We talk about how they managed wring such an incredible film out of such terrible source material and the ways in which the film functions as an essay on what Ellroy would become. 

This week we cover SOV lesbian hesher vampire romance Red Lips, directed by Donald Farmer and released in 1995, discuss how it connects to Jean Rollin and name a lot of bands sure to alienate our younger listeners. 

We survey the currents in feminist discourse thru rape/revenge & exploitation film from 1974 to 2011. Content warning: detailed discussion of sexual assault, both specific incidents and the conditions surrounding it, throughout.  Films and supporting material: https://letterboxd.com/hastapura/list/live-at-the-death-factory-episode-one-dead/ Films Featured: Rape Squad - 1974 - Bob Kelljan Lipstick - 1976 - Lamont Johnson Ladies Club - 1986 - Janet Greek Baise Moi - 2000 - Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi Twilight Portrait - 2011 - Angelina Nikonova

"You realize that to experience projected figures on the movie theater screen as life-size involves the reduction of your own body to the size of a doll, while with television, conversely, you must mentally blow yourself up to the size of a giant to account for the minuscule scale of figures on the small screen" - Mike Kelley

An episode of Sean's old podcast during which he and Astrid spoke about three genre films from the early 80s that thrum with deep-seated disgust and fear of sex. This kind of thing often goes unaddressed in genre fiction criticism, aside from a “woah, weird!“ The three films are Scream For Help, Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker and Incubus

Astrid and Sean reviewing Panos Cosmatos' Mandy (2018) on one of Sean's old podcasts.