Podcast
Movie Oubliette
Hosted by Conrad Chambers and Daniel Goh · EN
Intrepid film fans Conrad and Dan review obscure and forgotten horror, sci-fi and fantasy movies to decide whether they should be set free or thrown back into the oubliette to be forgotten forever!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
17episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Bug Buster (featuring Doug Jones and Derek Maki)
2w ago01:30:09Tap to summarizeLegendary actor and creature performer Doug Jones and independent filmmaker Derek Maki join Dan and Conrad to reminisce about Bug Buster (1998), a late-90s horror-comedy in which a quaint lakeside town is terrorised by mutant insects. The incredible cast combines a pre-Knocked Up Katherine Heigl with Randy Quaid, Star Trek alumni James Doohan and George Takei, Meredith Salenger, and – of course – Doug Jones as the big bad: Mother Bug! The movie sits squarely in the era when creature features were increasingly living on video rather than in theaters, and it builds its appeal from ecological panic, practical-effects goo, and the deliciously overripe promise that a “former military man” might somehow sort out an insect apocalypse with enough swagger.You can follow and support Derek's documentary on Doug's incredible career by visiting www.getmedougjones.com and adding it to your watchlist on imdb. The Kickstarter campaign kicks off on Monday 18 May.Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Phenomena
4w ago01:14:32Tap to summarizeDan is back from vacation and treats us to Phenomena (1985) – a supernatural giallo from Dario Argento that features a pre-Labyrinth Jennifer Connelly in a star-making lead as an insect-loving teenager who arrives at a Swiss girls’ school only to sleepwalk into a serial murder case that only becomes more bizarre as the story unravels. Released by New Line Cinema in the U.S. as Creepers (shorn of 30 minutes of its running time), Phenomena emerged in Argento’s most-celebrated period, with the director producing and co-writing with Franco Ferrini, Donald Pleasence as the obligatory learned eccentric, and a soundtrack that behaves like it's had one espresso too many. But is it an under-appreciated piece of Italian art, or an excessive and unruly misstep? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Cool World (with Melinda Mock)
Apr 1301:14:23Tap to summarizeRetroBlasting's Melinda Mock stands in for Dan as animation auteur Ralph Bakshi's Cool World (1992) bursts out of the oubliette and threatens to overwhelm us with its incoherent plot and haphazard melange of visuals. Starring a post Batman Kim Basinger as femme fatale Holli Would, Gabriel Byrne as murderous cartoonist Jack, and a very young Brad Pitt as by-the-book Cool World detective, Frank, Cool World is a very 90s live action/animation crossover with a remarkable soundtrack.Tonally the film tries on noir, erotica, satire and straight-up fever dreams, and then leaves the dressing room without checking the mirror. It’s flashy but confused, but never dull. But does it deserve to be pricked by the spike of power and be released from oubliette, or should it be sucked back into the author's pen and forgotten forever? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Cure
Mar 3001:16:23Tap to summarizeIn this Patrons' choice episode, we're exposing ourselves to Cure (1997) – the film that announced Kiyoshi Kurosawa as one of the most unsettling voices in modern horror. Set in Tokyo at the tail end of Japan's "lost decade", it follows weary detective Takabe (Kōji Yakusho) as he investigates a string of seemingly connected string of murders... with apparently different perpetrators. Victims keep turning up with the same grotesque X carved into their necks, and the killers – usually found standing nearby in a daze –have absolutely no idea why they did it. Just when things seem bleak enough, Takabe encounters a mysterious drifter, Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) – a soft-spoken young man who asks everyone the same simple question: Who are you? Should this early progenitor of the "J-horror" phenomenon be released from the oubliette… or would it be safer if we all forgot we ever saw it? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Hardware
Mar 1701:19:19Tap to summarizeReleased in 1990, Hardware is the abrasive feature debut of cult filmmaker Richard Stanley. Starring Stacey Travis as sculptor Jill and Dylan McDermott as desert drifter Mo, the film begins with a romantic gesture that – through the entirely avoidable gift of salvaged military hardware – turns into a claustrophobic battle with a self-repairing government robot determined to follow its programming to the letter. Emerging at the tail end of the VHS-era cyberpunk boom and somewhere in the industrial-grime lineage between The Terminator and Mad Max 2, Stanley’s film quickly carved out a reputation as a cult object: equal parts grimy dystopian satire and mechanical slasher movie. But is this often hard-to-find rusty curio a gem that deserves to be given pride of place in your lounge, or is it best left in the desert? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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The Bride (1985)
Mar 301:04:52Tap to summarizeBy popular demand, we're celebrating the release of Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! by taking a look back at Franc Roddam's The Bride (1985). This mid-80s take on Mary Shelley’s mythic creation project tellingly got the budget of a period romance, but likely only because it had a new romantic pop star in the lead role and the production design of an Adam Ant music video. The result is a Gothic fable where baroque laboratories collide with heartfelt journeys toward independence. The monster – dubbed Viktor by his diminutive travelling companion, Rinaldo (David Rappaport) – is played by Clancy Brown, presumably because he strayed from casting sessions for Highlander.Flashdance's Jennifer Beals’ Eva reinvents the notion of “the bride”: she’s bright, terrified of cats, and slightly too lucid for a world full of overlong candlelit discussions about autonomy and creation. Sting’s Baron Frankenstein embodies euro-aristocratic obsession with a bemused smirk, and spends most of his time leaning on something while holding a book.Should this experiment in misunderstood Gothic romance finally earn its freedom? Or is it a well-dressed atrocity that should be hurled off the nearest tower? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Monster in the Closet (with Octavio López Sanjuán)
Feb 1701:12:28Tap to summarizeWriter Octavio López Sanjuán joins us as we discover Monster in the Closet (1986), an affectionate pastiche of atomic age monster movies from Troma Entertainment. A string of baffling murders in wardrobes draws a plucky San Francisco obituary writer (Donald Grant) into the most terrifying assignment of his career. He’s soon joined by a biology teacher (Denise DuBarry) with more theories than common sense, her boy genius child (an early appearance from Paul Fast and Furious Walker!), and an assortment of moustachioed authorities who all take turns trying (and spectacularly failing) to make sense of a creature that would put even your most irrational childhood fears to shame. Should Monster in the Closet be released to let its freak flag fly, or should it be crammed back in there to wallow in its shame? Find out!You can buy Octavio's Spanish-language book on Monster in the Closet on Amazon!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Don't Torture a Duckling
Feb 301:16:39Tap to summarizeOur second film for this year will also be our second dip of the toe into the filmography of Lucio Fulci (see episode 158 for our take on Conquest, his bonkers fantasy adventure, with our special guest Vincenzo Natali).Don’t Torture a Duckling (Non si sevizia un paperino, 1972) is remembered as one of the most unsettling and thematically ambitious entries in the Italian giallo cycle. Its premise is deceptively simple: a series of brutal child murders shatters a seemingly idyllic community, prompting an investigation led by journalist Andrea Martelli (Tomas Milian) and local police. Suspicion falls quickly – and tellingly – on society’s outsiders: a reclusive “witch” (Florinda Bolkan), a mentally vulnerable man, and anyone who doesn't conform to the village’s rigid moral order. As the mystery unfolds, the film reveals a gallery of compromised adults whose piety and respectability mask repression, misogyny, and latent violence.Should Don’t Torture a Duckling be released from the oubliette and re-examined like an uncomfortable truth finally brought to light, or left buried with Maciara's baby? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Biggles: Adventures in Time (with Michael French)
Jan 2001:21:39Tap to summarizeHappy New Year! Michael French of RetroBlasting joins us for an exciting trip with Biggles: Adventures in Time (1986), directed by John Hough (of Watcher in the Woods and The Legend of Hell House fame). It's an ambitious and eccentric British fantasy-adventure that attempts to translate W. E. Johns’ imperial-era aviation hero into the idiom of 1980s blockbuster cinema. Produced by Rusty Lemorande (writer of Electric Dreams), the film has since acquired a reputation less as a failed franchise-starter than as a cult curiosity. It stars Alex Hyde-White as a contemporary New Yorker, Jim, who is randomly pulled back in time to the Western Front of the First World War, where he becomes entangled with the dashing Royal Flying Corps ace James "Biggles" Bigglesworth, played with the essential stiff-upper-lip earnestness by Neil Dickson. Peter Cushing also appears in one of his final screen roles.Should Biggles: Adventures in Time be sprung from the movie oubliette to soar again like its hero looping bravely back into the fray, or grounded permanently like a 'time-twin' displaced forever in the wrong era? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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The Curse of the Cat People
Dec 1601:16:41Tap to summarizeHappy holidays! Our festive special this year focuses on The Curse of the Cat People (1944), directed by Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise (of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Haunting fame), and produced by Val Lewton for RKO – a sequel that daringly abandons the horror conventions of its predecessor in favour of an atmospheric, psychological fairy-tale. The story follows young Amy Reed (Ann Carter), the sensitive and lonely daughter of Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) and Alice (Jane Randolph), whose imaginary friend manifests in the form of the serene and spectral Irena (Simone Simon), the tragic figure from Cat People (1942). With its expressionistic visuals, gentle pacing, and Lewton’s characteristically suggestive storytelling, should this film finally be released from the Movie Oubliette to flourish like Amy finding a true festive friend, or left to linger in the shadows like the fading spirits of Christmas past? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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