Castle Of Horror Podcast

Daniel Farrands chats about his new film THE AMITYVILLE MURDERS, which tells the story of Ronald "Butch" DeFeo, who one sleepy day in 1974 murdered his entire family in Amityville, Long Island.  We talk about the pluses and minuses of life in that analog era and the horrors that can hide in a house. Farrands also shares news on his other priod piece, the upcoming THE HAUNTING OF SHARON TATE.

St. Agatha is a brand-new psychological horror film (but don't worry, it gets intense and sometimes gory) about a young con woman (Sabrina Kern) in the 1950s who, finding herself broke and pregnant, joins a convent only to find herself trapped by an evil Mother Superior (Carolyn Hennessy.) It's an amazingly powerful performance from both, and we chat with director Darren Lynn Bousman on bringing this dark, pulse-pounding tale to life.

We kick off our 2019 retrospective on evil children with The Bad Seed, about Rhoda, a pig-tailed, murderous child psychopath.

This week we wrap up our retrospective dedicated to the films of Bela Lugosi, this time with Lugosi’s performance as a character that David Skal called “Dracula in all but name,” vampire Armand Tesla in the 1943 Columbia picture THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE.

The Raven is a 1935 American horror film starring Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi. The picture revolves around Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem, featuring Lugosi as a Poe-obsessed mad surgeon with a torture chamber in his basement and Karloff as a fugitive murderer desperately on the run from the police.

Our Lugosi series takes a turn towards a movie that teams Universal's Dracula against "Frankenstein," Boris Karloff. But it's so much more-- this lean film tells the story of two men facing off in a strange castle, where memories of wartime atrocities lay over a human chess game between them.

Mari Mancusi's The Camelot Code: The Once and Future Geek is a fast-paced middle grade adventure from Disney Hyperion, in which an adolescent King Arthur comes to the 21st Century and decides he doesn't go back. We chat about how the book came to be, the long process of publishing, and how to make the sometimes-adult Arthurian legends work in a family adventure.

This week we continue our retrospective dedicated to the films of Bela Lugosi, this time with Lugosi’s mysterious performance in the 1932 Universal film Murders in the Rue Morgue. Murders in the Rue Morgue is a 1932 American pre-Code horror film, very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". Bela Lugosi, one year after his performance as Dracula, portrays a lunatic scientist who abducts women and injects them with blood from his ill-tempered caged ape. Although not a hit at the time, the film is generally well-regarded by critics and is considered a cult classic.

Tonight we’re chatting with Anthony Rotolo, the creator of the TV Terror Podcast. TV TERROR is the show devoted to horror, thriller, and suspense programming from the movie-for-the-week golden age and beyond.

Leanna Renee Hieber is back to discuss her new book THE SPECTRAL CITY, from Kensington's new Science Fiction / Fantasy imprint Rebel Base Books. It's the beginning of a new series featuring a group of young lady psychics and mediums, and their ghostly best friends, as The Ghost Precinct solves weird and unsettling crime in 1899 New York City. We discuss ghosts, history and where to write in New York.

Bram Stoker Award-nominated author James Hornor Jacobs is the author of THE SEA DREAMS IT IS THE SKY. The story features a strong female lead, a powerful LGBTQ protagonist, a horrifyingly gripping plot, and a culturally-sensitive perspective as John worked directly with South American readers to shed light on aspects of distinct South American cultures and history. We talk about Jacob's process in creating this gripping story.

In 2015, Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie launched the Limetown podcast, about an NPR-style reporter investigating the mass disappearance at a corporate town in Tennessee. On the iTunes homepage, the podcast went to the #1 US slot—topping This American Life and Serial. With its cult following, Season two is now here, along with a TV adaptation with Facebook Watch in production, with Jessica Biel confirmed to produce and star. Now Simon & Schuster has released LIMETOWN: The Prequel, by Cote Smith, Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie. The book is goes back in time to tell the stories of both Lia’s adolescence and her Uncle Emile’s—and how his strange psychological condition entangled their family in mysterious and dangerous research. This exhilarating, completely original prequel takes readers back to the beginning and opens a whole new dimension of the Limetown universe. The LIMETOWN prequel is an addictive entry point for a new audience, and an explosive new layer of the story for existing fans of the podcast. We chat

This week we kick off a retrospective dedicated to the films of Bela Lugosi, beginning with Lugosi’s iconic star turn in the 1931 Dracula.

We chat with Duncan Skiles, director of THE CLOVEHITCH KILLER, which opens in theaters and VOD on November 16. The film tells the story of a boy from an apparently happy family who suspects his dad (Dylan McDermott) might be Clovehitch, an infamous serial killer that was never caught. 

In Monster Party, which comes out on November 2, three young thieves plan to rob a dinner party at a fancy Malibu mansion, only to discover that the dinner guests are all serial killers with no intention of letting them leave. Jason chats with writer/director Chris von Hoffmann. 

We discuss George Pal's War of the Worlds, a technicolor wonder even today and the first movie adaptation of HG Wells' immortal story.

In the first of two Halloween episodes, we discuss the 1976 Paul Lynde Halloween Special. 

Jason chats with Drew Edwards, writer of the long running indie comic Halloween Man and COMING Oct. 24th from Comixology and Sugar Skull Media, the all-new two issue mini-series Halloween Man: Hallowtide.

We complete our 2018 Halloween Retrospective with the brand-new reboot movie Halloween.

In Killer Kate! Which comes out in theaters and VOD on October 26, soon-to-be-bride Angie invites her estranged sister Kate to her bachelorette party held at a remote house booked on a home-sharing app. The women are unaware that by booking this house, they’re walking into a trap set in motion by a disturbed family of amateur killers who are out for blood to right a cosmic wrong. They soon become unwitting participants in a savage and often ridiculous life-or-death struggle that pits family against family, and past against present. The trailer is up and it’s extremely exciting, and its director is Elliot Feld, making his directorial debut. He says the family-versus-family thriller film was inspired by many of the low budget flicks of the 1970’s & 1980’s.