Castle Of Horror Podcast

We wrap up our King Kong retrospective with King Kong Escapes (released in Japan as Counterattack of King Kong, a 1967 Japanese-American science-fiction kaiju film featuring King Kong, co-produced by Toho and Rankin/Bass. This is a wild, fun film full of 60s spy tropes, an obsession with a world-ruling UN, and one giant robot ape.

We talk about the strange "monster mash" of American and Japanese giant monsters with the 1962 "King Kong vs. Godzilla" from Godzilla's own Toho Studios.

We talk to the author of Monster Mash: The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze In America 1957-1972 (Twomorrows Publishing). We talk about horror hosts, toys, books, movies, and why monsters became an integral part of mid-century pop culture. 

We continue our look at Kong with Peter Jackson's 3-hour-plus tribute to the 1933 King Kong, featuring Andy Serkis' moving performance as the emotions of the great ape. 

We take a fresh look at a version of King Kong just as time-stamped as its 1933 predecessor: the big-budget 1976 King Kong, which featured Rick Baker and his team creating the gorilla-suited Kong. Does this movie deserve a rehabilitation?

A chat with Sarah Habel, just recently Riverdale's sexy, troubled Mrs. Grundy, as she stars in the new Syfy film Atomica.

We kick off our retrospective on the world's most famous giant ape with a look at the 2017 KONG: SKULL ISLAND.

We wrap up our Sexy Vampire Retrospective (for now) with Jim Jarmusch's 2013 film ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE starring Tom Hiddleston, Tilda Swinton and John Hurt. The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and tells the story of two vampires living out what may be their final days on modern earth which has become dissolute, predictable, and contaminated. 

Kaaron Warren is the author of The Grief Hole (IFWG Publishing), about a young social worker haunted by ghostly visions that warn her how people are going to die. When she investigates the death of her cousin in an Australian beach community, she discovers a dark landscape of grief and exploitation. A cerebral, thought-provoking horror tale. We chat about the book, writing, and the weird 18-hour time difference between Melbourne and Colorado.

Director Ed Gass-Donnelly is the director of The Last Exorcism Part II and Small Town Murder Songs. His new film is Lavender: When a photographer (Abbie Cornish) suffers severe memory loss after a traumatic accident, strange clues among her photos suggest she may be responsible for the deaths of family members she never knew she had. 

Sheryl Scarborough is an award-winning writer for television, having written for shows such as Kim Possible, Doug, and Tiny Toon Adventures among many other credits. She lives in Washington state, and has always had an obsession with forensics since long before she became a writer. Her debut teen novel is To Catch a Killer, about a witty young protagonist who balances her school work with a budding forensics career.

We continue our Sexy Vampire Retrospective with the 1995 vampire movie EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE, directed by Anne Goursaud. The film stars Alyssa Milano as Charlotte, a chaste girl who is haunted by a vampire played by Martin Kemp, bassist of 80s New Wave band Spandau Ballet.

Chris Von Hoffmann is the director of the new film Drifter, about a pair of outlaw brothers in a post-apocalyptic desert world who find themselves trapped in a small town run by cannibals. 

This week we continue our Sexy Vampire Retrospective with the Luigi Batzella’s 1973 opus, The Devil’s Wedding , about a young scholar (Mark Damon) who discovers that the famed Ring of the Niebelung may exist and can be found in the Carpathian Mountains. But no sooner does he begin to plan an excursion to find it for science, his twin brother (also Mark Damon) sets out to retrieve the ring, stumbling upon the evil plans of Countess Dracula, portrayed by Italian actress Rosalba Neri.

The Riverman is the fourth novel in the DCI Lorimer series from Alex Gray. In the new book, Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer investigates the death of an banker whose body is fished out Glasgow’s River Clyde, and uncovers an international accounting scandal.

In this week's installment of the Sexy Vampire Retrospective we examine Dracula 2000, the Wes Craven-produced, Patrick Lussier-directed contemporary film in which Dracula is set free and heads straight for New Orleans. Stars Gerard Butler and Christopher Plummer.

Love is Love is a new comic anthology collection from IDW and DC Comics that gathers some of the greatest talents in comics today to tell stories in commemoration of the Pulse Night Club Shooting of June 12, 2016, honoring the victims, supporting the survivors, celebrating the LGBTQ community, and examining love in today's world. Organizer Marc Andreyko and two artists on the book, Brent Peeples and David Sexton, talk about the New York Times Best Seller.

This week we have a movie that's been requested by many of the folks on the Castle of Horror Facebook community-- From Dusk Til Dawn, written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Robert Rodriquez. 

Vampyres is a delight of sexy vampire cinema-- shot around Oakley Court, one of Hammer Studios' favorite settings, film stars Marianne Morris  and Anulka as female vampires inhabiting a derelict country estate where they seduce and kill passersby, until into their lives come a man that one of the vampires finds impossible to kill, and a young couple who are determined to discover their secret. It was was filmed on location in England mostly around Oakley Court. 

We talk about Jean Rollin's sometimes dreamy, sometimes odd movie about a man on a search for a vampire he met in his youth. Starring Jean-Loup Philippe and Annie Belle.