Bring Me The Axe! Horror Podcast

To unlock the full episode go to ⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠ and subscribe at the $5 level to unlock all of our X-Files episodes as well as Bring Me The Axe: Millennium Edition, and Radio Free Haddonfield our bi-weekly DJ and music show. In yet another dog of a Gansa/Gordon episode, Mulder and Scully are called in for a hail Mary play by a lousy past-colleague Mulder's faces down a killer smart home system. This being the 90's and the writers having no idea how computers work, it ends up wobbly as their last outing, Conduit. We also take a look at what was happening around Halloween in 1993 and the headlines and pop culture hits are every bit as weird as you likely don't remember. Take a trip back in time with us as we tackle it all!

This week Bryan and Dave celebrate one year of 99 Cent Rental with the mother of all cult movies. Get it? It's a drag queen's dream come true. In 1977, reeling from being written out of her mother's will for reasons well-known to her, Christina Crawford, daughter of Hollywood legend, Joan Crawford published a vicious hit piece of a memoir about the alleged abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and Hollywood couldn't wait to snatch up the option and transform it in a motion picture. Paramount came calling and took a book full of dubious claims and turned it into a movie full of even more dubious claims and a tone that shifts wildly from massively understated to flying dangerously off the handle. If a crazy story wasn't enough, the troubled production, made even more difficult by Faye Dunaway's horrible diva behavior on set and the meddling of celebrity husbands pushed the studio and producer Frank Yablans to the brink. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

2024 was a banner year for horror movies and Bryan and Dave are going to run you down the list of the best, worst, and most-okayest horror movies of the year. Where do your favorite titles drop? What did we think of Maxxxine? How about Terrifier 3? Longlegs? It's all in here and then some, a giant-sized episode to address 25+ titles. Our opinions are sure to make you mad. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

To unlock the full episode go to ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠ and subscribe at the $5 level to unlock all of our X-Files episodes as well as Bring Me The Axe: Millennium Edition, and Radio Free Haddonfield our bi-weekly DJ and music show. This week we look at the second Morgan and Wong joint of the season, the first of their tendency toward egregious ripoffs of horror movies you've probably seen. In this episode, Mulder and Scully investigate a series of deaths surrounding a woman who had a terribly unhealthy relationship with her boss, whose spirit might still be hanging around her, thwarting an Islamic terror cell and the corporate stooge who's supplying them with unspecified parts with which to carry out terror. It's all a little too much like The Entity but who are we to complain? In a wobbly first season, desperately trying to find its legs, it's one of the better early episodes.

This week Bryan and Dave wind down the year and celebrate the holiday season with a look at a movie that can only be called horror in the most charitable of terms. Christmas Evil is the tale of two parties: Lewis Jackson, a director whose ideas were too weird for commercial Hollywood and a wall of exploitation producers who saw potential in his weird little character movie to be exploited in the wake of Halloween. The result is a movie that's more like Taxi Driver than Friday the 13th, a comedy so black that most people miss the goofs. But it's a wonderful piece of Holiday weirdness carried almost entirely on the shoulders of its star, Brandon Maggart. It is a movie so well-made and off-beat that it's a real shame that its director became so disenfranchised from the film making experience entirely that he never returned. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week, Bryan and Dave take a trip back to 1984 for a look at one of the top box office draws of 1984 and one of the most toyetic pictures of the decade, Gremlins. It's one of Chris Columbus's first movies produced and Joe Dante's first feature with Steven Spielberg. It's got adorable little cuddly guys, nasty little monsters, Phoebe Cates, gleeful puppet carnage, and a powerhouse score from Hollywood's musical swiss army knife, Jerry Goldsmith. In a year packed with some of American pop cultures most enduring classic titles, Gremlins is among the most iconic of the decade. It's not all fuzzy feelings, though. As much as it's a lot of Loony Tunes fun and mayhem it's a movie that hasn't exactly aged well and we'll tell you all about it; the good and the bad. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠⁠

As another Friday the 13th dawns we bring you another bonus episode looking at our personal favorite slasher franchise. This time around Jason Voorhees stalks some kids who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as he seeks to convalesce after getting hacked in the shoulder with Ginny's machete. We'll tell you all about why, of all the movies Paramount could have chosen to revive the 3D craze, they chose an r-rated body count movie like this one. We'll wax romantic about Richard Brooker's performance as Jason. We'll be blown away by the production's choice to have their final girl fight back against the killer tooth and nail. We'll get downright pedantic about the origin of the hockey mask. All this and more as our tradition of covering Friday the 13th on Friday the 13th continues! Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

To unlock the full episode go to ⁠Patreon⁠ and subscribe at the $5 level to unlock all of our X-Files episodes as well as Radio Free Haddonfield our bi-weekly DJ and music show. This week we take a trip back to October 8, 1993, for a look at the fifth episode of the first season of The X-Files as Mulder takes it to the streets of Atlantic City in search of a murderer who might be the legendary cryptic of New Jersey but is actually a family of feral humans living in the wilds of the Jersey Pine Barrens, bumping up against the edge of civilized society. We have lousy witness sketches of the killer, Scully's magnificent fashion sense and social life, and a rundown of what was happening in America in October of 1993.

This week Dave and Bryan marvel at what is ostensibly the most egregious horror movie sequel of all time, a movie so lazy, so craven that it's hard to believe that it exists at all. When a greedy producer got his hands on the sequel rights to the original Silent Night Deadly Night he intended to have an entire movie made by simply editing the original into something new but director Lee Harry, a professional editor just couldn't make it happen. Because that's an insane and very stupid proposition. The compromise was to shoot insert scenes as a wraparound story. Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 still manages to compose half of its running time, including the credits, from the original movie but it's not without its charms. After all, this is the movie that gave us garbage day! Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Bryan and Dave go north for a look at The Christmas Martian, an utterly deranged Quebecois children's movie about unsupervised children in a remote Quebec town and the adult man from Mars who in any other context would be understood to be grooming this brother and sister. It's a film that was intended to be whimsical and zany but being the product of Tales For All producer, Rock Demers, it all just comes off as creepy and unsettling. Though, not quite as upsetting as The Peanut Butter Solution, a film we covered in 2023, it's still off-putting in a way that begs the question: who was this movie for? Produced by prolific Canadian producer, a man on a mission to make the lives of children genuinely better, Rock Demers, directed by one of the National Film Board's most talented cinematographer, Bernard Gosselin, and written by an author so-treasured by his native Canada that one of his works of fiction is quoted on their money, Roch Carrier, The Christmas Martian is remarkably artless and weird and we're going to tell you all about it. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

To unlock the full episode go to Patreon and subscribe at the $5 level to unlock all of our X-Files episodes as well as Radio Free Haddonfield our bi-weekly DJ and music show. This week we take a trip back to October 1, 1993 for the fourth episode of The X-Files. Mulder and Scully face off against the shadowy forces of the National Security Agency while searching for a missing teenager who may have been the victim of a UFO abduction. Meanwhile, a little boy is seemingly receiving binary data transmissions from his television. Is this kid a threat to national security? Was that girl taken by aliens? Could this small-town sheriff be any shittier about women?These questions and more will be answered on this week's episode.

Bryan and Dave go Belgian this week for a look at the extremely artsy vampire sleeper, Daughters of Darkness. Where Jess Franco and Jean Rollin both released signature lesbian vampire movies in 1971, Harry Kumel snuck in and delivered his own interpretation of sleazy euro-trash horror through the lens of The French New Wave. The film stars the absolutely radiant Delphine Seyrig and her many outrageous costumes. We break down the film's attempt to make a statement about the gender dynamics between men and women in a patriarchy and Dave goes to great lengths to illustrate the ways in which gay women are treated differently than gay men. In the process you get a crash course in radical feminism and, more specifically, radical lesbianism and the two of us do a lot of lousy cartoonish French accents. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Bryan and Dave take a look at one of the deepest of cult movie deep cuts, The Beaver Trilogy by Trent Harris, a story about fame, guilt, and Olivia Newton John. It's the story of a chance encounter with a strange young man one day in Beaver, Utah in 1979 that came to determine the entire trajectory of its director's life. For reasons that we'll dig into in the episode the movie is a document of the natural human inclination to seek fame, the natural human inclination to consider how our actions impact the lives of others, and maybe how we become our own worst enemies in the absence of answers. Harris, obsessed with the subject of his own work but unable to speak to him, works out his issues and tries to fill in the blanks as he remakes his own documentary twice with the help of Sean Penn and then again with Crispin Glover. It all culminates in a one-of-a-kind hybrid of documentary and scripted drama that you're most likely going to become obsessed with. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠⁠

To unlock the full episode go to Patreon and sign up at the $5 level to unlock all of our X-Files episodes as well as Radio Free Haddonfield, our bi-weekly DJ and music show. This week we look at the first proper X-Files monster of the week episode which pits Mulder and Scully against Eugene Tooms, a man who can squeeze his body through seemingly any opening in order to commit the cannibal murders which sustain his impossible physiology. It's an amazing home run for such an early entry in a long television series. As usual we also walk you through a brief history lesson of the week this episode aired and man... it's a doozy.

Take a trip back in time with Bryan and Dave this week as they go black and white with this unassailable classic of the golden age of horror. It's Paramount's remarkably gritty pre-code horror movie, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a movie meant to capitalize on and compete with the sudden popularity of Universal's 1931's horror movies, Dracula and Frankenstein. Paramount, however, takes things a bit further with a movie movie more explicitly sexy and violent than you're probably expecting from the 1930's. It's a dynamic, kinetic movie shot on elaborate sets and featuring powerful performances from both Fredrich March and Miriam Hopkins and it makes use of a brilliant in-camera trick to transform Jekyll into Hyde before your very eyes. Learn all about it and more in this episode. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

99 Cent Rental returns from its Halloween hiatus with a Van Damme good time as we drill down to the core of the spirit of this podcast with a look at a movie so patently ridiculous and offensive that we can't fully understand how it's simultaneously so entertaining and appealing. Death Warrant represents some firsts and lasts. It's ostensibly the first movie to truly put Jean-Claude Van Damme over as a viable box office draw and positions him to be the prime action movie star of the 90's. It also represents the final death rattle of Cannon Films after a decade of bad business practice finally caught up with them. Featuring a performance from Robert Guillaume that this movie clearly does not deserve, it's also full of side characters that are every bit as magnetic as JCVD. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠⁠

Here's a taste of our Patreon-exclusive podcast, Do You Think I'm Spooky, an X-Files Rewatch. Bi-weekly episodes (plus more goodies) are available to subscribers at the $5 tier. Subscribe today at: https://www.patreon.com/bringmetheaxepod Our inaugural episode looks at the spark that started a wildfire. The X-Files is among a treasured few TV shows from the 90's that came to define the entire decade. We look at the very beginnings with this one, a pilot episode that defied the odds. In this episode Mulder meets Scully and together they investigate a case of alien abductions, missing time, and sinister human experimentation. Dave prepares the listeners for his hardline skepticism and Bryan assures them that things will certainly get weird. Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Bryan and Dave are joined by their friends Jonny and Aileen from the Uy Que Horror podcast to cap off their month-long October spooky season rundown with a look at the utterly baffling horror movie misstep, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. It's what happens when a nobody really wants to make a movie but they have to anyway. John Carpenter and Debra Hill agreed to get involved but only if it didn't involve Michael Myers. Joe Dante quit the director spot to go work on another movie leaving it in the hands of Tommy Lee Wallace. Nigel Kneale, the original writer quit when Dino De Laurentis demanded more gory violence in the movie. The whole thing is a mess, really, with Tom Atkins playing a functional alcoholic and Stacy Nelkin playing a young woman in her prime suffering from severe daddy issues. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/

This week Bryan and Dave are joined by author and queer horror historian, Sean Abley for a look at a stone-cold classic of 80's horror, Poltergeist. It's out second Tobe Hooper movie in October, alone, and our third overall for 2024. Bryan talks about how this movie was a pivotal moment in his horror movie adolescence. Dave maps the paranormal investigators in the movie to their real-life paranormal investigator counterparts, and Sean has a bone to pick with the ending. We'd also be remiss if we failed to mention the so-called Curse of Poltergeist. We'd also be derelict in our duties if we didn't bring up the elephant in the room: How much of this movie did Steven Spielberg direct? For years rumors and nasty innuendo have swirled that Hooper may have been picking up an easy paycheck on this one in order to allow Spielberg to sidestep some studio deals he made that prevented him from working on it while he made ET. Is there any truth to it? The answer, as usual, is complicated. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week Bryan and Dave get real weird with it as they take a deep dive into a movie that defined not only Wes Craven's career but Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund's. Just when everyone thought that the slasher movie was dead on arrival, along comes Freddy Krueger to give it a powerful shot in the arm. Where slashers of the past felt like hangovers of the 1970's, pretenders to the Michael Myers legacy, A Nightmare on Elm Street is the first slasher movie that feels properly 80's. It lands at a crucial moment in American pop culture and just as Last House on the Left gave direction to the flagging horror movies of 70's and Scream gave direction to the flagging horror movies of the 90's, Nightmare and Freddy come to define the shape of horror movies to come in the 1980's. It's a hat trick of horrifying proportions and we can't wait to tell you all about it. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week Bryan and Dave kick off their Spooky Season '24 series with a look at one of the all-time greatest horror movie heavy hitters, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from director Tobe Hooper. Dave counts the human cost of making movies on a tiny budget, going over the notoriously rancid production history of a movie made in the dog days of a Texas summer on a set using real food and animal carcasses. You do the math on that one. Meanwhile, Bryan presents a wobbly thesis that, more than other horror movies, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a fairy tale in the style of The Brothers Grimm. They'll also answer the question: Is Leatherface the cutest franchise killer of them all? Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Take a trip to Italy with Bryan and Dave this week as they put a little garlic on it and talk about Michele Soavi's ambitious, absolutely mesmerizing but ultimately frustrating, Cemetery Man (also known as Dellamorte Dellamore). Adapted from the novel by weirdo Italiano extraordinaire, Tiziano Sclavi, Cemetery Man is also a backdoor adaptation of the wildly successful comic book series, Dylan Dog. It's top to bottom unreliable narrators, naked women, and zombies, headed up by a man so handsome it'll make you angry, Rupert Everett. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Bryan and Dave take a trip back to Japan for their Toho 3-in-a-ro-ho, looking at 1977's psychedelic haunted house freakout by Nobuhiko Obayashi, House (Hausu if you're nasty). You'll see a young woman be eaten by a piano, a grown man get turned into a pile of bananas, a flying severed head biting girls on the butt. This movie has everything! It's recognizably a horror movie by a director who stradfastly refused to let it be purely horrifying, instead putting the focus on high-flying visual style and storybook production values. You've never seen so many matte paintings. It's a real challenge to talk about a movie so rich in visual aesthetic but we're going to do our best to break it all down. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Bryan and Dave are joined this week for their episode celebrating Latin American History Month by Dracula enthusiast, Michael Varrati! Long thought of as a lost movie, the fully restored version of Dracula, produced in tandem with Tod Browning's version with Spanish-speaking actors, the movie is practically the same film with some key differences which have, since its restoration in the 90's, caused many people to declare it the better version of Dracula. Is it? Well, it's complicated. We're going to give you all the facts and tell you all about it in this episodio. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

It's Friday the 13th so here's a bonus episode about Friday the 13th... Part 2. In this episode Bryan struggles with his conflicted opinions on this movie and Dave turns him to the dark side with his position that Friday Part 2 just isn't a very good movie. It IS the movie that gave us Jason despite that part of the story making any sense and it also has a heaping spoonful of 80's misogyny. Great things are to come for fans of Jason and the Friday the 13th franchise but right here, right now, they're still figuring out what they're trying to do with this movie and unfortunately, it just doesn't shake out. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

We close out our two part examination of the Godzilla/King Ghidorah beef with a close look at the Heisei era movie where Americans from the future presume to travel back in time and destroy Japan with a monstrous weapon and then force what's left over to conform to their political and economic interests. This time around the America/Japan relationship is bopped real hard on the nose. We also discuss the cultural and social conditions of Japan at the time which made American attitudes toward Japan so weird and more than a little racist. Don't worry though, there's plenty of chatter about Godzilla, King Ghidorah and the peerless thrill of big, loud, Japanese special effects movies. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

We are joined once again by our friends Ash Kelley and Alaina Urquhart from Morbid to break down and diagram the greatest slasher movie of the 90's, one of the greatest horror movies of all time, Scream. It's a rare treat when a director comes along and changes the direction of an entire genre but to do it once a decade starting in the 1970's? Unheard of. And yet, Wes Craven pulled it off. Adapted from a dynamite script, written in a marathon writing session of days rather than weeks or months, and realized by a once-in -a-lifetime cast, Scream is ultimately a greater whole than the sum of its parts. Listen to us break it down in great depth.

Join us this week as we take a trip to Japan to talk Godzilla. This is the movie that introduced the world to Godzilla's arch-nemesis, Ghidorah, the floppiest golden dragon the world has ever seen. We also get short changed on Mothra, are delighted by those little fairy ladies who summon her, and can't help but talk shit about Rodan, one of the least compelling Godzilla monsters out there. You'll learn about Kaiju, Bryan will struggle to pronounce some Japanese words, and we'll tell you all about the several eras of Godzilla. We assure you nothing less than good time. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Celebrate 50 episodes of scares, questionable taste, and Simpsons references with us as we put the lotion in the basket for a giant-sized analysis of one of the most titanic horror movies of the 1990's or maybe even of all time as we break down Jonathan Demme's iconic The Silence of the Lambs. We're all about Ted Levine's Buffalo Bill, Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling, and Sir Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter. We air out some grievances, talk Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter novels, and definitively determine which of us is the classiest brother. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week, Bryan and Dave are joined by Jonny Atkinson of Uy Que Horror to talk He-Man as they take a real deep dive into the movie that drove the final nail into the Cannon Group's coffin, Masters of the Universe. We discuss the movie's enduring status as a cult film against all odds, the intense nostalgia high of a movie that seems to have gotten better with age, the utterly bonkers history of the Cannon Group, a production company that flew too close to the sun, as well as run down the troubling allegations facing the film's director, Gary Goddard. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week, Bryan and Dave face down the blandest notions of the 1990's with I Know What You Did Last Summer, ostensibly the first of the craven 90's Scream cash-ins, written and produced by Scream's very own Kevin Williamson. It's a movie that really takes its sweet time getting around to the mystery where four beautiful 90's young people, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryan Phillipe make every possible bad decision and deal with the consequences as they're stalked by the Gorton's Fisherman in a small North Carolina fishing village. Where does this movie land in the horror canon? Does it hold up after all these years? Listen to find out! Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Bryan and Dave conclude their John Carpenter double feature with a look at his first proper feature, Assault on Precinct 13 a movie so egregiously ripped off by other action movies that it hardly matters that Carpenter ripped it off of other action movies. Seeking to make a proper western in the style of his favorite Howard Hawks movies but pressed by budget, Carpenter lifted moves from his then brand-new Escape From New York script with Nick Castle and turned in the independent action movie that would come to redefine the modern siege movie. Is it any good? Well, yeah. Of course it is. Could it be better? Absolutely. Precinct 13 is wobbly as hell, with fairly serious pacing problems but every shot, every scene, is a preview of the best that John Carpenter has to offer the world. Listen for our usual deep analysis and historical context relating to the absolutely rotten state of things as it relates to the Los Angeles Police Department. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week Bryan and Dave go long on one of their shared favorites, John Carpenter's first fertile footsteps into the 1980's, the decade that would come to define his entire career and he couldn't have made a bolder announcement of his arrival than with this subdued ghost story, told in the old campfire tales. It's equal parts gothic spooks and EC Comics style ghoulish horror, a tale of revenge from beyond the grave, ghost sailors return from the briny deep to have their payback for a terrible crime committed 100 years ago. Though a little flimsy in the story department, Carpenter and his crew float one of his most effective features on vibes and style alone. Listen for a real love letter to John Carpenter. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week we're getting sloppy and erotic as we break down David Cronenberg's 1996 antithesis to the 90's erotic thriller, Crash, a movie about how people can't get off unless they're about to die horribly in a car accident. Adapted from J.G. Ballard's 1973 novel of the same name, which was an extension of his short story in the collection The Atrocity Exhibition, the film stars James Spader doing his best to look like making sweet, sweet love to a woman's leg wound is something he's really into. It also bring us Elias Koteas in his second appearance on the pod steaming up the windows with his menacing sexuality and Holly Hunter, taking the strange journey into the world of sexy death. Sound strange? Maybe more than a little off-putting? You have no idea. Listen to the episode for the full scope of the struggle. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week, Bryan and Dave ask the question that's on everyone's mind: Do you wanna party? Return of the Living Dead, the movie that changed the rules of the zombie movie game is a perfect time capsule of America in the 80's and it has a killer soundtrack to glue it all together. It's one part EC horror comic and one part paranoid Libertarian fantasy of a colossal government fuck up cooked up from the center of Dan O'Bannon's mind. Hear all about it in this deep dive of one of the greatest horror movies of all time, Return of the Living Dead. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week, Bryan and Dave get real sleazy with it and take a good long look at Angel, from 1984. Starring Donna Wilkes and a cast of wild character actors, including Susan Tyrrell in her second appearance on their podcast, Angel sets out to be a grimy exploitation movie that casts the seedy underbelly of the Hollywood Boulevard nightlife against the hard neon glow of the Los Angeles dream factory but it's a movie so in love with its oddball weirdo characters that it seems to struggle against the mandate to deliver violence, nudity, and cheap thrills, choosing instead to be a vehicle which provides its cast with all the scenery that they care to chew on. Make no mistake. Angel is garbage but it's remarkably lovable garbage that everyone should see. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Bryan and Dave are joined by Tyler Hyde, co-host of the That's Spooky podcast to close out their 2024 Pride series and talk about James Whale's 1935 Magnum Opus, Bride of Frankenstein. It's an absolutely gonzo gothic horror from the dawn of the talkies featuring more thrills and excitement in one of the earliest sequels that somehow manages to end up a better movie than the original. Bride of Frankenstein is a high-energy affair packed with unbelievable characters and performances from some a-list weirdos of their era such as Ernest Thesiger as the sinister Doctor Praetorius and the lovely Elsa Lanchester playing duo roles and Mary Shelley and the iconic Bride who, despite your expectations, occupies the screen for a scant few minutes but still manages to leave a powerful mark on the history of film. There is also a deeply queer interpretation of the movie which begs the question, was this subtext intended by James Whale? Was it purely subconscious? Are we just reaching? Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

It's astounding! Time is fleeting! For the third week of their Pride 2024 series, Bryan and Dave take a look at the notoriously queer-as-hell midnight movie sensation, perhaps the greatest midnight movie of all time, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's an episode packed with everything you could ever want to know about the phenomenon, the audience participation, the movie and the social experience as a haven for LGBTQ+ people who may not have found their tribe yet. It's also a movie music packed with hit song after hit song and a tour de force from Tim Curry who knocked it out of the park on his first feature film. Listen to the episode and do The Timewarp with us. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Pride 2024 continues apace as Bryan and Dave take a real deep dive into Robert Wise's unimpeachable horror movie classic, The Haunting. It's a foundational piece of horror and one of the finest haunted house movies ever made with a thousand ways to interpret it including a very particular queer read which places it firmly in the queer horror canon. Come for the horror movie discussion, stay for the discussion on representation and learn about Shirley Jackson, one of the greatest gothic horror authors of all time in the process. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Bryan and Dave kick off their 2024 Pride series by settling in for some QUEER VENGEANCE, Canada style! Siege is a by-the-numbers riff on Assault on Precinct 13 which makes one wonder, did Siege director Paul Donovan also watch Cruising at the same time? The movie pits a desperate struggle to survive the night against the 1981 Halifax police strike and despite it being such an obvious derivative of another movie, taking full advantage of the Canadian film tax shelter era, it's a solid action picture that is alarmingly suspenseful and it wears its ACAB sensibilities squarely on its sleeve. If you're in the mood to watch a bunch of homophobes get arrowed in the neck, shot in the face, and electrocuted by Home Alone-style traps, have we got a movie for you! Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week Dave and Bryan take their first steps into the 1990's and go deep with a real hard look at The Blair Witch Project. Joining them on this trek through the forest is Ash Kelley and Alaina Urquhart from the Morbid Podcast. Though, not the first found-footage horror movie, Blair Witch is definitely the one that convinced budding indie horror directors that yes, they too could make a horror movie on very little money. Dave and Bryan struggle to understand the appeal while Ash and Alaina do their best to articulate just what it is about this movie that they love so much. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This Week, Bryan and Dave put the brakes on to talk about Roger Corman, one of the most important filmmakers in the history of pop cinema and the genres, most notably horror and science fiction. He died at age 98 on May 9, 2024 and left behind a legacy of nearly 500 films which bear his name in one way or another. Bring Me The Axe picks 4 movies of Corman's that are formative horror movie experiences and enduring favorites. Hear all about A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Raven, and Death Race 2000 and the outsized influence Corman had on the larger industry in filmmaking. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week Bryan and Dave take a look at John Carl Buechler's swing-and-a-miss for the Charles Band dynasty, Troll. It's supposed to be filled with whimsy, adventure, and high-fantasy but is instead filled with crappy rubber monsters and cringe-inducing performances by actors tenured enough to know better by this point. Noah Hathaway casually throws away any goodwill he earned with his portrayal of Atreyu in The Neverending Story. Michael Moriarty seems to have no idea what he's even doing there. It's all a jumbled mess that somehow managed to be a smash-hit at the box office for Empire Pictures and a video rental gem of the 1980's. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week, Dave and Bryan are joined by Jeffrey Nelson, co-creator of the Scream Factory label for Shout Factory, to talk about the utterly unhinged Charles Bronson detective movie, 10 To Midnight. It's the tale of a cop, a father, his bleeding heart liberal, college-educated partner, and a serial killer whose nude and on the loose. Bronson could catch his man if it weren't for all the sleazy lawyers and liberal courts who want to coddle the criminal element instead of punish them. You'll be hard-pressed to find another movie that so brazenly espouses the dominant political theory of the Reagan 80's. It's a real NRA fever dream and an unintentionally hilarious piece of camp from the Cannon Group. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week, Bryan and Dave take a trip back to 1986 for the Rutger Hauer/C. Thomas Howell horror movie road trip, The Hitcher, from the murderous, deeply troubled writer, Eric Red. Dave struggles with modern re-evaluations that attempt to claim The Hitcher as some sort of queer horror hidden gem and Bryan has to do a lot of heavy lifting to fill in the movie's massive narrative gaps in order to make it a movie worth watching. Is the movie's imperiled hero Jim Halsey dead this whole time? Is he gay and on the run from the physical manifestation of bisexuality? You're going to have to listen to find out! Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week Bryan and Dave are joined by Aileen Clark of the Uy Que Horror podcast to take a trip back in time to 1990 when Turtlemania ruled the preteen scene. We explore the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon through the lens of Steve Barron's bizarre adaptation that struck closer to the dark indie turtles comics of the mid-80's than the colorful pizza-obsessed party dudes of Saturday morning cartoons. Does the movie hold up to modern scrutiny? Well, not exactly, but it's a fascinating franchise, nonetheless. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week, Dave and Bryan take a good long look at the gory 80's horror comedy classic, Re-Animator from director Stuart Gordon and producer, Brian Yuzna. What they find is, unfortunately, not much more to talk about than what's right there on the surface and the unfortunately troubling sexual politics of a movie that's operating head and shoulders above its contemporaries as far as sophistication and a sense of humor goes. You also get a good deal of background on H.P. Lovecraft, to whom the horror genre as we know it today owes a tremendous debt. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

Alright, boppers! This week Bryan and Dave put one of their favorite movies under a microscope for a giant-sized 99 Cent Rental episode about Walter Hill's 1979 gang odyssey, The Warriors. Few movies made as much of an impact on the exploitation market at The Warriors and fewer still impacted the rental market with such an iconic poster and rental box. In its day its marketing was driven by public outrage over gang violence at the movies but how much of that was true? We go over all of it. Can you dig it? Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week Bryan and Dave take in David Cronenberg's digest of divorce horror, The Brood. Samantha Eggar spawns killer munchkins, Art Hindle isn't very good at anything he does, Oliver Reed is a condescending jerk. It's a movie possessed of a terrible anger and frustration as Cronenberg, emotionally exhausted and unable to process his feelings put it all on the page and the result is the hard divorce horror movie that meant to spit in the face of Kramer vs. Kramer. Not for the faint of heart, The Brood is often like looking into the affairs of a person who chose to confide in you specifically in order to get something heavy off their chest but are you up to the task? Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠

This week, Bryan and Dave are ready for their close-up as they address a listener request to explore Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard through the lens of horror and cult and, well, they don't exactly pull it off but they do turn in a deep dive into Hollywood's silent era, the golden age of sound, and how it manages to keep up the fabulous illusion of fantasy with a ruthless stranglehold on every piece of machinery that surrounds it and supports it, including the very people that make it all possible. Sunset Boulevard is a drag queen's dream come true. Silent star, Gloria Swanson returns to the screen to portray the larger-than-life fallen star, Norma Desmond with grand sweeping gestures and some of the most quotable dialog in Hollywood history. Every aspect of this movie is lifted up and supported by every other piece. From Billy Wilder's writing and direction, to the photography of John Seitz, to the costuming of Edith Head, to the score provided by Franz Waxman. Join us for a deep dive into one of the greatest movies ever produced by Hollywood. Support Bring Me The Axe on Patreon! ⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/c/bringmetheaxepod⁠⁠ Buy Bring Me The Axe merch here: ⁠⁠https://www.bonfire.com/store/bring-me-the-axe-podcast/⁠