Twitch of the Death Nerve

The latest Twitch of the Death Nerve episode tackles one of the most notorious sexually transgressive epics: Tinto Brass’s Caligula (1979). Charles, Jon, and Samm discuss the absolute wildness of the movie and its complicated, disastrous production history. We also dive into so many of our favorite topics: ancient Rome, the Golden Age of porn and hardcore sex in movies, critiques of absolute power, eroticism in ’70s Italian arthouse cinema, nihilism, anti-erotic sex scenes, Malcolm McDowell, decapitation machines, orgies, and so on. We also discuss the strange subgenre of Caligula-sploitation and the recent Severin Films set. Thanks as always for supporting the show! Pretty please rate, review, and share! You can also find us on Apple and Spotify and please follow us on Instagram. Check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Earlier this month, the Twitch of the Death Nerve gang took a Texas vacation. Charles, Jon, and Samm ate a lot of tacos, went to the movies, and explored Austin. This trip was primarily for Jon’s birthday, which means there was also a weekend-long movie marathon. The Unsung Horrors Podcast served as our gracious host and kindly allowed us to use their recording equipment, so we had a lengthy chat about film programming and movie marathons. We also discussed the movies we watched, which was truly a wild lineup curated by Jon, including Hong Kong action, CAT-III, Indonesian madness, dictator-sploitation, an unseen Mexican “true crime” classic, Shaw Brothers, poliziotteschi, and more. Thanks as always for supporting the show! Pretty please rate, review, and share! You can also find us on Apple and Spotify and please follow us on Instagram. Check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

In the latest Twitch of the Death Nerve episode, Charles, Jon, and Samm discuss Jimmy Wang Yu’s epic kung fu revenge masterpiece, Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976). The episode also gives a general overview of the great Wang Yu’s career, why he’s so important to martial arts cinema, and his history as a real life street fighter. We also talk about the wild array of Hong Kong movies (and international co-productions) featuring one-armed warriors and so much more — it’s really an episode to lose your head over (sorry/not sorry). Thanks as always for supporting the show! Pretty please rate, review, and share! You can also find us on Apple and Spotify and please follow us on Instagram. Check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

In the latest Twitch of the Death Nerve episode Charles, Jon, and Samm take a deep dive into ’70s American exploitation cinema with this look at Guerdon Trueblood’s nasty classic, The Candy Snatchers (1973). We discuss how much we love the film — especially the mute child Sean, the real star of the show — but we talk more broadly about the history of American exploitation cinema and its golden age in the ’70s. Charles asks us why the hell anyone wants to watch these movies. We also discuss Tiffany Bolling’s wonderful career and share some of our related favorites. Thanks as always for supporting the show! Pretty please rate, review, and share! You can also find us on Apple and Spotify and please follow us on Instagram. Check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Happy New Year, friends! Charles, Jon, and Samm are back with an episode on everyone’s favorite guy: Godzilla. We nerd out about one of the wildest Godzilla films, Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971), which includes everything from a fight against pollution, psychedelic mod dance sequences, an alien blob monster, and much more. We also take a broader look at the wonderful Showa era films, the original classic Godzilla series running from 1954 to 1975. Thanks as always for supporting the show! Pretty please rate, review, and share! You can also find us on Apple and Spotify and please follow us on Instagram. Check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

For Christmas Eve eve, Charles, Jon, and Samm are like the Three Wiseman of cult cinema podcasting — delivering the gift of part two of our 12 Days of Psychotronic Christmas episode (which is hopefully more entertaining than frankincense and myrrh). We talk about everything from samurai swords and home invasion movies to time travel and German expressionism. Let us know what you think of our Christmas movie list and we hope you have a wonderful holiday and a Happy New Year!!! Thanks as always for supporting the show! Pretty please rate, review, and share! You can also find us on Apple and Spotify and please follow us on Instagram. Check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Happy Winter Solstice! Charles, Jon, and Samm have a special treat cooked up this Christmas season — a festive, two-part holiday episode of Twitch of the Death Nerve! There’s no way we could pick just one favorite Christmas film, so we’re discussing enough psychotronic holiday movies to get you through all twelve days of Christmas. This includes some expected classics, wild surprises, childhood favorites, and more. Pour yourself a heavily spiked glass of eggnog and join us! Part two will follow in a few days and we hope you all have a HAPPPPPY HOLIDAAAAAAYS! Thanks as always for supporting the show and for making us feel loved our first couple of months. Pretty please rate, review, and share! You can also find us on Apple and Spotify and please follow us on Instagram. Check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

On the latest episode of Twitch of the Death Nerve, Charles, Jon, and Samm dive into a particularly beloved cult movie topic — the spaghetti western. We focus on one of the absolute masterpieces of the subgenre, Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence (1968), where two bounty hunters (Klaus Kinski and Jean-Louis Trintignant) face off in the snowy wilderness. The discussion also includes how this is a perfect western for the winter season, why it is particularly bleak, plus director Sergio Corbucci’s career more broadly and his unique approach to the genre. Thanks as always for supporting the show. Pretty please rate, review, and share it! Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Happy Thanksgiving from Charles, Jon, and Samm! If you’re not already feeling nauseated from all that stuffing you just ate, this latest Twitch of the Death Nerve episode will surely raise your gorge! We took a deep dive into Faces of Death (1978) and the notorious mondo movie subgenre. Like National Geographic gone wrong, these brutal shockumentaries include everything from erotic encounters and death rituals to bizarre travelogues, tragic accidents, fictionalized cult rituals, and much more. In what is surely our most shocking episode yet, we discuss everything from the first mondo movie — Mondo cane (1962) — onward, including mondo sex movies, art film-mondo crossovers, political violence, airplane crashes, and — of course — autopsies. No turkeys were harmed in the making of this episode. Thanks as always for supporting the show. Pretty please rate, review, and share it! Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Beloved Philadelphia-based cinema collective Exhumed Films have an annual Halloween event, Horrorthon, where they screen 24+ hours of horror movies — an all secret lineup mostly on 35mm. Two years ago they held the “last” Horrorthon, because the venue they were using closed and then of course the pandemic happened. Charles, Jon, and Samm all love Horrorthon and have been to most of them — it’s been going strong for about 15 years now — so the return of Horrorthon after a solemn pause last year was cause for celebration. So last weekend, we strapped in on Saturday, November 26th for a surprise lineup of 15 movies. It was pure bliss. When it was all over, we drove home, took a nap, and then recorded this episode in honor of Exhumed Films and our favorite event of the year. We sound completely insane. You have been warned. Thanks as always for supporting the show. Pretty please rate, review, and share it! Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Happy Halloween! In honor of everyone’s favorite holiday, Charles, Jon, and Samm present a special Halloween episode. This is a celebration of the glorious director William Castle and his partnership with best-human-ever Vincent Price — one of our most fun episodes yet. We talk about The Tingler (1959), Castle and his madcap marketing schemes, Price and all his glory (and Samm’s Price-themed kitchen), movie gimmicks, and so much more. Really this episode is an ultimate paean to Halloween. Thanks to everyone for the support for our show. It would be a nice treat (for us) this Halloween if you could pretty please rate, review, and share our show. Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Charles, Jon, and Samm are back to share their love for Sammo Hung with this episode all about his groundbreaking horror comedy, Encounter of the Spooky Kind (1980). Sammo stars as an unwitting villager and kung fu adept who becomes targeted by a local sorcerer and has to battle zombies, ghosts, hopping vampires, and more. The episode also covers haunted attractions, kung fu horror more broadly, ensuing jiangshi films like the Mr. Vampire series and Haunted Cop Shop, and some of our other favorite Hong Kong ghost comedies. Thanks to everyone for the support for our show. Please subscribe, rate, and review and share (pretty please) on social media. Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Spooky season is officially upon us, so Charles, Jon, and Samm are back to talk about one of their favorite Halloween pleasures: the lush and atmospheric expanse of Hammer horror. This episode focuses specifically on the Frankenstein series — which launched Hammer’s foray into iconic genre cinema in 1957 — in particular the wild fourth entry, Frankenstein Created Woman (1967). The great Peter Cushing stars as the Baron, once again returning from death with a new experiment: to merge the soul of a wrongly executed man with the body of his lover, a disfigured girl who will emerge from Dr. Frankenstein’s operating table to wreak vengeance on her small town. Thanks to everyone for the support for our new show. Please subscribe, rate, and review our show and share (share, share) on social media. Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Not for the faint of heart, this episode is all about one of Charles, Jon, and Samm’s favorite films — Herman Yau’s The Untold Story (1993). Based on the true story of a massacre at the Eight Immortals Restaurant, this is the grim tale of Wong Chi-hang (Anthony Wong), who murdered an entire family, took over their restaurant, and served them up to the customers. Rated “category III” for its use of explicit violence, the episode also explores how category III (or CAT III) is more of a genre than just a rating system, its use of extreme violence and jarring tonal shifts, as well as political connections to the state of Hong Kong in the ’90s, and more. And of course, the episode is a big love letter to one of the world’s greatest living actors, Anthony Wong. Thanks to everyone for the support for our new show. Please subscribe, rate, and review our show and share (share, share) on social media. Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Charles, Jon, and Samm are back this week to discuss genre icon John Carpenter. The episode particularly focuses on his debut film, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), which he wrote, directed, edited, and scored. They discuss everything from Carpenter’s use of classic western tropes to depictions of gang violence, an ice cream truck visit gone wrong, the way the film handles issues of racism and sexism, the appearance of a proto-Snake Plissken, one of the coolest female characters of all time, and much more. Thanks to everyone for the support for our new show. Please subscribe, rate, and review our show and share (share, share) on social media. Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Twitch of the Death Nerve is doing something a little different for episode four. Instead of taking a deep dive into a single film, Charles, Jon, and Samm discuss their favorite animals attack movies, ranging all over the subgenre from killer orcas and baby-eating alligators to cuddly bunnies and cheetahs racing down the highway. This sprawling beast of an episode includes a rough top ten list of the all-time greatest psychotronic animals attack films plus lots of honorable mentions (and some real-life stories of animals attacking…). Thanks to everyone for the support for our new show. Please subscribe, rate, and review our show and share (share, share) on social media. Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Episode three of Twitch of the Death Nerve is a real scorcher. Charles, Jon, and Samm discuss Roberta Findlay’s hardcore horror classic, A WOMAN’S TORMENT (1977). When a disturbed young woman flees to an isolated beach house, she descends into madness, sex, and violence. Director Roberta Findlay was one of the few women making exploitation and porn films in the ’70s and this episode explores her complex career, the ins and outs of A WOMAN’S TORMENT, and dives into other examples of hardcore horror. Thanks to everyone for the early support for our new show. Please subscribe, rate, and review our show and share (share, share) on social media. Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Welcome to episode two of Twitch of the Death Nerve! This time around, Charles, Jon, and Samm discuss one of the holy grails of psychotronic cinema, Shogun Assassin (1980). When the Shogun’s assassin is framed by a rival clan and his wife is murdered, he and his young son have to go on the road fighting ninjas, cutting off heads, and chilling in a tricked out baby cart. The episode also goes into the glorious Lone Wolf and Cub series that Shogun Assassin is cut from, chanbara or samurai films, and our favorite Japanese sword fighting stars, among other things. Thanks to everyone for the early support for our new show. Please subscribe, rate, and review our show and share (share, share) on social media. Follow us on Instagram and check out Essex Coffee Roasters (enter code CINEPUNX for 10% off).

Episode one of Twitch of the Death Nerve is all about a movie that changed our lives: Lucio Fulci’s The Gates of Hell aka City of the Living Dead. Charles, Jon & Samm talk about everything from the title discrepancies and intestine puking to the majesty of Christopher George and his big Daddy energy.

Welcome to episode zero of Twitch of the Death Nerve. Charles, Jon, and Samm introduce themselves and the podcast and share what they think psychotronic cinema is all about — and what to expect from the show.

Get ready for episode one of Twitch of the Death Nerve, a film podcast all about a movie that changed all our lives—Fulci’s Gates of Hell aka City of the Living Dead!