Sadly we are not talking about the 90′s British rock band Terrorvision, but instead return to 1986 and the weird, wild, and gross films of our youth with TerrorVision. A 1980s satire made DURING the 1980s, featuring a collection of annoying and/or contemptible metalheads, swingers, and paranoid survivalists, the movie that introduced the world to an Elvira clone better than the genuine article and a grand gloopy monster straight from the Sanitation department from Planet Pluton. Is it good? Meh, not really, but it has its charms: at least two of them.
Episode 141 - Stories We Admire 3: Segments and Slimes
Both J.R. and Derek select a story that they admire and discuss it in depth. J.R. selects “Bright Segment” by Theodore Sturgeon, a psychological horror tale about a desperately lonely janitor who wants to feel useful, and finally has his change when he takes care of grievously injured woman. Derek goes with “Slime” by Joseph Payne Brennan, the unabashed simple monster tale that was the obvious prototype for The Blob. Much bickering ensues about whether Bright Segment qualifies as a horror tale, and our two hosts take delightful jabs at each other’s selection.
Episode 140 - Stories We Admire 2: Whipped Dogs and Ventriloquists
Both J.R. and Derek select a story that they admire and discuss it in depth. J.R. picks Harlan Ellison’s “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” a mean-spirited explanation for why New Yorkers are such grouchy people, which persuasively presents a vicious moral premise; and Derek selects Jon Padgett’s “20 Simple Steps to Ventriloquism,” a how-to manual for using Greater Ventriloquism to become a vehicle for great cosmic suffering. J.R. also saves you $5,000 on transcendental meditation courses. Everything is coming up garbanzo beans baby!
Episode 139 - Stories We Admire 1: Dog Parks and Human Chairs
Both J.R. and Derek select a story that they admire and discuss it in depth. J.R. selects Dennis Etchison’s “The Dog Park,” a strange tale that subtly escalates with tension even if you aren’t precisely sure what is going on, and Derek gets his freak on with Edogawa Rampo’s “The Human Chair,” an inspirational (and aspirational!) story about a brutally ugly master craftsman who gets to live in a chair.
Episode 138 - Horror Roundup, July 2019
We don’t mean to brag, but we DID watch ten movies in one weekend, and now we get to tell you all about them: Brightburn, The Hole in the Ground, Open Windows, The Ranger, Satan’s Slaves, The Perfection, and sadly, the best movie of the weekend, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich. J.R. also tells his “inspiring story” of “overcoming” a “life threatening” “overdose”. (And before you nitpickers get at us, the other three movies were The Creature From The Black Lagoon trilogy that we already covered).
Episode 137 - Creature From The Black LaJune 3: The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)
The duo finish what they started, wrapping up Creature from the Black Lagoon month with “The Creature Walks Among Us” (1956), where our unique creature goes from svelte, smooth sea-dweller to a thicc, chonky fat-boi merman and the story becomes a domestic drama about a somewhat-ditsy young woman, her controlling, insecure husband, and the aggressive sociopath who tries to use her for what he wants. Also, learn the secrets of the G.I.L.L.M.A.N. pickup system to become the real monster. Enjoy!
Episode 136 - Creature From The Black LaJune 2: Revenge Of The Creature (1955)
The duo cover Revenge of the Creature (1955), the sequel made only 13 months after The Creature from the Black Lagoon. We hope you want to experience some of the same story beats and tour a 1950s Oceanarium because that’s what a lot of what this movie entails, although it does feature the first screen performance of a certain 24 year old future cowboy / vigilante cop / Gran Torino serenader. What kind of “revenge” can it really be without the cast from the first movie? Find out!
Episode 135 - Creature From The Black LaJune 1: The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)
A clever pun compels the duo to discuss The Creature from the Black Lagoon Trilogy, starting off with none other than, you guessed it, The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). The movie - which is essentially a simple tale of survival - was enjoyable and compelling, and also features a distinctive audio refrain which Derek delights in recreating.
Classic THoNaH: Episode 11 - The Mist v. The Mist
Sometimes life happens and you need to rerun a classic episode of the show so that fans don’t get too let down. So straight from the archive we go all the way back to the magical year of 2016 for our episode on The Mist novella and The Mist film. If only we had waited a little bit longer we could have worked in the short lived TV show as well...
Episode 134 - Horror Roundup, May 2019
We saddle up and hit the open range, ready to herd up all those horror cows in another roundup. This week’s discussion: The Noonday Witch, Love Death & Robots, The Other, The Silence, Crawlspace, The Stepfather, Aliens 40th Anniversary Shorts, Mayhem, Incident in a Ghostland, Borgman, The Luminous Dead, A Quiet Place, and more! Again and again we wonder and lament how much time of our finite lives we have wasted…
Episode 133 - The Case Against Satan, Part 2
The duo finish The Case Against Satan. So…was it Satan all along? If so, did Satan come up with a sufficiently good excuse to possess Susan? Did Satan entirely win us over with his witty snark? Have science and faith been sufficiently reconciled? Find out!
Episode 132 - The Case Against Satan, Part 1
In the spirit of our last two months discussing God and the Devil in horror cinema, the duo discuss the 1962 first novel of Ray Russell, The Case Against Satan. This is the subtle, ambiguous story of two men of the cloth - one firm and unwavering, the other a more ‘modern’ man who has doubts about the literal nature of Satan - grappling with whether a young girl is possessed, and if that sounds like another certain novel, note we said “subtle” and “ambiguous.” No extracurricular use of crosses here, although the first half does end with “get the rope!”
Episode 131 - Horror Roundup, April 2019
We watch and read a lot of horror that never fits a cutesy little theme. So here we discuss a whole ton of stuff: Velvet Buzzsaw, Holidays, The Rift: Dark Side of the Moon, Trauma, I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House, Bird Box, Castle Freak, We Are Still Here, At the Devil’s Door, The Prodigy, Dolls, Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day 2U, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, The Narrow Caves, and more! And as always, looking back on how much of our lives we’ve wasted watching these…
Episode 130 - God Made Me Do It 2: Frailty (2001)
The duo discuss “Frailty,” the 2001 psychological and/or supernatural horror film from director Bill Paxton, about a man who becomes convinced that God has ordered him and his two young sons kill demons, demons who just who happen to be in perfect human disguises. We discuss the rumors behind the mysterious OTIS axe, demon-killing ethics, and the reception this movie received upon release. God Told You To … Listen To Our Ramblings!
Episode 129 - God Made Me Do It 1: God Told Me To... (1976)
The duo discuss Larry Cohen’s 1976 maybe-but-not-really horror movie “God Told Me To,” probably the closest Cohen gets to critical respectability. God personally intervenes to try and shut them up for about ten minutes in the form of a loud steam pipe in J.R.’s apartment, but the duo persevere, and, in the literal sense, therefore overcome the will of God. Oh yeah, the movie: glowing hippie aliens and yellow balls of light that can impregnate you. And this is the CLOSEST he came to respectability.
Episode 128 - The Devil Made Me Do It 3: The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015)
The duo finish up The Devil Made Me Do It Month with The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015), the writing and directorial debut of Oz Perkins. This is a moody, affecting film with an undeservedly low IMDB score, an interesting premise that relies on some unfair withholding of information, and a whole bunch of replayed scenes featuring ambient noises, noisy radiators and creaking doors.
Episode 127 - The Devil Made Me Do It 2: Angel Heart (1987)
The duo bask in that late-80s Mickey Rourke charm as they watch Angel Heart (1987), the occult supernatural noir film that was just in class minding its own business, unaware that Oldboy was in the back cribbing off its notes. As an added bonus, the movie gave Bill Cosby a conniption fit, although his criticism about the film wasn’t entirely off-base…
Episode 126 - The Devil Made Me Do It 1: The Devil's Candy (2015)
The duo discuss the 2015 occult horror film "The Devil's Candy," as they begin The Devil Made Me Do It Month. We got Ethan Embry as Jesse, a struggling artist dedicated to his family, his workout regime, and not bathing or shaving, squaring off-against Pruitt Taylor Vince as Ray, the lonesome character you would feel was essentially just a scared little boy if he wasn't in the body of a big ole sweaty hunk of man. Join us for sympathetic police officers, filthy undershirts, an extremely short run time, pretty-sweet-Devil-but kinda-corny heavy metal imagery, and a silly art-seller subplot at HAIL SATAN GALLERIES.
Episode 125 - The Wide, Carnivorous Sky, Part 3
The duo finish their discussion of “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies” with a smirky, meta werewolf story that, while it has its charms, isn’t really too much of a story, some Laird Barron fan fiction, and a text-adventure-of-a-story where a young professor attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding a statute of a heavily pregnant, decapitated woman. That is the magic of fiction, because in reality, if you found a statute of a heavily pregnant, decapitated woman on someone’s property, that just means the property owner has a bunch of heavily pregnant, decapitated corpses in his basement.
Episode 124: The Wide, Carnivorous Sky, Part 2
Part two of our three part discussion on John Langan’s 2013 horror collection “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky.” We conclude the titular story about a savage space vampire, and deconstruct two more stories, one a Lovecraft homage featuring an uber-beta cuckold and skinny dogs, the other a travelogue/gardening story in a post-apocalyptic Lovecraft wasteland. As Voltaire says, "Il faut cultiver notre jardin."