Podcasts
Mothers, Daughters and German Autumns in Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Suspiria’ Remake [Horror Queers Podcast]
Eat my c**t.
After looking at two very different types of queer-coded bromances in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse and Ron Underwood’s Tremors, we took a trip to Poland to analyze the trans allegory in the mermaid horror musical The Lure before heading back into the twisted mind of Clive Barker to discuss his infamous directorial debut, Hellraiser. This week, we’re doing a deep dive into Luca Guadagnino‘s 2018 remake of Dario Argento‘s 1977 classic Suspiria.
In the film, Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) is an American woman and former Mennonite who enrolls at the prestigious Markos Dance Academy in 1977 Berlin that just so happens to be run by a coven of witches, including the mysterious Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton).
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Episode 196: Suspiria (2018)
Prepare your red rope costume and spread open that chest vagina because we’re heading to divided Berlin in 1977 to discuss Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s classic horror film Suspiria! Joining us for the conversation is Trace’s better half Ari Drew, who is cashing in his annual guest spot ticket!
Join us as we go all in on the film’s disastrous release strategy before providing a crash course on the film’s historical context that absolutely enriches the dense and layered text. Then we’ll offer up a plethora of different interpretations of the film’s themes and plot developments.
Plus: our thoughts on Argento’s original film, juicy matriarchs with baby arms, Volk, Tilda’s triple threat and…lots of Disney connections (specifically Hercules and Sleeping Beauty)???
Cross out Suspiria!
Coming up on Wednesday: In advance of the second season premiere of SyFy’s Chucky, we’re going back to revisit the final film in the Child’s Play franchise just in time for its 5th anniversary: Cult of Chucky!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 200 hours of additional content! This month, we’ve got episodes on the film adaptation of My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Disney’s legacy sequel Hocus Pocus 2, Hulu’s Hellraiser reboot, the final(?) entry in David Gordon Green’s Halloween series Halloween Ends, and an audio commentary on Gore Verbinski’s The Ring, just in time for its 20th anniversary!
Maybe you haven’t thought about your good friend Sweeney Todd in a while, or maybe you have. The 2007 movie is a bit of a memory, though a fond one – it has a healthy 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, for what it’s worth. But 2023’s Broadway revival starring Josh Groban, who your mom thinks is “so talented” (she’s right!), was enough of a hit that its run was extended.
It appears we’re in a bit of a Sweeneyssaince.
For the uninitiated, Sweeney Todd is the story of a barber who kills his customers and disposes of the bodies by passing them off to pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett, who uses them as a special ingredient. But there’s more below the trap door.
Sweeney Todd isn’t just a late 70s musical that turned into a movie; it started as a penny dreadful called The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance (author unknown), told week-to-week in the 1840s. Penny dreadfuls were essentially fiction zines featuring serialized stories that were usually horror-based and cost a penny, leading to the very literal nickname.
The String of Pearls differs from the more well-known Sweeney Todd plot in that it follows the investigation of a missing persons case that leads to the reveal of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett’s arrangement, as opposed to the more modern iteration which treats audiences to the duo hatching their homicidal plan and then giving the worst haircuts ever. What a delightfully wild reveal that must have been if you were a reader in Victorian London after weeks of wondering what had become of the missing sailor carrying a string of pearls to deliver to a lovely girl.
Kristen and Will discuss the history and future of Sweeney Todd and works inspired by it this week on Guide to the Unknown. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to get a new episode every Friday.
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