Editorials
‘Halloweenies’ Joins the Bloody Disgusting Podcast Network – Meet the Hosts and Stream These Essential Episodes
In the past, the series has carved through Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th.
Look, Sheriff Brackett was right when he said everyone’s entitled to one good scare in 1978’s Halloween. What he forgot to mention is that those scares are best enjoyed with everyone. As any fan of the genre can attest to, horror works like a big bowl of Halloween candy: passed around and devoured with no treat left unwrapped. Those are the rules.
That’s also the guiding principle of Halloweenies. Since 2018, the podcast has spent countless nights trick or treating through the genre’s most storied franchises. They carved pumpkins in Haddonfield, Illinois for Halloween, dreamed through Springwood, Ohio for A Nightmare on Elm Street, and spent the pandemic at Camp Crystal Lake for Friday the 13th.
This year, they’re solving crimes in Woodsboro, California in the lead-up to Radio Silence’s highly anticipated fifth sequel to the Scream franchise. In addition to discussing the four entries in Wes Craven’s meta slasher series, they’re also sorting through the countless videotapes recommended by Randy Meeks — from Prom Night to The Howling.
As always, the Halloweenies will parse through every single detail tied to the films — and that’s not hyperbole. These are exhaustive analyses of your favorite films — Hardcore History for horror hounds, if you will — that span hours upon hours. What’s more, there’s always a special guest around the corner to lend a hand; a familiar face to save the day.
Scream 2 (Dimension Films)
To get you acquainted, co-hosts Justin Gerber, Dan Caffrey, McKenzie Gerber, Michael Roffman, and Mike Vanderbilt have gathered around the proverbial campfire to answer your questions. You know, like which classics deserve a legacy sequel, what novelization tie-ins are worth reading, and which films should be taken over by the Muppets.
You can stream that new introductory episode below, in addition to a handful of essential episodes from the show’s back catalogue. A catalogue, mind you, that’s constantly expanding, particularly this month which sees them talking to Joe Bob Briggs and slicing through Scream 2. That’s all without mentioning their exclusive content via Patreon.
Subscribe now via iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, RadioPublic, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS. You can also become a member of their Patreon for hilarious feature-length commentaries of horror’s greatest hits (e.g. Gremlins, Phantasm) and deep-dives into your favorite rentals of yesteryear (e.g. Sleepaway Camp, Nightbreed).
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Halloween
The one that started it all: Four hours devoted to John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s 1978 slasher masterpiece. It’s an epic series premiere that sets the template for all the episodes that would follow — from the hilarious segments to the recurring bits that have come to define the show.
Tommy Lee Wallace Weighs in on the New Love for Halloween III
The writer and director of the once-maligned sequel joins the show to discuss the newfound appreciation for the Michael Myers-less entry in the Halloween franchise. He also shares what he feels might have happened at the end there for Dr. Dan Challis.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Confession: When Halloweenies began, none of the co-hosts saw it living beyond David Gordon Green’s reboot. Alas, like so many of the movie maniacs we fear, the show sat up and vanished into the night. Or rather, Springwood, Ohio for a series of nightmares.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge
Bloody Disgusting‘s own Horror Queers co-hosts Joe Lipsett and Trace Thurman join the Halloweenies on Elm Street to discuss the most underrated sequel in the franchise, particularly the important stuff like Clu Gulager and Hope Lange’s birthdays.
Heather Langenkamp Returns to Elm Street
The Halloweenies meet the soul behind Nancy Thompson, who regales us with tales of studying at Stanford, cutting her teeth with Francis Ford Coppola, and surviving Wes Craven’s nightmares on Elm Street. She also weighs in on how horror history is often rewritten.
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
Last year’s Friday run saw the addition of pop culture writer Mike Vanderbilt and an onslaught of fan-favorite bits ranging from Weekend at Bernie’s to The Irishman. Final Chapter is a pure distillation of this season, and also wound up being their favorite entry.
Tom Savini on Dreams, Quarantine, and Revisiting Camp Crystal Lake
Early on in quarantine, the Halloweenies called up the Godfather of Gore and the Sultan of Splatter for a meditative discussion on how horror is a lifestyle and the ways it brings comfort and happiness. It’s a dreamy chat and a nice reprieve from reality.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
The first of two entries in the show’s New Line November event sees Vanderbilt defend this hellish sequel. The episode had been hyped all season, and was even paired with a Chicago drive-in screening. Psychoanalysis co-host Mike Snoonian guests.
Scream
Season 4 kicked off in Woodsboro, California this past February with Rue Morgue writer and fellow Losers’ Club member Rachel Reeves. Together, they chart how the Wes Craven classic nearly died in development hell, and how it has since shaped the genre altogether.
Randy’s Recs: The Howling
In between each Scream dissection, the Halloweenies will parse through the many films mentioned in the franchise as part of Randy’s Recs. The second entry in this side series is a definitive study on Joe Dante’s The Howling with Windy City Ballyhoo’s Adam Carston.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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