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.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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