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Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” Ages the Same Way We Do [The Losers’ Club Podcast]

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“And if it’s around October 20th and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash grey at twilight, it seems Hallowe’en will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners. But one strange wild dark long year, Hallowe’en came early.”

With Danse Macabre, The Losers’ Club journeys through all the books that influenced Stephen King. (You know, as he listed in his 1981 horror manifesto Danse Macabre; hence the name of this series.) In the past, the Losers have left King’s Dominion to flip through the pages of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

Today, the gang finds themselves deep within the local library of Green Town, Illinois, where they’re revisiting Ray Bradbury‘s 1962 dark fantasy novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Join Dan Caffrey, Rachel Reeves, Mel Kassel, and Michael Roffman as they praise Bradbury’s autumnal prose, derail into Gene Kelly tangents, and connect the dots to King’s Dominion.

It’s an episode as cozy as Bradbury’s Midwestern utopia, and one that demands a hot cup of cider and a moon glazed window. Catch it below! For further adventures, be sure to join the Club over long days and pleasant nights via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RadioPublic, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS. You can also unlock hundreds of hours of content in The Barrens (Patreon).

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Podcasts

‘Death Becomes Her’ and the Horror of Aging [The Lady Killers Podcast]

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“This is life’s ultimate cruelty. It offers us a taste of youth and vitality, and then it makes us witness our own decay.”

Is there anything more terrifying than the relentless passage of time? It’s a bitter truth that just when we’ve become accustomed to our bodies, the sands of time turn and we’re forced to watch them slowly break down in a cruel march towards inevitable death. But what if there were a way to stop the aging process – a potion that would return us to our peak physical condition and hold us there until the end of time? Would we take it? And would we eventually find that the blessing of perpetual life is actually a curse? No film explores this dilemma quite like Death Becomes Her. Robert Zemeckis’ 1992 horror comedy pits two showstopping divas against each other for a single spotlight while asking what they would do for eternal youth – and what will be the hidden cost?

Madeline (Meryl Streep) and Helen (Goldie Hawn) are old frenemies with a history of vicious competition. Madeline seems to have won the most recent battle and married Helen’s fiance Ernest (Bruce Willis), but decades later, their marriage is on the rocks and Madeline’s once thriving career is now a thing of the past. When Helen returns with a stunning new look, Madeline turns to unorthodox methods to maintain her feminine dominance. She drinks a potion designed to give her eternal youth, but returns home to find her life turned upside down by her downtrodden husband and jealous “friend.” Having both taken the potion, “Mad” and “Hel” engage in a bitter fight to the death over years of petty snipes and the right to claim the title of Most Desirable Woman.

In their latest episode, The Lady Killers dissect these two glamorous killers and the hidden social commentary in Zemeckis’ iconic film. Co-hosts Jenn AdamsMae Shults, Rocco T. Thompson, and Sammie Kuykendall dish over their own fears of aging, choose their favorite diva, and decide whether they would take the potion should they ever find themselves in Lisle’s (Isabella Rossellini) lavish home. How does the film hit differently when watching as an adult? Could Madeline, Helen, and Ernest ever make a polycule work? Is Lisle a hero or a villain and how does she keep that gorgeous necklace in place? They’ll wrestle with these questions and more in a podcasting shovel battle to the death on this unique horror comedy and one of the most glamorous casts of all time.

Stream below and subscribe now via Apple Podcasts and Spotify for future episodes that drop every Thursday.

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