Podcasts
Selecting Our Favorite Short Horror Games of 2022 [Safe Room Podcast]
Before diving into the first of our end-of-the-year coverage, listen to last month’s edition of The Inventory, Safe Room’s monthly review round-up.
Between finalizing holiday plans, purchasing gifts, and compiling those dreaded (or delightful) end-of-the-year lists, we are officially in our mad dash to the end of the year!
This year Neil and I started our monthly segment, Horror Bytes, in which we highlight bite-sized indie horror titles. Which began as an exercise to experience a more comprehensive, and let’s face it, weirder, types of horror experiences. The show flourished into a monthly personal highlight for us, as we experienced countless slices of horror that had their own unique flavors.
We also invited guests to bring their picks to our proverbial spooky table, furthering our dive into the never-shrinking pool of horror delights. And somehow, we narrowed our respective lists down to merely EIGHT Horror Bytes from the year. And while all couldn’t make the list, we recommend everyone to go back and listen to past episodes of Horror Bytes as, more often than not, the games we cover ended up delivering in one way or another.
And as always, while some of these titles we’ll be discussing are free to play, we believe it’s important to support the developer’s hard work: So, if you can, please support them through their itch.io, Steam, or Patreon pages. And it’s the season of giving, so support those who make the content you enjoy. – Jay Krieger
Jay and Neil’s Picks
Safe Room is a weekly horror video game discussion podcast with new episodes every Monday on
iTunes/Apple, Sticher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Linktree for additional streaming services.
Feel free to follow the show and hosts on Twitter:
Safe Room | Neil | Jay | Safe Room Horror Bytes
It’s been a busy month on Murder Made Fiction podcast. In addition to introducing a new co-host (Perfectly Good Moment‘s Amanda Jane Stern), we spent Pride Month tackling a wide variety of Leopold and Loeb fictional adaptations.
In 1924 Chicago, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb plotted to commit the perfect murder when they abducted and killed 14-year-old Bobby Franks. As Amanda outlines in her primer on the case, the men were caught almost immediately and the media circus that followed was billed “the trial of the century”.
Listen to Leopold and Loeb mini primer.
The fallout has reverberated throughout the last century as countless books, plays, musicals, and films have drawn on the case for inspiration. Some are more faithful than others, such as Richard Fleischer‘s 1959 drama Compulsion, which stars a young Dean Stockwell as Leopold and Orson Welles as the boys’ lawyer, John Darrow (named Jonathan Wilk in the film).
Listen to Leopold and Loeb: Compulsion (1959).
Then there are the texts that use the idea of queer-coded killers as a jumping off point, but confuse (or flat-out disregard) the details of the real life case in favour of jumbled fiction. That’s what happens in Barbet Schroeder‘s Murder by Numbers, which awkwardly introduces a tortured backstory for lead actress (and executive producer) Sandra Bullock. The result is an uneven film that misunderstands which of its two competing storylines are actually interesting (hint: it’s the Leopold and Loeb stuff with Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt).
Listen to Leopold and Loeb: Murder by Numbers (2002).
We ended up discussing other (often more successful) titles on Patreon, including 1992’s Swoon (a New Queer Cinema art-house take on the crime), Michael Haneke‘s 2007 Funny Games remake, and gay screenwriter Kevin Williamson‘s Scream, which proved to be a much more reverent and sly interpretation of L&L than we anticipated.
We wrapped up the month with a final summary episode about our favorite adaptations before chatting with author and archivist Erik Rebain, who literally wrote the book on Leopold (Arrested Adolescence) and maintains one of the foremost websites on the crime.
Watch our discussion on YouTube below (or listen here):
Next month: For July, we’re turning our attention to the Boston Strangler, with a look at films from 1964 and 1968, as well as the most contemporary version from 2023, starring Kiera Knightley and Carrie Coon.
Want even more true crime adaptations and Murder Made Fiction? Support the show on Patreon to listen to the aforementioned episodes, as well as a full-length primer on the case and 160+ hours of bonus content.
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