Podcasts
Gather Around the Campfire for Another ‘Friday the 13th’ Commentary Track [Halloweenies Podcast]
“It’s 7:01 on Friday the 13th of January! This is Big Justo, and it’s time for you lazy bones to get out of bed! It’s black cat day at Crystal Lake!” Curses be damned — sorry, Crazy Ralph, we ain’t listening — the Halloweenies have re-assembled at everyone’s favorite summer camp to record another feature-length commentary track on an essential horror classic.
This time around, it’s Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th. In celebration of this year’s wintry Friday the 13th, the gang has unlocked their 2021 commentary track for the 1980 blockbuster slasher. Join Justin Gerber, Dan Caffrey, McKenzie Gerber, and Mike Vanderbilt as they dust off the diamond that tipped off one of the wildest horror franchises to date.
Stream the commentary below or via iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, RadioPublic, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS. Stay tuned in a couple of weeks when the gang sticks around Chicago to help Detective Mike Norris solve a string of murders in the wake of Charles Lee Ray’s death. You guessed it, they’re covering the Chucky franchise.
Until then, you can catch up with the gang by revisiting their essential episodes on past franchises such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, and The Evil Dead. You can also become a member of their Patreon for exclusive one-off deep dives and even more hilarious commentaries, including tracks for Friday the 13th Part II and 3D.
And if that weren’t enough, you could revisit their entire season on the Friday the 13th franchise, which includes a 35th anniversary reunion with the cast and crew of 1986’s groundbreaking sequel Jason Lives. Start the season below…
Aaliyah Innocent.
May was a busy subgenre-switching month. After kicking things off with disaster “slasher” The Poseidon Adventure (listen), we watched American Giallo The Fan (listen), then wrapped things up with Vincent Price’s horror comedy Theater of Blood (listen).
Now, in honor of Pride Month and the return of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire (renamed The Vampire Lestat for S03), Trace and I had to check out the straight-washed second attempt to bring Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles to life.
Back in 2002, director Michael Rymer pitched Hollywood on his vision for Rice’s second Chronicle book, The Vampire Lestat. Instead, the suits opted to adapt the third book, Queen of the Damned (likely due to the ancillary opportunities of the soundtrack, written entirely by Korn frontman Jonathan Davis).
In the film, Lestat (Stuart Townsend) awakens from slumber to reinvent himself as a leather-pant-wearing rocker. Lestat’s very public vampire persona attracts the attention of Talamasca novice Jesse (Marguerite Moreau), as well as the vampire’s maker Marius (Vincent Perez). But the nu-metal has the greatest impact on Akasha (Aaliyah), who awakens and promises to take over the world if her old foe Maharet (Lena Olin) doesn’t stop her.
Whose side will Lestat join? Will Marius help his fledgling or abandon him to public sacrifice? And does anyone actually care about Jesse? (Please note: that last question is rhetorical.)
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Episode 389: Queen of the Damned (2002)
Practice your Egyptian accent and bare that midriff because we are talking the troubled “adaptation” of Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned (2002).
Directed by Australian Michael Rymer, this one was doomed by the suits before it was even greenlit (which happened AFTER all of the songs were written by Korn frontman Jonathan Davis). It’s a bit of a clusterfuck.
Plus: praising everything Aaliyah (RIP); critiquing everything Stuart Townsend (aside from his abs and leather pants); a soft queer reading of Marius; and bemoaning boring protagonist/audience surrogate JESSE.
Cross out Queen of the Damned!
Coming Up Next: We’re tackling Ben Stiller’s horror-adjacent dark comedy The Cable Guy (1996), in anticipation of its 30th anniversary!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 495 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Hannibal Season 3 Episodes 5 & 6, Backrooms, Passenger, Leviticus, an audio commentary on the original Scary Movie (2000), and the return of our Requel Tier as we begin our episode coverage of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat.