Podcasts
Cursed TV, a Xenomorph, and a Sinister Online Quiz Star in March’s Horror Bytes [Safe Room Podcast]
Before listening to this month’s edition of Horror Bytes, check out last month’s discussion on Atomic Heart, Resident Evil Village VR, and more!
For this month’s edition of Horror Bytes, in which Neil and I each highlight bite-sized indie titles, we have a new crop of horror experiences to chat about that can typically be completed in less than an hour.
And while some of these titles we’ll be discussing may be free, we believe it’s important to support the developers hard work: So if you can, please support them through their itch.io, steam, or Patreon pages.
Ever want to experience the final moments of Ridley Scott’s Alien, where Ripley must flee the Nostormo before it self-destructs? Now you can in Alien Survivor, a gorgeous recreation in Unreal Engine 5, but don’t be wary of the Xenomorph that is pursuing her!
A personality quiz with a demonic twist, Be Honest begins simple enough but grows increasingly unsettling with its personal questions and manipulation of the game’s presentation.
In The Deep combines the terror of Underwater with engrossing writing and atmospheric ambient track to make for a memorable text adventure experience.
Who else misses the days of channel surfing aimlessly? Nightmare Zapping preys upon our nostalgia with a series of disturbing vignettes that are all tied by a mysterious entity that is preying upon a small town.
Phobophobia Case File #0: The Orphanage
They thought the killings would stop when the serial killer was caught, but that turned out to just be the beginning. In Phobophobia Case File #0: The Orphanage the player explores an abandoned orphanage where the killer grew up in this unique hybrid of horror point-and-click and RPG mechanics.
A mysterious facility. A secretive company. A very dead body. Spectral Filter is an atmospheric exploration of the supernatural that relies on staggering sound design and gorgeous visuals to unnerve.
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.
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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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