Podcasts
Lady Scientists and a Mutant Bear in Alex Garland’s ‘Annihilation’ [Horror Queers Podcast]
Refraction action.
After closing out April with a look at the hagsploitation classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, we kicked off May with a deathly serious look at Gus Van Sant’s pseudo-Columbine adaptation Elephant. Now we continue the month with a look at Alex Garland’s dense and trippy 2018 film Annihilation.
Annihilation sees Lena (Natalie Portman), a biologist and former soldier, join a mission to uncover what happened to her husband (Oscar Isaac) inside Area X — a sinister and mysterious phenomenon that is expanding across the American coastline. Alongside a team of four other women comprised of paramedic Anya (Gina Rodriguez), physicist Josie (Tessa Thompson), psychologist Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and geomorphologist Cass (Tuva Novotny), Lena discovers a world of mutated landscapes and creatures, as dangerous as it is beautiful, that threatens both their lives and their sanity.
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Episode 231: Annihilation (2018)
Get ready to mutate because we’re heading into the weird, wonderful and terrifying world of Alex Garland’s Annihilation (2018)! Joining us for the conversation are Alma and Dalia of the Nightmare on 5th Street podcast!
Join us as we try our best to analyze this admittedly dense film, with discussions on how it works as an adaptation, the casting controversy, the likability of certain characters and (of course) that weird as hell climax.
Plus: refraction action, horrifying mutated bears, cancer metaphors and one giant soap bubble.
Cross out Annihilation!
Coming up on Wednesday: We’re checking out the ridiculous camp of the 1994 dinosaur romance Tammy and the T-Rex!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 243 hours of additional content! This month we’re going all in on Evil Dead with an episode on Evil Dead Rise, our thoughts on the whole Evil Dead franchise, and an audio commentary on the original 1981 film. Plus: we’ll have episodes on Amazon Prime’s queer as fuck Dead Ringers series, and the Lulu Wilson-starring The Wrath of Becky.
After winding down June with discussions of our vey first William Castle film Homicidal (listen) and queer director Roland Emmerich’s summer tentpole Independence Day (listen), we’re heading back to 1981 to check out Joe Dante‘s seminal werewolf film The Howling.
The Howling sees television journalist Karen White (Dee Wallace) attend a psychiatric retreat with her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) after being attacked and traumatized by local serial killer Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo). It isn’t long before Karen realizes that the retreat is actually a secret cult of werewolves, and they’ve already got their sights set on Bill.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.
Episode 394: The Howling (1981)
Make note of that smiley face sticker and snag that conveniently-placed jar of acid because we’re talking Joe Dante’s stealth werewolf classic The Howling (1981)!
Join us as we discuss the film’s deviations from its source material before doing a deep dive into this very tongue-in-cheek, self-aware horror film. It honestly feels like a precursor to Scream, in many ways!
Plus: Roger Corman (again!) those incredible special effects, differentiating “color movies” from “movies in color,” and why queer icon Elisabeth Brooks has us going “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!”
Cross out The Howling!
Coming Up Next: We’re tackling our very first Ken Russell film with a look at his controversial 1984 erotic thriller Crimes of Passion!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 508 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Forbidden Fruits, Saccharine, Evil Dead Burn, an audio commentary on Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (aka Howling II: Stirba – Werewolf Bitch), and the conclusion of our coverage of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat on the Requel Tier.