Podcasts
‘Full Dark, No Stars’: Stephen King Pulls No Punches With Gritty ‘1922’ [The Losers’ Club Podcast]
With summer behind us, it’s time to embrace the Fall season ahead. Pumpkins, black cats, and deadly rats. Be sure to keep an eye on your watch as the sun hits that horizon much, much earlier this time of the year. Before you know it: Full Dark, No Stars. Alas, The Losers’ Club has reached the next novellas collection in their journey through Stephen King‘s catalogue.
Released in November 2010, King’s third novellas collection — following 1982’s Different Seasons and 1990’s Four Past Midnight — captures the legendary author at his deadliest. No shit. King is truly the Master of Horror within these four sordid tales of retribution: 1922, Big Driver, Fair Extension, A Good Marriage. These are the stories that never leave the mind.
In the first of three episodes dedicated to Full Dark, No Stars, the Losers dial the clock back to 1922 and return to the familiar rustic landscape of Hemingford Home, Nebraska. You see, there’s been a murder, only nobody knows about it. Well, that’s not true — a father and son share this macabre memory, and it’ll eat ’em alive.
Stream the episode below and return next week when the Losers continue their coverage with Big Driver. For further adventures, 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) — including their latest episode on Holly.
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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