Podcasts
Best “Friend” Body Horror in the Influential ‘Akira’ [Horror Queers Podcast]
Kanedaaaaaaaaaaaa! Tetsuooooooooooooo!
After kicking off September with a look at Troma’s original trashterpiece The Toxic Avenger (listen) and celebrating our 350th episode at the Titty Twister in From Dusk Till Dawn (listen), were making our second foray into the world of anime (following our discussion of Perfect Blue) in Katsuhiro Otomo‘s seminal and incredibly influential film Akira (1988), an adaptation of his manga of the same name.
In Akira, Japan is reeling from a nuclear blast that destroyed Tokyo in 1988, leading to World War III. In 2019, Neo-Tokyo is now a cesspool of government corruption, gang violence and terrorism. The film focuses on biker gang leader Kaneda (Mitsuo Iwata) and his lover best friend Tetsuo (Nozomu Sasaki).
When the latter acquires telekinetic abilities after nearly running over a childlike “esper,” he is abducted by the morally suspect Colonel Shikishima (Tarō Ishida). Kaneda teams up with resistance movement activist Kei (Mami Koyama) to find his lover friend before he loses control of his powers and starts another World War.
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Episode 351: Akira (1988)
Hop on your motorcycle, avoid that “child” in the road and slide to a stop because we’re discussing Katsuhiro Otomo‘s seminal anime Akira (1988)!
Join us as we offer a primer on all things Akira, as well as its influences on, uh, everything. We then work our way through its very, very dense plot, which somehow condenses hundreds of manga pages into a 2-hour runtime. This includes a queer read for Kaneda and Tetsuo, as well as debating whether or not the film has a “woman problem.”
Plus: raisin-faced “children,” singularities, and one horrifying sequence involving malevolent stuffed animals (and a lot of “milk”).
Cross out Akira!
Coming Up Next: We’re heading to Bodega Bay to check in with Alfred Hitchcock and some pesky avian antagonists in The Birds (1963).
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After kicking off July with discussions of Joe Dante’s seminal werewolf film The Howling (listen) and Ken Russell’s controversial erotic thriller Crimes of Passion (listen), we’re heading to Maine to dissect one of Stephen King‘s most misguided adaptations in Lawrence Kasdan‘s 2003 misfire Dreamcatcher!
Dreamcatcher sees friends Henry (Thomas Jane), Jonesy (Damian Lewis), Pete (Timothy Olyphant) and Beaver (Jason Lee) reunite for their annual hunting trip in Maine. Their reunion is cut short when they find themselves caught in the middle of a war between a hostile race of farty-farty aliens and an elite US military unit led by Colonel Abraham Curtis (Morgan Freeman), who has been driven mad after spending decades tracking the extraterrestrials. When Jonesy is possessed by one of the aliens, the remaining friends seek out their disabled childhood friend Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg), who they believe has powers that can save Jonesy…and the world.
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 396: Dreamcatcher (2003)
Watch out for “ister gay” (oof), take some Gas-X and bite our bags because we’re talking Lawrence Kasdan’s baffling 2003 adaptation of Stephen King’s equally baffling novel Dreamcatcher.
Join us as we go all in on the farty-farty aliens populating this hilarious misfire that often feels like a bad Kevin Smith script. It’s a film filled with characters who get a single defining trait (if they’re lucky), played by respectable actors who are here for the paycheck (looking at you, Morgan Freeman).
Plus: blown-out assholes, using guns as telephones, pitying poor Donnie Wahlberg, and wondering why the hell this movie is called Dreamcatcher.
Cross out Dreamcatcher!
Coming Up Next: We’re going to be lounging around a posh Greenwich Village apartment as we check in on Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 513 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.