Podcasts
The Campy Delights and Dicey Racial Politics of ‘The Skeleton Key’ [Horror Queers Podcast]
After spending the last few weeks on J.A. Bayona’s ghost story The Orphanage (listen), Jack Nicholson’s commanding performance in George Miller’s The Witches of Eastwick (listen), and a timely discussion of James Whale’s Frankenstein (listen), we needed some mid-aughts comfort food.
Enter Iain Softley’s 2005 film The Skeleton Key, a Southern Gothic tale about Caroline (Kate Hudson), an impressionable young hospice aide who takes a job at a remote plantation against the advice of her roommate, Jill (Joy Bryant).
Tensions abound between Caroline and the matriarch of the house, Violet (Gena Rowlands), who has very particular demands about how to treat her husband Ben (John Hurt). The rules extend to the house itself, which is bereft of mirrors and has a single locked door in the attic that Caroline’s titular skeleton key won’t open.
Clearly, there’s something more going on, and as Caroline investigates, she becomes more immersed in hoodoo, a practice she barely understands. With the support of the Devereaux’s estate lawyer, Luke (Peter Sarsgaard), Caroline will stop at nothing to ensure Ben’s safety, even if it increasingly means she’s putting her own future in jeopardy.
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Episode 360: The Skeleton Key (2005)
Lay down a line of protective brick dust and scream “I don’t believe!” because we are discussing Iain Softley’s 2005 Southern Gothic thriller, The Skeleton Key.
Starring Kate Hudson and Gena Rowlands, this Ehren Kruger joint has a great twist (or is it a reveal?) that may or may not have dicey racial implications.
Plus: not trusting Peter Sarsgaard, Black character exposition, the difference between hoodoo and voodoo, and the ending we still can’t believe a studio signed off on!
Cross out The Skeleton Key!
Coming Up Next: We’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of arguably the most controversial film we’ve ever tackled on the pod: Pier Passolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975).
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 437 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Tina Romero’s Queens of the Dead, Hulu’s remake of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, new Oz Perkins joint Keeper, Predator: Badlands and, to celebrate American Thanksgiving, an audio commentary on the 1987 cult classic Blood Rage!
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.