Podcasts
‘Violated Angels’ Gorgeously Recreates a Horrific Mass Murder [Murder Made Fiction Podcast]
On July 13, 1966, Richard Speck broke into a Chicago student nurse’s dormitory and murdered eight of the women who lived inside. Only Corazon Amurao managed to survive the ordeal by hiding under a bed long enough for the intruder to forget about her.
Speck was arrested several days later and eventually given the death penalty before his sentence was converted to life in prison in 1972. This horrific crime shocked the world and Speck became one of the first men in history to be known in the press as a mass murderer.
In connection with their patreon coverage of criminal profiler John Douglas and the Netflix series Mindhunter, Jenn and Joe have been exploring cinematic adaptations of crimes described in the show’s first season. In the latest episode of Bloody FM’s Murder Made Fiction podcast, they tackle Kôji Wakamatsu’s 1967 Pink film Violated Angels. This gorgeous yet disturbing “visual haiku” builds on elements of Speck’s crime to create a nuanced exploration of geopolitical strife interwoven with uncomfortable questions about compliance and consent.
Next week, they’ll take a look at a similar adaptation from Ireland, Denis Héroux’s Géza von Radványi’s Born For Hell.
And if you want even more Murder Made Fiction, be sure to check out the pod’s Patreon feed, where Jenn and Joe have ~125 hours of content including episode by episode coverage of Mindhunter season 1.
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.