Podcasts
Talking Puppet Combo’s ‘Murder House’ With Rue Morgue’s Evan Millar [Safe Room Podcast]
The age-old adage of never judging a book by its cover has never been more applicable to indie horror games than it is right now.
We are inundated on a nearly daily basis with a variety of horror games, tapping into all manner of sub-genres and styles.
You genuinely love to see it as a genre fan, but more importantly, it is fantastic to see audiences crop up around any and all types of horror experiences, no matter how extreme it may be.
And while AAA horror might pride itself on delivering the most polished scares around, to say they have been lacking in exploring the seedier side of horror isn’t much of a reach.
Enter Puppet Combo (aka Ben Cucuzza).
Through utilizing lo-fi PS1-styled graphics, Cucuzza has built a brand on his distinctive approach to horror. Masterfully subverting audience expectations by crafting worlds using familiar textures and polygons and then filling it with unimaginable horrors. Horrors that never dared grace games of that era that he is so heavily influenced by and emulates.
And Murder House, which was recently ported to all major consoles, is seemingly the gory survival horror crescendo Cucuzza has been building towards, so where better to begin our exploration of indie horror and Puppet Combo’s work?
For this week’s episode of Safe Room, Neil and I enlisted the help of Rue Morgue Magazine’s video game editor Evan Millar to get to the root of why Murder House is such a memorable survival horror ride, and why Puppet Combo’s work resonates so much with horror fans.
On the DL.
After spending June on explicitly queer texts like Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn (listen) and William Castle’s Homicidal (listen), it’s only appropriate that Horror Queers celebrate the American holiday with a blockbuster film with a not-so-secret gay connection.
In Independence Day, an unlikely group of people come together when the human race faces extinction from a threatening alien race. After spaceships destroy every major city, pilot Steven Hiller (Will Smith) must team up with secret tech genius David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), as well as the US President (Bill Pullman), to execute a daring plan to save the planet from annihilation.
Along for the ride are the two saviors’ romantic partners – WH Communications Director Constance (Margaret Colin) and stripper Jasmine (Vivica A. Fox) – plus eccentric scientist Dr. Okun (Brent Spiner), who is at the center of the film’s most horrific set piece.
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Episode 393: Independence Day (1996)
Today, we celebrate our Independence Day…courtesy of gay German director Roland Emmerich.
As the summer blockbuster celebrates its 30th anniversary, we’re looking back on an alien disaster film that scared young Trace (thanks to that alien autopsy scene) and turned Will Smith into a star.
Plus: the death that upsets the most; bemoaning Vivica A. Fox’s career; pondering what could have been with the casting; why Smith’s bravado and the film’s patriotism doesn’t always work for Joe; and plenty of riffing on the atrocious sequel.
Cross out Independence Day!
Coming Up Next: We’re retreating to the country for some questionable therapy courtesy of Joe Dante’s 1981 classic, The Howling!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 503 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 the utterly ridiculous sequel Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf (1985), and the conclusion of our Requel Tier coverage of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat.