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Talking Puppet Combo’s ‘Murder House’ With Rue Morgue’s Evan Millar [Safe Room Podcast]

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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.

Podcasts

‘Death Becomes Her’ and the Horror of Aging [The Lady Killers Podcast]

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“This is life’s ultimate cruelty. It offers us a taste of youth and vitality, and then it makes us witness our own decay.”

Is there anything more terrifying than the relentless passage of time? It’s a bitter truth that just when we’ve become accustomed to our bodies, the sands of time turn and we’re forced to watch them slowly break down in a cruel march towards inevitable death. But what if there were a way to stop the aging process – a potion that would return us to our peak physical condition and hold us there until the end of time? Would we take it? And would we eventually find that the blessing of perpetual life is actually a curse? No film explores this dilemma quite like Death Becomes Her. Robert Zemeckis’ 1992 horror comedy pits two showstopping divas against each other for a single spotlight while asking what they would do for eternal youth – and what will be the hidden cost?

Madeline (Meryl Streep) and Helen (Goldie Hawn) are old frenemies with a history of vicious competition. Madeline seems to have won the most recent battle and married Helen’s fiance Ernest (Bruce Willis), but decades later, their marriage is on the rocks and Madeline’s once thriving career is now a thing of the past. When Helen returns with a stunning new look, Madeline turns to unorthodox methods to maintain her feminine dominance. She drinks a potion designed to give her eternal youth, but returns home to find her life turned upside down by her downtrodden husband and jealous “friend.” Having both taken the potion, “Mad” and “Hel” engage in a bitter fight to the death over years of petty snipes and the right to claim the title of Most Desirable Woman.

In their latest episode, The Lady Killers dissect these two glamorous killers and the hidden social commentary in Zemeckis’ iconic film. Co-hosts Jenn AdamsMae Shults, Rocco T. Thompson, and Sammie Kuykendall dish over their own fears of aging, choose their favorite diva, and decide whether they would take the potion should they ever find themselves in Lisle’s (Isabella Rossellini) lavish home. How does the film hit differently when watching as an adult? Could Madeline, Helen, and Ernest ever make a polycule work? Is Lisle a hero or a villain and how does she keep that gorgeous necklace in place? They’ll wrestle with these questions and more in a podcasting shovel battle to the death on this unique horror comedy and one of the most glamorous casts of all time.

Stream below and subscribe now via Apple Podcasts and Spotify for future episodes that drop every Thursday.

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