To honor of this most horrorderful time of the year, I revisit friend of the show(s) Jon Cross’ After Movie Diner to discuss The Evil Dead, Evil Clergyman, Lords of Salem, The Thing, Tremors, Godzilla, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Ju-On, Audition, Zaat, The Howling, Howling 2 Your Sister is a Werewolf/Striba, Werewolf Bitch “and” as he aptly puts it, “MANY more.” With extra special guest: Jon’s wife, Theodora, whose blog you should visit often.
In this third installment of Traumatic Cinematic’s celebration of Alfred Hitchcock, we discuss my third favorite film of 1951, Strangers on a Train – and the many, many films it went on to inspire. Including Danny DeVito’s feature film debut, 1987’s Throw Momma from the Train. Visit Traumatic Cinematic on Facebook, follow Traumatic Cinematic on Twitter, send your hate mail to TraumaticCinematic [at] gmail [dot] com and tell all your friends about the show.
Once again, the Traumatic Cinematic Show plumbs the depths of Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, discussing 1956’s The Man Who Knew Too Much…which inevitably brings up 1934’s Man Who Knew Too Much, and how remakes in general don’t have to suck. This, as you might imagine, gets terribly serious. So we’ve counterbalanced it with a discussion of Bill Murray’s 1997’s vehicle, The Man Who Knew Too Little. And then I go a little crazy, but I hope you’ll all understand. I’ve done my best to document my problems with 1997 and we’ll have another opportunity to go over them very soon. Until then, visit Traumatic Cinematic on Facebook, follow Traumatic Cinematic on Twitter, send your hate mail to TraumaticCinematic [at] gmail [dot] com and tell all your friends about me and my friends, and how we get together once a week to talk about movies.
by Chad Denton
And thus we enter the Golden Age…
Let’s get this out of the way first: not only did the game come out in the US as Final Fantasy II (and really, in the dark primordial age before the Internet, most of us who weren’t able to read Japanese or didn’t have subscriptions to trade magazines thought it really was Final Fantasy II), but Square sent us the “Easytype” version of the game. Back in the day, Square had a low opinion of American RPG players – perhaps with reason – so they gave us a version that not only was made easier, but had less combat options for the characters, because apparently having a main protagonist with a special attack that depletes his Health Points would melt our delicate brains. Continue reading Trash Culture’s Final Fantasy Retrospective Part 4: Final Fantasy IV
Hitchcocktober – our month-long celebration/exploration/exculpation of Alfred Hitchcock’s films – begins! Join the Traumatic Cinematic crew as we discuss 1960’s sub-genre creating masterpiece, Psycho, and it’s surprisingly-better-than-I-remembered-though-perhaps-my-standards-have-lowered-since-I-saw-it-last sequel, 1983’s Psycho 2.
As always, if you’d like to keep up with the show, Like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter at @TCPodcastcrew, @GenXnerd, @Greymattersplat & @aytiws. And if you really love us, nominate The Traumatic Cinematic Show for the The 8th Annual Podcast Awards and earn our eternal devotion.
By now, EON Productions had these Bond films running on a rock-solid two year schedule. Writers Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson seemed to have hit upon a winning formula: fuse the few remaining pieces of Fleming’s short stories together with plot elements “torn straight from the headlines of today’s newspapers.” This served the twin purpose of keeping James Bond “relevant” to a changing movie landscape and shaking up the stale formulas that had constrained the series for two decades.
Inevitably, the loudest criticisms of The Living Daylights and its sequel come from Bond fans who felt (and still feel) this series grand quest for “relevance” was a whole lot of tilting at windmills. The Dalton Era gets a lot of flack for a lot of things, but nothing more so than its lack of “fun”; that “campy” “charm” which supposedly made the Moore Era so much more “enjoyable” and the Connery films “instant classics.” Gods forbid anyone treat those like “serious” spy-fi action pictures…even if that’s exactly what they were intended to be.
They succeed on their own merits with no “camp,” required, save the kind the audience brings with it via the expectations in their heads. If you want real “camp,” I’ve got a version of Casino Royale you should check out (no, not that one)…me, I think Bond should’ve gone “darker” decades before he actually did. He might’ve stayed ahead of the trends instead of constantly playing catch-up. Licence to Kill almost does this and, on the strength of that almost, becomes my favorite Bond film of its decade…and the preceding one. Continue reading Licence to Kill (1989)
Words can’t describe how psyched I was when Mike “@Greymattersplat” Wickliff suggested Traumatic Cinematic look at Six String Samurai. It remains one of my favorite movie of 1998, no question. And I’m even more psyched by the opportunity to tell as many people about this film as humanly possible. It’s a rare thing in this age of over-marketing: a genuine cult classic of independent American cinema. Listen, rate and review the show on your podcast provider of choice and get in contact with us, either through here or through TraumaticCinematic.com
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