The Projection Booth Podcast

Shocktober 2017 continues with a look at the offbeat horror comedy TerrorVision (1986). Written and directed by Ted Nicolaou, the film centers on the Putterman Family who, while father Stan -- Gerrit Graham -- is installing a new satellite dish and accidentally receive a distant transmission of a horrific hungry monster which proceeds to feast on the family including wife Rachel (Mary Woronov), son Sherman (Chad Allen), grandpa (Bert Remsen), daughter Suzy (Diane Franklin), and her metal head boyfriend O.D. (Jon Gries).Podcasters Moe Porne (No Budget Nightmares) and Josh Hadley (Lost in the Static) join Mike to discuss this classic of Charles Band's Empire empire.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shocktober 2017 continues with a the 1976 film from Roman Polanski, The Tenant . Adapted from a book by Roland Topor (Fantastic Planet), the film also stars Polanski as Trelkovsky, a man in need of a new apartment. He finds one where the previous occupant has defenestrated herself. After her death, he's able to move in and finds that his neighbors don't like him being noisy... in fact, they don't like him being him at all. Some put this alongside Polanski's Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby as his “apartment trilogy” in which explores the terrors of urban paranoia.Jamey Duvall of Movie Geeks United! and writer/director/actor Alex Winter join Mike to discuss what many consider to be Polanski's most personal film.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shocktober 2017 kicks off with Karl Freund's final film as a director and Peter Lorre's film film in America, Mad Love (1935). Based upon Maurice Renard 's The Hands of Orlac, the film shifts focus from the titular Orlac to Dr. Gogol, a cunning physician who specializes in some questionable procedures. He’s fascinated by the actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake) and, rebuffed in his advances, manages to enter her life after he backhandedly helps her husband, concert pianist Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive), by giving him a new pair of hands after his have been crushed in an accident. But what kind of gift are the hands of a murderer on a master musician?Samm Deighan joins Mike to discuss the unusual American debut from Peter Lorre along with special guests Gregory W. Mank (Hollywood Cauldron: Thirteen Horror Films from the Genre's Golden Age) and Stephen D. Youngkin (The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre).Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We wrap up the first Czechtember series with a film from director Oldrich Lipský, 1966's Happy End, an experimental comedy (which is as unusual as that sounds) that puts scenes in opposite order and runs motion backward from the death of our main character (Vladimír Menšík) while he gives the voice-over account of life from birth. Of course, this provides us with constant ironic juxtapositions.The film was co-written by Lipský and Milos Macourek, the screenwriter behind some of the best comedies out of Czechoslovakia in the '60s and '70s.Kat Ellinger and Ben Buckingham join Mike to discuss Happy End and other favorite Czech comedies.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Czechtember continues with a look at Juraj Herz's The Cremator (AKA Spalovac mrtvol). Released in 1968, the year of the Prague Spring, the film stars Rudolf Hrusínský as Karl (or Roman) Kopfrkingl, a man dedicated to the idea of liberating the soul from the body through the practice of cremation.Samm Deighan joins Mike to discuss collaborators and the madness that gripped the world in the 1930s and '40s.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this special episode, Mike talks with author Patty Farmer about her work including her latest books, Starring the Plaza and Playboy Laughs. Find out more at www.patty-farmer.com.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Czechtember continues with a look at Pavel Jurácek's Case for a Rookie Hangman (AKA Prípad pro zacínajícího kata) from 1970. Very loosely based on the third part of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the film tells the tale of Lemuel Gulliver (Lubomír Kostelka) in the land of Balnibarbi, a surrealistic landscape where Lemuel has a hard time finding his footing, literally.Kat Ellinger and Kevin Heffernan join Mike to discuss the malleability of Swift's satire and The Key to Determining Dwarfs, or The Last Travel of Lemuel Gulliver.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5513239/advertisement

Set in the distant year of 2017, The Running Man (1987) is set in a dystopian world where reality television rules the airwaves and the most popular show pits criminals against muscle-bound, spandex-clad "stalkers". Based loosely on a novella by "Richard Bachman" (AKA Stephen King), the film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, a man framed as "The Butcher of Bakersfield" and thrown Running Man game, hosted by Killian (Richard Dawson), and featuring a cadre of killers including Jesse Ventura, Jim Brown, Professor Toru Tanaka, and more.Andrew Nette and Aaron Peterson join Mike to discuss the film, its odd production history, and the resonance to today's world. We also discuss the work of Robert Sheckley and his influence on "people hunting people" films including The Million Game, The Price of Peril, The Tenth Victim and Freejack.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We kick off the first annual "Czechtember" with a look at the most-easily accessible films of the Czech New Wave, the charmingly disarming 1966 film Closely Watched Trains (AKA Ostre Sledované Vlaky or Closely Observed Trains). Co-written and directed by Jirí Menzel and based upon Bohumil Hrabal's novella, the film stars Václav Neckár as Milos Hrma, a young man from a family of eccentrics. Not wanting to work too hard, he gets a job at the local railway station where he's mentored by the earthly Hubicka (Josef Somr) and Nazi-sympathizer Zednicek (Vlastimil Brodský).Samm Deighan and Jonathan Owen (author of Avant-garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties) join Mike to discuss Menzel's subversive film and the way it plays with "sex comedy" themes against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 1968 film by Frank and Eleanor Perry, The Swimmer (based on the John Cheever short story of the same name), stars Burt Lancaster as Ned Merrill, a Connecticut executive who decides to head back home by swimming through the pools of his neighbors, a "river" which he names "Lucinda" after his wife. Along the way, Ned is met with drinks, laughs, reminders of his affairs that went sour, and maybe even reminders that what he pretends to be may be no more.Elric Kane and co-host emeritus Rob St. Mary join Mike to discuss the trouble production and ground-breaking ideas of The Swimmer.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're up all night to get lucky as we discuss the 2001 film from director and co-writer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Intacto which stars Leonardo Sbaraglia as Tomás, a man who survives a plane crash and who may just be the luckiest man in the world. He's found by Federico (Eusebio Poncela), who introduces him to an underground world where luck is something of a commodity and the man who rules over this kingdom, Samuel Berg (Max von Sydow).Co-hosts Jamey Duvall and Heather Drain discuss the film as well as other related movies like 13, Fearless, and The Cooler.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this special episode, Mike talks with writer Michael Lucker about his career in Hollywood (including co-writing the screenplay for A Vampire in Brooklyn) as well as his recent book, CRASH! BOOM! BANG! How to Write Action Movies.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this special episode, Mike talks with writer/director Albert Pyun about his latest film, the sci-fi epic Interstellar Civil War: Shadows of the Empire (2017). They also discuss Pyun's dementia and how he was able to use this as an artistic method in the creation of his film.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The first feature film from director George Lucas, THX-1138 (1971) features a world in which love is outlawed and mind-altering drugs are mandatory. The film stars Robert Duvall as the titular THX-1138 and Maggie McOmie as LUH-3417 as roommates who eventually develop into something much more despite the totalitarian regime in which they live.Co-written by Walter Murch, the film ponders materialism, religion, and love.Chris Bricklemyer (Outside the Cinema, Are You Serious?) and Jay Bauman (Red Letter Media) join Mike to discuss Lucas's freshman film, how its themes would echo in his other work, and how he revised it in the 2004 "director's cut."Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 1960 directorial debut from Jerry Lewis, The Bellboy, also stars Lewis in the titular role. He's Stanley, a put upon hotel worker at the Fountainbleu hotel in Miami. The film doesn’t necessarily have a three act plot per se but is more an opportunity for a string of gags.Filmmaker Peter Flynn and actor Craig Bierko join Mike to discuss The Bellboy as well as many other aspects of Lewis's career. Special guest Shawn Levy is the author of King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Also known as The Streetwalker, The Margin, and sometimes even as Emmanuel 77, La Marge film stars Joe Dallesandro as Sigismond, a loving husband who leaves his wife and child to head to Paris. While there he learns of the sudden, unexpected death of his aforementioned family and spends a few days living in fringes of society, spending most of his time with Diana, played by Sylvia Kristel, a prostitute. The 1976 film is one of several adaptations of André Pieyre de Mandiargues by director Walerian Borowczyk.Samm Deighan and Daniel Bird school Mike in the work of Walerian Borowczyk with the help of Jeremy Richey (author of the upcoming Sylvia Kristel in the Seventies: From Emmanuelle to Chabrol), cinematographer and cameraman Noël Véry, and Walerian Borowczyk's assistant, Michael Levy.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Based on his manga of the same name, and released two years before the end of the comic series, Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1988) tells the tale of Kaneda -- a teenage punk in a motorcycle gang -- and Kei -- a member of an underground resistance -- and their adventures in NeoTokyo. They enter into a world of psychics including the titular Akira, the little boy with incredible powers that lead to the devastating explosion that opens the film.Special guest Jonathan Clements, author of Anime: A History, provides Mike with some much-needed background on Japanese animation while co-hosts El Goro and Chris Cummins describe their love of Otomo's groundbreaking film.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Written by Itaru Era, the 2001 movie from prolific director Takashi Miike Visitor Q tells the story of a family in disarray. The unemployed father (Ken'ichi Endô) a former newsman who laid off after an unfortunate incident, the mother (Shungiku Uchida) a heroin addict who prostitutes herself for money to get a fix, the son (Jun Mutô) is a victim of bullying who then bullies his own mother, and the daughter (Fujiko) who has left home to become a prostitute as well. When the titular Visitor Q (Kazushi Watanabe) shows up... things change.Special guest Tom Mes, author of Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike, discusses Miike's career. Co-Hosts Patrick Bromley and Kevin Heffernan join Mike to examine Visitor Q as well as François Ozon's Sitcom and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema (1968).Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a special episode of The Projection Booth Steve Byrne and Sean Gray join Mike to discuss the documentary film CinemAbility (2013). Directed by Jenni Gold and co-written by Samuel Reed, the film looks at the long history of portraying disabilities on screen.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Keenan Ivory Wayans's I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) is at once a parody of and follow-up to Blaxploitation films of the 1970s. In it, Wayans stars as Jack Spade, the new blood trying to take down Mr. Big (John Vernon) with a team of classic heroes like John Slade (Bernie Casey), Hammer (Isaac Hayes), Slammer (Jim Brown), Kung Fu Joe (Steve James) and Fly Guy (Antonio Fargas).Chris Cummins joins Mike to discuss the film. Special guests include actor Antonio Fargas (Putney Swope, Cleopatra Jones) and producer Peter McCarthy (Tapeheads, Roadside Prophets).Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices