The Projection Booth Podcast

Noirvember 2016 concludes with a look at Arthur D. Ripley's The Chase (1946). Adapted by Philip Yordan from a Cornell Woolrich novel, the film tells the tale of Chuck Scott (Robert Cummings) a down-on-his-luck veteran who ends up working for gangster Eddie Roman (Steve Cochran) before falling for Roman's wife (Michèle Morgan) and stealing away with her to Cuba.Cullen Gallagher and Maitland McDonagh join Mike to discuss The Chase, Cornell Woolrich, and more.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Directed by Boris Ingster with a screenplay by Frank Partos , Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) defines the stylistic conventions that would come to be known as film noir. The movie stars John McGuire as a hot shot reporter and Margaret Tallichet as his best gal (who eventually becomes the protagonist). He's framed for a murder committed by the man only known as "The Stranger" (Peter Lorre).Maitland McDonagh and Samm Deighan join Mike to discuss this first entry in the film noir pantheon as well as what it helped spawn. Author Stephen D. Youngkin joins the program to talk about the captivating Peter Lorre.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Difficult to find on home video for many years, Jack Bernhard's Decoy (1946) stands as a highly off-beat film noir in which Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie) plays the consummate femme fatale with designs on the $400,000 her lover, Frankie (Robert Armstrong), has hidden. She needs to break him out of jail in order to get her hands on the money and does so by allowing him to be executed, only to bring him back from the dead...Writers Christa Faust and Maitland McDonagh join Mike to discuss this usual film.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Frontier (2015) is a retro neo-noir in which Laine (Jocelin Donahue), a woman on the run, finds her way to a diner/hotel where the owner, Luanne (Kelly Lynch) hosts an amalgam of shady characters.Film archivist Jared Case joins Mike to speak to director Oren Shai and co-writer Webb Wilcoxen about this new film.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the most delightfully unusual movies of the decade, Jim Hosking's The Greasy Strangler (2016) is the tale of Big Ronnie (Michael St. Michaels) and Big Brayden (Sky Elobar), a father and son with a tense and greasy relationship. Trouble starts when Janet ( Elizabeth De Razzo), a disco tourist, enters the picture...Skizz Cyzyk joins Mike to talk about this hilarious film.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) lived a double life as a television pilot and feature film. A neo-noir that plays with themes of identity, roleplaying, and obsession, the film stars Naomi Watts as innocent ingénue Betty Elms and Laura Elena Harring as Rita, a woman with a past hidden from herself.Mike talks to Patrick Fischler and Laura Harring about their roles in Mulholland Drive (and a lot more). Professor Erik Marshall and author Jedidiah Ayres help elucidate the mystery of Mulholland Drive.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Coke Sams's Existo (1999), the Moral Majority runs the U.S. while artists like Existo (Bruce Arnston) and Maxine (Jackie Welch) hide out in The Sewer, an underground club run by Colette Watchuwill (Gailard Sartain).Brought to us by some of the folks behind the Ernest films, Bruce Arnston, Coke Sams, and J. Clarke Gallivan, Existo is a hyperbolic, hysterical musical that is perfect viewing for this election cycle.Skizz Cyzyk and Scott Calonico join Mike to discuss Existo as well as the Ernest P. Worrell (Jim Varney) phenomenon.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mike talks with author Phil Hall about his book, In Search of Lost Films, an invaluable resource for fans of film history. Published by BearManor Media, Hall writes about a few of the better-known lost films but, moreover, delves into dozens of obscure titles as well as several sequences of better-known films that have yet to be recovered.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mrs. French's cat is missing.In a rather different take on the typical zombie story, Bruce McDonald's Pontypool (2008) has the English language as the infectious agent which drives people mad. Written by Tony Burgess (and based on his novel, Pontypool Changes Everything), the film stars Stephen McHattie as Grant Mazzy, a shock jock from the big city now working in backwater Ontario with his audio engineer Laurel-Ann (Georgina Reilly) and producer Syndey Briar (Lisa Houle).Mike discusses Pontypool with See Hear's Maurice Bursztynski.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adapted from a novel by Andrew Neiderman, Sandor Stern's Pin (1988) stars Terry O'Quinn as a doctor who speaks to his children Leon (David Hewlett) and Ursula (Cynthia Preston) through the anatomical dummy, Pin.Guests on this Shocktober bonus episode include Caelum Vatnsdal, author of They Came From Within: A History Of Canadian Horror Cinema, as well as director Sandor Stern, author Andrew Neiderman, and actor Cynthia Preston.Canuxplotation's Paul Corupe and Shock Waves's Elric Kane join Mike to discuss this eerie Canadian thriller.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this Shocktober episode, the subject of "New French Extremity" films are under discussion, specifically Pascal Laugier's Martyrs (2008).Alexandra West, co-host of The Faculty of Horror podcast (and author of Films of the New French Extremity: Visceral Horror and National Identity) and Elric Kane of the Shock Waves podcast join Mike to discuss Pascal Laugier's film along with the 2015 remake.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this Shocktober special, Kat Ellinger of the Daughters of Darkness podcast and Jim Laczkowski of the Directors Club podcast (among others) join Mike to discuss the 1986 horror comedy from director William Fruet, Killer Party in which a trio of young women (Elaine Wilkes, Joanna Johnson, Alicia Fleer) rush a sorority with horrific results including hazing, murder, and demonic possession.Writer Barney Cohen talks about Killer Party, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, and the unmade Spiderman film.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adapted from a novel by Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick The Shining (1980) tells the tale of Jack (Jack Nicholson), Wendy, (Shelley Duvall) and Danny (Danny Lloyd) Torrance, a family who spend a winter at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. Jack plans on writing a book but, instead, battles the inner demons of alcoholism and anger, slowly going mad perhaps with the help of the ghosts of the Overlook...Directors Keith Gordon and Vincenzo Natali join Mike to discuss Stanley Kubrick and The Shining as well as the many interpretations of the films (as presented in works like Rodney Ascher's Room 237 and Rob Ager's Collative Learning series).Along with Ascher and Ager, cameraman Douglas Milsome and Steadicam operator (and inventor) Garrett Brown reminisce about working with Stanley Kubrick.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chris Gore dishes about the next steps after the recent successful fundraiser for Film Threat including a new project with Rob St. Mary...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1994, Roger Corman rushed to start the production of The Fantastic Four -- an adaptation of Marvel's quartet of superpowered beings who (somewhat) represented the four elements of earth (The Thing), Air (Invisible Girl), Fire (The Human Torch) and water (Mr. Fantastic). The documentary Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's the Fantastic Four tells the story of the making of -- and ultimate fate of -- the 1995 film.Interviews include writer/director Marty Langford, actor Carl Ciarfalio, and embedded journalist Chris Gore.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"What is this? A homicide, or a bad B-movie?"Fred Dekker's Night of the Creeps (1986) is a love letter to science fiction movies of the '50s. It's the story of Chris (Jason Lively) and JC (Steve Marshall), two friends who accidentally unleash a zombie plague from outer space onto their college campus. It's up to them, Cynthia (Jill Whitlow), and the grizzled Detective Cameron (Tom Atkins) to stop it.Maitland McDonagh and Heather Drain join Mike to discuss this wonderful film. Interviews feature writer/director Fred Dekker and star Tom AtkinsLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Directed by Leo McCarey, Duck Soup (1933) was the last of the four Marx Brothers' run at Paramount. A send-up of politics and warmongering, Duck Soup is an anarchic collection of sight gags, wordplay, and surrealism in which Groucho Marx plays Rufus T. Firefly, the man who will save Freedonia from disaster, despite the efforts of Chicolini (Chico Marx) and Pinky (Harpo Marx), two Sylvanian spies.Guest this week include Robert S. Bader (author of Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stage), Robert Weide (producer of Marx Brothers in a Nutshell) and Joseph Adamson (author of Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo: A History of the Marx Brothers and a Satire on the Rest of the World).Rob St. Mary and Jon Cross join Mike to discuss Duck Soup and the Marx Brothers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Produced by Ovidio Assonitis, Sonny Boy 1989 stars David Carradine and Paul L. Smith as Pearl and Slue, two desert-dwellers who end up "adopting" Sonny Boy (Michael Boston). Slue turns his boy into a feral killing machine in something of a Frankenstein tale.Screenwriter Graeme Whifler, director Robert Martin Carroll, and star Michael Boston share the history of this fascinating film.Mike Malloy, author of the upcoming David Carradine: The Lost Auteur, and Maitland McDonagh join Mike White in discussing Sonny Boy.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rescued from the brink of disaster, the audio of Mike's Q&A with Christopher Lloyd from FanExpo 2016 may be a little rough around the edges but is, hopefully, still enjoyable.Mr. Lloyd discusses working in the theater, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Andy Kaufman, Back to the Future, and more.Thanks to FDBK for cleaning up the audio files as best he can.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Directed by Karen Arthur, The Mafu Cage (1978) stars Carol Kane and Lee Grant as Cissy and Ellen, two sisters who live together in a large, sprawling house. Ellen is a scientist with a potential boyfriend and a world outside the house while Cissy lives in the house and, really, in her own head. Mike talks with director Karen Arthur about her early career.Josh Johnson and Kier-La Janisse join the discussion of this oft-overlooked film.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices