DRtL Episode 22: Curses and Premonitions!
Welcome back — finally — to Don’t Read the Latin! We’re back after something like a solid month of not-podcasting, so let’s see if we still remember how to do this! We would have had this episode done much sooner, but we were delayed by Michael’s illness and then Jennifer’s surgery, almost as if we were …. cursed. Hmmm.
Anyway! Join us as we wax rhapsodic about It Follows, visit Jen’s Documentary Corner, and talk about the renaissance of excellent synthesizer-based horror soundtracks we’ve been getting lately. (And, not coincidentally, talk about Jen’s love of collecting movie soundtracks on vinyl.)
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Music Bonus!
Here are a couple of links to the albums that Michael mentions this episode:
That second one is pay-what-you-want over at Bandcamp, so definitely check both of them out for retro synth-y goodness.
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Shout-Outs!
There are a couple of listeners we wanted to thank — first of all, thanks to commenter Kylie for her suggestion of Noroi: The Curse, which Michael watched based on her recommendation. Fun movie!
Secondly, many thanks to the listener who ran into Michael at Emerald City Comicon and told him this was her favorite podcast! Very, very cool. You made our month. (He didn’t catch your name, though! Let us know who you are!)
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For Paranorman: An innocent little girl ofabout 10 who was also a medium (Like Norman) was unjustly condemned by the town’s superstitious and frightened elite, who were then cursed to reawaken as the undead by the girl as she was taken for execution.
I’m not the person you met at Emerald City Comicon but this is my favorite podcast too! I’ve seen a lot of great movies on your recommendations! Loved hearing you talk about It Follows. Have either of you seen the tiny short films that led to Ju-On being made? One is called “Katasumi” (In a Corner) and the other is “444-444-4444.”
I am so glad you guys are back! I’ve missed listening to it these last three weeks.
I’m glad you liked Noroi Michael. I consider it payback for The Babadook, which I was alerted to because of you guys talking about it and watched recently. I didn’t find it that scary, probably because I don’t have and don’t want children, but I loved the imagery and the creepiness of it. Like The Bay, Sinister and Banshee Chapter the DVD is slowly making the rounds of my friendship group. Oh, and I watched the Subspecies trilogy after your Full Moon pictures chat, which I love. Have yet to see the forth because it wasn’t included in the box set I picked up.
I’ve missed you guys a lot. I need to catch up on the past three episodes due to internet issues, so if you get more essay comments from me on those don’t be alarmed (well, any more than you usually would be at one of my comments). Due to the down time I did watch a bunch of DVDs, most of which were British TV shows I borrowed off a friend (I can see why Demons only had one season). I also watched Deliver Us From Evil, which was not good but I did end up being slightly fond of it for possession imagery reasons. And the hot Jesuit exorcist. Father, I believe I may have a demon inside me too, you might need to check…
I’m glad I’m not the only one who isn’t keen on Drag Me to Hell. There was so much potential for me to enjoy it, but I agree that the type of comedy in it made it feel muddled and neither one thing nor the other. It’d be interesting to see if in 5/10+ years time they do a straight remake of it like the did for Evil Dead, and whether I’d like it better (wasn’t as keen on The Evil Dead though I think it was pretty well done, still prefer the original though).
I agree that Lords of Salem was disappointing, basically what happened was that Rob Zombie took the essential parts of the book and filmed an art house movie using the script. Dull. I really enjoyed reading the book, perhaps because I had low expectations as I’m not a huge fan of his non-music career, but I did not like the ending very much at all. Somehow he managed to make the ending of the film even worse…Congratulations, I guess.
I’m a bit sad that you find Prince of Darkness boring, but I think that’s justified. It’s kind of a slow burn film, and I tend to like it partly for nostalgia (it was one of the many late night Saturday TV showing horror films I cut my teeth on as a tween) and partly for the underlying sense of menace and weirdness.
I don’t know if you can leave your body to horror (though count me in), but there was a man who specified that his skull be used in productions of Hamlet.
I’d be interested in hearing your opinions of Annabelle, because I am one of the poor saps that paid to watch it in the cinema (I needed a distraction, I like dolls, and my local cinema has a deal on a certain day when tickets are £5). In my opinion the only interesting part of it was the sequence in the basement of the apartment complex, even if they did suffer from Night of the Demon’s critical issue a bit. Speaking of Night of the Demon, from what I can remember a lot of M R James stories and their subsequent adaptations have that ‘Asian’ curse style feature to them – you’re fucked because you did x, nothing you can do about it. I think this sort of applies to Crooked House as well, because of the reason why the house and all connected to it are evil. Though that might be a bit of a stretch.
The two Ju On Short films that Wendy mentions were included on the R2 release of the Collectors Edition of The Grudge, I think they’re both on Youtube as well.