Hey there, horror fans, Jennifer Lovely and Rhias Hall are coming at you with a short and sweet episode where they talk about not just the movies with mothers, but the roles they play in them. There’s still a lot of movies to check out though, just bundled under archetypes!

And yeah, the monster in Beneath looked like a huge catfish.

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Happy Halloween, Latin listeners! This episode is all about horror tropes, and features Rhias Hall of The Villain Edit, Jeff Harris of Fanboy News Network, and perennial favorite Jillian Venters of Gothic Charm School.

They talk about the cliches they love, the ones they hate, and digress a little into the days of yore when Vampire: the Masquerade LARPers walked the Earth. We hope your pumpkin patch is the most sincere tonight!

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If you’re a regular listener of Don’t Read the Latin, you’re probably pretty well versed in horror movies — you know your classics backwards and forwards. But if you’re a new listener, or if you have friends you would like to help get into horror, then we’ve got you covered with our latest episode — Horror Movies 101! Your horror hosts Jennifer Lovely and Michael Montoure walk you through the most significant movies in horror history to give you a solid grounding in all the basics. Check it out and let us know what you think! And be sure to let us know if there’s anything you think we missed!

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Welcome back! Joining us for another episode of Don’t Read the Latin is Jillian Venters from Gothic Charm School! This time, in the wake of election results that are arguably more terrifying than any movie we’ve ever discussed, we decided to get our feminist rant on and sat down to talk about The Monstrous Feminine — the idea of women as monsters in horror movies and pop culture.

Along the way, we discuss Gothic romance novels, Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios, the role that Mad Max: Fury Road played in the beginning of Jen’s relationship with Handsome Boyfriend Jim, and we wonder why the hell Marvel keeps burying pretty actors under way too much prosthetic makeup, and we wrap it all up with the topic of older women having a voice and taking up space in our society. We don’t necessarily do a great job of sticking rigidly to our topic in this episode, but we sure hope you’ll think it’s an interesting conversation. Check it out.

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Bibliography
Books we mention in this episode:

• The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, by Barbara Creed
• Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, by Carol J. Clover
• Monstrous Bodies: Feminine Power in Young Adult Horror Fiction, by June Pulliam
• Bad Dreams, by Kim Newman
• Angels of Music, by Kim Newman

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Mister Babadook
As mentioned in this episode, Jen’s copy of the crowdfunded prop replica/movie tie-in book from The Babadook has finally arrived! Here are some pictures of just how gorgeous it is. Click to embiggen:

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“Let’s make this bullshit happen!”

” …. Is that going to be our new motto from now on? Actually, that might look good on stickers, now that I think about it.”

So hey, check us out! Fifty episodes! That’s kind of a lot! And to celebrate, we are counting down the TOP FIFTY HORROR MOVIES OF ALL TIME!

Okay, well, no. We’re not going to pretend that we’re being at all objective. What we’re actually doing is our Our Top Fifty Favorite Horror Movies! You’re actually getting more than fifty, because Jennifer and Michael have each brought their own lists, so listen in as they compare the movies they love the most. (Presented in chronological order, so as not to descend into complete chaos.) Just in time for you to figure out what you want to watch for Halloween!

All this and more, as Jen tells us about a recent unpleasant incident in a movie theater, a documentary on the murder of Kitty Genovese, and completely spoils the ending of “The Changeling!”

We also talk about movies we’ve seen recently, including Blair Witch. If you just want to skip directly ahead to the Top Fifty goodness, you will find it at the 27-minutes-and-15-seconds mark.

Hope you enjoy this one!

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Please rate our podcast on iTunes!

The more reviews and ratings we have, the easier it is for people to find us. If you’d like to hear another fifty episodes of Don’t Read the Latin and would like to help us reach more people, please click here to rate our podcast on iTunes and leave your comments. It will only take a few minutes out of your day, but your feedback can make a huge difference to us. Thanks for everything, you guys.

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Welcome back, sugar — won’t you set down for a spell? There you are, settle right in, bless your heart. Thank you so much for joining us for a little Southern hospitality as we sit by the fire and talk about Southern Horror!

We will also be talking about the related-but-slightly-separate Southern Gothic genre, which Tennessee Williams described as writing fiction that captures “an intuition, of an underlying dreadfulness in modern experience.” Which is something we can all relate to, don’t you think?

Join us as we break down our favorite horror films that take place deep in the American South, including some that could only tenuously be said to take place in the South, including one that we were just straight up completely wrong about. (Michael brings up The Others, which, in fact, takes place in freakin’ England. DRtL regrets the error.)

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Bonus Features

Jennifer talks about her subscription to Horror Block, Nerd Block’s horror box subscription that provides her with hand-selected toys, T-shirts, and more surprises every month. (We are not affiliated with this site — Jennifer is just a happy customer.) You can sign up for Horror Block here, if you are so inclined.

We mention “Mama,” the original short film that Guillermo del Toro helped turn into a . . . well, sadly-inferior feature film. But the original hasn’t lost any of its intensity. You can watch it here:

Michael makes fun of the “Look at me, I’m burning” line from Silent Hill, because — well, just watch:

Finally, courtesy of Jim Cartwright, we have this article that’s right up our allery: Report: Leading Cause Of Death Still Venturing Beyond The Pines.

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…. And once again after slightly too long a hiatus, we return once more with another episode of Don’t Read the Latin!

This time out, we’re talking about heroines in horror. Horror movies tend to have more female protagonists than practically any other genre, which is something we both love about them. At some point, we plan on having a Feminism in Horror episode where we’ll delve into why we think that is and examine just how horror treats its female characters. But for now, we just want to talk about some scream queens we’ve known and loved, from our favorite classic final girls all the way to, well, The Final Girls. Give it a listen, tell your friends, and as always, we look forward to your comments.

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Welcome to the latest, almost hilariously overdue episode of Don’t Read the Latin, with your hosts, shiftless ne’er-do-well Michael Montoure and Magical Girl Jennifer Lovely! I know we keep saying this, but we will, hell-or-high-water, be going back to our normal bi-weekly schedule following this, even if someone has to die. (Not one of us, ideally. It’ll be no one you know, don’t worry.)

This time out, grab your bell-bottoms and your disco shoes, because we’re going back to the 70’s! Even though the 70’s are not our favorite horror movie decade (that would be the 80’s), you could make a strong claim that it was the best, with a high number of standout classics. Give it a listen and let us know what you think.

Recommended! As far as new movies go, there are two we’ve seen lately that are both super, super-fun, and we highly suggest you give these two a watch ASAP: Tales of Halloween and The Final Girls. Four thumbs up. (That’s two from each of us.)

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You know what we’re talking about — you’re home for a sick day, or maybe you’ve just straight-up run out of fucks. In either case, it’s time to crash on the couch with a pint of ice cream. Or maybe not — maybe it’s just time to try to get something done around the house that you’ve been putting off, like tackling that mountain of laundry, and you just want a movie to put on that won’t demand your full attention.

However it goes, you reach for a comfort movie — something you’ve already seen a zillion times, but just don’t get tired of. The cinematic equivalent of comfort food. A big ol’ audio-visual bowl of macaroni and cheese. Maybe with the emphasis on “cheese.” (As such, this episode sometimes strays way, way far out of strict horror movie territory. We promise you’ll be entertained anyway.)

We are joined this time by the always-charming Jillian Venters, the Lady of the Manners herself, from Gothic Charm School!

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Hail to the King — namely, Stephen King, that household name of horror, the Maine Man himself! As any horror fan will tell you, Stephen King has had more than his fair share of movie adaptations, not all of them good. Well — maybe, most of them really not that good. But! We persevered here at DRtL, and dove right into our retrospective. We mostly remembered King’s films as being fairly light, fun, popcorn movies — but join us as we realize how wrong we were, and just how many of the genuinely horrifying aspects of human nature are lurking under the surface of King’s work, like a clown in a sewer.

Not to say we didn’t have fun with the topic. See for yourself. Or, I guess, hear for yourself!

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