Movie Oubliette

In this Patrons' choice episode, we're exposing ourselves to Cure (1997) – the film that announced Kiyoshi Kurosawa as one of the most unsettling voices in modern horror. Set in Tokyo at the tail end of Japan's "lost decade", it follows weary detective Takabe (Kōji Yakusho) as he investigates a string of seemingly connected string of murders... with apparently different perpetrators. Victims keep turning up with the same grotesque X carved into their necks, and the killers – usually found standing nearby in a daze –have absolutely no idea why they did it. Just when things seem bleak enough, Takabe encounters a mysterious drifter, Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) – a soft-spoken young man who asks everyone the same simple question: Who are you? Should this early progenitor of the "J-horror" phenomenon be released from the oubliette… or would it be safer if we all forgot we ever saw it? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

By popular demand, we're celebrating the release of Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! by taking a look back at Franc Roddam's The Bride (1985). This mid-80s take on Mary Shelley’s mythic creation project tellingly got the budget of a period romance, but likely only because it had a new romantic pop star in the lead role and the production design of an Adam Ant music video. The result is a Gothic fable where baroque laboratories collide with heartfelt journeys toward independence. The monster – dubbed Viktor by his diminutive travelling companion, Rinaldo (David Rappaport) – is played by Clancy Brown, presumably because he strayed from casting sessions for Highlander.Flashdance's Jennifer Beals’ Eva reinvents the notion of “the bride”: she’s bright, terrified of cats, and slightly too lucid for a world full of overlong candlelit discussions about autonomy and creation. Sting’s Baron Frankenstein embodies euro-aristocratic obsession with a bemused smirk, and spends most of his time leaning on something while holding a book.Should this experiment in misunderstood Gothic romance finally earn its freedom? Or is it a well-dressed atrocity that should be hurled off the nearest tower? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our second film for this year will also be our second dip of the toe into the filmography of Lucio Fulci (see episode 158 for our take on Conquest, his bonkers fantasy adventure, with our special guest Vincenzo Natali).Don’t Torture a Duckling (Non si sevizia un paperino, 1972) is remembered as one of the most unsettling and thematically ambitious entries in the Italian giallo cycle. Its premise is deceptively simple: a series of brutal child murders shatters a seemingly idyllic community, prompting an investigation led by journalist Andrea Martelli (Tomas Milian) and local police. Suspicion falls quickly – and tellingly – on society’s outsiders: a reclusive “witch” (Florinda Bolkan), a mentally vulnerable man, and anyone who doesn't conform to the village’s rigid moral order. As the mystery unfolds, the film reveals a gallery of compromised adults whose piety and respectability mask repression, misogyny, and latent violence.Should Don’t Torture a Duckling be released from the oubliette and re-examined like an uncomfortable truth finally brought to light, or left buried with Maciara's baby? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy holidays! Our festive special this year focuses on The Curse of the Cat People (1944), directed by Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise (of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Haunting fame), and produced by Val Lewton for RKO – a sequel that daringly abandons the horror conventions of its predecessor in favour of an atmospheric, psychological fairy-tale. The story follows young Amy Reed (Ann Carter), the sensitive and lonely daughter of Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) and Alice (Jane Randolph), whose imaginary friend manifests in the form of the serene and spectral Irena (Simone Simon), the tragic figure from Cat People (1942). With its expressionistic visuals, gentle pacing, and Lewton’s characteristically suggestive storytelling, should this film finally be released from the Movie Oubliette to flourish like Amy finding a true festive friend, or left to linger in the shadows like the fading spirits of Christmas past? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the last of our series of early previews of forthcoming films, gleaned from Conrad's time at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) under the wing of Toronto native and film critic extraordinaire, Joe Lipsett, we're looking at two gold-and-turquoise whimsical fantasies: Dust Bunny and Eternal Return.The former is Hannibal and Pushing Daisies showrunner Bryan Fuller's directorial debut, introducing Sophie Sloane as a young girl who recruits the assassin who lives next door (Mads Mikkelsen) to slay the monster that lives under her bed. Cue a delightfully colourful and frequently absurd fairytale that also features fun supporting turns from Sigourney Weaver as Mikkelsen's handler and David Dastmalchian as a rival assassin. It's an odd blend of ingredients, but does it work?Eternal Return is writer-director Yaniv Raz's attempt to create a whimsical romantic time travel fantasy, starring Naomi Scott as a broken-hearted twenty-something and Kit Harington as the eccentric map shop owner who believes he can navigate her back to emotionally significant moments in her life... and possibly change them. Also featuring Simon Callow as an elderly friend who also narrates in his sonorous tones, and set in a London that wouldn't look out of place in a Potter adaptation, does this romantic confection sweep Conrad off his feet?Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're back with our penultimate pair of exciting early previews of forthcoming attractions, gleaned from Conrad's time with Joe Lipsett at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). This time, the connection between them is simpler: they both feature one of Conrad's favourite actors, 1917's George Mackay.The first, & Sons, stars Bill Nighy as a reclusive famous novelist who gathers his two estranged sons, Richard (Johnny Flynn) and Jamie (you guessed it, George Mackay), for an important announcement about their half-brother, Andy (Noah Jupe)... with a fantastical twist. This slow burn family drama with a sci-fi/fantasy element is an adapted from a novel by David Gilbert, directed by Pablo Trapero.Perhaps more hotly anticipated is the new film from Cornish 16-mm phenomenon Mark Jenkins, director of Bait and Enys Men. Rose of Nevada features Mackay in a leading role alongside Masters of the Air's Callum Turner, as two men who unwisely sign up to work on a fishing boat that mysteriously drifted back into the docks – sans crew – after disappearing decades before. What follows is a voyage into an uncanny time-travel purgatory... but did it work? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seventh Son (2014), an overcooked fantasy-adventure directed by Sergei Bodrov and adapted loosely from Joseph Delaney’s 'The Spook’s Apprentice', was a troubled Universal–Legendary Pictures co-production whose delays, rewrites, and ballooning budget became as notorious as the film itself. Set in a vaguely medieval landscape of witches, knights, and prophetic farm boys, it stars Jeff Bridges (yes, it's a JB double bill on Movie Oubliette!) gargling his way through a swamp of dialogue, Julianne Moore relishing her turn as an evil sorceress, and Ben Barnes looking perpetually bewildered as the titular seventh son of a seventh son. Game of Thrones heartthrob Kit Harington and Tomb Raider Alicia Vikander are also in the movie, apparently. Should this magical relic be sprung from the oubliette or should it be thrown off a cliff and left for dead? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our TIFF coverage continues with two horror-inflected films centring indigenous characters, and using hauntings as a method of exploring generational and personal trauma. In Taratoa Stappard's Mārama, a Māori woman travels from freshly colonised New Zealand to a creepily gothic English manor in the Yorkshire moors to uncover secrets about her family's past. Meanwhile, Bretten Hannam's At the Place of Ghosts (Sk+te'kmujue'katik) follows two estranged Mi’kmaw brothers' quest into the Canadian woods to avenge spirits that haunt them from their childhood.Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our second preview of coming attractions from TIFF 2025 focuses on Genki Kawamura's psychological horror Exit 8, in which a commuter finds himself struggling to escape a seemingly endless loop of subway passages. Conrad joined Joe Lipsett, friend of the pod and co-host of the excellent Horror Queers podcast, in Toronto to discuss this liminal, time-loop terror, based on a popular video game.Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joe Lipsett joings us to celebrate the imminent release of Tron: Ares by taking a look back at the original Tron (1982), a sci-fi action adventure arguably remembered best for its groundbreaking visuals and concepts rather than its storytelling and characters. Starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan and David Warner, the film takes us inside an alternate reality within the rapidly emerging and little understood digital domain – which seems quaint in retrospect – to tell a tale of a society under threat of subjugation by an all-powerful and unchecked AI – which seems anything but quaint in our current context! But should this one be remastered in neon HDR 4K (hint: it already has been) and worshipped, or should it be de-rezzed and deleted? Find out!Check out our guest Joe Lipsett on Instagram, Horror Queers and The Queer Gaze.Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John D. Hancock’s Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) is a moody, low-budget psychological horror shot in Connecticut, emerging at the uneasy dawn of the 1970s when American genre cinema was shifting toward ambiguity and dread rather than monsters and gore. Starring Zohra Lampert as the fragile Jessica, supported by Barton Heyman and Mariclare Costello, the film follows a small group retreating to a rural farmhouse where whispers of the past mingle with Jessica’s precarious mental state. Should this eerie curio languish in obscurity like a ghost no one believes in, or should it be acknowledged as a living, breathing classic of psychological horror?Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Serge Bodnarchuk of Cold Crash Pictures joins Conrad to take on guest co-hosting duties while Dan goes on vacation – ironically, when we pull an Australian 80s sci-fi movie out of the Patreons' Choice nominations! It's another day, another ridiculous sci-fi bra for Carrie Fisher. The Time Guardian (1987) is an Ozploitation oddity directed by Mad Max (aka The Road Warrior) co-writer Brian Hannant, featuring a giant time-travelling dome, 'hoards' of menacing cyborgs, and a modern-day geologist trying to help a soldier from the future protect humanity's last hope. It's been largely overlooked and often difficult to find since its release. Even witty memoirist Carrie Fisher failed to mention it in her self-deprecating autobiographies. Should it be preserved for the ages in a time dome, or should it be blissfully forgotten? Find out!Support us on Patreon to nominate films for us to cover, access exclusive bonus content, and vote on the final verdict!Rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice, and tell a friend about us.Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.