The Curator of Schlock #358: Season of the Witch

11 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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Arrow Home Video, George A. Romero, Hungry Wives, Season of the Witch

The Curator of Schlock #358 by Jeff Shuster

Season of the Witch

Also known as Hungry Wives

I think my traveling kangaroo companion, Edwige, killed a Quebecer named Lickity Split in an illegal street fight. I collected my winnings and skedaddled before the cops showed up. Apparently, kangaroos punch really hard. I’m not heading back to that bar until the heat dies down.

This week’s Arrow Home Video is 1973’s Season of the Witch from director George Romero, of Night of the Living Dead fame. Apparently, the original distributer tried to sell the flick as a softcore porno called Hungry Wives.

The film never really found an audience and didn’t gain any attention until Dawn of the Dead became a hit. Hungry Wives was then triumphantly rereleased under the title Season of the Witch.

You could file this movie under the dissatisfied-housewife-turns-to-the-occult-to-spice-things-up-in-her-life genre. The housewife in this movie is named Joan Mitchell (Jan White) and she is 39 years-old. She has a free spirited daughter named Nikki (Joedda McClain) and a workaholic husband named Jack (Bill Thunhurst).

Joan is plagued by bad dreams usually revolving around her being locked in a dog cage by her husband or, more disturbingly, being given a sales pitch on the wonders of suburban life by her husband. Making matters worse, she regularly sees a psychiatrist who can’t distinguish shit from Shinola. And worse still, she’s joined by an insufferable gaggle of the other housewives and weekend parties with Mad Libs games. If I were her, I’d be bereft, too.

While talking to her friends, Joan hears about a new neighbor rumored to be a witch, a practitioner of the forbidden art of spells and magic. Apparently, this was a trend in the late 1960s America, according to the commentary by Travis Crawford on this superb Arrow Home Video release. Joan and her friend Shirley (Anne Muffley) visit this neighbor and Joan receives a beginners guide to witchcraft book. The two of them go back to Joan’s house where they run into her daughter and this obnoxious college professor she’s dating named Gregg. You get the whole Silent Generation versus Baby Boomer showdown between Joan and Gregg when he plays some head games with her friend Shirley. On the ride back to Shirley’s house, Joan has to listen to Shirley complaining about how she’s old and over the hill and that Joan will be there soon enough.

Joan returns home earlier that she should have because she overhears Nikki and Gregg having sex. When her daughter realizes she’s home, she storms off and moves out the next day without telling anyone. Joan’s husband slaps her around for not doing anything. The police get involved, but no one knows where Nikki is. I think it’s around this point that Joan goes all in on the witchcraft stuff, gathering up occult items and casting spells. She casts a spell on Gregg so that they can have an affair. All is going well, but then Joan starts having vivid nightmares about a demon masked stranger trying to break into her house. She then gets the bright idea of trying to conjure something. I won’t spoil the rest, but this is an interesting lost movie of George Romero’s.

Check it out.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, and episode 450) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #357: J. D.’s Revenge

04 Friday Jun 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #357 by Jeff Shuster

J. D.’s Revenge

Time for another month of devil movies.

So I’ve set up the match between Edwige, my traveling kangaroo companion, and a Quebecer nicknamed Lickity Spit. I’ve been promised safe passage into Canada if Edwige knocks this guy out and I’m putting my money on Edwige. Literally, I’ve placed what’s left of my savings on this match. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.

It’s Satan Month for this blog and I’ll be covering four films featuring the Prince of Lies or the closest equivalent. Tonight’s movie is 1976’s J.D.’s Revenge from director Arthur Marks. It’s a movie about ghostly possession. There are no bona fide demons in this movie, but we do get a fire and brimstone preacher ranting about Satan. Close enough.

The movie is about a college football player named Isaac Hendrix (Glynn Turman). Life is going well. He’s studying pre-law, has a job as a taxi driver, and a supportive wife named Christella (Joan Pringle). The two of them go out for a night of revelry with their friends which has them turn up at a stage show featuring hypnosis with audience participation. The hypnotist makes the participants think it’s really hot so they start to strip. Then the hypnotist tells them it’s really cold so they start to cover up. During this hypnosis, Isaac sees horrible visions of death and mutilation. The hypnotist snaps the participants awake, but Isaac is now possessed by the malevolent spirit of J.D. Walker, a hustler murdered in New Orleans back in the 1940s.

J. D. Walker’s ghost is on a mission to find his sister’s real murderer, after his sister’s vengeful husband mistook J. D. for the murderer and killed him (J. D.). Did you get all that? I was pretty confused from the get-go, but maybe that was the director’s intent. Anyway, Isaac acts stranger and stranger. He starts buying old clothes, straightens his hair, and experiences blackouts when he takes on the persona of J.D. Walker, hardened criminal and womanizer.

Seeking answers to what’s wrong with him, Isaac finds his way to a church run by the Reverend Elijah Bliss (Louis Gossett, Jr.), a prizefighter turned preacher. Reverend Bliss goes on about how we have to fight our inner demons and keep Satan from entering our house. Elijah’s brother, Theotis (Fred Pinkard), doesn’t like the looks of Isaac, but Elijah’s daughter, Roberta (Alice Jubert), is drawn to him. J.D.’s possession of Isaac takes greater and greater control of him. He wreaks havoc all over town before a final confrontation with his killer. Will J.D.’s soul be put at peace and his killer brought to justice? You’ll just have to watch. This a creepy little horror movie with a great dual performance by Glynn Turman.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #114: Highway Legends

17 Wednesday Mar 2021

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #114 by Drew Barth

Highway Legends

I love legends—stories we tell about a location, leftover warnings about the dangers of certain roads and houses at night, and the spooks and ghouls that inhabit those spaces long after their welcome. Grant Morrison, Alex Child, Naomi Fanquiz, and Tamara Bonvillain stitch together those old legends with other horrors that hop in the shadows in Proctor Valley Road.

Cousins August and Rylee are joined by friends Cora and Jennie in a quest to save up enough money for a Janis Joplin concert in Chula Vista in 1970. The friends steal and perform grunt work before the realization that cashing in on local legends may be their best option. After bringing three guys to Proctor Valley Road in their VW Bus, they recount the legends and haunts of the road.

Then the monsters arrive.

This is slow and subtle work with the kind of creeping horror that sticks with you long after the first issue closes. It’s also another series from Morrison at Boom! that foregoes some of their more psychedelically violent visions seen in series like Nameless and Happy! in the past.

While Morrison and Child’s script sings with spooks, Franquiz’s art grounds the series in its time and place—not to mention Bonvillain’s colors that establish her as one of the best and hardest working colorists in the industry next to Matt Wilson and Jordie Bellaire. Throughout this first issue, the time and timbre of the story are set by Franquiz’s paneling—you can feel the spatial awareness of each page and how those page turns become scene changes. Those transitions let the slow, creeping horror gain its foothold as the eyes never panel-jump to spoil what’s coming up. Coupled with character details as rich as their fine dialogue, this first issue is already one of the best of the year.

Proctor Valley Road likely would have been one of my favorite first issues this year even if it didn’t have the local lore that I love so much. A new Morrison story is always welcome, especially when it’s buttressed by creators like Child, Franquiz, and Bonvillain.

Get excited. Get on the road.

Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #112: I’m Talking About Isolation

03 Wednesday Mar 2021

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #112: I’m Talking About Isolation

If you listen closely to the wind, you can hear me once again espousing the tenets of a good first issue: strong world-building, plot introduction, character establishment, etc. Luckily, Vault Comics has a new series that deals with the dead in a way I’ve never seen before as Paul Allor and Paul Tucker bring us Hollow Heart.

A part of Vault’s Nightfall horror imprint, Hollow Heart has that distinct ghoulishness to it from the first page. We’re met with El, a man who is nothing more than organs and bones inside a robotic suit—already bringing to mind the Spooky Space Kook of Scooby-Doo fame but with a bit more terror. El is trapped. From being stuck inside the suit to being tethered to a research facility, El has very few options outside of trying to escape from said facility to break his tether and die. It isn’t until a new mechanic comes to work on his suit, Mateo, that El experiences some degree of kindness and respect. He also experiences for the first time an inkling of hope as Mateo proposes to cut El’s tether in such a way where he can finally live the rest of his life somewhere else. Even if that is still as some organs inside a robosuit.

Allor and Tucker’s story is centered on isolation and loneliness. El himself has been cut off from his own humanity—for how long we don’t know. No one in his facility wants anything to do with him as, to them, he has become a nuisance. It isn’t until Mateo makes a passing comment that he can respect El’s silence that El is able to open up and form this singular bond. But still. He’s trapped in the confines of his suit—permanently an other by merit of barely looking human. Mateo himself can reciprocate the isolation as he is also ostracized within the facility—even a man he had dated in the past, who we can see hunting El in the first page—will barely acknowledge him. El and Mateo’s bond reflects their own loneliness in one another.

There are a lot of places horror comics can go as a genre. Hollow Heart does so much to show its essential humanity and its loneliness just in the first issue. Even with the grotesquery of El’s organs on display, we still want better for him and we want to see Mateo help out someone who has become so isolated. It’s a love story at its core and it’s one that screams out for help to those who will listen.

Get excited. Get together.

Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

The Curator of Schlock #344: Evil Ed

26 Friday Feb 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #344 by Jeff Shuster

Evil Ed

This is a wet one, folks.

As I stated last week, Edwidge, my pet kangaroo, was tossed into a hutch filled with fine China by Wally the vampire. With Edwidge down for the count, I knew I was done for. Then I remembered a strategically placed bear trap above the fireplace right behind me. As Wally made his way toward me, fangs out, I grabbed the bear trap and brought it crashing down on his head. Wally screamed and screamed as Celestial and Jervis tried to pry it off of him. I knew this was the time for me to escape, but I never leave a kangaroo behind. Edwidge was coming to and I lifted her over my arms as I made my way out the front door into the cold night air.

This week’s Arrow Home Video release is 1995’s Evil Ed from director Anders Jacobsson. This is the Special Edition of the movie or the Special Ed-Edition. This is a Swedish movie dubbed in English and I find it odd that there is no Swedish language track on the Blu-ray, Still, the English dubbing has its own charm I suppose. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t detract from the movie because the whole affair is so bizarre regardless. Let me explain.

I previously mentioned that England had thrown many horror movies into the Video Nasty category, but other countries in Europe also had it in for these kinds of movie censorship laws. Apparently, the Cinemabureau of Sweden was one of the worst film censoring bodies in the world until it was finally dismantled in 2011. Naturally, gory horror movies must have been at the top of the list which brings us to Evil Ed.

The movie begins with a film editor finally losing his mind from editing and censoring too many gory horror movies. He sticks a grenade in his mouth and pulls the pin, blowing his head apart in front of a producer named Sam Campbell (Olaf Rhodin) who screams, “You’re fired!” at the headless corpse. This brings us to Ed (Johan Rudebeck), a mild mannered editor of Swedish indie dramas. He gets transferred to the Splatter & Gore department at the orders of Sam Campbell and is now assigned the editing duties of Lose Limbs 1 through 8. The Loose Limbs series is about a maniac that likes to cut people up, piece by piece. Sam gives Ed the keys to his own house, says he’s set up an editing station there since they’re short on space at the studio.

After cutting so much bloody footage out of these slasher movies, Ed begins to hallucinate. He starts cutting a loaf of bread only to see the loaf replaced by a severed arm. He then opens the refrigerator only to be greeted by a what appears to be a goblin swigging cans of beer. The goblin then flips him the bird, calls Ed a Nazi, and throws a tomato at his face. Sam Campbell stops by the house to inspect the final cuts of Loose Limbs and he chides Ed for removing the “beaver rape” scene. Ed says that scene was in bad taste, but Sam argues that there was no nudity in that scene therefor it doesn’t violate the censorship laws. Soon after, Ed is chased through the house by a demon with horns and when he’s cornered, he gets his courage up and snaps the demon’s neck, only to then realize the demon was Sam after all. He cuts up Sam’s body and throws it in the trash and if you think that’s the last person Sam will mutilate, you’re in for a treat as he mutilates several more.

I enjoyed Evil Ed. It reminded me of a send up of Giallo movies I saw called The Editor. Both are comedies, both feature film editors as their main characters, and both feature plenty of splatter. The Arrow Blu-ray has loads of special features and a nice transfer. It’s interesting. I don’t think of the 90s as a boom time for horror movies, but Evil Ed is worth your time if you laugh at gallows humor.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #343: The Mutilator

19 Friday Feb 2021

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Arrow Films, The Mutilator

The Curator of Schlock #343 by Jeff Shuster

The Mutilator

Also known as Fall Break.

Where did I leave off last week? Oh, yes. I was about to be eaten by Wally the vampire when in busts Edwidge the kangaroo, ready to pounce. Wally arches his back and hisses at her like a wild cat, but that doesn’t faze Edwidge as she pummels Wally with repeated stomach jabs and right hooks. Just as she’s ready do what looked a tiger uppercut, Wally grabs her by the tail and starts swinging and swinging and when Wally finally lets go, Edwidge goes flying into a hutch filled with china. Plates and tea cups smash on the floor and poor Edwidge is down for the count. Wally slaps his hands together and I realize I am once again a dead man.

This week’s Arrow home video release is 1984’s The Mutilator from directors Buddy Cooper and John S. Douglass.The movie’s original title was Fall Break, most likely to capitalize on the slasher tradition of naming movies after famous days like News Year’s Evil or My Bloody Valentine. The problem is fall break isn’t a thing. I never enjoyed a fall break while I was in college. I got spring breaks (many of which I spent catching up on term papers). Mutilator is a better title. It reminds brings to mind a killer that mutilates bodies which is exactly what I want to see in this kind of movie.

The movie begins with a young boy named Ed cleaning his father’s rifles for his birthday while his mom is preparing the birthday cake. Ed accidentally fires off a round, killing his mom in the process. Needless to say when his father arrives home to find a dead wife at the hands of his son instead of a fun birthday celebration, he kind of loses it a little. We know this because he drags her body to the living room, props it up, and pours her a glass of Scotch.

Fast forward about ten years later and Ed (Matt Mitler) is a happy college student, trying to move on from his past. Ed’s father has a beachfront condominium in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, and Ed has to prep it for the winter as his dad is an insane drunkard and can’t manage it himself. Ed’s college friend go with so they can party hearty. Naturally, there’s a mutilator on the island ready to pick them off one by one.

The first victims are Lisa (Francis Raines) and Mike (Morey Lampley) who decide to go skinny dipping in an abandoned swimming pool. The first murder is Lisa, drowned by the Mutilator. I have to say that’s rather disappointing. When I spend my limited time watching a movie called The Mutilator, I expect to see some mutilation. Drowning is not mutilation! Fortunately, Mike goes looking for Lisa only to encounter the Mutilator waiting for him with a chainsaw. And he cuts Mike up real good. You can see the guts and everything!

Wait! What am I talking about? This is a sick movie and you’re sick individual for liking such filth! Why couldn’t I have covered a more wholesome movie like Paddington or Paddington 2? We get to see other gruesome murders. The local sheriff gets cleaved in the neck before getting decapitated. The Mutilator then goes on to stab the funny friend, Ralph, with a pitchfork. Later, our slasher guts Ralph’s girlfriend, Sue, like a fish.

This leaves Ed and his girlfriend, Pam (Ruth Martinez), to escape the insane clutches of the Mutilator. Are you ready for the shocking twist? Turns out the Mutilator is none other than Ed’s dad, driven mad by coming home to his dead wife on his birthday so many years ago. I bet you didn’t see that one coming. The Arrow Blu-ray comes with a bevy of special features including a making of documentary where we learn that the producer had enough money in the early 80s to make a slasher movie or buy a vineyard in France.

He now thinks the vineyard in France would have been a better investment.

Photo by Leslie Salas

The Curator of Schlock #342: The Slayer

12 Friday Feb 2021

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The Curator of Schlock #342 by Jeff Shuster

The Slayer

I don’t want to meet the slayer.

I was about to be a late night snack for a group of hungry vampires led by their leader, a southern gentleman named Wally. I might have soiled myself and sobbed uncontrollably after he bared his fangs, but that’s neither here nor there. I thought I was done for when through the parlor window bursts Edwidge, my pet kangaroo, decked out American flag boxing shorts and sporting cherry red boxing gloves. Edwidge was there to kick ass and eat Fruit Roll-Ups, and I was all out of Fruit Roll-Ups…

Tonight’s Arrow Films selection is 1982’s The Slayer from director J.S. Cardone. This one another one of those movies that got classified as a “video nasty” over there in Great Britain in the early 1980s. So did last week’s movie, Madhouse,for that matter. Any mom and pop rental store caught renting one of these sorted movies could end with criminal charges filed their way, sometimes even leading to jail time. Now we can enjoy these video nasties in pristine high definition picture. Can you enjoy The Paper Chase in pristine high definition? I don’t think so.

So The Slayer begins with an artist named Kay (Sarah Kendall) having a bizarre nightmare where some beast claws at her face. Nightmares have plagued Kay since she was a little girl. Kay’s husband, David (Alan McRae), her brother Eric (Frederick Flynn) , and his wife, Brooke (Carol Kottonbrook) are all planning a vacation. Where does this vacation take place? On an isolated and abandoned island off the coast of Georgia. And there’s a nasty storm headed that way. This is a bad idea.

The four of them are flown to the island by a creeper named Marsh (Michael Holmes) who warns them about the impending storm. Eric scoffs and says they’ll take their chances. Why not stay on the island? Plenty of surf, sun, and sand. Eric is excited about getting some early morning fishing in. The fridge is stocked with food, wine, and champagne. Good times. If only there wasn’t all that murder.

There’s someone or something on that island that wants to murder people. First up is David. While prowling about the house late at night during an intense rainstorm. David gets nearly decapitated by someone or something slamming a couple trap doors through his head. Yeah, this is a bizarre one to describe. Let’s just say he died from loss of blood through a huge gaping wound in his neck. Then the beast or psychopath dragged his body away.

Kay wakes up to find David sleeping next to her. She kisses him on the mouth only to soon realize that he’s nothing more than a severed head. She then wakes up again from what was clearly a nightmare, but David has gone missing and Eric and Brooke won’t take any of this seriously. After yelling “David” for about five hours, the three of them find David’s corpse, sans head, in an abandoned theater.

Brooke puts a bunch of sleeping medicine in Kay’s coffee knocking her out cold. So Kay sleeps through the murders of Brooke and Eric. Brooke gets stabbed through her back with a pitchfork. Eric’s death is a bit more complicated. He gets hooked by a fishing line coming from the ocean and is slowly dragged into the waves never to be seen again. That leaves Kay to fend off whatever is lurking on the island. They should have taken that trip to Dollywood instead.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

The Curator of Schlock #341: Madhouse

05 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #341 by Jeff Shuster

Madhouse

It’s February. I’m watching slasher movies.

I escaped a vampire house and lived to tell the tale. Here’s the story: I gave three copies of my spec screenplay called The Taming of the Screw, a kind of My Dinner With Andre, but with vampires. Wally, Celestial, and Jervis read over the pages with rapt attention. Halfway through reading, Wally raises his head and says, “I think you’ve written yourself into a corner.”

That angered me. I then read a magic spell that I translated from ancient Aramaic, to send all vampires within a five mile radius straight to hell. The lights flickered, and then a distant toilet flushed.

Wally told me the spell would have worked if I had read it in the original Aramaic. Then he bared his fangs. …

For the rest of 2021, I’ve decided to venture into the world Arrow Home Video, once described as “the Criterion Collection of shitty movies.” This week’s Blu-ray is 1981’s Madhouse from director Ovidio G. Assonitis. Yes, that is really his name. This odd, Italian-made slasher movie made for American audiences tried to capitalize on the early 1980s slasher movie craze. Oh, and it looks like Assonitis directed Beyond the Door, one of my earliest reviews (The Curator of Schlock #9). The good old days before world- wide pandemics and HBO Max.

Madhouse begins with a rather creepy credit sequence that features an unsettling rendition of “Rock-a-bye Baby” being sung by a man who isn’t really committed to the tune. The camera slowly crawls forward until we make out a little girl bashing in the face of her twin sister sitting in a rocking chair.

Fade to black. Begin movie.

Julia Sullivan (Trish Everly) is a teacher for children who are hearing impaired. Julia has a deep, dark secret. She has a psychotic twin named Mary (Allison Biggers) who currently resides in a mental hospital. At the behest of her Uncle James (Dennis Robertson), a Catholic priest, Julia visits Mary in the hospital.

Father James warns Julia that her sister is now a deformed shell of her former self and that her appearance might appear unsettling, because it most certainly is. Mary grabs Julia’s arms and vows to make her suffer as she has suffered. Turns out when Julia was little, Mary would torture her on their birthday by burning her arm with matchsticks. Mary also had a pet Rottweiler that she’d send into Julia’s room late at night while she was trying to sleep. Mary is bad people.

Mary escapes from the hospital, and Julia freaks out. Her doctor boyfriend, Sam (Michael Macrae), and Father James tell her there’s nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, there’s a nasty Rottweiler on the loose in Savannah attacking and killing unsuspecting people like Julia’s favorite student. Sam has to go to San Francisco for a medical conference leaving Julia all alone on her birthday in her creepy apartment building. But that’s okay. Father James is there to throw her a splendid birthday party. What could possibly go wrong? Did I mention that Uncle James is off his rocker?

Arrow Video delivers Madhouseon video with a splendid transfer and some neat extras. You get an interview with the director, Ovidio G. Assonitis, and an audio commentary track with the hosts of The Hysteria Continues. Worth checking out if you’re a horror collector.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #101: Winter’s Ghouls

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #101 by Drew Barth

Winter’s Ghouls

One of my favorite things about the holiday season is spooks. We’re only a month and a half removed from Halloween and hauntings come back, hoisted by seasonal depression. But then that’s where the good comics come in. In the past couple weeks, we’ve had two new series premiere that deal with monsters and ghosts in two distinct ways that I haven’t seen yet: I Walk with Monsters by Paul Cornell, Sally Cantirino, Dearbhla Kelly, and Andworld Design and Home Sick Pilots by Dan Watters, Caspar Wijngaard, and Aditya Bidikar. Both are steeped in mood and mystery, but handle their supernatural elements in ways that are wholly original.

As these are both the first issues of their respective series, I Walk with Monsters and Home Sick Pilots do a laundry list of things well: create an instant mood and atmosphere; set a mystery within the first couple pages; solidly establish their main character with a couple strong lines; and create distinct visual motifs throughout (Cantirino and Kelly’s fingerprints and Wijngaard’s pops of neon pink). But what are these stories? I Walk with Monsters deals with two people, Jacey and David, as they kill serial killers and Jacey looks for her disappeared brother. Home Sick Pilotsis about Ami and her titular band as they contemplate playing a punk show in a haunted house. The former deals with monsters and the latter brings in actual ghosts that trap people for weeks in the house. So, you know, all the good and spooky fun we expect at the end of the year.

From an aesthetic standpoint, these series are quite different. I Walk with Monsters is contemporary and autumnal in its colors.Home Sick Pilots is nineties and neon all the way through. But what brings these series together is how both deal with the idea of a haunting. Home Sick Pilots deals a little more literally with the haunted house and the haunted objects that have been pilfered from it. I Walk with Monsters deals in a different way. Jacey and David are both haunted—one by the memory of The Important Man that took her brother and the other by a beast that lives within him. But what both of these stories do so well is how they treat the haunting. A haunted house is a haunted house, but a haunted house that traps people within it to bring back all of its lost objects? A missing brother is one thing, but the memories of your father gladly giving your brother away to a faceless man at a carnival? It’s what I mean by establishing mysteries early—Watters and Cornell plot comics like no other.

There’s an Ebenezer Instinct within me that craves ghoulish stories at the end of the year. Maybe it’s the seasonal depression. Maybe it’s revenge for Christmas decorations going up in mid-September. Either way, having comics like I Walk with Monsters and Home Sick Pilots to curl up with just makes the holidays all the more enjoyable.

Get excited. Get spooky around the Christmas tree.

Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 444: TDO vs. The Curator of Schlock #4

31 Saturday Oct 2020

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Episode 444 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Photo by Leslie Salas

On this week’s show, Jeff Shuster and I discuss Jordan Peele’s Us, and a lot of other things, too.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.
Check out Jeff’s column, The Curator of Schlock.
Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.