Tag Archives: thriller

242 – Twisted Dreams: The Beauty of B-Movies With Joe Bob Briggs

To those of us who are crazy about horror movies, there’s One Redneck To Rule Them All and that’s the host of MonsterVision, Joe Bob Briggs. To millions of impressionable teens, he was the voice who was able to find the best in cheesy horror movies. With his beer-drinkin’, nude scene-loving, onscreen violence-adorin’ attitude, he was the horror host that we all looked up to. A comic (real name John Bloom) who turned an encyclopedic knowledge of low-budget horror and sci-fi film into a full-time Hollywood job of commenting and writing about movies, and we couldn’t get enough.

Now it took me halfway through film school to get this, but the thing about movie lovers is that we love movies.

That’s a simple and seemingly obvious statement, but I want to clarify it because it means something. There are film snobs who can talk about the French New Wave and The Hollywood Renaissance and will pontificate on the power of Robert Bresson and Terence Malick and they are correct. Those movies are fantastic and while they take a cultured palate to appreciate, there is a passion that makes them rich and deserving of appreciation.

And if you were a film geek like me, you watched At The Movies with Siskel & Ebert, paid attention to the Academy Awards (before they gave a damn about “popular” films), and listened to your local overcompensating small town movie critic. We knew that there were “great films” and then we knew there were the movies that the rest of us watched for fun.

So there were brilliant and artistic films out there that could stir the cultured soul…

…and then there’s the lowest common denominator. Movies with simple plots that feature cheap grossout special effects to shock you, naked girls to tittilate you, and simple plots to so that even the lowest forehead Neanderthals among us can keep up. Guilty pleasures are what we call them. But why feel guilty?

Joe Bob Briggs is the guy that made those guilty pleasures not just okay, but something to be proud of. He could find ways to appreciate films made with affection and love, even if the budget is minimal, and even if they’re just about monsters killing teenagers. He knew when to call a movie out when they were lazy, but he knew how to craft film appreciation for the movies that the other critics left behind.

We met up in Austin during SXSW 2019 and discussed some of his favorite movies, his new show on Shudder, and even the movies that he’s never been able to get for his drive-in but wishes he could. Now, it’s a live interview in the restaurant in a crowded hotel where we were passing the microphone back and forth, so the audio isn’t like we’re at home in the studio, so please keep that in mind when you take a listen.

Me and Joe Bob Briggs at SXSW 2019

According to Joe Bob Briggs, there are three B’s every good B-movie needs:

  • Blood
  • Breasts
  • Beasts

And that sounds to me like a recipe for the kind of film that I want to watch. His new series is called The Last Drive-In and you can stream the show on the online service, Shudder. It’s got everything from Tourist Trap to Re-Animator and features the directorial talents of genre favorites like Clive Barker and (UW-Madison alumni) Stuart Gordon. When Shudder decided to run a horror movie marathon with Joe Bob in July of 2018 it got so much traffic that it broke downt he service for them, which some said was a sign of the sheer popularity of low budget horror presented by people who love it, but as Joe Bob said, “We worked hard on something and wanted people to actually see it!” So, they decided to bring it back as a full Shudder series.

While Joe Bob played to a rapturous and packed house in Austin during SXSW 2019, he’s also going to be appearing in Milwaukee for the Twisted Dreams Film Festival on April 6th. I also got a chance to talk to Chris House and Stephen Milek from the Twisted Dreams festival where Joe Bob will be doing his show How Rednecks Saved Hollywood where he shows hundreds of clips in a live show about how Tinseltown has relied on the same redneck stereotype to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in box office receipts.

And that Twisted Dreams Festival is something you’re not going to want to miss if you’re in the Midwest. From The Lake Michigan Monster to The Amazon Hotbox, Chris and Stephen tell us about the horror and exploitation movies made with love that are going to be showing at the festival. So not only do you get a chance to watch Joe Bob Briggs do his show live, you can support dozens of independent and Midwestern filmmakers.

Click Here For Tickets

Twisted Dreams is Milwaukee’s Horror Film Festival and Chris and Stephen tell me their original favorite gnere movies and what got them hooked on horror films, they also lay out some of the highlights of the film festival for not only splatter and scary movie fans, but for aspiring filmmakers as well. And c’mon, they’re giving a special achievement award to American Movie‘s inspirational Mark Borchardt (the man behind Coven!) so you know it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Me, my sister Allison Jornlin, and Mark Borchardt

Chris House is also a ghost hunter with the Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee so you know that we have to talk a little bit on what film influenced his journey to study the other side and what films best represent paranormal investigation (and of course I asked Joe Bob if he’s ever seen a ghost himself!)

Twisted Dreams Film Festival runs April 4th through 7th at the Times Cinema in Milwaukee. Click here to learn more and get tickets to this awesome event!

For the song this week, we were inspired by Joe Bob’s Three B’s. After all, when it comes to a horror film what else do you need? Here’s our latest track inspired by Joe Bob himself, “Blood, Breasts, and Beasts”!

There’s a creature in the wilderness
there’s a babysitter in a skintight dress
pretty soon they’re gonna meet and it won’t be pretty

I’m not worried about the misc en scene
of horny adolescents
All I know is someone is gonna die tonight.

Monsters in rubber suits
Killers in hot pursuit
Gut-wrenching violence
and a gruesome murder scene
You know I love that
gratuitous nudity
So give me
Blood
Breasts
and Beasts

There’s something underneath the floor,
There’s a sadist behind the closet door,
waiting for that couple to get it on.

I’m not worried about the misc en scene,
my interest is the prurient,
All I know is someone is gonna die tonight.

Monsters in rubber suits
Killers in hot pursuit
Gut-wrenching violence
and a gruesome murder scene
You know I love that
gratuitous nudity
So give me
Blood
Breasts
and Beasts

gimme blood
the stain’s getting redder
gimme breasts
the faker the better
gimme beasts
attacking some scream queens

gimme blood
the floor’s getting wetter
gimme breasts
the tighter the sweater
gimme beasts
to rip apart some teens

I want some…

Monsters in rubber suits
Killers in hot pursuit
Gut-wrenching violence
and a gruesome murder scene
You know I love that
gratuitous nudity
So give me
Blood
Breasts
and Beasts

86 – Convergence: Between Heaven and Hell with Writer/Director Drew Hall

First things first, our new release, American Monsters, is live and you can download the newest EP for free at http://www.sunspotuniverse.com – it’s three songs that were inspired by this podcast and we took them into the studio. You will love how these tracks turned out!

This episode features the writer and director of the film Convergence starring Clayne Crawford (from SundanceTV’s Rectify and who will be playing Mel Gibson’s role in the new Lethal Weapon reboot) and Ethan Embry (I loved him in That Thing You Do… but he was also zombie fodder in the latest season of The Walking Dead). Convergence, written and directed by Alabama-based filmmaker Drew Hall is a paranormal thriller in the Jacob’s Ladder vein.

Set in 1990s Atlanta (and you can tell that right away because of the Everclear and Toad The Wet Sprocket on the radio), a police detective gets caught in the explosion of an abortion clinic bombing by a religious extremist group and wakes up in a hospital caught in a nightmare scenario where he has to hunt down the leader of the extremist group who is causing mayhem all through the hospital.

In some more 90s awesomeness, the soundtrack was also partially composed by Helmet’s Page Hamilton. Betty was one of my favorite hard rock albums and Ben (the guitarist from Wendy and my band, Sunspot) used to jam out at rehearsal to “Unsung” in high school all the time.

So number one, is the movie any good? Yes. Convergence is a thoughtful horror film with some clever modern twists (the appearance of the Ghost Hunters-style paranormal investigation team). There’s a little bit of gore (my favorite is a scene that ahem… took the words right out of my mouth) and there’s some of the inescapability of dream-logic terror. One of the things I enjoyed most about it though was its treatment of religion.

Now I’m mostly used to seeing only a few kinds of religion in film:

1. The Catholic Church’s exorcists as wizards or priests as holy warriors in vampire movies.

Back when Peter Jackson was making horror films (but still usually about 25 minutes too long), his film Brain Dead has my personal favorite of the badass priest archetype (please do not watch this Youtube clip at work, it is NSFW all the way.)

2. Religious zealots as redneck murderers. Kevin Smith covered this one in Red State.

3. Faith-based films where atheists are engaging in a war on Christianity and God hands out miracles like mini Snickers on Trick or Treat night. Jennifer Garner went from The Invention Of Lying (Ricky Gervais’ love letter to atheism) to Miracles From Heaven, a new faith-based film where God basically saves her sick kid.

While these depictions of faith and religion are what we’re used to and the antagonist of Convergence sometimes veers into Red State territory, the nice thing about Convergence is that its themes of redemption and faith are given plenty of breathing room.

Now, to be fair, you’re not going to get Diary Of A Country Priestlevels of cinematic spiritual contemplation and some of the dialogue is a little too on the nose, but it’s nice that a horror movie with supernatural elements can feature spirituality upfront and center without sanitizing the religious elements or making everyone who has faith look crazy. It’s a refreshing change of pace.

Now, if you’d like to watch the film without any spoilers, then you can find links to download it here or you can grab it on Blu-Ray at your local Best Buy. Then come back and listen to the podcast!

In my conversation with Convergence auteur, Drew Hall, we go in deep on the influences behind the film. From the paranormal reality TV-influenced ghost-hunting team (called G*A*P*S*, ha!) to the real-life abortion clinic bombings of his youth to the details that he took directly from Dante’s epic 13th-century poem, Purgatorio.

dante purgatory convergence
The map of Dante’s island of Purgatory

So, if you’re not familiar with Purgatory, it’s a Roman Catholic concept that if you died and your soul is still stained by sin, but what you did isn’t really that bad to send you to Hell, then you just get punished for a little while before you get to go to Heaven. It’s also a good way for the church to explain what happens to babies who die before they get baptized or people who lived good lives before Jesus, so they never had a chance to believe in the guy.

Basically it’s a place where everyone sorts their leftover business out before they get to the next world. It pops up in a lot of films and TV shows, like The Sopranos, The Leftovers, What Dreams May Come, Wristcutters: A Love Story, and one of the crappy Hellraiser sequels (don’t bother with any of those films after the second one.)

In Dante’s poem, Purgatory is an island (huh, wonder where people might have gotten the idea that Lost was set there…) with a mountain on it that has several levels where souls are being punished in for different sins  in order for them to redeem themselves and make it to the top of the mountain. Once they get to the top, they have fulfilled their punishment and they can finally get into Heaven.

Drew even uses Dante’s different levels of Purgatory as inspiration for what happens on each floor of the hospital and how the lead character, Ben, has to advance through the hospital and make his way to his own redemption by the end of the film, all the while being hunted by the Ethan Embry’s maniacal villain.

Drew’s interest in the paranormal stems from having his own experiences as well. He tells us a couple of stories in the interview, but my favorite is getting a little otherworldly help while almost drowning. Here’s how he tells it:

[I was] whitewater rafting… but I flipped out of the boat and we got caught in a whirlpool type thing stuck in a whirlpool-type and when I flipped out, I got stuck underneath the raft. And the raft is fairly heavy, much less loaded down with six adults. You float up because you’re wearing a [vest]… I’m trapped under this thing for, according to accounts,  two or three minutes, luckily I was a swimmer at the time so I could hold my breath. 

But I had to come face to face with the idea that I might not get out… As audible as I’m talking to you now underwater, as insane as it sounds… I heard “look left” and as I did, there was a shaft of light that looked as solid as a pole sticking out. And I reach for it thinking maybe they had found a stick. My hand went through it and then my buddy had gotten out of the boat and grabbed my wrist…

It could have been fight or flight, I understand, but to me that became reality… it planted that seed.

Hall has some more interesting paranormal stories that he shares with us (including a scary shadow person story!) and he isn’t done with films inspired by real-life paranormal activity, he’s currently working on a script about the latest paranormal urban legend to hit the Internet, Black-Eyed Children (who will get their own episode soon!)

Drew Hall is a filmmaker to keep an eye on because he has a unique cinematic vision and you can tell he cares deeply about the craft. There’s a literacy and depth to his work that is too rare in horror and thriller circles.

Since this conversation centered on horror movies and one of my favorite movie directors and composers, John Carpenter, has a new album out on April 15th (Lost Themes II), we thought we’d do a little electronic instrumental soundtrack homage this week and call it “Purgatory”.