Chopping It Up

It's every axe murderer's dream: 1988's Edge of the Axe commits to exactly one weapon and never looks back. Jesse, Joel, and Jeannie welcome special guest Gareth "Slasher Trash" Morgan (creator of the Slasher Trash page and an upcoming feature-length slasher documentary) to dig into this Spanish-American slasher obscurity — small-town paranoia, a shockingly prescient "technology will ruin relationships" subplot, tonal whiplash between sitcom hijinks and pig decapitations, and a twist ending that has the crew split on who's actually swinging the blade. Plus: video nasty talk and a masterclass in gaslighting your way into slasher-sequel status.

A sewer gator raised on hormone-jacked lab dogs takes on a CGI crocodile that cost six times as much and looks half as real. The crew pits 1980's scrappy, John Sayles-penned Alligator against 1999's big-budget, Stan Winston-adjacent Lake Placid — practical effects vs. CGI, indictment of big pharma vs. crazy old lady feeding cows to a lizard, and a fight over crocodile biology the movie's own screenwriters apparently lost. Also: why is the lake in Lake Placid not named Lake Placid? Nobody in this movie can answer that, but we sure try.

Freddy's back, but this time he's not avenging anyone — he's just really into leather bars, apparently. The crew chops up A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985), the film that's basically the poster child for queer horror whether the studio wanted it to be or not. We get into writer David Chaskin denying the gay subtext for 25 years (then admitting it — sort of), star Mark Patton's brutal real story, and why this rushed, chaotic sequel accidentally became one of the most beloved films in the genre. Pride Month respect paid, blowjob jokes mostly avoided.
References: Horror Queers Podcast A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) LIVE! feat. Mark Patton, Robert Rusler & Kim Myers
https://open.spotify.com/episode/31noqPrrc1EFk2S5vdMgU3?si=_8kK0RZUQayWI6bgR03RDg
 
 

Sledd's back from his self-imposed "sled season" break with maybe his most personal pairing yet: two movies about mothers who are, in his professional opinion, doing their absolute worst — and somehow still more sympathetic than the demon-summoning grandma in the attic. Jesse and Jeannie both watched The Babadook for the first time this episode and have feelings (mostly about insect chittering and never wanting to rewatch it). Joel attempts to defend Gabriel Byrne's parenting. Sledd defends his own questionable childhood relationship with a dead bird. The crew gets into grief-as-monster metaphors, generational curses, postpartum horror, and a Franklin Award debate that's not close (sorry, Samuel). Plus: the Babadook's design has a 1920s silent film ancestor, Hereditary made eight times its budget, and someone brings up Hack-O-Lantern unprompted.
Two heavy hitters, zero good parents, and a demon named Paimon who's just trying his best.

The crew couldn't resist the hype — this week on Prime Cuts, Jesse, Jeannie, Joel, and Sledd dive into Widow's Bay, the new Apple TV+ horror comedy series from Parks and Rec creator Katie Dippold. A cursed New England island, a hapless mayor, folklore that turns out to be terrifyingly real, and commercials that will genuinely unsettle you — it's a lot. Jesse's all in, Jeannie's calling it horror comedy (not comedy horror, there's a difference), Joel's hoping it gets the Penny Dreadful treatment, and Sledd gives it a 3.75 while explaining exactly how you should run over a sea hag with your car. Ratings are preliminary and contingent on how they stick the landing. We'll be back.

Slasher Season is back, and we're going all the way in on the greatest horror franchise of all time — no, Joel, you don't get a say in that. Jesse pairs Friday the 13th Part III and Jason Takes Manhattan as the alpha and omega of the franchise: the movie that gave Jason his hockey mask, and the movie that sent him packing to the Big Apple. Jeannie watched both for the first time and would like her life back. Sled considers eight the last real Friday the 13th. Joel pulled out a map of New Jersey trying to figure out the geography. And Jesse has been freestyling over that disco opening since COVID. Hockey masks, heroin injections, biker gangs, Franklin Awards, and the hotly debated Mount Rushmore of horror — all that and a body count you have to respect.

This week on Prime Cuts, the crew watches a forgotten slice of early Oliver Stone — The Hand (1981), starring a very committed Michael Caine as a comic strip artist who loses his hand in a car accident and slowly loses everything else. His marriage, his sanity, and apparently several people in his vicinity.
Jesse, Jeannie, Joel, and a special guest who definitely watched Conan the Barbarian instead break down the film's double-swerve ending, hand-POV cinematography, the very real question of whether Oliver Stone cast himself as a bum with a missing hand, and whether Michael Caine has ever actually seen any of his own movies.
Body horror, messy divorces, and at least one prosthetic hand squeezing raw hamburger meat. You know, a chill one.

This week we're chopping up the second entry in Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy — and we brought backup. Actor Thom Bray joins us to talk about landing the most memorable kill in the film, what it was actually like to get impaled by a bicycle with Alice Cooper, and why Carpenter told him to dial it back on the blood. We also get into the theology, the theoretical physics, the goo, and whether Prince of Darkness deserves a higher spot in the Carpenter canon than it gets. Spoiler: it might.

What does it look like to live deliciously on the wrong side of sanity? Jesse brings the crew to 1971 Connecticut for John D. Hancock's haunting folk horror gem. Part psychological thriller, part vampire mythology, part counterculture eulogy — Let's Scare Jessica to Death is the kind of movie that asks you to do the work, and rewards you for it. The CIU crew unpacks Charon and the underworld, the Baudelaire connection, polyamory among the hippies, and why the inner monologue shouldn't work but somehow does. Ratings are divided. Joel wants to live in the farmhouse. Sledd was a little sleepy.

We recorded this one back in February to close out Sled dSeason, and we've been sitting on it — but good things are worth the wait. A Black History Month double feature that earns its place: both films follow the same blueprint — a Black vampire dropped into a modern urban landscape, chasing a reincarnated love and dragging a Renfield-type ghoul behind him. The parallels are undeniable.
Blacula is historically significant and cinematically rough. William Marshall is genuinely commanding, but the ADR is a disaster and the pacing will test you. Vampire in Brooklyn has the cast (Murphy, Bassett, Hardison, Witherspoon at peak Witherspoon) and still squanders it — a Wes Craven-directed Coming to America with fangs and no teeth.
The real conversation goes deeper: blaxploitation's double-edged legacy, what Blacula actually got right, and how Vampire in Brooklyn ends up undermining everything it seemed to stand for. Plus a hook hand nobody else saw and a very compelling shared cinematic universe theory.