Show Notes
It's heeeere! I'm Samm Deighan and I'm beyond excited to launch the first episode of my new podcast, Eros + Massacre. Chris Haskell from They Live on Film podcast kindly joined me for the first episode, where we talk all about one of our mutual favorite underrated directors, Michele Soavi, and focus on his four key horror films from the late '80s and '90s: Stage Fright, The Church, The Sect, and Cemetery Man. We particularly focused on Soavi's brilliance as a surrealist and the fact that he is -- for my money -- the last great Italian genre director.
Thanks as always to Cinepunx and since this is a brand new show and it needs all the help it can get, please rate, review, follow, and share! And if you plan to cut out anyone's heart in satanic revenge in the near future, please don't get pickpocketed on the subway. Viva Soavi!
More from Eros + Massacre
I am finally back from finishing my Żuławski book with an episode that is long, long overdue. Cultural historian and cinephile Jessica Shires joined me to gush over our love for Walerian Borowczyk and his radical 1981 gothic horror film, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne. This is meant to serve as something of an introduction to Borowczyk, so we spend some time talking about the development of his career, the importance of surrealism and literary adaptation to his work, and his incredible approach to female characters and women’s sexuality on screen. We love Boro!
For the second part of my ongoing series about Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Clara from Angura Research Center was kind enough to return to the show. You might remember her from the episode we did together on Shuji Terayama, but she’s also a huge Kurosawa fan. We had a lot to say about the horror films and thrillers he made at the beginning of the 2000s: Séance (2000), Pulse (2001), Bright Future (2002), Doppelganger (2003), and the short film Matasaburo the Wind Imp (2003).
This April was the great Roger Corman’s centennial, so what better time to finally discuss his work on Eros + Massacre. Writer, artist, programmer, and friend of the show Klon Waldrip joined me for an epic conversation about Corman’s 8-film series loosely based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
The greatest of all time, Meiko Kaji, recently came to NYC for a retrospective of her work at Japan Society, so naturally I had to celebrate with a podcast episode in her honor. This is a solo outing, where I discuss the Stray Cat Rock series, which Kaji made for Nikkatsu. It launched her to countercultural stardom and was her last major project for the studio before departing for Toei in 1972 where she went on to greater heights with a series of crime and revenge films.
I haven’t yet had a chance to talk about New German Cinema on Eros + Massacre, though episodes on Rainer Werner Fassbinder and key figures from his group of collaborators have been high on my list. I could never pick a single favorite director, but Fassbinder is at least in the top five. And Kurt Raab—the actor, set designer, art director, screenwriter, and producer who was among Fassbinder’s most loyal, brilliant, and beleaguered collaborators—is among my favorite Germans to ever exist, so it seemed like a good idea to start with him.