Episode 106: Crisismas 2025: Wake in Fright + Lady in the Lake + City On Fire
Caliber 9 From Outer SpaceShow Notes
Peace on Earth. Can it be??? No, apparently not. Angst and dread continue to reign supreme as we enter the death throes of 2025, so let's just embrace it and have a very happy Crisis-mas!
We've stuffed the stocking fit to bursting in this year's special Christmas episode. We welcome back Sammy from the Gentlemen's Guide to Midnite Cinema, and habitual Caliber 9'er, Bryce Hamilton (who never says no to a good bit of stuffing). Together, we'll be delving into a triple feature of sort-of-Christmas movies, starting with Wake in Fright (1971) directed by Ted Kotcheff, taking a detour into classic film noir with Lady in the Lake (1946), directed by Robert Montgomery and accelerating finally up into a Hong Kong action cinema frenzy with City On Fire (1987), directed by Ringo Lam.
We will be announcing a Spoiler Territory section for all these films. So if you haven't seen them before you listen, you can nevertheless avoid spoilers for Wake in Fright by skipping ahead to the 1:34:50 mark, for Lady in the Lake by skipping ahead to the 2:27:48 mark and for City On Fire by skipping ahead to 3:30:16.
Want to get in touch? You can reach us on [email protected]
Theme music: "The Cold Light of Day" by HKM.
Check out HKM on #SoundCloud or Bandcamp
"The Slow Descent into Alcoholism" by The New P*rn*graphers
More from Caliber 9 From Outer Space
Graham Humphreys programs a sacrilicious double feature for our latest Creepy Spooky Month episode! First up, Hammer horror goes all Satanic Panic and espionage thriller at the same time with The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), directed by Alan Gibson. Following this, we explore the deeply weird and also weirdly seminal The Devil's Rain (1975), directed by Robert Fuest. This month is scary enough without the eerie parallels between the apocalyptic imaginings of these two films and today's sociopolitical climate. Plus we find out where John Carpenter got the iconic Michael Myers mask from, and why John Travolta joined the Church of Scientology.
Creepy Spooky Month continues as we revisit that most terrifying of horror subgenres: the airborne threat of malevolent birds! OK, maybe it's not THE most terrifying horror trope, but that won't stop us watching films promising such dubious delights. Ted Bennett is in the house to check out the relatively yet-to-be-discovered Shaw Brothers gem that is Bloody Parrot (1981), directed by Hua Shan, and the epically derided made-for-TV sequel to Hitchcock's classic (and recently covered by us) work of avian existentialism, The Birds II: Land's End (1994), directed by Alan Smithee (otherwise known as, in this case at least, Rick Rosenthal) - that's right, a film so hated that even the director of Halloween: Resurrection saw fit to remove his name from it.
Hell is other people. Apartment living means being close to your neighbours - way too close, in some instances - leading to all sorts of psychological horrors and possible silliness. This week, Dallas Norvell stops by to discuss a couple of apartment horror stories like only the 1970's could turn out. First up: The Tenant (1976), directed by Roman Polanski, followed by The Sentinel (1977), directed by Michael Winner.
The days are cooling down, the leaves are changing colour, and the nights are drawing in. It must be Creepy Spooky Month! Bryan Davidson joins us for the first of a series of episodes all devoted to horror this October - and we start with ZOMBIES. Or at least, zombie adjacency. First up, we discuss Stewart Gordon's absolute cult classic, Re-Animator (1985), and follow that up with a jaunt into some woozy, Italian weirdness: Zeder (1982), directed by Pupi Avati.
The fabulous Samm Deighan is back with us this week to delve into a couple of great, underseen French films - and also to tell us all about her new book on the work of that great master of cinema insanity, Andrzej Żuławski. Exciting! We kick off our double feature with Żuławski's frantic ode to mad French mobsters, L'Amour Braque (1985) and we follow that up with La Cérémonie (1995), directed by Claude Chabrol - a domestic thriller about class, shame and sociopathy that comes on like a television procedural but hits you like a gut punch when you least expect it. Oof!!!