Podcast Roundup

I confess to being a bit of a podcast junkie - I'm less than passionate about my day job and while I can't afford the attention to listen to a book or watch a movie while working, podcasts seem to be the right level of distraction. It gives me a chance to indulge my interests while grinding through whatever spreadsheet fuckery the day requires. I also confess to not being the most loyal listener and I frequently fall in and out of love with podcasts depending on how well they match up with my interests at the moment. The one glaring exception being Mike White's The Projection Booth which I have been listening to regularly for years.

Having said all of that, I have become completely enamored of THREE new-to-me podcasts over the last week or two and as in all new relationships I'm eager to blab about them to whomever might listen.

Unsung Horrors - I believe I may have heard one or both of Unsung Horror's hosts Lance and Erica on another film podcast but I "officially" discovered them after finding their episode on The Corruption of Chris Miller (having just watched it myself). The premise of the podcast is fairly straightforward - Erica and Lance trade off picking a movie to review for each episode that is more or less a horror movie and has fewer than 1000 views on Letterboxd at the time they chose it. So you get a relatively deep dive on a lesser known film and then they pick pairings to go with the main feature to help expand your ever-growing watch list. Both hosts bring a lot of horror and exploitation knowledge to each episode but it's also fun and conversational. I'd probably recommend watching the film before listening to the episode but you know your own spoiler tolerance. The Chris Miller episode is great - and got me to watch Bell from Hell - but I'd also recommend this episode discussing The Passing which you should also absolutely watch.

Twitch of the Death Nerve - Twitch is a relatively brand spankin' new podcast on the Cinepunx network featuring Charles Perks, Jon Dzwonar, and Samm Deighan. Samm Deighan was well known to me through her multiple podcast appearances as well as her run of blu-ray commentaries but all three are very knowledgeable and bring a lot of fun background to the episodes so far. The Twitch crew only has two episodes out as of this writing and both focus on a single film while the discussion pulls in many other films for context. Either episode is great, but I was especially impressed with the Shogun Assassin ep - I thought I knew my Lone Wolf & Cub shit, heck I've even been on a podcast discussing Shogun Assassin - and I still learned a lot listening to these three.

Live at the Death Factory - This self described deep dive into scum is newest to me and while I don't have a breadth of listening under my belt - I like what I've heard. Hosts Astrid Rose and Sean McTiernan discuss a single film to a handful of features but the focus remains on shot-on-video, transgressive, confrontational, outsider stuff. If you want to win me over - shitting on slick corporate horror while singing the praises of Twisted Issues is a great way to start. If you can segue into your personal experiences with hardcore or doom metal - all the better. If this sounds interesting to you - as it should - start here