Special Guests: Sara Paretsky, David Aaron Cohen, Nick Thiel, Jeff Kanew, Warren Leight Guest Co-Hosts: Dahlia Schweitzer, Rahne Alexander
Noirvember 2025 keeps rolling as Mike teams up with author Dahlia Schweitzer and artist Rahne Alexander to crack open V.I. Warshawski (1991), Jeff Kanew’s glossy take on Sara Paretsky’s groundbreaking detective. Kathleen Turner commands the screen as V.I., whose night on the town swerves into murder, a dead former Blackhawks star, and a teenager who refuses to stay out of danger.
This episode brings together an incredible lineup: Sara Paretsky, creator of the V.I. Warshawski novels; screenwriters David Aaron Cohen, Nick Thiel, and Warren Leight; and director Jeff Kanew. They share the inside story of adapting an iconic literary detective, shaping Turner’s formidable on-screen persona, and navigating the film’s winding path from page to screen.
Along the way, we dig into Chicago’s cinematic grit, the film’s place in early-’90s studio genre filmmaking, and—yes—we spoil who killed Boom Boom and finally reveal what the initials V. I. actually stand for.
Mike talks with cultural critic Dan Schindel and Lyle Zanca of GKIDS to discuss Mamoru Oshii’s 1985 anime film, Angel’s Egg (AKA Tenshi no Tamago), a gorgeous lyrical film about spiritualism and redemption. The film has been recently restored and given a 4K scan that will be screened across the U.S. starting November 19, 2025.
Check local listings and be on the lookout for the upcoming Blu-Ray release.
Mike joins Caliber 9 From Outer Space for their landmark 100th episode, celebrating the milestone with an ambitious and eclectic triple feature: Brian De Palma’s Sisters (1972), John Sayles’s The Brother from Another Planet (1984), and John Hough’s Hammer favorite Twins of Evil (1971).
Along with hosts Rob Spencer and Joe Odber (and fellow guest Sammy from the GGTMC), Mike digs into the films’ shared fascinations with identity, social fractures, and psychological duality -- whether explored through De Palma’s split-screen paranoia, Sayles’s still-timely critique of American intolerance, or Hammer’s lurid Gothic stylings.
The group avoids major spoilers for The Brother from Another Planet and only lightly touches the ending of Twins of Evil. However, Sisters receives a full spoiler discussion, with a clear cue for listeners who want to skip ahead: you can safely rejoin at 1:35:59.
It’s the show’s longest episode to date and a lively deep dive befitting the occasion. Congratulations to Caliber 9 From Outer Space on reaching 100 episodes—and here’s to many more.
Noirvember 2025 keeps rolling with Helmut Käutner's Black Gravel (1961), a scalding portrait of postwar Germany buried under guilt, corruption, and American occupation. Mike is joined by Andrew Nette and Samm Deighan to dig into this bleak anti-Heimatfilm, where gravel trucker Robert Neidhardt (Helmut Wildt) scrapes by on the black market and rekindles an affair with Inge (Ingmar Zeisberg), now married to a U.S. officer. When an accident turns deadly, their secret unearths a moral wasteland of complicity and denial.
Once condemned by the Oberhausen critics as “the worst achievement by an established director,” Käutner’s film now stands as a bold, unflinching noir that dared to confront the rot beneath Germany’s economic miracle.
Noirvember 2025 roars to life with Walter Hill's sleek, existential chase film The Driver (1978). Ryan O’Neal plays the nameless getaway specialist who moves through Los Angeles like a ghost, pursued by Bruce Dern’s manic lawman hell-bent on taking him down. It’s a lean, hypnotic duel between predator and prey where style is substance and silence is power.
Mike rides shotgun with Beth Accomando and Walter Chaw to unpack Hill’s minimalist approach, his homage to Melville’s Le Samouraï, and the cold precision that makes The Driver a high-octane hymn to professionalism and control.
Addendum: Big apologies to Ms. Adjani. Re-reading her Wikipedia, it looks like she's not anti-immmigrant but actually speaks out against anti-immigration!
Special Guests: Payton McCarty-Simas, Adam Lowenstein Guest Co-Hosts: Father Malone, Rahne Alexander
George A. Romero trades zombies for suburban malaise in 1971's Jack’s Wife (AKA Season of the Witch, Hungry Wives), a spellbinding portrait of domestic despair and occult liberation. Jan White stars as Joan Mitchell, a disenchanted housewife drifting through a fog of loneliness and repression until she finds power--real or imagined--through witchcraft.
Rahne Alexander and Father Malone join Mike to dig into Romero’s haunting mix of feminist allegory, surreal dream logic, and kitchen-sink psychology. Mike interviews Professor Adam Lowenstein about Romero’s Pittsburgh years and scholar Payton McCarty-Simas about her new book That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film.
Shocktober 2025 spirals into demonic delirium with Juan López Moctezuma's Alucarda (1977). This feverish blast of Mexican Gothic horror follows Justine (Susana Kamini), a sheltered orphan who finds herself drawn to the wild, otherworldly Alucarda (Tina Romero) within the stone walls of a convent that’s anything but holy. What begins as innocent friendship erupts into a blood-soaked storm of possession, blasphemy, and ecstatic madness.
Ryan Luis Rodriguez and Mark Begley join Mike to dissect Moctezuma’s infernal masterpiece — its ties to Jodorowsky’s surrealism, its place in the “nunsploitation” subgenre, and its bold feminist undercurrents that still scorch the screen nearly fifty years later.
Special Guest: Barbara Creed Guest Co-Hosts: Suzen Tekla Kruglnska, Beth Accomando
Shocktober 2025 sinks its teeth into Raw (2016), Julia Ducournau’s visceral coming-of-age horror. Garance Marillier stars as Justine, a sheltered vegetarian entering veterinary school, where a brutal hazing ritual ignites her taste for flesh—both animal and human.
Co-hosts Suzen Tekla Kruglnska and Beth Accomando join Mike to explore Ducournau’s blend of body horror and female awakening, peeling back the film’s layers of appetite, identity, and transgression. Special guest Barbara Creed, author of The Monstrous-Feminine, offers insight into how Raw redefines the monstrous body for a new generation.
Special Guests: Sara Paretsky, David Aaron Cohen, Nick Thiel, Jeff Kanew, Warren Leight
Special Guests: 
Mike joins Caliber 9 From Outer Space for their landmark 100th episode, celebrating the milestone with an ambitious and eclectic triple feature: Brian De Palma’s Sisters (1972), John Sayles’s The Brother from Another Planet (1984), and John Hough’s Hammer favorite Twins of Evil (1971).
Along with hosts Rob Spencer and Joe Odber (and fellow guest Sammy from the GGTMC), Mike digs into the films’ shared fascinations with identity, social fractures, and psychological duality -- whether explored through De Palma’s split-screen paranoia, Sayles’s still-timely critique of American intolerance, or Hammer’s lurid Gothic stylings.
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Guest Co-Hosts: 
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