Special Guest: Peter Hames Guest Co-Hosts: Jim Vendiola, Samm Deighan
Czechtember 2025 wraps with Jan Švankmajer's Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), a delirious, dialogue-free plunge into fetish and surrealism. Mike teams up with filmmaker Jim Vendiola and critic Samm Deighan to unravel the tangled lives of six Prague eccentrics whose private obsessions—ranging from papier-mâché contraptions to elaborate role-play—collide in hilariously unsettling ways. The result is a darkly comic meditation on desire, ritual, and the pleasures of the bizarre, filtered through Švankmajer’s singular stop-motion, tactile textures, and Surrealist imagination.
We are kicking off a month dedicated to Japanese Film with a look at Hitoshi Matsumoto’s 2013 film R100 . It’s the story of a man (Nao Ômori) who makes a contract with an organization called Bondage. For a year they’ll surprise him with appearances from a variety of dominatrices who will attack and humiliate him at random. When they begin to show up where he works and lives he tries to cancel the contract but finds this impossible.
This was a suggestion from Jim Vendiola who joins Mike along with Samm Deighan to discuss this hilarious film.
We’re kicking off a month of discussions of French films with Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse (1976). The film stars Bulle Ogier as the titular Mistress, Ariane, and Gerard Depardieu as Olivier, a thief who robs the wrong apartment.
Special Guest: Peter Strickland Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Jim Vendiola
For our 10th Anniversary we're looking at Peter Strickland’s 2014 film The Duke of Burgundy, the story of a couple, Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D'Anna), and their relationship in a world of women where lepidoptery seems to be the stock and trade of its denizens. The film examines the slow decline of Cynthia and Evelyn’s relationship.
Samm Deighan and Jim Vendiola join Mike to discuss the film. Writer/Director Peter Strickland talks about his career and making The Duke of Burgundy.
French Month continues with a look at Alain Renais's Last Year at Marienbad (1961). Based on a script by Alain Robbe-Grillet, the film tells the tale of three characters, M, A, and X, as they wander the halls and grounds of a vast hotel in Marienbad. What are their relationships? What are they doing in Marienbad? How does this film take apart everything that we think we know about narrative storytelling? We do absolutely nothing to answer those questions.
Music:
"I Walk Along Darkened Corridors" - They Might Be Giants
"I Remember It Well" - Maurice Chevalier & Hermione Gingold
"Last Year at Marienbad" - Parralox
"Final" - Francis Seyrig
Special Guests: Robert J. Avrech, Gregg Henry Guest Co-Hosts: Bill Ackerman, Jim Vendiola
Brian De Palma’s 1984 film, Body Double stars Craig Wasson as Jake Scully, an actor in a low budget vampire film. After a terrifying bout of claustrophobia he loses his job, his girl, and his home until fellow actor, Sam Bouchard (Gregg Henry) does Jake a favor by letting him apartment-sit at a posh pad. As an added bonus, there’s a woman across the way who performs a nightly ritual of self-pleasure and, well, Jake likes to watch. But, of course, things aren’t always what they seem in Hollywood.
Jim Vendiola and Bill Ackerman join Mike to discuss this mash-up of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Rear Window. Screenwriter Robert J. Avrech and actor Gregg Henry talk about the behind-the-scenes of De Palma's exploration of voyeurism.
Special Guest: Peter Hames
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