Special Report: Morgana (2019)

Special Guests: Josie Hess, Isabel Peppard, Morgana Muses
Guest Co-Hosts: Lisa Vandever, Kevin Heffernan

On this special episode of The Projection Booth we're discussing the film from co-directors Josie Hess and Isabel Peppard, Morgana (2019). It's the story of Morgana Muses, a former housewife who found her path to self expression and fulfillment via making personal, often very adult, films.

Lisa Vandever and Kevin Heffernan join Mike to talk about this powerful documentary.

Listen/Download Now:

Listen to "Special Report: Morgana (2019)" on Spreaker.

Links:
Visit the official Morgana documentary website
Visit the official Permission 4 Pleasure website
Visit Pink Label films
Visit the Erika Lust website
Visit the Cinekink website

Music:
"Lessons In Love (Instrumental)" - Lords of Acid
"Bullet With Butterfly Wings (Instrumental)" - Smashing Pumpkins

Watch:

Episode 353: Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Special Guests: Max Allan Collins
Guest Co-Hosts: Kevin Heffernan, Andrew Nette

Based on the 1952 Mickey Spillane novel, Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955) stars Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer, a hard-boiled gumshoe who gets dragged into a mystery involving a glowing case, duplicitous dames, and two-fisted violence.

Max Allan Collins, director of Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane, talks about his career and working on Mickey Spillane's posthumous work.

Writer Andrew Nette and Professor Kevin Heffernan join Mike to discuss paranoia, the cold war, and much more.

Listen/Download Now:

Listen to "Episode 353: Kiss Me Deadly (1955)" on Spreaker.

Links:
Buy Kiss Me Deadly on Blu-Ray
Buy Kiss Me, Deadly by Mickey Spillane

Music:
"Kiss Me Deadly" - Generation X
"Kiss Me Deadly" - Thee Jenerators

Watch:

Episode 340: Case for a Rookie Hangman (1970)

Special Guest: Peter Hames
Guest Co-Hosts: Kat Ellinger, Kevin Heffernan

Czechtember continues with a look at Pavel Jurácek's Case for a Rookie Hangman (AKA Prípad pro zacínajícího kata) from 1970. Very loosely based on the third part of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the film tells the tale of Lemuel Gulliver (Lubomír Kostelka) in the land of Balnibarbi, a surrealistic landscape where Lemuel has a hard time finding his footing, literally.

Kat Ellinger and Kevin Heffernan join Mike to discuss the malleability of Swift's satire and The Key to Determining Dwarfs, or The Last Travel of Lemuel Gulliver.

Listen/Download Now:

Listen to "Episode 340: Case for a Rookie Hangman (1970)" on Spreaker.

Links:
Buy Case for a Rookie Hangman on Blu-Ray/DVD
Buy Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Buy The Czechoslovak New Wave by Peter Hames
Buy Avant-garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties by Jonathan Owen
Hear more of Kat Ellinger on the Daughters of Darkness podcast
Hear Kat's interview on the Supporting Characters podcast
Read Knot and Gender blog by Kevin Heffernan
Read The Crawling Eye Cult Media Blog by Kevin Heffernan

Music:
"The Flying Island" - Trevor Jones
"Laputa" - Trevor Jones

Watch:

Episode 332: Visitor Q (2001)

Special Guest: Tom Mes
Guest Co-Hosts: Kevin Heffernan, Patrick Bromley

Written by Itaru Era, the 2001 movie from prolific director Takashi Miike Visitor Q tells the story of a family in disarray. The unemployed father (Ken'ichi Endô) a former newsman who laid off after an unfortunate incident, the mother (Shungiku Uchida) a heroin addict who prostitutes herself for money to get a fix, the son (Jun Mutô) is a victim of bullying who then bullies his own mother, and the daughter (Fujiko) who has left home to become a prostitute as well. When the titular Visitor Q (Kazushi Watanabe) shows up... things change.

Special guest Tom Mes, author of Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike, discusses Miike's career. Co-Hosts Patrick Bromley and Kevin Heffernan join Mike to examine Visitor Q as well as François Ozon's Sitcom and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema (1968).

Listen/Download Now:

Listen to "Episode 332: Visitor Q (2001)" on Spreaker.

Links:
Buy Visitor Q on DVD
Buy Sitcom on DVD
Buy Teorema on DVD
Buy Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike by Tom Mes
Buy Re-Agitator: A Decade of Writing on Takashi Miike by Tom Mes
Buy Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto by Tom Mes
Read Knot and Gender blog by Kevin Heffernan
Read The Crawling Eye Cult Media Blog by Kevin Heffernan
Visit F This Movie! for more of Patrick Bromley

Music:
"Dead or Alive" - Koji Endo
"Bubbles of Water" - Realtime

Watch:

Episode 321: Wanda Whips Wall Street (1981)

Special Guest: Larry Revene
Guest Co-Hosts: Kevin Heffernan, Heather Drain

When Wanda talks... everybody listens...

In Larry Revene's Wanda Whips Wall Street (1981), Veronica Hart stars as Wanda Brandt, a serious business woman who plies her feminine wiles while taking over Tyler Industries, despite investigators Lou Perrini (Jamie Gillis) and Ed Drummond (Ron Jeremy) being hot on her trail...

Professor Kevin Heffernan and Heather Drain join Mike in discussing the film as well as it's 1984 re-cut version, Stocks and Blondes.

Be sure to read the interview with Wanda's screenwriter Rick Marx.

Download Episode Now:

Listen to "Episode 321: Wanda Whips Wall Street (1981)" on Spreaker.

Links:
Buy Wanda Whips Wall Street on DVD
Buy Stocks and Blondes on DVD
Buy Wham Bam $$ Ba Da Boom! : Mob wars, Porn Battles and a View from the Trenches by Larry Revene
Buy Life in a Film Can by Larry Revene
Visit the Veronica Hart fan site
Read American Ticklers: The Early R-Rated Films of Chuck Vincent by Paul Freitag
Read Casey Scott's review of Stocks and Blondes
Read Knot and Gender blog by Kevin Heffernan
Read The Crawling Eye Cult Media Blog by Kevin Heffernan
Visit the Mondo Heather website

Music:
"Rebel" - Norman Newell & John Moran
"The Big One" - Alan Tew

Watch:

Wanda WHIPS Wall Street (trailer) from Lee Jones on Vimeo.

Episode 311: The Cars that Ate Paris (1974)

Special Guests: Jonathan Rayner, Hal McElroy, Terry Camilleri, Bruce Spence
Guest Co-Hosts: Ben Buckingham, Kevin Heffernan

Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) stars Terry Camilleri as Arthur Waldo, a meek man whose brother dies in a car accident outside of Paris, Australia -- a town whose economy relies on scavenging on the wrecks they create.

Also released (in a truncated form) as The Cars That Eat People, the film is the first feature from Peter Weir and was produced by Jim and Hal McElroy.

Ben Buckingham and Kevin Heffernan join Mike to discuss the film, Mad Max 2, and more.

Download Episode Now:

Listen to "Episode 311: The Cars that Ate Paris (1974)" on Spreaker.

Links:
Buy The Cars That Ate Paris on DVD
Buy The Films of Peter Weir by Dr. Jonathan Rayner
Learn more about Mapping Cinematic Norths
Learn more about Filmurbia
Visit the Peter Weir Cave
Visit the Trench website
Read some of Ben Buckinghame's writing at An Online Universe
Visit Kevin Heffernan's Knot and Gender blog
Visit Kevin Heffernan's The Crawling Eye: A Bloodshot Look at International Genre Film, Television, and Cult Media
Read Killer Cars: Death on the Highway by Mike White

Music:
"The Visit" - Bruce Smeaton
"The Cars That Ate Paris" - Bruce Smeaton

Watch:

Episode 276: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

Special Guest: Peter Hames
Guest Co-Host: Nicholas Schlegel, Kevin Heffernan, Axel Kohagen

Continuing our discussion of fairy tales in films, we discuss Jaromil Jires's film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, the story of a young woman coming of age.

And who better to join Mike in discussing the film than Kevin Heffernan, Axel Kohagen, and Nicholas Schlegel?

This week's special guest, Peter Hames, is the author of several books about the Czech and Slovak New Wave.

Download Episode Now:

Listen to "Episode 276: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)" on Spreaker.

Links:
Buy Valerie and her Week of Wonders on DVD
Buy Valerie and her Week of Wonders by Vitezslav Nezval
Buy Czech and Slovak Cinema: Theme and Tradition by Peter Hames
Buy The Cinema of Central Europe by Peter Hames
Buy The Czechoslovak New Wave by Peter Hames
Buy Avant-garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties by Jonathan L. Owen
Buy Sex, Sadism, Spain, and Cinema: The Spanish Horror Film by Nicholas G. Schlegel
Read Knot and Gender blog by Kevin Heffernan
Read The Crawling Eye Cult Media Blog by Kevin Heffernan
Visit the official Axel Kohagen website

Music:
"Talk With Grandmother" - Luboš Fišer
"Valerie" - Broadcast
"Valleri" - The Monkees

Watch:

Episode 267: Smile (1975)

Special Guests: Bruce Dern, Nicholas Pryor, Barbara Feldon, Denise Nickerson, Annette O'Toole
Guest Co-Hosts: Carol Borden, Kevin Heffernan

Get on your sash and listen to the discussion of Michael Ritchie's Smile, a send-up of beauty pageants and small-town America from 1975.

We talked to a few of the stars of the film: Bruce Dern, Nicholas Pryor, Barbara Feldon, Denise Nickerson, and Annette O'Toole. Joining Mike in the discussion is The Cultural Gutter's Carol Borden and The Crawling Eye's Kevin Heffernan.

Listen/Download Now:

Listen to "Episode 267: Smile (1975)" on Spreaker.

More Cast Interviews:

Listen to "Bonus Interviews: The Cast of Smile" on Spreaker.

Links:
Buy Smile on Blu-Ray
Buy Howard sings Ashman
Buy Unsung Musicals on CD
Watch a visual history of Michael Ritchie's work
Read You're a goddamn Young American Miss by Casey Scott
Read Smile by Forgotten Films
Read Smile by Ken Anderson
Read The Unsung Heroine of "Smile" (1975) by Hill Place
Read Lonely In A Crowd by Barbara Feldon
Visit Kevin Heffernan's Knot and Gender blog
Visit Kevin Heffernan's The Crawling Eye: A Bloodshot Look at International Genre Film, Television, and Cult Media
Visit the Cultural Gutter website

Music:
"Delta Dawn" - Helen Reddy
"Smile" - Nat King Cole

Watch:

Episode 144: The Brain that Wouldn't Die (1962)

Special Guests: Jon Gillespie, Tom Sivak
& Kevin Frei

Is The Brain that Wouldn't Die a schlock classic or a treatise on unfettered male desire? Why not both?

We spoke to not one but three people who have worked on musical adaptations of the film (The Brain that Wouldn't Die: A New Musical, The Brain that Wouldn't Die: In 3-D!, and Head: The Musical).

We're joined by Professor Kevin Heffernan, author of Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, 1953–1968.

The paths of podcasts twist and turn through mountains of miscalculations and often lose themselves in error and darkness!

Listen / Download Now:

Listen to "Episode 144: The Brain that Wouldn't Die (1962)" on Spreaker.

Links:
Buy Kevin Heffernan's Ghouls, Gimmicks, and Gold
Buy the Synapse version of The Brain that Wouldn't Die on DVD
Buy Professor Dowell's Testament on DVD
Buy Professor Dowell's Head by Alexander Beliaev
Buy Jon Gillespie's The Brain that Wouldn't Die: A New Musical soundtrack
Learn morea bout Tom Sivak's The Brain that Wouldn't Die: In 3-D!
Visit the official Head: The Musical website
Buy the MST3K Brain that Wouldn't Die
Buy the Elvira Brain that Wouldn't Die
Read about Brains on Film at MovieMorlocks.com
Learn more about Cinema Insomnia

Music:
"The Brain That Wouldn't Die" - Abie Baker
"Drive in Movie" - Kevin Frei
"Transplantations" - Kevin Frei
"Let Me Die! - Tom Sivak/Elizabeth Gelman
"Open the Door - Jon Gillespie/Phil Luna
"Brain that Wouldn't Die - Tom Sivak/Elizabeth Gelman
"Transfusion" - Nervous Norvus
"The Brain that Wouldn't Die" - MuSiK

Watch:

The Brain That Wouldn't Die - HD - by MuSiK from MuSiK on Vimeo.