Special Guests: Pola Rapaport, Maya Gallus Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Jessica Shires
Jessica Shires and Samm Deighan join Mike for a deep, unflinching look at Just Jaeckin’s Story of O (1975), the adaptation of Pauline Réage’s notorious novel. Corinne Cléry embodies O with startling vulnerability as she’s led by her lover René (Udo Kier) into the secretive Chateau at Roissy -- an isolated world of ritual, discipline, and erotic power exchange.
The conversation opens up the film’s legacy, its aesthetics, and its complicated relationship to the source text’s authorship and mythology. The episode also features two illuminating interviews: Pola Rapaport, director of The Writer of O, discusses the real story behind Dominique Aury and the creation of the literary sensation; and Maya Gallus, director of Erotica: A Journey Into Female Sexuality (1997), explores the film’s place in a broader lineage of women’s erotic expression, taboo-breaking, and cinematic desire.
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.
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.
Special Guest: Ginette Vincendeau Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Andrew Leavold
Film historian Samm Deighan and cult cinema expert Andrew Leavold join Mike to shine a light on Jean-Pierre Melville's Two Men in Manhattan (1959). Often overshadowed by his better-known crime films, this moody noir follows a journalist and a photographer as they comb the streets of New York in search of a missing French diplomat. The trio digs into Melville’s fascination with American style, the film’s ethically murky characters, and how it fits within the director’s larger body of work. They also explore the tension between documentary realism and stylized noir, and why Two Men in Manhattan deserves a second look.
Special Guest: Ginette Vincendeau Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Andrew Leavold
We conclude Art House August with a look at Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows (1969). Based loosely on Joseph Kessel's memoir about the French Resistance in World War II, the film stars Lino Ventura as Phillipe Gerbier, one of a handful of Resistance fighters we meet as we travel through the underworld, striking out at the German occupiers and those loyal to the Vichy government.
We continue Sci-Fi July with a look at the Yugoslavian/Czechosolvakian co-production Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy (1981). Directed by Dušan Vukotić and co-written by Projection Booth favorite Miloš Macourek, the film stars Žarko Potočnjak as Robert, a writer who manifests some of his own characters to hilarious results.
Samm Deighan and Axel Kohagen join Mike to kick off a month of science fiction fun with the one film that is the least sci-fi of the bunch, The Unknown Man of Shandigor. Released in 1967 the film is a rare feature film from Swiss filmmaker Jean-Louis Roy.
The film is something of a spy movie which stars the singular Daniel Emilfork as Professor Herbert von Krantz, a scientist who has crafted a device called the Annulator which can reverse a nuclear explosion. He, his assistant Yvan, and daughter Sylvain are the targets of several spy rings -- The Russians, The Americans, The French maybe, and the Man with the Platinum Ring all want The Annulator or to destroy it.
We conclude a month of discussing Japanese films with a look at Toshio Matsumoto's 1971 film Demons AKA Shura AKA Pandemonium. The story of the film is part of the fabric of the larger 47 Ronin narrative and is the story of a ronin (Katsuo Nakamura) who is cheated by a geisha and how he carves a bloody path for revenge.
Emily Intravia and Samm Deighan join Mike to discuss this breathtaking, disturbing film.
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.
Special Guest: Alan Light Guest Co-Hosts: Bill Ackerman, Samm Deighan
Samm Deighan and Bill Ackerman join Mike to discuss 1984's box office smash Purple Rain which launched Prince's movie career and made him a household name. The film stars Prince as "The Kid", a musician from Minneapolis who struggles to find his place in the music scene while battling personal demons.
Emily Intravia and Samm Deighan join Mike on Episode 666 of The Projection Booth to look at Helmut Käutner's 1948 film Der Apfel ist ab (The Apple Fell AKA The Original Sin).
It's the story of Adam Schmidt (Bobby Todd) who is torn between his wife Lilith (Joana Maria Gorvin) and his mistress Eve (Bettina Moissi). Despondent, Adam tries to commit suicide among the ruins of post-war Germany. Instead of killing himself, he commits himself to a sanatorium where he undergoes an extended musical fantasy sequence which retells the Genesis story.
Special Guest: Jyrki Siukonen Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Eric J. Peterson
Directed by Risto Jarva, A Time of Roses (1969) is a low-grade science fiction film set in the distant year of 2012 where the government is a meritocracy. We focus in on Raimo Lappalainen (Arto Tuominen), a historian who wants to know what the world of 1969 was really like. He decides to recreate the past by creating a likeness of a woman who died in 1976 via her contemporary double, Kisse (Ritva Vepsä), to act as a substitute.
We continue our request month with one from Patreon Donor Ludo Round. We’re discussing Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes (1964). Based on a novel by, and adapted by the author Kōbō Abe, the film stars Eiji Okada as teacher and amateur entomologist Niki Jumpei. On a sea-side vacation, he spends the night with the titular Woman played by Kyoko Kishida . In the morning he finds that he is trapped in the pit that holds her home. He’s now expected to help her shovel sand every night in a Sisyphean nightmare.
Samm Deighan and Spencer Parsons join Mike to look at the 1976 Hungarian film from Zoltán Fábri, The Fifth Seal / Az ötödik pecsét (1976). Based on the novel by Ferenc Sánta, the film is a deceptively simple story of five men who meet and drink in an urban watering hole in World War II. One of them proposes a bit of a thought experiment which colors the world of his companions and eventually manifests in real life thanks to the fascists, the Arrow Cross Party, running the place.
Special Guests: Mike Werb, Michael Colleary Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, AJ Black
In John Woo's Face/Off (1997), Sean Archer (John Travolta), a FBI Agent whose son was killed by his enemy, Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage ). Six years later Troy has planted a bomb somewhere in L.A. and, after he’s accidentally put into a coma, Archer must put on Troy’s face in order to find where the bomb is at.
Samm Deighan and A.J. Black join Mike to discuss this landmark action film while screenwriters Michael Colleary and Mike Werb talk about the long, strange history of the movie.
French Month continues with a look at Marcel Carné's Children of Paradise (1945). Set in the early-mid 1800s, the film tells a winding tale of the woman Garance (Arletty) and the four men in her orbit: The mime Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault), the actor Frederick (Pierre Brasseur), the criminal Larcenaire (Marcel Herrand), and the aristocrat Edouard (Louis Salou).
Keith Gordon and Samm Deighan join Mike to discuss the film as well as the compelling circumstances around its making.
Special Guest: Ginette Vincendeau Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Andrew Leavold
French Month continues with a look at Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur (1956), the first of many gangster films he would direct. Based on his story with dialogue by Auguste LeBreton, it tells the tale of Bob (Roger Duchesne), an aging man who robbed a bank 20 years prior, and now spends his time going from game to game -- craps, cards, whatever. He even has a slot machine in his Montmartre apartment.
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: Christopher St. John Guest Co-Hosts: Gary Phillips, Samm Deighan
Our Black History Month coverage continues with a look at Christopher St. John's Top of the Heap. Released in 1972 the film stars St. John as George Lattimer, a DC police officer who’s confronted with pressures from his job, his wife, and his daughter. When his mother dies, George undergoes a bit of a breakdown where he starts fantasizing about another life including being an astronaut.
Gary Phillips and Samm Deighan join Mike to discuss this sorely under-seen film while Christopher St. John talks about how Top of the Heap came together despite interference from the film's producer.
The Code Red Blu-Ray of Top of the Heap is out of print. In the meantime, you can see the film via Shout Factory TV, Tubi, and other streaming services.
Special Guest: Karen Shakhnazarov Guest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Alistair Pitts
We’re discussing the 1988 film from Karen Shakhnazarov, Zero City. The film stars Leonid Filatov as Aleksei Varakin, he’s from a Moscow Mechanical Plant and comes to a small town to meet with a man about air conditioners. He soon finds himself in an absurdist nightmare where he’s served a cake that looks like his own head by a chef who is not his father and commits suicide.
Samm Deighan and Alistair Pitts join Mike to talk about the film while director Karen Shakhnazarov provides more context to the making of the movie.
Special Guests: Pola Rapaport, Maya Gallus
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