237 | Appendage

• Written & Directed by Anna Zlokovic

• Rated TV-MA

• Runtime: 1hr 34min

• Stars: Hadley Robinson, Emily Hampshire and Kausar Mohammed

• Premiered at South by Southwest March 11, 2023

• Released on Hulu October 2, 2023

• RT: 52% critics / 62% audience

  Synopsis 

  A stressed-out young woman finds that her anxieties are manifesting themselves in strange ways, as a growth begins to appear on her stomach and soon dislodges itself and develops a mind of its own.

Join us next time when we'll review Argentinian import When Evil Lurks, currently in theaters and coming to streaming October 27.

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Theme music: "Secret of Tiki Island" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

162 | Bad Hair

Written & Directed by Justin Simien

Stars Elle Lorraine, Vanessa Williams, Lena Waithe & Kelly Rowland

Premiered at Sundance January 23, 2020

Released October 23, 2020 on Hulu

Unrated

Runtime: 1hr 42mins

RT: 64% critics, 41% audience

Synopsis: Anna is a young woman with a low-tier job at a struggling music TV station called Culture. She desperately wants a show of her own but is hampered by sexism and by her lack of style. When the station management is revamped in an attempt to increase viewership, a glamorous woman named Zora becomes Anna’s new boss. Anna manages to impress her with her ideas, but Zora makes it clear that she’ll go nowhere until she looks the part. Willing to do anything to succeed, Anna agrees to see the stylist Zora recommends for a fabulous weave. Little does she know that, while the weave giveth plenty, it also taketh away.

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Next up, a supernatural horror movie made by a mom, dad and their teenage daughter. The family wrote, directed, starred, pretty much everything’d in the low budget The Deeper You Dig. Check it out on Shudder so you’ll be up to speed when we discuss in in two weeks.

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Theme music: "Secret of Tiki Island" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Bloodlust Bites | Shirley

Directed by Josephine Decker

Written by Sarah Gubbins, based on the novel by Susan Scarf Merrell

Stars Elizabeth Moss, Odessa Young, Michael Stuhlbarg and Logan Lerman

Rated R

Runtime of 1hr 47min

Synopsis: In this period drama, young marrieds Fred and Rose move in with real life literary couple Stanley Hyman and Shirley Jackson after the publication of Jackson’s iconic short story “The Lottery.” In addition to finding herself as Jackson’s de facto personal assistant/housekeeper, Rose also becomes Jackson’s window into a new story she’s working on.

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Theme music: "Secret of Tiki Island" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

151 | The Lodge

Horror fans have long understood that horrific things don't only happen in the movies. In fact, 2020 has felt as if it's single-handedly showing us just how horrible the real world can be. While our podcast is a platform for us to discuss the horror genre, we can't ignore the fact that it's this same genre that often provides a catharsis for many of those real-world horrors. 

We at Bloodlust Ventures are troubled by the seemingly endless instances of murder and violence towards POC. We want our black listeners to know that we see you, we hear you, and we will NOT forget about this after the hashtags stop trending.

If you want to support BLM, and have the financial means to do so, please consider joining us in donating.

Directed by Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz

Written by Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz and Sergio Casci

Stars Riley Keough, Alicia Silverstone, Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh

Rated R

Runtime of 1hr 48 min

“a constant barrage of bad parenting decisions”

— Jamie

Synopsis: A father insists on taking his two children to spend Christmas at their cabin with his new fiance shortly after the death of their mother, then promptly leaves the three of them there together to get to know each other. Already a profoundly stupid idea, right? But it gets so much worse - turns out dad’s fiance is the lone survivor of a Heaven’s Gate-like cult that committed mass suicide not long ago. Why wouldn’t you want to leave her alone with your kids in a remote cabin?

NOTES FROM THE EPISODE:

Okay listeners, which of these two do you think looks more like the cult leader from The Lodge? Let us know in the comments.

Here’s a fun thing I didn’t think of while we were recording - Jamie’s pick for who the cult leader looked like was The Six-Fingered Man (aka Christopher Guest), who played opposite my pick, Chris Sarandon. Ain’t life funny.

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Jim Can’t Swim - True Crime/Police Interrogation videos

Check out his videos and if you find them interesting, you may want to check out his Patreon, where you can subscribe for a very reasonable $1/month and get additional videos.

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Next up, The Wretched, now available for rent on Amazon as well as showing at select drive-in theaters. This movie is real hot right now and probably owes a lot of that success to the fact that times are crazy and one of the few escapes for folks is to head to the the drive-in.

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Theme music: "Secret of Tiki Island" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/