Half Price Horror – Details, episodes & analysis

It's been a while since we've talked about 'Shaun of the Dead', Edgar Wright's ferociously inventive debut feature, and even longer since we've discussed 1973's folk horror classic 'The Wicker Man'. But they're both relevant here, as Wright and his collaborator Simon Pegg come together for a loving mashup of folk horror and action comedy in the 2007 masterpiece 'Hot Fuzz', and we're going to take a look at it together!

Time for deja vu all over again, as we jump ahead a year from 'The Night Stalker' to its very similar sequel, 'The Night Strangler'. Will Kolchak clash with the police? Will he argue with his editor some more? Is there a supernatural angle to the murders? Listen and find out!

Before 'The Conjuring', before 'Insidious', before 'The Ring' and 'Poltergeist' and a host of films about the supernatural, George C Scott starred in a mournful, elegant film about a grieving father confronted by a vengeful ghost. And what vengeance does it want? Come along with Half Price Horror and find out!

Half Price Horror jumps into the Halloween season with a 1951 classic of science-fiction horror that John Carpenter loved so much he almost refused to remake it, 'The Thing From Another World'! Join us for a discussion of Cold War politics and atomic horror as we take on one of the greats of the genre that inspired another one of the greats of the genre.

It's time to bid farewell to the Phantasm franchise, and we end as we begin with a microbudgeted surrealist horror film created by a group of close friends that defies logic and refuses easy answers as it meditates on death, grief, and what lies beyond the world we know. So let's get into the 'Cuda one final time and go out guns blazing as we take on the Tall Man once more in 'Phantasm: Ravager'!

HPH dives into Taika Waititi's mournful, elegiac meditation on aging and loss as seen through the eyes of a group of immortal vampires unable to die even as they see their loved ones and the world they knew pass away. It's full of bleak dread and endless sorrow... oh yeah, and also werewolves not swearwolves, a look they call 'Dead But Delicious', and plenty of arguments over who should do the dishes. It's funny, it's sad, it's scary, it's WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS!

The budgets keep getting smaller, but Don Coscarelli keeps throwing bigger and wilder and weirder ideas at the screen with every installment of the PHANTASM franchise! This time, we look at the fourth installment, PHANTASM: OBLIVION, and talk about Roger Avary's involvement, the brilliant use of archival footage, and lots lots more!

What better way to celebrate a birthday than with an obscure birthday-themed slasher flick from the 80s? That's right, your host is another year older, but giallo-inspired movies about a killer at a prep school will never go out of style. Come for the red herrings and quirky characters, stay for the absoludicrous twist ending that was a clear inspiration to Kevin Williamson's 'Scream'!

Half Price Horror enters the later, weirder era of the Phantasm franchise with its first direct-to-video entry, Phantasm III! Do we get more silver spheres? Do we get a return from A. Michael Baldwin as Mike? Do we get a completely unmotivated Home Alone reference? Yes to all that and more! Come see what's going on with the Tall Man as we dig into every bit of it!

Half Price Horror takes a bold stance in this episode, suggesting that the 2011 prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 classic might be... good? Really good? Unfairly maligned, full of sympathetic characters and tight, tense action set pieces good? Mary Elizabeth Winstead with a goddamn flamethrower good? Give the CGI a break, it lets the monster do things it could never have done in the original good? Don't believe us, just listen and find out good? Yes! That good! Don't believe us? Just listen and find out!