Eros + Massacre

This April was the great Roger Corman’s centennial, so what better time to finally discuss his work on Eros + Massacre. Writer, artist, programmer, and friend of the show Klon Waldrip joined me for an epic conversation about Corman’s 8-film series loosely based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

In this episode we discuss: House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Premature Burial (1962), Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven (1963), Lovecraft adaptation The Haunted Palace (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), and a handful of related films. We talk a lot...

The greatest of all time, Meiko Kaji, recently came to NYC for a retrospective of her work at Japan Society, so naturally I had to celebrate with a podcast episode in her honor. This is a solo outing, where I discuss the Stray Cat Rock series, which Kaji made for Nikkatsu. It launched her to countercultural stardom and was her last major project for the studio before departing for Toei in 1972 where she went on to greater heights with a series of crime and revenge films.

I discuss the five film series: Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl...

I haven’t yet had a chance to talk about New German Cinema on Eros + Massacre, though episodes on Rainer Werner Fassbinder and key figures from his group of collaborators have been high on my list. I could never pick a single favorite director, but Fassbinder is at least in the top five. And Kurt Raab—the actor, set designer, art director, screenwriter, and producer who was among Fassbinder’s most loyal, brilliant, and beleaguered collaborators—is among my favorite Germans to ever exist, so it seemed like a good idea to start with him.

Film programmer and proj...

I missed this podcast so much, but finishing a book while keeping on top of my commentary deadlines has been brutal. The episode title — as some of you have probably guessed — is a bit deceptive. This is all about my favorite new-to-me films of 2025 and it skews heavily towards East Asian cinema and towards crime thrillers. There are actually more contemporary films on here than I would have guessed, as well as some real wild cards (especially in the runners up section), but they are ALL BANGERS. Fair warning that a number of them are heavy on the violence, sexu...

Squeezing in one last special episode for the Halloween season, this is another subject I’ve been dying to talk about since I started Eros + Massacre. Erica Shultz was kind enough to join me to discuss about a series of ’70s and ’80s thrillers and horror movies featuring the phone as a source of terror. You probably know Erica from her podcast, Unsung Horrors, and her book, The Sweetest Taboo: An Unapologetic Guide to Child Kills in Film. She has an upcoming Miskatonic lecture on November 18th all about that very subject, so get your tickets here.

We sta...

It took me YEARS to make this episode happen, but I am finally triumphant, thanks to my generous and tolerant co-host, Keith Allison. You might remember him as my guest for our episode last year on beach party movies, or know him from his many years writing about cinema, including his book Cocktails and Capers: Cult Cinema, Cocktails, Crime, & Cool. Keith joined me to talk about one of my favorite things in the entire world, the Hammer Dracula series: Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960), Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970...

It’s officially the beginning of Halloween season and the end of the Japanese celebration of the dead, Obon. Obon is celebrated at different times in different parts of the country, though it is traditionally mid-August. I’m being a little flexible with the dates here, because I want to start doing an annual Obon-themed episode that focuses on Japanese folklore, horror, and the supernatural.

This episode is also an experiment — it’s my first solo episode of Eros + Massacre, which is something I’ve been planning to do for a while. For this one I’m discussing t...

This is an extra special episode near and dear to my heart, since Kenji Misumi has become one of my favorite directors, largely because of the Sword trilogy. Though his name may be unfamiliar to many of you, you have likely seen a few of his films: he directed most of the Lone Wolf and Cub series and many Zatoichi films. Longtime Criterion producer Curtis Tsui — who worked on both of those sets — joined me to discuss some of Misumi’s less frequently seen or discussed masterpieces.

We briefly discuss the great Satan’s Sword (1960) trilogy, but focus mo...

Chicago film programmer John Dickson, from the Oscarbate podcast and film collective, joined me for another wild discussion of Jess Franco’s spy/detective films. This time we’re talking about most of the movies in his Red Lips series, focusing on two female friends (and later, lovers), who are imaginative young strippers and/or cabaret performers who moonlight as private detectives, spies, vigilantes, Interpol informants, and so on.

This episode covers Tio Jess’s debut film, We Are 18 Years Old (1959), which is the origin of the character types even if it isn’t officially in the series...

Since we’re on the verge of summer, it seemed like the perfect time for my first episode on American sex comedies. After years of asking, I finally listened to reason and sat down with gentleman pervert Shawn Porter, who has been proselytizing to me about the joys of Hamburger: The Motion Picture (1986) for far too long. You might remember Shawn from the Jamie Gillis episode of Twitch of the Death Nerve, but he also runs the body modification archive Sacred Debris, an important resource documenting the history of tattooing, piercing, other body mods, which fo...

Clara from Angura Research Center was kind enough to join me for this episode on one of cinema’s greatest surrealists, Shuji Terayama. Poet, writer, master of underground theater (known as angura in Japanese) and experimental cinema, and so much more, Terayama had an incredibly rich, prolific career in many art forms, which blend together influences from classical Japanese theater, pop culture, folklore, deeply personal elements of biography, etc. Consider this episode more of an introduction to Terayama: we break down why he is so important and mainly discuss one of his more accessible films, the beautiful Pastoral: To Di...

Ditch class, rev your engines, sharpen your switchblades, and roll up some reefer! Extremely patient friend of the show Byron Lueders joined me for this episode that we recorded four score and seven years ago (or at least that’s how long it feels), all about American teenage girl gang films in the 1950s and ’60s. In the episode, we focus primarily on Girl Gang (1954), Teenage Crime Wave (1955), One Way Ticket to Hell (1955), The Violent Years (1956), Teenage Doll (1957), The Delinquents (1957), Live Fast, Die Young (1958), and Teenage Gang Debs (1966). We discuss: the rise of “teenager” culture in postwar America and how many...

It’s officially spring, which seems like a fitting time to release the first — but certainly not last — Jess Franco episode of the show. Thanks to Patreon supporter Pat Radke for requesting a series of Jess episodes! Chicago film programmer John Dickson, from the Oscarbate podcast and film collective, joined me for a particularly wild discussion of Jess Franco’s best films featuring his recurring detective character, Al Pereira. Sometimes played by Howard Vernon, Eddie Constantine, Uncle Jess himself, and Antonio Mayans, among others, Pereira is a perverse twist on the standard sleazy private eye character from pulp fiction.

Th...

It’s spring equinox and Eros + Massacre is emerging from hibernation! This first episode of 2025 is a discussion with cinema historian Tom Mes. He’s an international treasure and many of you were likely introduced to some incredible Japanese films due to his exhaustive writing and research and his site Midnight Eye. He just released a new book, Japanese Film and the Challenge of Video, and works with blu-ray companies like Arrow and Radiance as a producer on many of their Japanese cinema releases. Be sure to check out his latest lovechild with Arrow, V-Cinema Essentials: Bullets & Betrayal (for which...

We are still in the no man’s land between Christmas and New Year’s Day, so hopefully this second part of my two-part episode on the BBC’s original Ghost Stories for Christmas series with Will Dodson will get you through. As a reminder, in part one we discussed six M.R. James adaptations, mostly from the original series. Part two takes us through the final three episodes, The Signalman (1976), Stigma (1977), and The Ice House (1978), plus two spin off films, The Stone Tape (1972), and Schalcken the Painter (1979), and one last M.R. James television adaptation, Casting the Runes (1979) from I...

My sweet Yuletide angels, here is the other two-part episode I’m shoehorning into this December. I’ll have the second part up later this week (though it will be on my Patreon earlier) so you all have something to listen to when you’re driving to and fro family holiday events this week. I have been absolutely dying to do an episode on the BBC’s original Ghost Stories for Christmas series. I’m grateful it finally happened because this was such a joy and I was thankful to find a cohost insane enough to agree to watch and discus...

Here is part two of this journey through Teruo Ishii’s Joys of Torture with Chris Haskell (from the They Live By Film and Punk Vacation podcasts). Part one covered Tokugawa: Women’s Genealogy (1968), Shogun’s Joy of Torture (1968), and Orgies of Edo (1969), and in this episode we packed in Shameless: Abnormal and Abusive Love (1969), Inferno of Torture (1969), Yakuza Law (1969), Love and Crime (1969), and Shogun’s Sadism aka Oxen Split Torturing (1976).

And just a reminder that if you want to watch along but are struggling with where to locate some of these, email me (at samm.deighan@gmail.com) and I ca...

After a much needed break, I’m back! I have been DYING to do a few podcast episodes on underrated Japanese master Teruo Ishii and Chris Haskell (from the They Live By Film and Punk Vacation podcasts) was kind enough to agree to my insane demand that we cover all the films in Ishii’s Joys of Torture series. Ishii directed seven films in 1968 and 1969 for Toei that explore torture, sexual obsession, sadism, toxic relationships, crime, and debauchery in a series of movies that are only thematically connected (plus one loose “sequel” made by Yuji Makiguchi in 1976). Some of these are...

For the latest Eros + Massacre episode, designer, writer, musician, and jack of all trades Christopher Norris joined me to talk about one of our mutual favorites, Alain Robbe-Grillet, a giant of modern French literature, a genius filmmaker, and an unabashed pervert. We focused on three of his classic films, each from a different decade: Trans-Europ-Express (1966), Le jeu avec le feu (Playing with Fire, 1975), and La belle captive (The Beautiful Prisoner, 1983). And of course the conversation includes everything from Jess Franco and Jacques Rivette to Marguerite Duras and White Chicks, among other things.

You can find Christopher at Ste...

Andrew Nette, my co-editor on Revolution in 35mm, joined me for this rather intense episode about Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966). We talk a lot about the film’s powerful impact, the Algerian struggle for independence from French colonial occupation, the cost and effectiveness of violence, Pontecorvo’s time in the Italian resistance during WWII, his career more broadly, and the use of The Battle of Algiers as a training tool for political radicals.

We also discuss films made around the same time that addressed the war, particularly Youssef Chahine’s incredible Jamila, The Algerian (1958). In additi...

Starting this September, the Criterion Channel is running a series on giallo films. It includes thirteen films from The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) through Tenebrae (1982), covering a lot of the greatest hits of the genre with a few added bonus in the mix as well. Criterion video editor, Channel programmer, and all around lovely person Clyde Folley was kind enough to join me to talk about this series, which he programmed. We discuss the challenges of programming a series like this, the genre as a whole, our favorite films in the series, the magic of Nieves Navarro, our...

It broke my heart that the absolutely wonderful Donald Sutherland died this summer, even though he lived a long, extremely full life, so I knew I needed to do an episode on some aspect of his sprawling career. Robert Skvarla was kind enough to join me to talk about some of Sutherland’s thriller films from the 1970s and ’80s. We focused primarily on Alan Pakula’s Klute (1971), but also discussed Bob Clark’s Murder By Decree (1979), Richard Marquand’s Eye of the Needle (1981), and naturally brought up a host of other related films like Don’t Look Now and my new fa...

Over the years I’ve talked a lot about how Fulci’s City of the Living Dead (1980) changed my life as a young teenager and so it goes without saying that Fabio Frizzi’s music has also had a huge impact on me. This September, he’s taking a Zombie live score on an American tour and he was kind enough to speak with me ahead of that. We talk about his process composing, how he approaches films, and what it was like to work with Fulci, but it was also important to me to get in some questions about his...

I have been wanting to do an episode on American International Pictures’ beach party series with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello FOR YEARS. I absolutely love these films and I’m so grateful to my pal Keith Allison, a film and pop culture writer, for going on this long and very sandy journey with me. We talk about what I consider the main films in the series — Beach Party (1963), Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini Beach (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), and Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) — and a lot of related topics like teen culture, surfer music, the inn...

Happy belated birthday to Mario Bava, who was born on July 31 (much like me). This is a loaded episode: guest host Bill Ackerman, from Supporting Characters podcast and a number of commentaries and other blu-ray special features, shares my love of Bava and his final feature film, Shock (1977). We talk about: Shock and its relationship to Ovidio Assonitis’s Beyond the Door (1974), to which it is an unofficial sequel; Bava’s collaborations with his son, director Lamberto, in the late ’70s; the wonderful Dario Nicolodi and her performances in Shock and the television film Venus of Ille (1979), which Mario and Lambe...

Learn more about what wild and obscure movies I’m watching by following me on Patreon to unlock this full episode and access the entire back catalogue of bonus episodes, video essays, written essays, and podcast series! This episode covers everything from Hong Kong action and horror to Stephen Chow movies, classical Japanese melodrama, Yaphet Kotto, and much more.

For this episode, I was joined by Adam Torel, the owner of Third Window Films, a blu-ray label focusing specifically on more unusual Japanese cinema. We talked about the ins and outs of running a blu-ray label, working in Japan, the complexities of releasing more obscure Japanese films, and so much more. Even if you aren’t a huge fan of Japanese films, there’s so much detail in here about some of the difficulties of getting films released on disc. We started to get into specific films Third Window has released, like some of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s ’80s movies a...

This Fourth of July, I wanted to celebrate a real American hero and who better than one of the greatest Americans to ever do it — Rudy Ray Moore. My friend Klon Waldrip joined me to talk about everything from Rudy’s entrepreneurial spirit (he printed and sold his own records… in the ’70s), his important role as a sexual anarchist, and his underground cinema, focusing mostly on his classics like Dolemite and Petey Wheatstraw. We love Rudy so much and Klon actually got to meet him a few times over the years, so he was kind enough to share some stori...

Episode two is all about one of my favorite experimental Japanese New Wave films and I’m so grateful to my guest, film analyst Celeste de la Cabra, for agreeing to discuss this one with me. The film’s director, Toshio Matsumoto, has become one of my favorites in recent years and is criminally underrated, so we also spend a little time getting into his other work. Funeral Parade of Roses (1969), his most celebrated film, can best be described as an arthouse reimagining of Oedipus Rex, set in the queer nightclub scene in late ’60s Tokyo. It’s a challeng...

It’s heeeere! I’m Samm Deighan and I’m beyond excited to launch the first episode of my new podcast, Eros + Massacre. Chris Haskell from They Live on Film podcast kindly joined me for the first episode, where we talk all about one of our mutual favorite underrated directors, Michele Soavi, and focus on his four key horror films from the late ’80s and ’90s: Stage Fright, The Church, The Sect, and Cemetery Man. We particularly focused on Soavi’s brilliance as a surrealist and the fact that he is — for my money — the last great Italian genre director.

Check out this short preview of Samm Deighan’s new podcast EROS + MASSACRE! Thanks!