And Now The Podcast Starts

10/11/2023

Exorcist II: The Heretic has been called "the worst film ever made" (by Mark Kermode) and has attracted derision ever since its release in 1977, not least by the makers of the original The Exorcist (1973). Our Ian, who worships The Exorcist, has always avoided it. But esteemed critic Neil Young, our special guest on this episode, insists The Heretic is a more interesting film than its progenitor. Listen as Neil explains while he feels this way, Ian and Stella react to The Heretic for the first time, and Dan tries to chart the middle ground!
(Regular listeners will be aware that our schedule is still up the spout. This episode has leapfrogged the promised episode on Quatermass [1979] with Simon Clark, ostensibly to coincide with the cinema release of The Exorcist: Believer, but then we missed the date anyway - and don't mention the new film here cos this episode was recorded months ago. Our podcast schedule is going to remain random for a while, unfortunately, due to Dan's complicated life.)

Relevant links
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) is available for rental streaming via YouTube and Amazon
The bonkers trailer is also on YouTube

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11/08/2023

Stella and Dan are back and they're enthusing... https://wordpress.com/post/andnowmovie.wordpress.com/1007

04/08/2023

New episode - Dr Stella Gaynor and TD Velasquez on Scream VI... https://andnowmovie.wordpress.com/2023/08/04/scream-vi-2023/

28/07/2023

A long while after our last Missed Classic on When A Stranger Calls (1979), Ian Winterton confronts another feted movie he has heretofore avoided, 1984’s iconic Wes Craven slasher, A Nightmar…

28/07/2023

One, two, Freddy's coming for you!

A long while after our last Missed Classic on When A Stranger Calls (1979), Ian Winterton confronts another feted movie he has heretofore avoided, 1984’s iconic Wes Craven slasher, A Nightmar…

24/07/2023

Our latest episode!

WARNING – SPOILERS FOR MIDNIGHT MASS ARE COMING IN THE VERY NEXT PARAGRAPH – AND THIS IS ONE (HUGELY RECOMMENDED) SERIES THAT’S BEST ENJOYED ENTIRELY UNSPOILED! Or, “Vampi…

14/07/2023

We've been away for some time, but at last here's the first episode of our third series. Lots of goodies coming up over the next few weeks, but first, "Was it coincidence Was it murder? Or was it... AN OMEN?"

“It’s a bit like The Beatles…” Returning after a long delay, Dan, Stella, Ian and (in a surprise telephone cameo) Howard commence their latest series with a discussion of 19…

25/12/2022

Merry Christmas, folks! Alas our planned Christmas Day episode is still not quite ready, but should be with you tomorrow. It's a goodie...

16/12/2022

Show notes coming soon!

02/12/2022

Stella and Dan express their fandom of co-writer/star Simon Pegg and co-writer/director Edgar Wright's horror tinged 'Cornetto Trilogy', aka the comedy films Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007) and The World's End (2013), plus the TV series they co-created with Jessica Hynes, Spaced (1999-2001...

25/11/2022

We go back to the Alien franchise again, as Ian and Dan compare their personal lists of five favourite things from the 1979 classic. We assume you've all seen this one, so it's spoiler-filled from the start. And if you haven't seen it, stop listening to us, get yourself to Disney+ and treat yourself...

18/11/2022

Together as a foursome for the first time in a while, Kirsty, Stella, Ian and Dan discuss 2012's The Hunger Games, as well as touching on its sequels and the books the films were based on. Beware, some spoilers... (Kirsty at one point says "kill to the death" instead of "fight to the death". Dan, wh...

11/11/2022

A few weeks late, we're giving our first coverage to Grimmfest 2022. Stella and Dan discuss the Italian comic heist thriller with a gruesome undertone, L'Orafo aka The Goldsmith, winner of the festival's Reaper Award for Best Screenplay. Dan was unable to attend Grimmfest itself due to illness, but....

04/11/2022

This episode, Dan and Stella discuss the subgenre of body horror: what are our favourite body horror sequences in film and TV, what makes them work, how body horror crosses subgenres and how it's evolved with the development of FX techniques. The discussion takes in the following films and shows, wi...

28/10/2022

Welcome to the second proper weekly series of --And Now The Podcast Starts! And happy Halloween. This episode, Kirsty, Ian and Dan are discussing Men, director Alex Garland's recent hybrid of folk horror, gender commentary and body horror, first in spoiler-free fashion, then with full spoilers. 00.0...

29/07/2022

A relaxed, horror-adjacent chat this week, as Stella and Dan put their feet up and chuckle about the horrific elements of their (and possibly everybody's) favourite sci-fi sitcom, Red Dwarf. (The Series 2 episode they discuss without naming is called Thanks for the Memory.) Red Dwarf Series 1-8 are....

22/07/2022

Following their discussions of Aliens (1986) in the previous two episodes, and Alien3 (1992) much earlier, Dan and Ian now take on 1997's not-much-loved fourth part of the franchise, Alien Resurrection, although the two can't agree whose idea it was. Listen as Ian rediscovers a nightmare from litera...

15/07/2022

Following the brief discussion last episode, Ian and Dan now get to enthuse at length about one of their favourite movies, James Cameron's 1986 sequel to Alien, Aliens. Plus a child pops in. All the Alien films are available for streaming via Disney+ Find out more about the new Aliens documentary, A...

08/07/2022

Apart from Howard (he says hello), the gang's all here as Stella, Kirsty and Ian join Dan to discuss how far the horror genre might stretch to include action, disaster and sci-fi films, with specific reference to The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Jaws (1975) and Aliens (1986). Beware: spoilers for The....

31/05/2022

Ian, Stella and Kirsty do their best without Dan's guidance (he's away on holiday, the slacker) and dig into 'Dashcam', Rob Savage's eagerly anticipated follow-up to 'Host', with a spoiler-free and spoiler-full discussions, plus an interview with 'Dashcam' screenwriter Gemma Hurley and its producer....

27/05/2022

It's time to talk Tolkien, and specifically the more horrific elements of the Middle Earth canon. Peter Jackson's 2001 film instalment The Fellowship of the Ring (featuring the ever-forbidding Christopher Lee, of course) has long given Ian, Stella and Dan the collywobbles, but Ralph Bakshi's 1978 an...

30/04/2022

AKA: 'Another Hannibal Love-In'... We return to the world of Hannibal, Bryan Fuller's majestic TV remix of the works of Thomas Harris. As with our Season One discussion last year, Kirsty and Dan are joined by very special guests Dr Lori Hitchcock Morimoto of the University of Virginia and Dr Rebecca...

28/04/2022

The date this episode drops, 18th April 2022, would've been the 100th birthday of Nigel Kneale, the great pioneer of SF/horror TV and film, who died in 2006. Here, in an extract from our forthcoming episode on Kneale's film version of Quatermass and the Pit (1967), renowned horror author Simon Clark...

01/04/2022

It's April Fool's Day, so perhaps it's appropriate to admit our own foolishness in failing to put out our March episode actually in the month of March. Here it is instead, and you'll get a proper April episode in due course... David Edwards, former film critic of the Daily Mirror and old mate of Ian...

04/03/2022

Now that the major episodes of the podcast have moved to a monthly schedule, we'll be dropping occasional mini episodes in between, including reviews of new movies. Here is the first, as Kirsty and Dan sink their teeth into director Joe Badon's surreal dark comedy, Sister Tempest. Relevant links: Or...

18/02/2022

It's 100 years since the premiere of FW Murnau's Nosferatu - Eine Symphonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horror). Although not quite the first screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, it's the one by which all others are measured - a masterpiece of German Expressionist cinema that marks....

21/01/2022

Dan spent quite a while thinking up the title for this episode... Yes, having graduated from high school (or 'left secondary school' as we tend to say in this part of the UK) just as Wes Craven's seminal slasher comedy Scream (1996) first hit UK cinemas, Stella and Dan are franchise fans and wouldn'...

25/12/2021

Kirsty, Dan and Ian discuss 2019's Doctor Sleep and whether it was a good idea to make a direct sequel to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Also, Merry Christmas! 00.00.00 Intro 00.09.25 Doctor Sleep and The Shining (non-spoilers) 00.40.49 Doctor Sleep (spoilers) Recommendations Doctor Sleep (in...

03/12/2021

Kirsty and Dan ponder the horror films they've decided never to go near, and the reasons behind their choice. Elsewhere, Howard returns - for the first time over Zoom - to delve into the Bag of Death. 00.00.41 Intro with Dan 00.04.55 The Bag of Death with Howard 00.25.46 The Question of Horror with....