Before binging this show upon its release, I didn’t know anything about it. I’ve never read the novel or seen the other films. In fact, if you listened to the horror podcast we did for six years, I hardly ever even like ghost movies. First, I usually don’t think they’re very scary. But mainly, I find they rely too much on the supernatural angle and end up telling boring stories in the process. I enjoy the first Poltergeist, and I’m intrigued by the whole Amityville story. And some recent films, like The Conjuring and Sinister, have been effective. But overall, I tend to avoid them.
That being said, I’m a huge fan of Mike Flanagan (and Robert Kurtzman, of course). Our podcast praised Flanagan’s Absentia a bunch, and while we were sort of divided on Oculus and others, we absolutely loved Hush. So I figured if anyone was going to make a good ghost movie (or series) in 2018, it’d probably be him. And he totally did it.
Summarizing the plot of The Haunting of Hill House would take a while, and honestly, the less you know about it, the better. But it tells the story of Hugh Crain and his family, who buy Hill House in the summer of 1992 with the intent to fix it up and quickly flip it. However, the spirits that occupy the home remain with the family for the rest of their lives. The series constantly switches between 1992 and present day, often times showing the same stories from different points of view.
Ghosts aside, this is a great story. The five Crain siblings have such a colorful history and strong connection, and the drama aspects of the series are on par with any of today’s top television shows. But the ghosts… The ghosts are amazing! And they’re everywhere. Just look around in every scene, and you’re bound to see something. Of course, we get to learn the stories about some of the ghosts, while others are just random.
There are so many layers to this story, and there is so much to unpack with each character. The series could easily be double or triple the amount of episodes, as we really only get to see the family for that fateful summer and then mostly only for a few days in the present. You learn something new about each character in each episode. Just like the house itself has entire rooms and even a full basement that need to be discovered and explored by the Crains, it’ll take more than a single viewing to fully uncover everything hidden in this film.
Flanagan has recommended that viewers should re-watch the first five episodes before moving on to episode 6, acknowledging that the audience will not catch many important details during an initial screening. Whether or not you follow his advice, however, episode 6 might just blow your mind. I think it might be the best episode of any horror TV show I’ve ever seen.
I’m not doing ratings on all of the reviews on this site, but this is a 10/10. It’s a case of the ideal director with a great story, an adequate budget, and the perfect platform in Netflix. Everything lined up here, and Flanagan, along with his cast and crew, knocked it out of the park. Binge it ASAP.
The Radiant Radish can be heard on Radio Free Nashville WRFN 103.7/107.1 FM (or through the app) each Wednesday at 8:00 pm CST.
The show can also be heard on popthatgoescrunch.com on Thursdays at 2:00 pm CST and Saturdays at noon CST.
Contact us at radiantradish@yahoo.com with any feedback.
Record of the Week: Caper Clowns – A Salty Taste to the Lake
The Radiant Radish #83: 10/10/18
Peach Kelli Pop – Honey
The Archies – Bicycles, Roller Skates, and You
Better Than Ezra – Insane
Soulwax – Saturday
Belle & Sebastian – Jonathan David
Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs – Care of Cell 44
Caper Clowns – The Way I Dream
Caper Clowns – Second to None
Caper Clowns – Pretty & Underwear
Caper Clowns – Paper Trail
Oasis – I’m Outta Time
Camera Obscura – Tears for Affairs
Kula Shaker – Hey Dude
TGTG – Romantic Novel
Resistance House Band – Slayer v. Science
Year of October – Come & Get It
Imperial Teen – Butch
Every October, there is a streaming film that everyone is talking about, and this year it’s Terrifier. Everyone seems to be talking about it, and Josh from the Library Police recommended it to us, knowing how much we love slashers. So it was time to give it a try.
There’s not much to Terrifier. It really is as simple as a crazy guy dressed as a clown killing people on Halloween. And sometimes, that can be enough, depending on what he has to work with. Unfortunately, here, there is not a whole lot to work with!
I understand budget constraints. But if a filmmaker doesn’t have enough to make a feature length film, then it makes more sense to just have a short film instead. In this case, we have two main characters, including the one who should be the “final girl.” (Spoiler ahead…) Yet, because there isn’t anything else to do, we get our final girl chase halfway through the film, the final girl is killed, and her sister has to now take over as a new “final girl.”
And don’t get me started on the gunshot kill. We decided long ago that guns have no place in slasher films, except for maybe in the case of that Sleepaway Camp kill when Angela shoots the ex-cop. At that point, we wondered how she would do it, and the single gun shot was actually a surprise. Here, the gun is too easy of a weapon and really has nothing to do with a slasher.
But my biggest problem is the clown himself. He can be creepy at times, but he’s also too goofy. With his dumb faces that he makes, I just can’t take him seriously. Like, Freddy can be funny with his words, but the site of him should be nothing but scary. You don’t see Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers making funny faces at their victims. And that’s cause it’s absurd.
Overall, I’m just not a big fan of clown horror. I don’t have this huge “fear” of clowns that so many adults claim to have in our society, so I see it as more of a gimmick in horror films, and usually not an effective one. There are exceptions of course. Aside from It, I would recommend 100 Tears to anyone who really wants to watch an actual scary clown killer. Or if you’re into clowns who want to be funny before they kill someone, then you should check out Billy Pon’s Circus of the Dead, which is every bit as bloody as Terrifier, but it utilizes much better character development.
Honestly, I didn’t hate Terrifier. There are some genuinely scary moments, the kills are mostly great, and anyone who enjoys slashers will find something to like here. But we’ve seen it before, and we’ve seen it done much better. As a short film, I may have been really into it for 30 minutes. With its current runtime, it doesn’t really work for me.
That being said, will I watch the inevitable sequel? Of course I will.
This is another familiar story: Ozge, a taxi driver in Austria, witnesses a serial killer murdering a prostitute, and now he is after Ozge. The difference with this film is that Ozge, originally from Turkey, is also a serious fighter. In fact, she is banned from her local gym after destroying a guy and breaking his nose when she is only supposed to be sparring. This killer doesn’t realize what he’s chasing.
First this film looks great, even when most of it is set at night. But the best part is Ozge herself. She’s clearly taken enough crap from guys in the past and now has the opportunity to take her anger out on someone who deserves it. Furthermore, I also liked the writing and the minor religious angles that are explored, giving more of a glimpse into Ozge’s culture.
The action scenes are fast and brutal, but things slow down enough throughout the film that the audience can get a glimpse into the relationships that Ozge has with the various men in her life, mainly her father, her boxing coach, her cousin’s husband, and a new friend, one of the police detectives working on her case. Obviously she’s had a troubled past, but it all peaks when she actually says the words, mainly to herself, “I’m going to kill you.”
I’ll add one other thing… (Minor spoiler) This movie had the feeling like it was going to reveal that the killer was a cop, but luckily that didn’t happen. There is a twist to it, but it’s OK. Overall, I definitely recommend Cold Hell to fans of horror or even just action thrillers.
On a side note, this is the second new film I’ve watched on Shudder now, and so far they’ve both been pretty good. I’ll also point out that I came across this film by watching Shudder’s 24-hour channels that just stream constant content. While I wasn’t impressed with Shudder when it initially launched, I’m liking it more during my second visit. If you gave up on it a while back like I did, you may want to check back in with the service.
While I don’t remember everything along the way so clearly, I do remember a lot about 2001, which is really what this collection celebrates.
First I should note that, as of Christmas Break in 2000, The Robinsons wasn’t really supposed to be much of a project. We thought we might play a show each summer when Todd came home from school, but he was far away in Monroe, Louisiana, in his first year of college, and I was just focused on writing fun songs for us to play when he came home for breaks.
The first Robinsons show was in August 2000 right before Todd left for school. When he came home for Christmas and we called a practice, I taught them “She Likes the Beatles,” “Angela’s Song,” and “Pulling Strings.” We knew right away that we were onto something. By the end of Todd’s Christmas Break, we decided to book shows for Mardi Gras (an uptown flophouse without Terrell) and Spring Break (a three-day run that got us pretty tight right away).
During Spring Break, Todd told us he’d be transferring to UNO, so we were officially going be a real band. We immediately started booking shows for the summer and planned to record “Cool Down! Got It?” as soon as he got home in May.
Until 2001, I had only recorded on an analog four-track. By now, Allen had acquired video editing software that might not have been designed to record music, but it was way better than the analog options we had. By recording on his computer, we could finally record instruments separately and really arrange and spread out some vocals and harmonies.
In early-May we set everything up in a bedroom in the house Donna and I had on Imperial in Chalmette. Taking breaks to practice, play shows, and go to work, I think we did it all in about a week.
1. E (Cool Down)
Ever since we’d bought our house in January 2000, Donna and I often hosted “Stupid Scary Movie Nights.” We’d rent three or four horror movies from Blockbuster, everyone would bring food, and we’d have like 20 people in our living room. One of the movies we screened a couple of times was an indie film called Sleepy Hollow High. We thought it was hilarious. We had to rewind this scene like 10 times one night and decided it had to go on our new CD. We got in touch with the director, and he even gave us permission to use the clip. So we ended up using it for the CD title as well.
2. Pulling Strings
I don’t remember writing this one, but it’s one of my favorite songs I’ve written. I remember practicing it with the band and thinking it was the best song I’d written so far. The opening synth sound became sort of a trademark sound for the band and for my music. I still use it sometimes on Vista Blue stuff. It’s just a basic synth sound on a fairly cheap keyboard, with two octaves played together for a more complete sound. The original keyboard was a Christmas gift to me and Todd from our grandparents a couple of years earlier. After I lost it in Katrina, Donna found a similar brand that had the same exact sound bank. Synth sound #61 is the one.
3. Lucky One
Todd and I were in a band called Park Bench from 1998 until summer of 2000. One day in early 2000, Todd started playing the main melody of this song on the bass. I thought it was great, so I used it for this song. I got the chorus pretty easily (ripping off my favorite song, Weezer’s “Falling For You”) and the middle eight was fun, but I couldn’t get good verse lyrics. Park Bench played this song live at one of our last shows when we opened for MTX and the Groovie Ghoulies, but I have no idea what I sang for the verses. When The Robinsons decided to use it, I tossed it to Terrell to finish, and he wrote some fun verses for it, so it made more sense to let him sing lead on it.
4. She’s My Girlfriend
I wrote this one in the spring of 2000 after listening to the Cars all day. I thought the chorus had a Cars kind of feel. We didn’t use it on the first Robinsons demo cause that had more of an indie rock sound. It fits way better here.
5. Angela’s Song
A real favorite of our scary movie nights was the Sleepaway Camp series, especially parts 2 and 3, which starred Pamela Springsteen (Bruce’s sister!) as Angela Baker, a psycopath who really only wanted kids to have a good camp experience. Her kills were the best, sometimes topping even Jason’s, and her one-liners were way better than Freddy’s. We had to write a song about her. We were obviously really into the Ramones during this time, and Terrell had to sing this one to make it sound a little more like Joey. Unfortunately, we could NOT get permission to use the sound clips in this track, so that has gotten it blocked on the internet at different times.
6. She Likes the Beatles
Another one that I just don’t remember writing, but I imagine I did it while riding around in my Jeep, which only had a cassette player. I can remember teaching everyone the arrangement, but I can’t remember anything about writing it. It’s held up and still works well when I throw it in my solo sets sometimes.
Terrell made this in MS Paint on my computer while we recorded CD!GI?
7. Suzie’s Got a Boyfriend
For this one, again, I wanted something like a Cars kind of chorus, where the band would chant something, and I’d answer it. So I just started with that chorus and those dumb lyrics and went backward from there. The lyrics are really weak, but the song is so much fun that it’s one of those times where people don’t even care about the lyrics. The immediate response to this song, both recorded and live, was one of the first times I felt like people were really “fans” of our music, as opposed to just friends and strangers being polite. What I thought could’ve been a throwaway turned out to be our most popular song throughout this year.
8. Blackmail Baby
I’m obviously trying to write something along the lines of Dr. Frank/MTX here. My first attempt was “Bill Gates” on the first Robinsons demo, and that one was pretty good, I think. On the other hand, I don’t know that I’ve ever played this one live. It never caught on like “Bill Gates” did. As I listen back, probably for the first time in 10 years, I guess I should’ve done something different with each chorus. And maybe I tried that and gave up. That being said, I like it now and am going to throw it on my setlist for my upcoming shows.
9. You Would Never Lie
That spring, it looked like we were going to put out “Cool Down! Got It?” right around the same exact time that our heroes, Weezer, returned from a five-year hiatus with the Green album. In fact, I remember handing out cassette tapes with our final mixes to some friends on the Green album’s release day. The point of this song was simply a prediction game to me. We knew the next Weezer album was NOT going to sound like Pinkerton. But what would it sound like? So one day I sat down and wrote a song where I tried to guess what Weezer’s next sound would be. (In hindsight, I was obviously pretty far off!) I didn’t even know if we’d definitely use this song, but the band liked it, so we used it to close out the album. Terrell and Todd doing the falsettos in the breakdown is really cool. We weren’t big fans of Anti-Flag, so we joked about our friend Ben being at their concert. We thought that kind of stuff was hilarious, although most people probably had no idea what we were even singing about.
That summer we played a lot of shows. In June, Todd’s first full month home, we played seven shows, including Baton Rouge and Jackson, Mississippi. We started to sell a lot of copies of “Cool Down! Got It?” and it was getting good reviews.
We had sent a copy to our friend Wyatt Funderburk, who had just completed his first year of college in Nashville. Wyatt was going to be back at his house in Starkville for the fall semester before returning to Nashville in 2002 to launch his new project Second Saturday. He said if we could get to Starkville in the fall, he’d love to produce an EP for us.
So we arranged to go for a weekend in October. We stayed with Wyatt’s parents, ate Sonic and lots of cookies, and recorded the “Summer Fun” EP.
10. Fun Times
With “Angela’s Song,” “Pulling Strings,” and others, we were getting pretty good at the three-part harmonies in our choruses. So I wanted to keep that going here. I just gave it a bit of a Beach Boys narrative, and while most of my choruses to this point had been like two to four lines, I did the opposite here, using just the two words.
11. Rev It Up
I wrote this song in early 2000. It was the second song I wrote for the Robinsons, and it was originally recorded for our first demo. Park Bench was still playing when I wrote this one, but I knew I wanted my next band to sound like both the Ramones and something from the ’60s (in addition to Weezer, of course). This was just a simple song about a guy who was about to race. Wyatt wanted to try a new arrangement, and he did such a good job. This is still one of my favorite tracks I’ve recorded.
12. No School Tomorrow
In February 2001, the school where I worked had sort of a retreat day on a Thursday. Instead of going to classes, the kids sat around in small groups all day and guests came to speak and all. Along the way, the kids tried to convince the principal that they should not have school the next day. In an amazing turn of events, he got on the p.a. system at the end of the day, and canceled school for Friday. Teachers with tests scheduled were stunned. The kids went crazy. I looked at it all as the perfect song topic. Everyone remembers the feeling of being a student and not having to go to school in the morning. We threw in some Chalmette jokes for fun, and I had Terrell write a couple of the verses since he’d be singing it. Again he came through with some great lines. Wyatt playing guitar and doubling me on the keyboard is another of my favorite moments.
13. Bogalusa
This one also appeared on the first Robinsons demo, which Todd and I recorded in my garage on my Tascam four-track in June 2000. The idea goes back to the fall of 1999. I was the assistant band director, and our school was playing a football game in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The town has a paper mill, and it STINKS. No matter where you go, it’s just bad. We tried to hold our breath for three hours. Mike Gulotta of Mike TV was in the band, and I mentioned to Mike that we should write a song about how terrible Bogalusa is. He told me it might be better if I go the other way and make it sound like a great place to be. He was right. I held onto the idea and then threw it together for the demo, basing the song mainly on the bass line I’d come up with. Again, Wyatt wanted to try a version with some better vocals, and he nailed this arrangement as well.
Note: We also recorded “Summer Girl” with Wyatt, but the files were lost.
We closed out 2001 with a bunch more live shows, and by December were starting to split our time between Chalmette, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge. The rest of the tracks on this CD are different versions of the songs we recorded in 2001 and/or are representative of the time period.
14. Angela’s Song (Horror Movie Society soundtrack, 2013)
In 2013 I had my first book published (in Australia). Inspired by our scary movie nights, the book is about a group of guys who watch movies and are killed throughout the night. Two of the characters are in a band, so I recorded a “soundtrack” for the book, as recorded by their band. There are four songs about horror movies, and then I added an acoustic version of “Angela’s Song” for the final track.
15. Bogalusa/Punk’s Not Dead/She Likes the Beatles (Howlin Wolf, 2002)
Howlin Wolf in March 2002 was our biggest NOLA show to date. We asked our Baton Rouge friends to try and drive down, and so many of them did it. We opened for two bigger NOLA bands, but we had the biggest and best crowd by far. They were chanting and singing along for the whole set. These recordings are rough, but you can hear how much fun it was.
16. I Want To Hold Your Hand (Songy’s, 2002)
This was Mardi Gras 2002, and it was another rare show where our Baton Rouge fans came out to support us somewhere else, this time actually in Chalmette. Park Bench had played a show here for about 20 relatives a couple of years earlier. This night was wild. This Beatles cover was recorded on a mini-tape recorder placed right next to Todd’s drums.
17. She’s My Girlfriend (Coach’s House, 2007)
This was the final Robinsons show before I moved to Nashville. Todd had moved to Nashville to start Second Saturday with Wyatt in 2002, and Terrell quit soon after that. I did Sally Stitches for a few years, but after Katrina, Allen and I played as The Robinsons again, with our friend Brian on drums. Our final show was in a New Orleans house that had been gutted but still not fully repaired since Katrina. This track shows that, through all the changes and different bands, we were still playing some of the songs from 2001 in our final set.
18. Pulling Strings (Coach’s House, 2007)
Again, this is from the same show. The first song from “Cool Down! Got It?” is one of the last we played. It sounds pretty different with the three-piece lineup, but the energy is there. Again, the recording is super rough.
Thanks for reading and for supporting us at any point along the way.
The Caper Clowns are from Denmark and play the kind of upbeat power pop that we love around here. Their new album, A Salty Taste to the Lake, follows The Buca Bus, the band’s great 2016 debut.
A Salty Taste to the Lake kicks off with “The Way I Dream,” which sounds something like a John Lennon track from A Hard Day’s Night. It’s definitely a hit single in some other place and time.
“Second to None” features a running piano riff through the track, as the band seems to race along a little faster than usual. Still, the chorus is just as catchy as always, and the strings in the break are beautiful.
“Sacre Bleu” is bouncy and catchy, and it seems exactly like something you’d hear in an American TV commercial, while “Paper Trail” has a crunchier guitar and almost sounds like a Fountains of Wayne album cut.
The Caper Clowns know how to write catchy songs with good choruses. If that’s something you’re into, this is for you.
The Radiant Radish can be heard on Radio Free Nashville WRFN 103.7/107.1 FM (or through the app) each Wednesday at 8:00 pm CST.
The show can also be heard on popthatgoescrunch.com on Thursdays at 2:00 pm CST and Saturdays at noon CST.
Contact us at radiantradish@yahoo.com with any feedback.
Record of the Week – The Limit (discography)
The Radiant Radish #82: 10/3/18
Television Personalities – Part Time Punks
Beulah – Score From Augusta
The Cure – Boys Don’t Cry
Kung Fu Monkeys – I Fell in Love on the Last Day of School
The Knack – Maybe Tonight
The Cars – Sad Song
The Limit – Uh Oh
The Limit – Call Jane
The Limit – radio spot
The Limit – Modern Girl
The Limit – Candy Rocks
The Clash – Train in Vain
Ben Kweller – I Don’t Know Why
20/20 – Yellow Pills
The Leftovers – Telephone Operator
Big Star – Thirteen
Matthew Sweet – Evangeline
The Kinks – Animal Farm
Swearin’ – Grow Into a Ghost
Jeremy Saulnier directed this Netflix original, and his Green Room was my favorite film of 2016. Discussing his work on our podcast a couple of years ago, we thought Murder Party was good, we thought Blue Ruin was excellent, and to me, Green Room was a nearly perfect movie. So we’ve been looking forward to this one for a little while now.
In Hold the Dark, a woman asks a wolf expert to come to her northern Alaska town to track the wolves who have killed her son and other children in the area. After investigating the wolf pack, however, the expert begins to uncover secrets about the woman and her family.
First of all, this film looks amazing. Although Blue Ruin got to utilize the beach and a few other locations, both Murder Party and Green Room were mostly confined to one area. Here, Saulnier has a whole world to show us, climaxing with some really cool shots of a very small plane flying through some very large mountains. (The action, on the other hand, peaks with a brilliant shootout scene that is essentially the opposite of Assault on Precinct 13.)
Saulnier’s friend Macon Blair wrote the screenplay here,based on a novel by William Giraldi. Blair is star of Blue Ruin, and the two films have a lot in common, sharing themes of grief, revenge, and of course, death, among others. Furthermore, Saulnier’s directing is completely on point once again. Obviously, like we were shown the blues in Blue Ruin and the greens in Green Room, much of this film centers on darkness, along with the bleak reality of living in towns that are so separated from general civilization.
This is a great movie that fits perfectly with Saulnier’s other projects so far. He’s definitely in my short list of current best horror directors, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
I haven’t had a Shudder subscription for quite a while, so upon renewing recently, I was pleased to see that there is now a large selection of original content. This film, Revenge, was featured, so I figured it was a great place to start. Revenge horror flicks are typically not super original, at least not in recent years, but the description called it “the boldest, bloodiest film of the year.” So I had to check it out.
The movie begins with Jen and Richard being airdropped into a remote location with a very nice home and pool. We soon learn Richard is married and that this is part of an annual hunting trip that he takes with Stan and Dimitri. After the first night, Richard’s buddies arrive, and Jen prepares to catch a helicopter back home. However, one of the other guys decides he should be entitled to have fun with Jen as well and forces himself upon her. By the time Richard realizes what has happened, it is too late to fix the situation, and he decides the best way to keep everything a secret is to kill Jen. Of course, lucky for us (and unlucky for the men in the film), she doesn’t die.
While the story has been told before, the wilderness and mountains make this one a little more fun. With only five total characters (and one, the pilot, barely present at all), the film doesn’t have to waste any time and can focus on developing the only characters who matter to us.
I don’t know if this is the “boldest, bloodiest film of the year,” and I’m hoping Halloween has something to say about that in a couple of weeks. But it’s definitely bloody! This story also features a couple of unique twists that separate it from most other revenge films. And while most of these movies, to me, tend to drag in the final act, this one keeps the pace up, and it had me on the edge of my seat. It’s always fun to see snobby rich dudes get what they deserve, but this one goes above and beyond.
Overall, I thought this was a great introduction to Shudder originals. I’d definitely recommend it to horror fans who like intense thrillers and bloody kills.
The Radiant Radish 