Ask the Fack – Episode 1 (PREVIEW)

Our first-ever Ask the Fack Q&A episode is live, in which we discuss our favourite books, our top non-horror movies, and some bonus parenting tips for horror fans (hey, you asked!)

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Episode 76. Girls Trip: House (1977)

Andrea and Alex kick off a new semester with a discussion of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House, a truly bizarre but exciting entry into the horror canon. Covering everything from witch-y house cats, to nuclear bombs to inter-generational tensions, this episode may never capture the unbridled energy of the film but it might unlock some doors…

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REQUIRED READING

House (aka Hausu). Dir Nobuhiko Obayashi. 1977.

EXTRA CREDIT

History Extra Podcast: The story of modern Japan. Author Christopher Harding deconstructs modern Japan and the world events that brought them there.
 
Video interview with Obayashi. The filmmaker talks about seeing the positive in the negative, the light in the darkness.
 
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny. Full PDF of Freud’s theory of the uncanny and its ability to instill fear in us.

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Episode 75. Crime Spree: Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) and Zodiac (2007)

This month, Andrea and Alex pull back the veil on narrative cinema and the true-crime phenomena. From John McNaughton’s nightmarish debut to David Fincher’s gumshoe epic, the answers to our response and responsibility to real-life events is almost always more complex than they appear on the surface.

Class of 2019 T-shirts are available now at Twisted Ts! 

Salem Horror Fest – Tickets to our live show on October 5th are on sale now! The Fack Dispatch – Subscribe to our BRAND NEW monthly newsletter!

REQUIRED READING

Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. Dir. John McNaughton, 1986.

Zodiac. Dir. David Fincher, 2007.

EXTRA CREDIT

Violence Incorporated: John McNaughton’s “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” and the Uses of Gratuitous Violence in Popular Narrative. Steffen Hantke’s in-depth examination of violence in the film.

Regarding the Pain of Others. Susan Sontag’s follow up to On Photography.
 
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. Michelle McNamara’s search for the Golden State Killer.
 
The Ethical Dilemma of Highbrow True Crime. Alice Bolin discusses how true crime went from guilty pleasure to pop culture phenomenon.

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Episode 74. Party of Five: The Mist (2007)

Is it the apocalypse or just the start of a new era? Can it be both? Andrea and Alex delve into everything from the military to existentialism, brought to life by Frank Darabont’s controversial adaptation of Stephen King’s novella. 

Class of 2019 T-shirts are available now at Twisted Ts! 

Salem Horror Fest – Tickets to our live show on October 5th are on sale now!

The Fack Dispatch – Subscribe to our BRAND NEW monthly newsletter!

REQUIRED READING

The Mist. Dir. Frank Darabont, 2007. .

EXTRA CREDIT

A Brief History of the End of the World M.R. Carey’s analysis of the apocalypse genre in literature. 

The Philosophy of “Optimistic Nihilism,” Or How to Find Purpose in a Meaningless Universe Open Culture’s helpful video describing how contextualize the end of the world in a healthy, productive way. 

Making Sense of “The Weird and the Eerie” A primer on academic Mark Fisher and his works.

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