Open Mic Night of the Living Dead
A horror movie podcast where every episode ends in a song! Actually, two songs. Hosts Rachel and John review cult classics, creature features, and creepy gems, write original music inspired by each film, and perform it for each other live and uncut. Expect weird trivia, nerdy banter, and bizarre deep dives. Full episodes feature movie analysis and live songs, followed by shorter bonus encore episodes with demo versions and extra commentary. New episodes drop weekly. Come for the gore, stay for the encore.
Episodes
We keep finding new corners of Jaws to get stuck in. This week we wrap up the production stories, spend a long while in the cinematography (the poster, the water box, that dolly zoom), sit with John Williams' two notes, and finally get to talk characters: Brody, Hooper, Quint, all of them. Part two of three - the boat's not big enough yet.
Chapters
00:00:00 Intro 00:04:59 Let's Make a Movie: Production 00:17:16 Vibe Check 00:21:...
Steven Spielberg's "little" movie about a very big shark kicks off part one of our three part deep dive into Jaws. We get into Peter Benchley's novel, the mechanical shark that refused to cooperate, and why shooting on the real Atlantic nearly ended a young director's career before it started. Two more parts to come.
Chapters
00:00:00 Intro 00:09:24 Intro: Distribution & Reception 00:30:03 Let's Make a Movie: Filmmakers 00:51:...
This week's encore takes a detour: instead of riffing off of Smile 2, we're talking about us. How Open Mic Night of the Living Dead actually got made, why it's audio only, and what a full year and 52 episodes have taught us about making something together. Plus a new song, Float Away. Thank you for spending year one with us - onto year two.
This week marks our first sequel: Smile 2. We follow pop star Sky Riley as recovery becomes performance and her own body becomes something for everyone else to manage. Choreography turns predatory, the curse goes public, and we talk about where Smile 3 might take this mythology. Plus two very different songs: one about floating away, one about falling for the wrong pop star.
Citations
We've been watching a lot of bad husbands. So we built a rubric. This encore to our Rosemary's Baby deep dive introduces our three-tier taxonomy of bad partners in horror - Trevors, Guys, and Billys - and the films that gave us each one. Plus the demo for our new song based on Rosemary's Baby.
Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:03:28 Tier 1: The Trevor 00:08:28 Tier 2: The Guy 00:16:46 Tier 3: The Billy 00:29:45 Song Demo 00:33:39 Losing Lig...
Rosemary's Baby Part 2: we finish what we started. Rosemary, Guy, and the entire Castavet operation get the deep dive they deserve - coercive control, bodily autonomy, and the Rosemary's Baby curse. Then both original songs, live for the first time, with a split perspectives gimmick.
Chapters
00:00 Intro 05:24 Story Time: Characters 24:18 Story Time: Murder, Mayhem & Myths 47:55 Story Time: The Rosemary's Baby Curse 52:31 Stor...
Rosemary's Baby is one of our all-time favorites, and it's easy to see why. Part 1 covers the film's production history, the real buildings behind the Bramford, the complicated legacy of its director, and the cinematography that turns a dream apartment into something much worse - all without a single special effect. No music this week, too much to cover everything i...
20 deep dives in, we finally settled it - a horror villain draft from every film we've covered. Mrs. Voorhees, the Thing, Pazuzu, the Overlook Hotel, and more are all on the table. We close with Breaking Our Silence, our new song demo based on A Quiet Place.
The Villains Ghostface (Scream) Pazuzu (The Exorcist) Deadites (The Evil Dead) Black and White Zombies (Night of the Living Dead ) Jerry Dandridge (Fright Night ) The Thing (T...
This week we tackled A Quiet Place, and one thing we’re completely sure of is that our family absolutely would not survive. John Krasinski's 2018 PG-13 creature feature is 91 minutes of the most efficient horror storytelling we've covered. We dig into Industrial Light & Magic’s last-minute creature redesign, the cochlear implant debate, and what it means to watch a parent-child horror film when your kids are close t...
We're taking a look at contagious curse horror - comparing Smile, It Follows, and The Ring on everything from how each curse works to the moral weight of passing one on, plus a few more curse films for good measure. Plus John's Smile Song studio demo makes its world debut!
00:00:00 Intro 00:04:29 Smile (2022) 00:07:14 It Follows (2014) 00:18:20 The Ring (2004) 00:28:34 Drag Me to Hell and Talk to Me 00:35:24 Stu...
We dig into Smile (2022) - a film that works so hard to make you feel terrible that you can't help but respect it. Parker Finn's debut feature, Sosie Bacon's breakout lead, practical creature effects, and a trauma curse that hits different two years after a pandemic. Plus two original songs inspired by the film, gimmick: no names.
We just got back from Universal Studios - and what better way to decompress than talking about all the ways vacations go horribly wrong? This week we're doing something a little different: a vacation horror special. We cover Infinity Pool, Speak No Evil, Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, Wolf Creek, Turistas, The Ruins, Midsommar, and more. Stay home. Trust...
This week we're in the grocery store - and not for the weekly specials. Fresh off our Intruder deep dive, we wander the aisles of supermarket horror: Messiah of Evil, Alien Raiders, Bait, 28 Days Later, and The Mist. Plus, John debuts his demo "One More Shot" - a love song with a trunk and some red flags.
The overnight crew at Walnut Lake Market is closing up shop - and someone is killing them off one by one. We dive into Scott Spiegel's 1989 cult slasher Intruder, the Michigan filmmaking crew behind it, and how a $130k grocery store shoot became the audition tape for the most important practical effects team in horror history.
Citations
Psychic powers make for some of horror's best and weirdest movies. This week we tour five of them - Carrie, Scanners, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, and Spellbinder - and talk about what it means when your mind is the weapon. Plus the demo for "Completely Normal Individual."
We're back in the Overlook for part two of our deep dive on The Shining (1980). We dig into the Steadicam innovation that changed horror forever, the blood elevator's year of prep work, and Wendy Carlos's groundbreaking score. Then we make the case for Wendy Torrance, unpack Jack's alcoholism through a recovery lens, and ask the question the film never answers - did the hotel make him a monster, or just find one?
Citations
The Shining finally got the two-part treatment - because some movies just won't fit in a box. Part 1 covers our personal histories with the film, how it landed (badly) when it first came out, and how it became one of the most analyzed pieces of horror cinema ever made. We get into Kubrick's adaptation choices, the famous tension between his vision and Stephen King's novel, and what it actually looked like to make this movie - the c...
John opens this episode by announcing himself as "the man of the duo." Rachel introduces herself as "John's wife, defined by her role in the life of a man." Then we talk about feminist horror for 30 minutes. Inspired by The Slumber Party Massacre, we're asking what actually makes a horror film feminist - and whether it matters who made it. We work through The Descent, You're Next, Midsommar, The Love Witch, and more. Plus Rachel de...
This week we're taking a deep dive into The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) - a 77-minute slasher that's weirder and smarter than its reputation suggests, and honestly more fun than it has any right to be. Written by Rita Mae Brown as a feminist parody and shot as a straightforward exploitation film, the result is this fascinating hybrid that we genuinely cannot stop thinking about. We dig into what makes it tick - the girls' social ...
In this encore episode, we dig into the fascinating history of horror movies at the Academy Awards. From early classics like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Phantom of the Opera to modern favorites like Get Out, Pan’s Labyrinth, and this year’s record-breaking Sinners, we explore which films from the genre have scored Oscar nods and wins. We discuss trends in how horror films are recognized - often in technical or “vi...
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