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
Taking a brief break this week to talk about some of the movies we've watched recently, and whether you should watch it or not. Plus a shiny new version of one of our earliest demos.
It's that time of year! The mornings are getting crisp, the leaves are starting to turn, and the kids are back in school. Speaking of school, we do a lot of that in this week's episode. We're counting down our top school-related horror as we celebrate back-to-school season. What's your favorite scary school movie?
We tackle another sequel this week with Sam Raimi's second entry in the Evil Dead franchise. Sometimes we surprise ourselves and this week was no exception, in some unexpected ways.
With just a few weeks left in summer, we spend some time in this special episode discussing our favorite summer horror movies. Plus a remixed and remastered version of our very first demo, The Ballad of Jack Deth inspired by Trancers!
We spent three weeks on Jaws, so of course we followed it with a whole episode on the shark movies that came after it. The sequels, a SeaWorld disaster, Dangerous Animals (still one of our favorite watches from last year), and the ones most shark movie lists forget. Stick around after the discussion for a studio demo of an original song from our Jaws trilogy.
Chapters
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:42 Shark Movie Roundup: Welcome
00:03:18 ...
Quint slides beneath the water, and Brody is alone on a sinking boat with nothing left but a rifle. We close out our three part dive into Jaws with the ending, the aftermath, our favorite lines, and two brand new songs written from opposite ends of that opening beach scene.
Citations
Baisas, Laura. “Why the creators of ‘Jaws’ regretted making sharks the monsters.” Popular Science. 22 July 2023. https://www....
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.
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