Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - The Night of the Hunter

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney present THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, the only film ever directed by celebrated actor Charles Laughton, starring Robert Mitchum as a serial killer preacher who's hunting two children in the American south. And it's one of the best movies EVER MADE.  

How did THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER influence THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW? William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are about to find out!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - The Karnstein Trilogy (1970-1971)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney present a triple feature: Hammer Horror's THE KARNSTEIN TRILOGY, a trio of queer-themed vampire movies that pushed the boundaries in the early 1970s! There's the celebrated THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, the salacious LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, and the pulpy TWINS OF EVIL!

How did THE KARNSTEIN TRILOGY influence THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW? William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are about to find out!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Baby Doll (1956)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney introduce you to BABY DOLL, the Oscar-nominated and controversial Tennessee Williams adaptation, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, and (in their motion picture debuts) Eli Wallach and Rip Torn!   

How did BABY DOLL influence THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW? William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are about to find out!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Mr. Sardonicus!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney invite you into the weird and wonderful world of WILLIAM CASTLE, a horror filmmaker and iconic showman who incorporated gimmickry into his motion pictures unlike any director before him! And one of his best gimmicks ever was in MR. SARDONICUS, a creepy thriller where the audience (allegedly) got to pick the ending!  

How did William Castle and MR. SARDONICUS influence THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW? 

William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are about to find out!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and Tarzan and His Mate (1934)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney are indulging in some shirtless hunkiness with TARZAN THE APE MAN (1932) and TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934), two iconic and influential adventure movies that are half sexual empowerment fantasy, and half colonialist bullsh*t.   

How did the Johnny Weismuller TARZAN movies influence THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW? 

William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are about to find out!

Give it a listen!

Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Reefer Madness (1936)!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney are stricken with REEFER MADNESS, the original 1936 exploitation cult classic that told the world that marijuana turns everyone into insane ax murderers! How the heck did this cartoonish propaganda film become a midnight movie, and how does this connect to THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW?

William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are about to find out!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - The Women (1939)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney meet THE WOMEN, a 1939 George Cukor film with an astounding ensemble cast of only female actors! Norma Shearer! Joan Crawford! Rosalind Russell! Joan Fontaine! Butterfly McQueen! Hedda Hopper! It's one of the most unique films of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and it had an intriguing impact on THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney revisit THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, an early sci-fi sensation from future Oscar-winner Robert Wise, about first contact with an alien species, who have a message for humanity about how we should live! Is it still one fo the best science fiction movies ever? And how, oh how, did it influence ROCKY HORROR?

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - The Celluloid Closet (1995)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney explore one of the greatest documentaries ever made about movies and Hollywood: THE CELLULOID CLOSET (1995) puts the whole of film history - up until 1995 - in context by exploring the way movies depicted queerness, and the impact those depictions had on multiple generations of moviegoers!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Rope (1948)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney get tied up with Alfred Hitchcock's ROPE! The innovative suspense thriller about two young, queer-coded men who decide to commit the perfect murder was filmed to look like one, long, continuous take, and tackles difficult philosophical concepts while also just being a heck of a lot of fun! And wouldn't you know it, it plays suspiciously like a certain ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW dinner scene...

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - It Came From Outer Space (1953)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week, Bibbs and Witney find out if IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE! Jack Arnold's sci-fi classic tells the story of an alien spacecraft that crashelands outside a small town in the desert, but are they here to take over the planet, or do they not give darn about humanity whatsoever? Big ideas, amazing visual effects!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week on EPISODE ZERO, author M. Lopes da Silva joins Bibbs and Witney to go FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! Russ Meyer's cult classic stars Tura Satana as the leader of a drag racing, kidnapping, murdering go go dancers who run afoul of a family of misogynistic creeps.  

Find out more about the unusual filmography of Russ Meyer, and how FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! became one of the most celebrated, iconoclastic films of the 1960s! And follow M. Lopes da Silva on Twitter at @_MLopesdaSilva and buy her feminist, pro-queer, pro-sex work, retrowave 1980s vigilante/slasher novel HOOKER right now!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week on EPISODE ZERO, Bibbs and Witney drop into THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, the German Expressionist silent horror classic that critiqued the rise of authoritarianism in post-World War I Germany, helped usher in a new and influential genre, and just plain rules.  

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Hygiene Films and You!

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week on  they travel back in time to the heyday of the "social guidance" or "hygiene" films, which children were forced to watch for decades, and which were essentially government propaganda promoting the way Americans were "supposed" to look and act!  

It's a giant genre, so Bibbs and Witney pick a few to highlight on this week's episode: BODY CARE AND GROOMING, WHY STUDY INDUSTRIAL ARTS, WHY STUDY HOME ECONOMINCS, BOYS BEWARE and THE TERRIBLE TRUTH!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Doctor X (1932)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week on EPISODE ZERO they take a dip into two-strip Technicolor with Michael Curtiz's pulpy horror classic DOCTOR X, about a cannibalistic serial killer who's pursued by a heroic mad scientist with a scheme lifted straight out of HAMLET!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Hercules (1958) and Hercules Unchained (1959)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week on EPISODE ZERO they venture back to ancient Greece, or at least Italy in the 1950s, for an epic double feature of HERCULES (1958) and HERCULES UNCHAINED (1959). These two superhero blockbusters put brawny men front and center, with glorious homoerotic subtext that can't possibly be ignored!

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Forbidden Planet (1956)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week on EPISODE ZERO they travel to the influential 1956 sci-fi classic FORBIDDEN PLANET, which blazed new trails in sound design, special effects, out of this world ideas and repressed sexuality! 

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - Scorpio Rising (1963)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week on EPISODE ZERO they gear up for Kenneth Anger's experimental queer short film SCORPIO RISING, about a group of masculine bikers who defy popular convention. Bibbs and Witney explore the way that SCORPIO RISING forever changed how filmmakers used movie music, paved the way to help legalize controversial and risqué motion pictures, inspired Martin Scorsese and David Lynch and Nicolas Winding Refn, and much, much more! 

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Rocky Horror: Episode Zero - The Old Dark House (1932)

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, and in Season 2, they're using THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as the starting point!  

This week on EPISODE ZERO they explore the way ROCKY HORROR took its influences from the horror, sci-fi and queer films that preceded it, starting with Jame Whale's brilliant yet often-overlooked THE OLD DARK HOUSE! It's the film that helped introduce many of the horrifying tropes we take for granted today, and it's kooky as hell to boot. 

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Star Wars: Episode Zero - Clerks.

Film critics William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold are working backwards through film history, using STAR WARS as the starting point!  

This week on EPISODE ZERO they explore how Kevin Smith's micro budget slice of life comedy CLERKS changed the conversation about Generation X, about independent film, about retail jobs, and about STAR WARS, while having a surprising impact on the franchise itself! 

PLUS: Bibbs and Witney reveal which pop culture phenomenon they'll be exploring on the NEXT season of EPISODE ZERO!

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