#2: The House, And The New Accommodations Of Stop-Motion Animation

 

Who would live in a house like this? An international team of talented stop-motion animators of course, bringing their skills to bear in a macabre anthology piece about the home renovation from hell. Laborious, time-consuming and requiring considerable skill & patience, this naturally prompts a discussion about the surprisingly healthy state of stop-motion animation in a modern industry where shortcuts are relentlessly sought out. It's busted; it's dangerous; but it's ours! Come on in, take off your shoes, put your feet up and let your soul reside here forever!

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Drawn Or Alive #6: The Addams Family VS The Addams Family VS The Addams Family VS The Addams Family

It's a monster sized edition of Drawn Or Alive as four seperate branches of The Addams Family jostle for rightful inheritance to their creator's legacy! The first live-action adaptation from 1964, and the first screen version to boot, dances a deadly tango with Hanna Barbera's 1973 effort, the dearly beloved movie from 1991 and the second go from ol' HB inspired by that same movie in 1992. It's a family feud like no other; they may all be Addams, but only one gets the seat at the head of the table!

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Show #196: Scooby Doo On Zombie Island

Anthony Askew braves our dread waters on a moonlit Halloween night in search of his faithful old dog who's still got a few tricks left in him! For a direct-to-video movie with no great weight of expectation on it Scooby Doo On Zombie Island sure did push the boat out in terms of doing much more exciting things with the Mystery Inc gang after decades of rehashes had inured audiences to their schtick, and is credited with revitalising the franchise as a whole. Was it the witty self-awareness? The monster butts? Was Terror Time really THAT good of a song? Our investigation proceeds after the link, within which we can also share the Halloween treats of our Post-Podcaste Repaste!

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Show #172: Paranorman

Martin Schneider and Joseph Wade join us on the graveyard shift this Halloween for a spirited appraisal of Paranorman!

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A long overdue reunion after our last dive into Studio Laika's unique filmography, Paranorman represents a quantum leap in the scope & ambition of their craft. But much like its namesake hero does the film risk being misunderstood by an indifferent audience inured to getting all their scary cartoons from Tim Burton? Perverse puppets, an ever more relevant message and the finality of death await you on the other side!

Give a listen to Martin investigating another strange town in Breaking Mayberry!

Keep it seasonal with Joseph and company over on Christmas Creeps!

Show #171: Edgar Allan Poe's Extraordinary Tales

The days grow shorter and the nights ever longer as the eeriest time of the year approaches, so why not bundle up with a good scary book? Or better yet why not a succession of frightening stories in animated form, such as Edgar Allan Poe's Extraordinary Tales?

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The writings of Edgar Allan Poe have been committed to film on countless occasions, his macabre short stories & poetry proving fertile ground for imaginative interpretation. Poe superfan and animator Raul Garcia took it upon himself to pay tribute to the man in this anthology piece featuring a stellar cast of horror film luminaries. Will this outing resurrect this ancient terror in the modern day? Or has the whole subject been done to death? Book talk, Halloween party plans and amazing restraint on Niall's part to not reveal the bizarre twist in The Murders In The Rue Morgue await if you dare!

Show #158: Extreme Ghostbusters

Greg Driver of Ace Comicals is the new kid on the block, making a frightful ruckus this Halloween about Extreme Ghostbusters!

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Eager to escape the trappings of their allegedly less cool forebears, the 90s were rife with retools and reboots of older properties hoping to capitalise on a new generation of impressionable kids. He-Man and GI Joe got theirs so it was only a matter of time before everybody's favourite tech start-up got the treatment. Does it keep the spirit of the original or is it yet another lost soul? Political poltergeists, comic counterparts and slime scarcity to come!

THE SHORT VERSION

Creepy ghosts

Positive representation

'Ey, woah, fuck yoo pal.

Show #153: Castlevania

Halloween in August! We make use of the service Niall questions continually paying for to take in the long awaited Castlevania!

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Video game adaptations of any sort are a shaky proposition and this held true for Castlevania, so imagine our surprise when it came out fairly okay! However does it stand out for its own merits or merely look favourable in comparison to the more notorious game shows that preceded it? Fluffy capes, bad accents and a lightheaded podcast host await!

THE SHORT VERSION

Boozy Belmonts

Sad Dracula

Vandalism

Show #142: Skeleton Warriors

Jake Bourke joins us from within his ancestral tomb to rise again with the Skeleton Warriors!

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Remember He-Man? Gary Goddard certainly did and he seemed unwilling to let go of the idea if this short lived cross-media franchise is anything to go by. With some striking visual motifs and a pretty cool action figure line where could it have gone wrong? Skeletons on rocket bikes, animal anatomy, the nature of evil and more are discussed under a haze of questionable audio quality!

THE SHORT VERSION

A solid concept

Tony Jay's Cosmic Golden Skull

Missed cross-promotional opportunities

Show #107: The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo

That most blessed of holidays is upon us and we get into the Halloween spirit with a most horrifying chapter of a long running franchise, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo!

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For our first foray into the venerable annals of Scooby Doo we picked a more obscure offering that sounds great on paper; beloved actor Vincent Price is a wizard helping the gang capture some runaway revenants. However the transition to actual ghostbusting does not fit so well for the mystery solving teens, already hamstrung by a roster of repulsive replacements dealing out gags that were stale a decade before the show came out and essentially doing away with most of what makes Scooby Doo work in the first place. Vincent Price deserved a better class of cartoon than this, a terrifying apparition that will curse one with nightmares on these late October evenings!

THE SHORT VERSION

Scooby skits

Too good for this show

Scrappy Doo ver. 2.0

Show #98: BAWKSTRAALS

After many months we've finally established a link with another world! Those strange folk Anthony Askew from Dynamite In The Brain along with Martin Schneider and Joseph Wade from Front Row Central arrive in our dimension with the good news about Coraline.

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Based on the Neil Gaiman book of the same name and wonderfully animated by the stop-motion faithful at Studio Laika comes Coraline, a be-careful-what-you-wish-for-tale that is at once charming and unnerving. While it's dark fairytale aesthetic and the involvement of Henry Selick may draw comparisons Coraline adheres to no such template and proves a cut above the rest. All this plus silly accents and Martin's fantastic journey through Studio Laika!

Anthony's Twitter

Joseph's Twitter

Martin's Twitter

Christmas Creeps - a podcast about Christmas movies all year round!

Movies Silently's review of The Cameraman's Revenge, a stop-motion pioneer

THE SHORT VERSION

Spooky dolls

Spooky parents

CAT David

Show #83: Put A Hockey Jersey On That Dracula

Our bags are packed for our annual Halloween break, and we have some reservations with Hotel Transylvania!

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Genndy Tartakovsky's directorial debut! Four words that should excite any animation aficionado, however there are a couple of strings attached to that statement. Brought in to revitalise an already lengthy production Tartakovsky brings his distinct visual style and penchant for physical comedy to the CG feature realm, easily the best thing about this film. For what it's worth Adam Sandler and his cohorts aren't nearly as exasperating as they could have been but with such a wealth of characters and setting it's a shame something more fulfilling didn't emerge.

THE SHORT VERSION

Daffy Dracula

Daddy Dracula

DANCIN' DRACULA