The Desire of Horror
Charla's love of horror movies combine with Marty's love of psychoanalysis and history of religions. This is a review and analysis of horror movies and what they say about desire.
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Episodes
43 episodes
39. The Serpent and the Rainbow: More Harm than Good?
In a political environment in which racial and cultural stereotypes have been weaponized against our Haitian brothers and sisters, this movie hits a little different. However, it provides a good talking point about how Haiti is imagined in the ...
True Detective S.1, E.4: What would you risk to stab at the Beast himself?
Rust shows that he's wiling to sacrifice just about anything to get at Reggie Ledoux, including putting his life and the lives of others at great risk. Worth it?
38. The Evil Dead: Watch Out for Demons!
Watch out for Demons! Nobody knows what they'll do if they get ahold of you or your magical books made out of human skin and written in blood. Demons seem to enjoy racing through the woods in frantic POV tracking shots, and then smashing into M...
True Detective season 1, episode 3: Freedom from Sin, Freedom from Self
Two types of freedom are on display in this Episode of True Detective, and they may be related. Is the sense of having a self an illusory torture better ended sooner rather than later? Is it the sense of having a self that causes us to fall int...
37. The Omen 1976: Why Would the Devil Want a Son?
In the book of Revelations it is suggested that the Devil rules of the Earth, but only for a time. Revelations is about the overthrow of the rulership of Roman authorities, coded by its anti-Roman writer, John of Patmos, as "Babylon." The infam...
True Detective Season 1, Episode 2: Would We Have Been Better Off not to Have Been Born?
In as much as we are "thrown" into the circumstances of our existence, as Heidegger famously put it, we don't seem to have a lot of choice in the matter, or in the facticity of our determinate being. Yet, according to "Death of God" theologian ...
36. The Exorcist: Is the Desire of Horror Despair?
Caution: In this episode we discussion both the physical and sexual violence of the movie.The "Problem of Evil," which is the irresolvable contradiction between an all-loving, all-powerful God and the suffering of innocence, is what cau...
True Detective Season 1, Episode 1: Nihilism, Satanism, or Something Else?
In True detective Season 1, Episode 1, Nic Pizzolatto, introduces his main themes and the sources of those ideas. The "Cosmic Horror" of HP Lovecraft is central, especially a troupe that Lovecraft borrowed from Robert Chamber's "The King in Yel...
35. The Devil Rides Out
How much of the Occult is there in the classic 1968 "The Devil Rides Out?" The film was directed by Terence Fisher and the screenplay, based on the Dennis Wheatley novel of the same name was written by Richard Matheson. The film depicts a secre...
34. Nature Horror Wrap-Up
https://youtu.be/y_J-6TTdtzgAlright! It's the season 2 wrapt up! We covered nature horror this season. The main theme of nature horror is Human Being's alienation from the natural world. Human Beings are biologically a part of nature but...
Special Episode: Backrooms (2026)
https://youtu.be/XR8TvC5gfsoWhat about when we choose to remain sick? There is a scene in Backrooms in which the protagonist "Clark," played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, decides to stay in his disease because coming out of it would mean taking r...
32. Grizzly Man: Are We Responsible for Our Mental Illnesses?
https://youtu.be/cpZRMV7txJUTimothy Treadwell was mentally ill, and it led to his death and that of his girlfriend. He compensated for his sense of not being accepted in human society by projecting a persona of the protector of bears. He...
31. Out of Darkness
https://youtu.be/9lQHXQcW7_MWhat is Otherness? Out of Darkness 2022 directed by Andrew Cumming fits into a number of horror categories, but we've decided to do it on our nature horror series. When we were kids back in the 80s, there were...
30. Annihilation
https://youtu.be/uhvYVd4_Z7IWe get deep into the weird genetic refractions of Alex Garland's very loose take on Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation. Area X seems to be a place of infinite possibilities, except for the possibility of remaining...
29. Outbreak and The Bay
https://youtu.be/lzFx6_RfhngIn this special double feature addition of the Desire of Horror, Marty's sister Andrea joins the duo once again for a discussion of Outbreak (1995) directed by Wolfgang Peterson and The Bay (2012) directed by ...
Special Episode: Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix
https://youtu.be/XR8TvC5gfsoChar and I cross over from our normally audio-only Desire of Horror Podcast to produce this Youtube video. We discuss the book Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix. https://youtu....
27. Frozen
Three, vanilla, college kids get stuck in a ski lift chair high above some undisclosed, New England slopes, as a winter storm rolls in. While they're up there, they argue about stuff like their bizarre love triangle dynamic, which doesn't reall...
26. The Ruins
Privileged, White folk on vacation at a Central American resort may be a sort of cliche at this point, but The Ruins' version of this well-worn scenario takes some pretty fun, and perhaps, critical, twists, which seem to challenge the ...
25. The Happening
"The Happening" kind of sounds like there's about to be a groovy 1970's party. Maybe, that's intentional because what happens is like the total opposite of a groovy 1970's party, and M. Night Shyamalan loves the old switcheroo. Elliot ...
24. The Descent
We're going down, way down into the underground with an all female cast of characters who desire nothing so much as to be put to the test of extreme situations. Yes, these adventurous ladies love their adrenaline, and oh, boy, are they going to...
23. Cabin Fever
Welcome to a cast of reprehensible characters who aren't even lovable enough to hate. These guys not only have no moral compass but they've caught some highly contagious disease in the Appalachian region of North Carolina that causes their outw...
22. Lake Placid
Well, let me tell you, this lake is anything but placid, especially since (spoiler alert) Mrs. Delores Bickerman (Betty White) keeps her big-ass crocodiles in there. And some poor man studying beavers with Brendan Gleeson gets his bottom half e...
21. Deep Blue Sea
One of the most common and ancient themes of horror is that of human transgression of the "natural" world. In Western Mythology this history of transgression begins with Prometheus's giving to humankind the ambiguous gift of fire, which introdu...