This week we're joined by Chris Haskell of Punk Vacation, Mondo Macabro, and They Live By Film as we continue our series of high-class horror movies. We're talking about the divine black and white Swedish torment of Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf.

Bergman is one of the all-time film making greats and you can see his fingerprints on the weirder corners of American film. In the case of Hour of the Wolf you can draw a direct line from this deeply introspective movie to the work of David Lynch. With Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman, Hour of the Wolf is a movie about a lot of things. It's about an artist's place in his own work, what it means to own a piece of art, it's about guilt and regret and the damage left in your wake when you're constantly following your heart. Ingmar Bergman is a filmmaker who seemed to be constantly going through something and this is one of the results of a man living in his head 24/7.

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This week we take a look at the first episode of The X-Files to be directed by Rob Bowman, the second-most prolific creative force on the show after Kim Manners. It's a potentially thorny episode about killer Amish people who can change their gender at will that ends up surprising us both with its restraint. When stepping back into a decade like the 90's you get used to a certain insensitivity and still, Gender Bender surprises us.

Also, it's a wild week in pop culture as we take a look at the headlines and try and remember some of these absolutely forgettable top 40 songs.

This week we're getting real stupid with it and looking at Cannon Film's ultimate ninja festival, American Ninja from 1985. This one hits all the high notes for the 80's. Michael Dudikoff makes his starring debut playing an American soldier with a mysterious past who must fight evil ninjas to stop an arms dealer from selling missiles to communists in Central America or maybe it's Angola. Who can say? We also break down the dubious political conditions of The Philippines and the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos that made so many cheesy low budget action movies, the intense, apocalyptic conditions of the late Cold War, and the wild abandon with which Cannon made jingoistic action movies for the American market.

This absolutely ridiculous movie is one of the dumbest movies we've watched so far and we cannot resist its stupid allure. It's got just about everything a twelve year old boy could want in an action movie. They're ninjas! And they're freaking out!

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This week we're classing the place up a bit by taking a detour down under for a look at the movie that the Australian Film Board considers the greatest Austrlian movie ever made. We're watching Peter Weir's 1975 piece of magical realism, Picnic At Hanging Rock. When three girls and their teacher vanish without a trace under strange circumstances during a school picnic in 1900 the mystery becomes an obsession for those left behind. This dreamy, lyrical piece of cinema is as unconventional as a horror movie gets. It's vulvacious! Let us tell you all about it.

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To unlock the full episode go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and subscribe at the $5 level to unlock all of our Millennium Edition episodes as well as our X-Files rewatch and 90's history podcast, Do You Think I'm Spooky?, and Radio Free Haddonfield our bi-weekly DJ and music show.

This month's Millennium Edition takes a look at 2008's Lake Mungo, from Australian director Joel Anderson. This extremely affecting mockumentary sets up a promise that it can't possibly deliver on but the first hour that it sets up is a deeply moving and relatable document of loss and grief. The entire affair is a terribly frustrating affair that leaves you wondering: Why didn't Anderson direct anything after this? He's clearly a very talented filmmaker.

Grease up your pompadours and get your switchblades ready. This week we're taking a look at Walter Hill's 1984 rock and roll fable, Streets of Fire. Coming in hot off the back of the 1982 smash hit buddy cop picture, 48 Hours, Hill and co-writer Larry Gross could write their own checks and dictate their own destinies and sold Hill's dream project, a retro nostalgia vehicle about tough guys, femme fatales, bad guys, and pop music but when the movie landed in the screening rooms at Universal they knew they had a problem. Streets of Fire is weird as hell and out of step with what movie-going teens of the summer of 1984 were looking for. So dire was the outcome that Streets of Fire ended up getting killed in its opening weekend against one of the weakest Star Trek movies and then the following week Ghostbusters dropped and until Beverly Hills Cop came out it was the only thing anyone wanted to talk about.

In the years that followed Streets of Fire gained a cult following that appreciates what Hill was trying to do. It's an upgrade from The Warriors in many ways and the sound track, paired with powerhouse performances from Diane Lane and Willem Dafoe in early roles, delivers a wildly entertaining, deeply silly action movie with an enduring legacy. Let us tell you all about it.

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This week we take a look at Lamberto Bava's first official director's credit with the incredibly tasteless and disgusting piece of southern-fried necrophilia, Macabre from 1980. It's one of those movies that makes you really work for the goods since the worthwhile parts of the movie lie almost entirely in the final third after a lively and berserk setup. It'll make you wonder precisely how long you could preserve a severed head in your average consumer freezer.

Everyone's insane in this one, including the horrible little girl and you'll be hard pressed to find an actor more deeply committed to overacting than Bernice Stegers. Keep a barf bag handy.

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To unlock the full episode go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and subscribe at the $5 level to unlock all of our X-Files episodes as well as Bring Me The Axe: Millennium Edition, and Radio Free Haddonfield our bi-weekly DJ and music show.

This week in X-Files history we take a look at the monster-of-the-week episode, Fire, in which Scully has to do all the work to stop a serial killer who is somehow burning members of the British parliament and nobility class alive. Mulder is too busy to help, being mopey about the reappearance of his English ex-girlfriend, a psychotic Scotland Yard agent who adds a solid dose of misogyny to an otherwise okay episode.

We also take a walk down memory lane as we look at the headlines and pop culture notes for December 17, 1993. It's a real desert of music, TV, and movies and the contemporary events of the day aren't so hot, either.