Daughters of Darkness

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne

Kat and Samm return to talk about Walerian Borowczyk's transgressive take on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Gothic tale of duality, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, exploring one of the most perverse and empowering adaptations of the tale.

Dirty Girls: The Films of John Hayes

Kat and Samm return to explore the overlooked work of director John Hayes, in typically outrageous fashion. While many know Hayes’ horror efforts Dream No Evil (1971) and Grave of the Vampire (1972), his extensive work in exploitation, sexploitation, and pornographic film still remains widely unknown to all but a very few cult aficionados. This episode focuses on three different films from three different genres, Help Female Wanted (1968), Mama’s Dirty Girls (1974), and Baby Rosemary (1976), as Kat and Samm attempt to unravel the director’s career. Help Female Wantedstarts out as a typical roughie, before leaving reality to travel into the warped fantasies of an emasculated man; sadism and necrophilia, and much much more, follows. Meanwhile, straight up seventies exploitation numberMama’s Dirty Girls is a late film for one-time Hollywood A-lister, and Queen of the Noir, Gloria Grahame. Grahame stars as an unscrupulous woman, who along with her band of sexually oppressed but overly flirtatious teenage daughters, is out to make her fortune by murder and deceit. And finally, Baby Rosemary,mixes hardcore pornography with occult fantasy, in one of the strangest coming of age tales to come out of the Golden Era.

I Saw What You Did: The Later Films of William Castle

Kat and Samm are back at long last to discuss the final films of beloved producer and director William Castle. Though he’s generally celebrated for gimmicky horror classics like The Tingler (1959) and House on Haunted Hill (1959), in this episode, they’re going to explore some of his underrated later titles and recurring themes. This includes films like The Night Walker (1964), a surreal affair starring screen legend Barbara Stanwyck, and the subject of Castle’s collaborations with renowned actresses like Stanwyck and Joan Crawford. Other topics include his children’s thrillers like I Saw What You Did (1965), and Castle’s sensitive use of teenage girl protagonists, and the brilliant and sadly neglected Shanks (1974). This beautiful, thoroughly creepy film was Castle’s final directorial effort and is a rare collaboration with the great Marcel Marceau, so it gets some long overdue love in this episode.

Sex Without Shame: The Telephone Book (1971) and Elle (2016)

Kat and Samm return from a lengthy hiatus with this personal, boisterous episode that explores desire, consent, and sexuality by comparing two very different films: Nelson Lyon’s forgotten erotic classic, The Telephone Book (1971), and Paul Verhoeven’s challenging rape-revenge drama, Elle (2016). Made early in the porno chic period, before mainstream titles like Deep Throat (1972), The Telephone Book follows a young woman who becomes the target of an obscene caller. Instead of feeling victimized, she’s excited by the encounter and goes on a ribald odyssey through New York City to find her loquacious love. And though Elle’s approach is quite different, Kat and Samm discuss how it serves as an important counter example to the idea that such films can’t be made in recent years. Marking Verhoeven’s return to filmmaking in a decade, Elle stars the great Isabelle Huppert as Michele Leblanc, an unconventional business executive who is raped in her home by a masked attacker. Refusing to see herself as a victim, Michele becomes determined to learn her rapist’s identity and uncover his potential motivations. Hovering somewhere between domestic drama, rape revenge film, and black comedy, Elle explores complicated notions of power, consent, and intimacy.

A Few Of Our Favorite Things

In a very special episode, Kat and Samm explore some of their favourite things, unedited, unscripted, and unrestrained. The list was long, but they only made it to two subjects. Listen to the show to find out what they are…