Video artist Liz Zito joins me to discuss a film whose killer bears her name: the infamous Maniac! We talk Italian-American horror, masculinity, women who love grindhouse, and more.

This is the free version of my episode with Vita Breva on the cult classic film, The Wicker Man. To access the full episode, subscribe to my Patreon at patreon.com/girlsgutsgiallo or sign up on Spotify or Apple subscriptions. You don't want to miss the full version!

As a director associated with the Cinema of Transgression movement, Charles Pinion made three SOV horror classics in the late 80s/early to mid 90s: Twisted Issues (1988), Red Spirit Lake (1993), and We Await (1996). In this interview, Charles and I discuss his filmmaking career, as well as his foray into the porn industry. The director generously s…

Recurring guest Tina Horn joins me to discuss Derek Jarman's controversial punk film, Jubilee. We talk about the punk movement, Derek Jarman's career, and the scandalous aftermath of the film.

Our dear friend Erica Schultz is back on the show — coincidentally right around Mother’s Day — to talk about her book, The Sweetest Taboo: An Unapologetic Guide To Child Kills In Film (which you can still buy through that link if you haven’t ordered it yet, though get on it because it’s selling like hot cakes). We talk about how the book came to be…

What force on earth could compel us to the suburbs of New Jersey and Staten Island to watch movies? Learn more by following us on Patreon to unlock this full episode and instantly access our entire back catalogue of bonus episodes, video essays, written essays, and several of Samm’s ongoing solo podcasts. Support Twitch of the Death Nerve and help …

We’ve gotten a lot of requests to do an episode on the great Stalked By My Doctor series, starring the absolute king Eric Roberts, and we finally delivered. Lifetime Channel thriller enthusiast Rob Weychert joined Charles and Samm to talk about this wild trend in made for TV movies and we honestly had the best time. We discuss everything from histo…

The latest Death Nerve is here, and it’s a real throwback! Acting as a spiritual successor to our Texas Psychorama episode from a couple years back, Death Nerve founding member and true dyed in the wool freakshow Jon Dzwonar is back with a fiendish 6 movie marathon! Unfortunately, Samm got stuck in the hospital visiting her catatonic friend Patrick…

In this episode, Samm gives an impassioned argument for why you should watch as many Kenji Misumi movies as possible and Charles dons a tinfoil hat to explore the connection between the death drive and ’00s disaster movies. What the hell does that mean? Learn more by following us on Patreon to unlock this full episode and instantly access our entir…

How am I supposed to relate to a character who has CGI blood coursing through their veins? Find out the answer to this question for the ages by following us on Patreon to unlock this full episode and instantly access our entire back catalogue of bonus episodes, video essays, written essays, and several of Samm’s ongoing solo podcasts. Support Twitc…

Dune has been one of Samm’s favorite books since childhood and Charles has become similarly obsessed (maybe even more so), so it was inevitable that we were going to do cover it at some point, because… the spice must flow. For this episode — which covers everything from Herbert’s first few books to David Lynch’s adaptation and the two Villeneuve fi…

This is part two of a two part episode. Filmmaker Carr Conaway guests on this highly requested episode. A titan of the neo-noir movement, Blue Velvet is one of David Lynch's masterpieces. This is a traditional GGG episode with a scene by scene analysis. Join us for discussions of Freudian theory, the neo-noir genre, and David Lynch's career in the …

This is part one of a two part episode. Filmmaker Carr Conaway guests on this highly requested episode. A titan of the neo-noir movement, Blue Velvet is one of David Lynch's masterpieces. This is a traditional GGG episode with a scene by scene analysis. Join us for discussions of Freudian theory, the neo-noir genre, and David Lynch's career in the …

From the inception of Twitch of the Death Nerve, an episode on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) seemed inevitable. It’s a film that has had an incredible influence on Samm’s life, plus we got to see it on 35mm recently at a sold out screening in NYC. Luckily we found the perfect guest, Annie Rose Malamet, who shares Samm’…

Follow us on Patreon to unlock this full episode and instantly access our entire back catalogue of bonus episodes, video essays, written essays, and several of Samm’s ongoing solo podcasts. Support Twitch of the Death Nerve and help us keep the show ad free and on the airwaves forever! The post Twitch of the Death Nerve Preview: Let My Puppets Hug …

For this episode, we’re diving in to the Hong Kong New Wave through the work of underrated auteur Patrick Tam. Dear Death Nerve friend Bobby Rodriguez joins to help break down the history of political turmoil in Hong Kong in the ’60s as it relates to the birth of the New Wave. We talk about its origins in television, how the Hong Kong New Wave is d…

Follow us on Patreon to unlock this full episode and instantly access our entire back catalogue of bonus episodes, video essays, written essays, and several of Samm’s ongoing solo podcasts. Support Twitch of the Death Nerve and help us keep the show ad free and on the airwaves forever! The post Twitch of the Death Nerve Preview: 2023 Was All Bad ap…

Happy New Year! Charles and Samm had a lot of fun talking through their respective favorite films of the year: this includes both their top 10 films watched for the first time, but a few runners up and a run through of some Letterboxd stats like top actors and top directors. As a result this episode is all over the place in terms of geography, genr…

Follow us on Patreon to unlock this full episode and instantly access our entire back catalogue of bonus episodes, video essays, written essays, and several of Samm’s ongoing solo podcasts. Support Twitch of the Death Nerve and help us keep the show ad free and on the airwaves forever! And have a happy holidays!!! The post Twitch of the Death Nerve…

Part II is here! Travis and I continue a scene by scene analysis of the film, and continue to be horny throughout.

Part I of II! My gay goth brother Travis Merriman guests on the show to gush blood over Neil Jordan's homoerotic vampire classic.

Follow us on Patreon to unlock this full episode and instantly access our entire back catalogue of bonus episodes, video essays, written essays, and several of Samm’s ongoing solo podcasts. Support Twitch of the Death Nerve and help us keep the show ad free and on the airwaves forever! The post Twitch of the Death Nerve Preview: Questions Part Deux…

We’ve been wanting to do a Death Nerve Q&A episode for awhile and we got so many great questions from social media, the Patreon, and our Discord. We got to talk about everything from rape revenge movies to dream blu-ray releases, favorite books, under-seen films of the 1940s, Stalked By My Doctor, why Samm dislikes New Hollywood, Stalked By My Doct…

That’s another Halloween season and another Exhumed Films 24-hour Horrorthon in the books. This year’s Horrorthon was particularly delightful, because so many of our friends and listeners were in attendance. Harry, Dan, and Jesse from Exhumed Films had a packed lineup this year and we break it down, film by film, in the latest Death Nerve episode. …

Part II of my discussion with Annaliese about Ms. 45. We continue to analyze the film in full!

Annaliese joins me for a rigorous, sometimes emotional, discussion of Abel Ferrara's famous rape revenge exploitation film starring Zoe Lund. This is Part I. Part II comes out next week. This was a great discussion and I know you all will enjoy it. We talk about what the film means to us as survivors, why we dislike most discourse about survivorshi…

This Halloween, Charles and Samm dive into one of the best cozy horror subgenres — the slasher film. This episode breezes through 10 of our favorite underrated slasher movies, with some probably predictable choices and others that are more niche. We also talk about what exactly constitutes the slasher genre and how it intersects with and differs fr…

Follow us on Patreon to unlock this full episode and instantly access our entire back catalogue of bonus episodes, video essays, written essays, and several of Samm’s ongoing solo podcasts. Support Twitch of the Death Nerve and help us keep the show ad free and on the airwaves forever! The post Twitch of the Death Nerve Preview: Asperger Auteur The…

Scottish critic Michael Gillespie joins me for a discussion about this subversive '90s sleeper hit. Sign up for my Patreon for the full episode. Patreon.com/GirlsGutsGiallo

I have a new episode for you! Only my patrons have access to the full episode I recorded with Katrina Kemp (@kueenkatrina)! Sign up on patreon.com/girlsgutsgiallo for the full experience. The first hour and a half is available for free Katrina Kemp, a prolific actress and little person rights advocate, joins me for a thorough discussion about Tod B…

Kamikaze Jones returns for the third installment in our series about important directors of gay porn from the 1970s!

The latest Twitch of the Death Nerve episode celebrates one of America’s greatest heroes — hardcore icon Jamie Gillis. Charles and Samm are joined by gentleman pervert Shawn Porter to discuss Jamie’s incredible career, the Golden Age of Porn, Radley Metzger, Water Power, Gerard Damiano, woods porn, quaaludes, kink, and so much more. Shawn runs the …

In a stunning reevaluation of a film I once called "indefensible," trans therapist and femme sadist Maeve Martin joins me for an episode about Brian De Palma's most controversial film. This a traditional GGG episode, meaning we go scene by scene and do a deep analysis of the subversive themes and history of the film. Maeve provides much needed insi…

Every year in early summer for over a decade now, Exhumed Films holds their annual 35mm exploitation movie marathon, Exfest. We covered this event on the show last year and we’re back to talk about 12+ hours of exploitation cinema. To discuss this year’s marathon, which was held on June 10th at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, PA, Charles and …

Our latest episode is about shot-on-video (SOV) horror, as well as all things regional and very, very low budget. Divisive, underground, and often mind-melting, SOV horror movies exist in a world unto themselves and outside the bounds of good taste. Joining us to discuss a slew of no-budget oddities are Philly-based filmmakers Michael DiFrancesco a…

Usually these Patreon-only bonus Happy Hour episodes exist behind a paywall, but we decided to unlock this one to the general public because it’s just so much dang “fun.” Charles Smith III, who was the guest on our previous episode covering the ongoing WGA strike, hangs back for the Happy Hour to drink some cheap whiskey and discuss the tribulation…

Kamikaze Jones and I return for a liminal episode of Anal Auteurs to discuss the late experimental filmmaker, Kenneth Anger. We chat about sex magic, James Dean as a human ashtray, the whore of Babylon and Scientology, the fraught history of occult mysticism and the aesthetics of fascism…and more! Note: we were very tired recording this and at one …

For this episode, Charles and Samm are joined by our friend Charles Smith III, a local producer, director, film teacher, and proud union member. We discuss the ongoing writers strike, why it’s so important, what the core demands are, and larger issues related to strikes and class war within the entertainment industry. We briefly talk about a few fi…

We’re baaaack with a really fun, somewhat raucous conversation with Jesse Nelson and Brian Izzi from Cauldron Films. Charles and Samm gush about their recent fancy pants edition of The City of the Living Dead, and chat with them about some of their other great releases like Contraband and American Rickshaw, what it’s like to run a boutique blu-ray …

Fellow perverted film writer Travis Woods talked to me for three and a half hours about voyeurism in Brian De Palma's oeuvre. This is part I of that conversation, part II will be available on my patreon. Listen to us get hot and horny for looking and being looked at. Sign up for my patreon to get part II when it drops! patreon.com/girlsgutsgiallo B…

For the latest Twitch of the Death Nerve, Charles and Samm were joined by one of the best people on the planet, Michael DiFrancesco, to talk about one of the best subgenres on the planet, sword and sorcery movies. We set out on an epic journey from the origins of the subgenre in Greek myth, pulp literature, and Italian sword and sandal films, throu…

Critic and programer Justine Peres Smith joins me to discuss four films from the New French Extremity movement: Trouble Every Day, In My Skin, Inside, and Martyrs. We discuss Justine's work on religious devotion and body horror and apply it to this group of films. Sign up for my patreon at patreon.com/girlsgutsgiallo! Bibliography: West, Alexandra …

For this episode, Charles and Samm were joined by dear friend Phil Jablon, an author, photographer, and researcher who first made a name for himself photographing and documenting historic movie theaters in Thailand. He also collects and sells Thai movie posters — enabling our growing addiction to them — and we talked to him about everything from li…

Screenwriter/streamer Carol Grant joins me for a review episode about Todd Field's new Oscar-nominated film! This is the first review episode about a movie I actually liked. We talk about themes of colonialism, power, lesbian masculinity, and reactionary politics. Listen to find out why we think Lydia Tár would defend JK Rowling. Sign up for my Pat…

One of our favorite people, Robert Skvarla, is back on the show to discuss a particularly popular American conspiracy: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Charles and Samm ask Rob a million questions about the murky facts surrounding the murder and dive into a few JFK movies, namely: New Hollywood classic The Parallax View (1974), spagh…

We’re getting romantic in true Death Nerve fashion this Valentine’s Day — with a discussion of three juicy necrophilia films that run the gamut from gore fest to indie teen romance to Hong Kong thriller. Charles and Samm are joined by dear friend Angel, a New Jersey/Philadelphia based performer and model with an unusual penchant for all things maca…

We’re diving into some of the Twitch crew’s favorite subjects with the latest Twitch of the Death Nerve episode: political resistance, folk horror, and Polish cinema. Historian and pal Matt Kowalski joined Charles and Samm for a lengthy discussion of Andrzej Żuławski’s The Devil (1972) and Marek Piestrak’s She-Wolf (1983). Both films are set during…

Kamikaze Jones joins me again for part II in a four-part mini-series about important gay porn directors from the 1970s. In this episode we discuss two works directed by Fred Halsted, L.A. Plays Itself and Sextool. We talk leather, top vs. bottom cinema, and anal voids. *correction: Annie says the Halsted blu ray release is from Kino Lorber, but it’…

I'm trying out a new venture where I review new movies with guests. I promise that the fact that I've hated everyone so far is a complete coincidence! Caleb Luna joins me to discuss Darren Aronofsky's lauded new film, The Whale. We cover fat archetypes in film, Brendan Fraser's comeback, and the tyranny of the fat suit. Sign up for more me at patre…

We’re baaaaaaack! Charles and Samm took a much needed break in December to relax, regroup, and plan some exciting episodes for the next few months with more wonderful guests. And despite the title of this episode, we also spent a lot of time thinking about our favorite films of 2022; not necessarily new releases, but films that were new to us. So w…