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The story behind the North Korean kaiju film Pulgasari is so incredible it's in danger of overshadowing just how interesting the film is itself. In this episode we are joined by Travis Workman, Associate Professor of Korean Studies at the University of Minnesota, to try and cover both the making of Pulgasari and what it might all mean. His chapter "Parodies of Realism at the Margins of Science Fiction: Sin Sang-ok's Pulgasari and Jang Jun-hwan's Save the Green Planet," in Simultaneous Worlds: Global Science Fiction Cinema, forms the basis of the discussion. North Korea has an official YouTube channel! You can find it here. Do get in touch with us via Twitter - @secondfeatures - or by email - [email protected] - if you have any feedback or suggestions. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yes, it's Second Features, and we're back with a long-awaited episode with Dr Pete Turner of Oxford Brooks University, where we talk Robocop (1987, Paul Verhoeven) and watching inappropriate films when we were underage. Who watched the worst possible film at the youngest age: Pete, Laura or Adrian? Listen to this discussion to find out! You can find the article Pause and Rewind: Memories of Age-Inappropriate Film Viewings in the 1980s here. You can also follow the project Memories of Underage Film Viewings in 1980s UK on Twitter @FilmMemories80s. Do get in touch with us via Twitter - @secondfeatures - or by email - [email protected] - if you have any feedback or suggestions. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After almost two years of using the Edgar Wallace theme we finally get around to covering one of Merton Park studio's early Wallace thrillers, The Clue of the Twisted Candle (Allan Davies, 1960), paired with another low-budget second feature, The House of Mystery (Vernon Sewell, 1961). We take this opportunity to discuss Dr Laura Mayne's article 'Whatever happened to the British ‘B’ movie? Micro-budget film-making and the death of the one-hour supporting feature in the early 1960s', which was published in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. There will be murder, mystery, and nostalgia for a cinema experience our hosts are really too young to remember. Do get in touch with us via Twitter - @secondfeatures - or by email - [email protected] - if you have any feedback or suggestions. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been a loooong summer break, but we are finally back with a new episode. Join us as we talk 'Namsploitation with the University of Lincoln's Dr Neil Jackson. He chose the 1980 classic The Exterminator (James Glickenhaus) as our point of entry, but the conversation covers many classic, and relatively obscure, Vietnam war-themed movies. So join us as together we experience massive explosions, decapitations and industrial mincing machines. Do get in touch with us via Twitter - @secondfeatures - or by email - [email protected] - if you have any feedback or suggestions. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To celebrate the recent publication of the book Norman J. Warren: Gentleman of Terror, we invited Dr Adam Locks back on the show to discuss his memories of the much-missed British director. As co-author, Adrian has basically used this podcast as an excuse to plug his own book, but hey! If he doesn't, who else will? Laura is made to watch the sci-fi/ D.H. Lawrence mashup Prey (1977) but does find some redeeming features. If you would like to get your own copy of the book (and why wouldn't you?) it can be ordered from FAB Press if you are in the UK, Creepy*Images if you are in Europe, or Dream Haven Books in the US. Do get in touch with us via Twitter - @secondfeatures - or by email - [email protected] - if you have any feedback or suggestions. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Diamonds are Forever may not be considered one of the better James Bond films, but there is still much to love about Sean Connery's return to the franchise, as Laura and Adrian discover. Also on the podcast is Dr Llewella Chapman, whose excellent new book Fashioning James Bond: Costume, Gender and Identity in the World of 007 is available now. Do get in touch with us via Twitter - @secondfeatures - or by email - [email protected] - if you have any feedback or suggestions. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This time we're delving into the dread-infused gothic world of Italian maestro Mario Bava with writer, academic and Italophile Dr Leon Hunt. His new book Mario Bava: The Artisan as Auteur, is out now as part of Blomsbury's fabulous Global Exploitation Cinemas series. Do get in touch with us via Twitter - @secondfeatures - or by email - [email protected] - if you have any feedback or suggestions. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marty was the dork of Doddsville High. One day he got mad... then he got even! Join us as we enjoy the British slasher doing its best to be American, Slaughter High. Our guest for this episode is horror historian Dr Johnny Walker, Associate Professor in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University and expert in eighties horror and the VHS rental boom. You can find out more about Johnny's research on his website. You can find details of his current exciting research project 'Raising Hell: British Horror Cinema in the 1980s and 1990s' on the UKRI site. The best way to keep up with his many projects is by following him on Twitter @johnnycwalker Do get in touch with us via Twitter as well - @secondfeatures - or by email - [email protected]. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We start the new year by taking a swim with Argentinian superstar Isabel Sarli. Dr Victoria Ruétalo joins us to talk sexploitation, censorship, and the amazing thirty year filmmaking partnership between Sarli and her director Armando Bo. We mention several sources in the episode, so as promised here is a list of things to check out: "Violence and Sex in the Work of Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli" by Victoria Ruétalo "Temptations: Isabel Sarli exposed" by Victoria Ruétalo Violated Frames: Armando Bó and Isabel Sarli's Sexploits by Victoria Ruétalo "‘The girl the whole world is waiting to see more of!’ Isabel Sarli, and the failed attempt to launch a new star in 1960s Britain" by Adrian Smith When John Waters met Isabel Sarli in 2018 The closing song is "Fuego" by Eleni Foureira, and was the Cyprus Eurovision entry in 2018. Sorry. Couldn't resist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's Christmas and what better way to celebrate than with Hammer's first festive film, Curse of the Werewolf (1960, Terence Fisher). Joining the podcast this month is the University of Nottingham's Dr. Kieran Foster, who spent his PhD days in the dusty, cobweb-enshrouded vaults of the Hammer script archive at De Montfort University and survived to tell the tale. He is currently working on a monograph on the unmade Hammer films of the 1970s, and has recently co-edited a collection on unmade films called Shadow Cinema: The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films which will be available in paperback in 2022. There is currently a Call for Papers for the conference "Shadow Screens: Unmade, Unseen, Unreleased Film and Television" which is being held in May 2022 at Sheffield Hallam University. Do get in touch with us via Twitter @secondfeatures or our email [email protected]. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. And Merry Christmas! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we go in search of Dracula's treasure with a Mexican masked wrestler and Dr Dolores Tierney, head of Film Studies at the University of Sussex. You can watch El Vampiro y el Sexo with English subtitles on Archive.org if you want to play along at home. Dolores wrote an excellent article on this film for the journal Porn Studies which you can find HERE, and the book chapter referred to in this episode can also be found HERE. Do get in touch with us via Twitter @secondfeatures or our email [email protected]. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we are joined by Dr Adam Locks as we enter the sweaty world of bodybuilding and witness the birth of a Hollywood legend care of the fascinating documentary Pumping Iron (1977, George Butler & Robert Fiore). The documentary can be streamed via Amazon Prime, and the other documentary we mention, Raw: The Making of Pumping Iron, is available on YouTube. You can get in touch with us via Twitter @secondfeatures or our email [email protected]. We would love to hear from you! Please also leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.