Scary Movie Book Club
A monthly podcast where we read a horror story, watch the corresponding movie, and discuss which did it better.
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Episodes

Feb 1, 2025
Feb 1, 2025
49 min
Based on the 1988 novel by Thomas Harris, the 1991 film adaptation stars Jody Foster, Anthony Hopkins and Ted Levine. Screenplay written by Ted Tally and directed by Johnathan Demme, the Oscar-Winning film was a real treat this month.
This month marks the first actual appearance of Vlad the tuxedo cat (all prior appearances cut for time).
Apologies for the speed variances. We were really excited to discuss and our mouths often got away from us.
Clarification on the screenplay: Kristine gives credit to Harris as a screenplay writer but it was all Ted Tally.

Jan 1, 2025
Jan 1, 2025
44 min
Written by H. P. Lovecraft in 1927 and movie-ified for the 5th time in 2019. Directed and written by Richard Stanley (writing credits also to Scarlett Amaris), starring Nicholas Cage, Joey Richardson, Madeleine Arthur, Elliot Knight and Tommy Chong.
For the first time ever we have a pod-guest, Emily from Tell Tale Books, who you can watch on YouTube for more book-discussing goodness.
In the episode we talk about Project Gutenberg for all your classics-reading needs if you want to delve further into Lovecraft without purchasing a giant tome.
Susie mentions Arkham Horror: the Card Game from Fantasy Flight Games as a gateway to Lovecraftian understanding.
Emily briefly talked about Lovecraft being on the autism spectrum (gosh I hope I'm describing that the right way). A google search brings up lots of message boards and even a book wherein the author delves into the possibility, but nothing on the first page that seems at all conclusive... probably because the man is dead.
Madeleine Arthur we mentioned was on "The Magicians" as Fragile Human, but the descriptor is "Frail".
A google search will bring up many articles explaining how the color Magenta doesn't actually exist. Check out Sci Show's video about it (because Sci Show is awesome).
Finally, if anyone wants to produce some fine art of a person with Arden's Anthology of Shakespeare in one hand, Complete Works of H. G. Wells in the other, and the Complete Works of Lovecraft on a utility belt that would be rad. We'd love to see it.

Dec 1, 2024
Dec 1, 2024
52 min
We look back on our first season and discuss the best, the worst, and some of the in between.
When talking about Interview With the Vampire we neglected to provide the name of the actress who had taken over the role of Claudia. That's Delainey Hayles.
Kristine mentions The Exorcist being based on a true story. That is true. There was an exorcism in 1949 which inspired Blatty's novel.
The King/Barker piece is 1997's made for television movie Quicksilver Highway.
Our friend's podcast is Wave Makers Audio Plays. Found here on Podbean as well as other major distributors including Apple.

Nov 1, 2024
Nov 1, 2024
40 min
Published in 1977 by Jay Anson and based on the real life events surrounding the Lutz family's takeover of the titular house after the murder of the DeFeo family it was turned into a movie soon after in 1979. The movie was directed by Stuart Rosenberg with the screenplay by Sandor Stern, and starred James Brolin and Margot Kidder.
It's a short episode this month. When it comes to the references to real life events most of the timeline was compiled using the Wikipedia page for the novel. A few side searches yielded results but most of it was the casual curiosity that started and ended with wiki.

Oct 1, 2024
Oct 1, 2024
50 min
Written by Bram Stoker in 1897 and adapted to the screen multiple times we chose Francis Ford Coppola's rendition with screenplay by James V. Hart starring Keanu Reeves, Winona Rider, Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman as the titular character.
Lots of show notes for this one so...
The actor who played Renfield in "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" was Peter MacNicol. Mel Brooks actually had Renfield be the visitor to Dracula's castle and then cast Steven Weber as Mina's beau Johnathan Harker, who stayed at home.
Princess Weekes' YouTube video is entitled 'How Mina Murray Became Dracula's Girlfriend' It can be watched here.
The Bram Stoker Estate webpage is simply bramstokerestate.com and has a plethora of nifty information about his lost journal and other stuff, worth a look.
Susie credited the statement about actors who don't work to Michael Caine. She's having a hard time finding evidence of it to make sure he said it. Someone on a forum suggested Christopher Walken had a similar quote. Can't find evidence of that either. She'll have to keep looking.
She did find the Carrie Fischer quote about no bras in space (she actually said "underwear"), and you can listen here.
Richard E. Grant's quote about wearing tights can be found on his X page, here.

Sep 15, 2024
Sep 15, 2024
49 min
After the disappointment of the most recent we went back to the original starring Brandon Lee, Michael Wincott, and Ernie Hudson. Directed by Alex Proyas with screenplay by David J. Schow and John Shirley, based on the graphic novel by James O'Barr.

Sep 1, 2024
Sep 1, 2024
53 min
We tried to go in with an open mind and... well... you can listen to the result. Originally published through Calibur Comics (1989), James O'Barr's story of a man who crosses back over from death in order to exact revenge on the people who killed him and his fiance has once again been brought to the screen. Directed by Rupert Sanders, Screenplay by Zach Baylin, and starring Bill Scarsgard, FKA Twigs, and Danny Huston this 2024 version is... something.

Aug 1, 2024
Aug 1, 2024
48 min
If you did your homework you know there's gonna be a lot of spilled tea over this one. Scott Smith's 2006 novel adapted to film in 2008 tells the story of a group of kids on spring break going off the resort and getting themselves into a heap of trouble.
We had a lot of fun discussing this month's pairing but while editing we realized it may require a warning so...
Trigger Warning: This discussion contains talk of a character's suicide, self-mutilation/flaying, and vines crawling under your skin.

Jul 1, 2024
Jul 1, 2024
41 min
Peter Benchley's 1974 classic novel about a giant fish was then turned into a movie in 1975 directed by Stephen Spielberg.
(Fun Fact: Podbean won't allow a 4-letter title. Go figure.)
Did you love the book? Sad you borrowed it instead of buying a copy? Want to gift one to a friend? If you feel lucky Goodreads has a giveaway for the month of July. You could be one of the lucky 24 people to win.
We have a talk about movie posters. Susie mentions one and now looking it up finds that it's a fan design by Andrew Swainson, not the actual. You can see his movie poster here: https://www.andrewswainson.com/jaws
We hearken back to our Exorcist episode when we compare the cost of the shark ($500,000 each) to the cost of the refrigerated set ($50,000) without going back and checking some numbers.

Jun 9, 2024
Jun 9, 2024
45 min
June's book is actually a short story, The Birds by Daphne du Maurier (1952) which was then turned into a movie in just over 10 years later in 1963 by Alfred Hitchcock who kept the title and concept but threw away just about everything else. It starred Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Suzanne Plechette, and Jessica Tandy.
We've been recording in a new space and it seems to be eating up our sound. Let us know if we need to crank up the volume by emailing us: scarymbc[at]gmail.com.


