Producer and host Mr. Lobo, who presided over the nationally syndicated late-night television show Cinema Insomnia, joined Ian Punnett (Twitter) to discuss horror and sci-fi films and the movie industry. "A lot of people found Cinema Insomnia during the pandemic," he revealed, noting the show can currently be seen on 32 television stations and via streaming on Roku channel OSI 74, and has a footprint of 7 million households. Mr. Lobo described his favorite kind of films as "late-night misunderstood movies," such as Invasion of the Saucer Men or the classic Godzilla franchise. "I love a good cheesy sci-fi movie... anything with guys in monster suits or model flying saucers," he said.
According to Mr. Lobo, the filmmakers of the OG horror era made movies with serious themes even though at the time horror movies had the stigma of being juvenile. He pointed to Frankenstein (1931) as having themes that reflected the horrors of World War I. Horror films mostly had a bad reputation until the 1970s, Mr. Lobo suggested. He briefly spoke about films that have been pushed back because of the Hollywood writers strike, including Dune 2, Beetlejuice 2, Deadpool 3, and the American Horror Stories series.
Mr. Lobo recommended listeners watch The Exorcist (1973), Creep (2014), John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), and Escape from New York (1981) as well as Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). "It has [Godzilla] fighting everyone... it's like a greatest hits movie," he said, adding a plethora of Godzilla movies are available to stream on Pluto TV. He also commented on Rob Zombie's The Munsters (2022), which he thought did not deliver on the Rob Zombie side, and the Netflix series Wednesday, which he felt had a rather dull main character in Wednesday Addams. "Everything around her was so much more interesting than she was," Mr. Lobo argued.
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Open Lines followed in the latter half of the program. John from California told Ian he had recently become captivated with movies from the Pre-Code Hollywood era. He pointed to Gold Diggers of 1933, "which has sexual overtones that were kind of put in the closet moving forward in Hollywood at that time." Ian told John about Ecstasy (1933), starring Hedy Lamarr. "It was a highly sexual movie for its time," Ian said.
Doug in St. Louis phoned in to recommend the 1982 comedy-horror movie, Pandemonium, which stars a cavalcade of classic movie and TV actors, including Donald O'Connor, Edie McClurg, Tab Hunter, Kaye Ballard, Eve Arden, Tom Smothers, Carol Kane, Phil Hartman, Judge Reinhold, Eileen Brennan, David Lander, and Paul Reubens. "It's basically the Airplane of slasher films," he said, noting it was available in full on YouTube.
Dave from New York City revealed one of his favorite movies was the sci-fi horror classic Them! (1954) starring James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, and James Arness, who also played The Thing in The Thing from Another World (1951). Dave also recommended the suspense film High Lane (2009) about an ill-fated rock climbing expedition. "Even though I've seen it six times... I'm on the edge of my seat every time I watch it," he admitted.