Bill & Claire's Excellent Adventures

This week, we kick off our exploration of musicals! Our first film in this series is the 1952 spectacle: Singin' In The Rain.

Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O'Connor sing and dance their way into our hearts in this film about Hollywood's transition from silent pictures to talkies. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly direct, and we get to really see what the "King of Musicals" (Donen) and one of the most talented dancers ever to g...

This week, we conclude our dive into the films of Alfred Hitchcock! Our final film in the series is the 1963 classic: The Birds.

Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor star in this thriller as Melanie and Mitch, a young would-be couple who find their mutual flirting interrupted by a bizarre phenomenon of birds of all species attacking people and property in the small fishing community of Bodega Bay, California. Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshett...

This week, we continue our dive into the films of Alfred Hitchcock! Our next film in the series was a first-watch and big hit for all of us: Rear Window.

Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly delivered phenomenal performances as L.B. Jefferies, the temporarily incapacitated world-traveling photographer and Lisa Fremont, the wealthy socialite fashionista. While confined to his apartment recovering from an injury, Jefferies believes he witne...

This week, we continue our dive into the films of Alfred Hitchcock! Our second film in the series was a first-watch for all of us: Rope.

The movie features incredible performances by Jimmy Stewart, John Dall, and Farley Granger. It was written by the phenomenal Arthur Laurents, most famous for writing the script to West Side Story and based on a 1929 play by Patrick Hamilton. The film features Brandon and Philip, a couple attemptin...

This week, we're starting a dive into the films of Alfred Hitchcock! Our first film in the series is an all-time classic: Psycho.

The movie features some amazing performances from Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh. Though, they had some really terrific roles to work with given the script. I confess, I only saw this movie all the through for the first time a year or two ago at our Alamo Drafthouse. It's funny, these movies baked into ...

Last week, we concluded #OperationUniversalHorror with Creature From The Black Lagoon. We were so sad to see it go we just had to add Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water to the line-up. Claire had mentioned she wanted something with more dancing and kissing and, well. This creature feature had it all!

...Including a really disturbing sex scene that I had totally forgotten about! We start out our chat with that scene, consent, a...

Welcome to 2020! We're excited about the new year and all the amazing films to come. This week, we conclude #OperationUniversalHorror with Creature From The Black Lagoon. We're sad to see this chapter go, but we had a blast going through these movies. Plus, we're ending on a high note because this movie is gorgeous and awesome.

Shout out to Mallory O'Meara and her amazing book "The Lady From The Black Lagoon" about Milicent Patrick...

Happy New Year's Eve! We thought we'd squeeze one last episode in for 2019. We're really proud of all the work we've done and we hope you've enjoyed it, too. Stay tuned, next week conclude #OperationUniversalHorror with Creature From The Black Lagoon. But, before all that, you know we've got to talk about some Star Wars. We talk The Rise Of Skywalker in specific, a bit about the franchise as a whole, and what it means to be a fan o...

 This week, #OperationUniversalHorror returns! Finally! We're (mostly) over the zombie virus and it's time to get back to those classic monsters. We're talking George Waggner's The Wolf Man, starring the magnificent Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry Talbot, who's kind of a creep! Telescopic spying as a pick-up line is super not cool. We get into consent and agency. We also talk a bit about the history of the Romani people, especially during ...

We interrupt our regularly scheduled #OperationUniversalHorror (don't worry, it'll be back in a sequel) because Bill & Claire caught a touch of the zombie virus! No worries though, this is a strictly audio medium. While we can't record this week, we thought we'd give you a chance to listen to Claire's debut on the In The Mouth of Dorkness ChatCast!

On this extra spooky special episode of the ITMODChatCast, we're bringing you an inc...

We interrupt our regularly scheduled #OperationUniversalHorror (don't worry, it'll be back in a sequel) programming to bring you this special episode. This week we're talking Wolfman's Got Nards. André Gower (Sean in The Monster Squad) and Henry Darrow McComas made a beautiful documentary about the life of The Monster Squad after its lackluster theatrical release. If you've ever loved a movie or been inspired by someone else's art,...

Happy Halloween! We're slashing #OperationUniversalHorror (don't worry, it'll be back in a sequel) to bring you this special episode. We knew we were going to show Claire John Carpenter's Halloween this year, we just didn't know it would be part of a Joe Bob Briggs' Last Drive-In #HalloweenHootenany on Shudder. We talk a bit about the #MutantFam, why slashers slash, and the concept of feminism. 

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This week, #OperationUniversalHorror continues with Tod Browning's Dracula, starring the incomparable Bela Lugosi. We get into the great performances, including Dwight Frye's phenomenal performance as Renfield. Plus, there's a great conversation about how art can facilitate conversations about pressing social issues. Through that, we explore the depiction of mental health and the treatment of patients on film.

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This week, #OperationUniversalHorror continues with James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein. We were very excited to get back to the Frankenstein movies and this one didn't disappoint! We continue our conversation on the depiction of women and also get into the Hays Code and the implementation of the Production Code Administration. We talk about how that leads to the modern-day MPAA and how an MPAA rating can impact both the business a...

This week, #OperationUniversalHorror continues with James Whale's The Invisible Man. To be honest, this one was a bit of a miss overall for us. Claude Rains' maniacal performance was fantastic and the special effects were a lot of fun to pick apart, but the movie didn't quite land for a couple of reasons. For example, Danielle and Claire dig into the lack of well-written roles for women.

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We're really proud to bring you a discussion about James Whale's Frankenstein as the first film in what we'll be calling #OperationUniversalHorror. Frankenstein is a story of the outsider and the damage words like normal and abnormal can inflict on those who don't conform to the expectations of society. It's also a story of man's obsession to become God. We dig into these themes and more in our chat. 

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This summer, Claire had her first experience with sleep away camp! Naturally, we decided to dive into a camp-based horror-comedy slasher film with the Shudder original You Might Be The Killer. This movie started as a Twitter riff between authors Sam Sykes and Chuck Wendig, which just goes to show rad movie ideas can come from anywhere with a team of awesome people bring them to life. Claire shares a couple of camp stories and then ...

Claire turned 10! For her birthday, I offered her the chance to pick any movie she wanted. After a lengthy conversation, she settled on Shaun of the Dead. I'm as shocked as you that she didn't pick 2017's IT! Tune in to see what she thought of one of my all-time favorites!

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Last week, we got a bit side-tracked and wound up having a great conversation about how we do title selection. We're back on movies! Sometimes, Claire wanders out as my wife and I settle in to watch an evening movie. This time, that film happened to be Varsity Blues. We dig into small town politics, the ups and downs of a wildly popular high school football team, and - yes - we breakdown the infamous scene with Claire. 

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