Cinema Yūgen

On a sunlit Balinese terrace, Matthias Hues unspools a life that reads like an action script — arriving in Hollywood with nothing but a shirt on his back, surviving dizzying highs and desperate lows, crashing celebrity parties, rubbing elbows with icons, and even losing a phone to a mischievous rescue monkey. His anecdotes leap from Venice Beach to Moscow, jungle sets to black sites, each scene stitched with humor, danger and the o...

Step into a gleaming, outrageous world where swords sing, sorcery smolders, and the joy of cinema is unabashedly pure. In this episode of Cinema Yugen, Kent Hill celebrates Lawrie Brewster’s The Slave and The Sorcerer — a handcrafted valentine to 80s sword-and-sorcery that revels in bravado, practical effects, and larger-than-life performances. From the gloriously eccentric Arlo the Torturer to Megan Tremethick’s Frazetta-wrought s...

When Bryan Kristopowitz drags you behind the velvet curtain of late‑night video stores — the hum of fluorescent lights and the scent of worn VHS — you discover that direct‑to‑video films are not failures but secret adventures. In this episode of Cinema Yugen, Bryan tells the improbable story of how a trove of rescued reviews became a book celebrating fifty explosive action movies that skipped theaters but burned bright in rental ai...

He answers the phone and immediately calms a fan who calls him a hero — and from that small, human moment this episode unfurls into a lively, unguarded portrait of Joe R. Lansdale. Listen as a nervous admirer becomes a collaborator in a conversation that moves from Roadkill chapbooks to martial arts, audio books, and the strange, funny lines that make Lansdale’s characters leap off the page.

Through quick anecdotes and sharp, comic...

When Todd (LeJon) happens across a high-tech fortune‑teller booth, he thinks he's just here for an interview. But Athena (Dawna Lee Heising), the AI within, begins to pry at the corners of his life, unspooling a past he has tried to bury. What starts as a routine application becomes a delicate reckoning between human frailty and machine insight. This is The Job.

Director Craig Railsback weaves suspense, tenderness, and a wry optimi...

When a once‑lost B‑movie resurfaces, it doesn’t just cough up footage — it tells a life story. In this episode Kent Hill sits down with director Mark Terry to trace the strange, gritty odyssey of Samurai Priest Vampire Hunter: a 2009 release that vanished into the HD transition, only to be resurrected years later through obsessive restoration, new scenes, and the magnetic presence of Tim Thomerson.

Listen as Mark recounts scraped b...

Step into a fever dream of 90s action-movie nostalgia where earnest heroes, mismatched villains with eye-patches, and frozen raccoon minions collide in a Christmas of chaos. This episode follows filmmaker Travis Irvine as he traces the wild, booze-soaked origins of Killer Raccoons! 2!: Dark Christmas in the Dark! and how a college prank evolved into a full-blown homage to the gloriously bad sequels of the 90s.

Through laugh-out-lou...

Step into a night where cameras never stop and the line between performance and terror blurs. Host Kent Hill guides you through Raymond Wallace’s dizzying found-footage chiller, Paranormal Investigations, then sits down with star Jamie Bernadette to unravel the movie’s meticulous craft, the pulse‑quickening scares, and the real-life brushes with the uncanny that shaped the film.

Between backstage confessions, haunted childhood stor...

It’s October — the spooky season — and we take you straight into Paranormal Investigations where a reality TV crew doesn't know they’re shooting their final episode. What starts as slick promos, backstage banter, and the familiar theatrics of ghost hunting show slowly peels back into something far darker: a night of blood, shocking revelations, and razor‑sharp satire that wants you to question what’s real and what’s produced for th...

From a torrentially wet first day to a 2 a.m. pool fall, this episode tears the curtain back on The Handyman — a scrappy, action-packed film that evolves from cheeky home-invasion slapstick into full-throttle, wrench-and-hammer mayhem. Hear the writer, director and the film’s grunting, boxer-short-clad hero recount broken props, improvised cameos, midnight shoots and the brutal crowbar-and-hammer kills that had test audiences gaspi...

When Kent Hill sits down with Mike Caravella, the conversation becomes a road trip through late-night video stores, desert skies and a low-budget dream that refused to die. From a cancer scare to COVID isolation, Mike's journey into the Mojave gave birth to Astral Plane Drifter — a ragged, hilarious and hallucinatory mashup of westerns, kung fu, and space-horror.

Listen as Mike traces the films strange inspirations, guerrilla shoot...

When a fearless young writer pitched a daring idea — “Mad Max on water” — no one expected the epic that followed. In this episode Kent Hill sits down with Peter Rader, the screenwriter whose audacious debut became Waterworld: the practical-stunt spectacle that weathered critic storms, inspired theme-park spectacles, and now gleams in a definitive 4K restoration.

Rader walks us through the mythic drafts, the strange beats that stuck...

In this episode we ride alongside a rediscovered film and the people who refused to let it die: Riverbend, a daring 1989 drama about three Black Vietnam veterans who confront a racist sheriff and reclaim their town. From the thrill of finding untouched 35mm prints in a forgotten vault to the intimate memories of cast and crew, the conversation unfolds like a detective story and a love letter to overlooked Black cinema.

Listen as ac...

Join Kent Hill and special guests as they peel back the curtain on President Down, a lean, high-energy Asylum original that punches far above its budget. With director Nick Lyon’s theater-like block shooting and a cast led by G. Anthony Joseph and Lorenzo Lamas, the film stitches together intense ensemble set pieces, surprising twists, and a chilling premise about technology, control, and vulnerability at the highest level.

Through...

When filmmaker Sean Cisterna adapts a creepy short and assembles an unlikely crew, eight retirees answer the call — drawn by curiosity, camaraderie and the promise of free snacks. What begins as a cheeky invitation to play with fake blood becomes a transformative adventure that rekindles purpose, sparks new friendships and proves creativity has no age limit.

Silver Screamers weaves on-set chaos with tender interviews, revealing per...

Join Kent Hill for a freewheeling conversation with cult auteur Richard Stanley as he celebrates restored classics, teases a new British shoot he finally controls, and reveals how public‑domain mischief and indie grit are fueling his next outrageous project.

From the psychedelic rebirth of Dust Devil to a chainsaw‑wielding take on Winnie the Pooh, Stanley navigates synchronicity, AI anxieties, and the survival of true cinematic art...

Join Kent Hill as Cinema Yugen unwraps Part Two of an unfiltered conversation with film sleuth Paul Rowlands. From laugh-out-loud oddities like Ghost Shark and the misnamed Ice Road Vengeance to the bittersweet art of sequels and the magic behind Top Gun Maverick, this episode moves like a midnight double-feature — surprising, nostalgic and wildly entertaining.

Through sharp anecdotes, offbeat movie lore and a shared love of cinema...

Step into the raw, dust-swept world of Black Pearl, where two now-legendary filmmakers set off in a busted RV with $35,000 and a story that felt bigger than them. This episode unfolds like a road movie turned hero’s quest — late-night edits by candlelight, real fights and real sacrifices, and the moment a young filmmaker severs his dreads on camera to become the character he believes in.

We trace the film’s origins from New Zealand...

Host Kent Hill invites fellow cinephile Paul Rowlands into the studio for an unfiltered, laugh-lined conversation that wanders from the blockbuster battleground to the intimate corners of film history. Over coffee and candid asides they pick apart a divisive summer at the box office, question the fate of franchises, and trace how our movie-going rituals have changed.

They leap from dinosaur islands and James Bond’s surprising fate ...