When Mark Hartley first suggested John Hough as the filmmaker he'd want to talk about, we won't deny it: we went scurrying to IMDb to see who he was and what he'd made.
We'd definitely heard of many of those films, such as Twins of Evil, Watcher in the Woods, Escape From Witch Mountain, American Gothic, but these works were not heavily branded with the director’s name in the way of a film by, say, the Coen Bros film or David Lynch.
Hough is a jobbing director, and probably the first one we've ever talked about on the show. That in itself makes this a special episode. But we were also keen to see who the director behind Not Quite Hollywood, Machete Maidens Unleashed!, and Electric Boogaloo - three documentaries that were absolute celebrations of a type of film that rarely gets the time of day - would choose.
His choice definitely didn't disappoint. Even some of Hough's films that may seem like write-offs hold some merit, and this discussion of a lesser-known name of genre cinema is, we're confident to say, one you won't hear anyone else.
In addition, we talk about some of the month's new releases, including Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars, Susanne Bier's Serena, and Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler. We also look at whether childhood nostalgia clouds our judgement when it comes to bad films, or allows us to see them more clearly than we would with a critical eye.
All of this in our one hour show! Which you can listen to on iTunes, on Stitcher Smart Radio, or right here.
