Cult Film School

27/10/2025

🍿 COMING SOON: “Mattei and Fragasso Ride Again!” 🐀💀

Adrian and Dion gear up for another wild Cult Film School field trip — Italian exploitation cinema...Made in America. 🇮🇹🎥🇺🇸

They’re diving into films by tag-team maestros of shlock — Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso:
🎬 Rats: Night of Terror (1984) — Mad Max meets Night of the Living Dead...on the set of Once Upon a Time in America
🎬 Night Killer (1990) — A Nightmare on Elm Street meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre...if it all went down in Virginia Beach

Expect wild dubbing, questionable acting, insane plot twists, and the kind of Italian sleaze wrapped in Americana only Mattei and Fragasso can deliver!

👀 Episode drops Tuesday, Nov 4th
🎧 Wherever you get your podcasts

17/10/2025

When we think of fantastic sequels, we likely don’t think of Staying Alive (1983). But if there’s one thing Staying Alive is, it’s fantastical. By the time the producers capitalized on the success of Saturday Night Fever (1977), disco was dead, so Tony Manero instead tries to turn his Saturday night hobby into a career with his sights set on the Broadway musical. But with Sylvester Stallone as director, the film too neatly becomes a Rocky clone: Rocky, with Dancing. It is another underdog story, with our hero facing and overcoming obstacles - including Frank Stallone! - to reach their dream. Only this time it feels like a fever dream: Tony Manero is less of a developed character than his earlier film, here both more narcissistic and more naive (if either were possible); Tony is (still) awful to women; and the third act Satan’s Alley is brain-meltingly amazing.

Satan’s Alley, the contemporary musical of a journey to the underworld and Tony’s goal gig, is so stylized and excessive that it deserves its own film. If anything, the film can be divided into “before Satan’s Alley” and “Satan’s Alley.” Unfortunately, only one of these is truly mesmerizing. But what the play within a play has is camp excess: Tony, with a body sculpted like a Greek god and clad in baby oil and not much else, dominates the stage but as a much different spectacle than his earlier disco persona - what it lacks in emotion it makes up for in sheer bravado. There’s a lot to love in Satan’s Alley, but the journey that leads there can be a bit of a sweaty mess.

14/10/2025

Saturday Night Fever (1977) is not the film you think it is. Some combination of nostalgia and cultural amnesia have replaced the film with memories of the Bee Gees’ soundtrack and the iconic image of Tony Manero (John Travolta), striking a pose on the disco dance floor as if a bolt of lighting made human. Yes, the film rejuvenated the waning disco sounds of the 1970s, but those iconic poses, those emotions, and those songs almost mask what is otherwise a masterpiece of 1970s American cinema.

Most will still agree that the disco dance sequences of Saturday Night Fever are transcendent. These moments are pure joy on film. Some might view the coming of age story set against a backdrop of an immigrant working class world as crass or even morally repugnant: misogyny and racism are as much the set dressing as disco balls. But these things serve a narrative purpose. This is not a film of heroes and good guys. Instead, for a film so rife with musical vibrancy and life these glittering diamonds (of musical set pieces) are set in a narrative world that is fundamentally corrupted and broken.

Everything in Tony’s world undermines his sense of self: his job, family, friend gang, relationships with women, his brother’s religion, and even the disco dance competition itself all reveal not only an identity in crisis but a complete subversion of ideas of “America.” In that way, the different subversions of institutions, private and public, is in keeping with the kind of critical cultural and political reassessments of the 1970s. Those characters are not immune from these broken systems, and are often the worse for it: chief among these is Annette (Donna Pescow), but also Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney), and Bobby C. (Barry Miller). Tony attempts to find a way through, or eventually out, but has to learn to first face his own worst instincts. And it’s those different character and societal flaws that reveal the cracks in that surface disco world and underscore the ways the film exists in the thrall of and far beyond that musical scene it documents. And with this duality, there is a measure of beauty even in its ugliness.

10/10/2025

🎙️ Ep: Travolta Sweats

Adrian & Dion return to revel in the musical joys and excesses of Saturday Night Fever (1977) and the sweaty disco-hangover sequel Staying Alive (1983). It was musical drama that defined a generation… and Staying Alive. Whether disco-era polyester and dance floors or aerobics-era baby oil and headbands, there is only one thing for sure: Travolta sweats.

📽️ Saturday Night Fever (1977) → Directed by John Badham
📽️ Staying Alive (1983) → Directed by Sylvester Stallone

🎧 Listen to today’s episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & our website — links in bio 👉

Spotify ▶️ https://open.spotify.com/show/1c9XoWNzbOmH9JgErDazWH
Apple ▶️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cult-film-school/id1697351574
Website ▶️ https://cultfilmschool.libsyn.com/

🧠💥 Stay tuned. Stay weird. Stay culty.

29/09/2025

💃 COMING SOON: "Travolta Sweats" 🕺💦

Adrian and Dion are turning up the disco inferno heat this time. 🪩🔥

They break down two iconic slices of Travolta fever:
🎬 Saturday Night Fever (1977) — the film that made disco immortal
🎬 Staying Alive (1983) — the sweat-soaked sequel no one saw coming

Expect polyester, spandex, Bee Gees beats, and all the Frank Stallone tunes you didn’t know you needed. ✨🎶

👀 Episode drops Tuesday, Oct 7th
🎧 Wherever you get your podcasts.

12/09/2025

Albert Pyun’s Captain America (1990) Director’s Cut is a revelation.

While the originally released film captured the quintessential spirit and naïveté of the comic book source, all too often it exposed the weaknesses of the production (in casting, performance, script, and production design). But the Director’s Cut makes so many choices that act to deepen and support the film, so even if it’s nearly 30 minutes longer it somehow feels shorter than the original. What it adds is character, so Salinger is a source of empathy not comedy, and Red Skull is given moments to humanize him (even if he still wears the clothes of an Italian stereotype). It creates a structure and uses editing in such a smart way that it protects what might have earlier been unintended comedy and replaces it with heart and character. In so many ways, it is a completely different film, and in every way the Director’s Cut is better for it.

11/09/2025

Thanks for the shoutout Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Video!

In this Extra Credit episode, Adrian and Dion return to Captain America (1990), but now with the newly released Director’s Cut available from Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Video. They have high hopes for this fabled Director’s Cut, but does it get a "Captain America thumbs up" seal of approval?   Ch...

09/09/2025

🚨Extra Credit: Captain America (1990) Director’s Cut

Cult Film School is back in full swing with a brand-new semester packed with fresh episodes and deep dives.

BUT… we just had to shout out the Director’s Cut Blu-ray release of Captain America (1990) — courtesy of the awesome folks at Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Video. 🇺🇸🛡️So we’re dropping an Extra Credit episode with our take on the new Director’s Cut — since we already covered the Theatrical Cut (yep, the one that didn’t actually hit theaters) in our Marvel Before Disney episode. 🎙️🇺🇸

📀 Captain America → Directed by Albert Pyun, 1990.
💿 Director’s Cut released by Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Video, 2025.

🛸🎤 Listen to today’s episode on our website, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts — links in bio 👉

Spotify ▶️ https://open.spotify.com/show/1c9XoWNzbOmH9JgErDazWH
Apple ▶️ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cult-film-school/id1697351574
Website ▶️ https://cultfilmschool.libsyn.com/

🧠💥 Stay tuned. Stay weird. Stay culty.

07/09/2025

It was probably inevitable that It: Chapter Two would be made. It (2017) was financially successful and the story was already there to complete. Unfortunately, it was also probably inevitable that the same problems from the first film would appear in the sequel. But like any sequel, it would repeat and exaggerate parts from the original, and those instincts only work when built around the logic of the set piece jump scare.

So much happens in It: Chapter Two but nothing really matters. Somehow the film is both bloated and underdeveloped at the same time, with more hysteria but less heart. Bill Hader (Richie Tozier) shines, but even here that comedy often does more to destroy the horror than be a counterpoint to it. Obviously inserting the child characters was to give the audience more of what they wanted, and what sometimes worked in 2017. But here the whole thing feels more like a legacy sequel: bringing the kids back to add something to the bumbling adults running around their hometown in search of a problem and solution they arrived at decades earlier.

If the film were half its length it would be bad, but the sheer audacity to make these questionable choices (for just one example, see “Angel of the Morning”) and try to jam in the heart of the story with the kids and have it at nearly three hours seems like such a waste for all involved, especially the audience.

06/09/2025

As much as It (2017) takes its cue from the “Night 1” child-centred structure of It (1990), there are too many choices here that undermine so many of the things that made the earlier miniseries adaptation successful. Pennywise as an outright monster (a wolf in very tattered clown’s clothing) might work as a scary image but it’s so warped in its monstrosity it loses the power to shift from playful to threatening in interactions with the children. And the 1980s setting seems out of place: what 1980s preteens had a clown as a cultural touchstone? (Side note: Derry, Maine doesn’t even have a McDonald’s.)

The film is a series of set pieces and jump scares that might work on some visceral level but don’t really work beyond that, and only bits and pieces shine through. For example, Sophia Lillis (Beverly Marsh) is a revelation but sadly is not given enough to do (all the while other members of the “Loser’s Club” are adapted in ways that question their narrative purpose here).

For a coming-of-age film, with echoes of It (1990) and even the camaraderie of Stand By Me (1986), it’s a shame that It (2017) feels as soulless as it does. Clowns deserve better.

06/09/2025

While Tim Curry’s Pennywise traumatized a generation, it’s the rest of the cast and the film’s tone that allows him to be as effective as he is. The child actors of “Night 1” elevate and ground the tv miniseries with emotion and humanity, buying a lot of goodwill for the adult actors of “Night 2.” Even though characters are rendered more as caricatures, the relationships, loves, and fears that bond them make the fantastical coming-of-age story feel earnest and earned. Sure, the “Night 2” conclusion can rightly be criticized, whether due to the production’s special effects or the narrative choices adapted from the source novel, but it doesn’t undue the tremendous foundation the miniseries sets, and the visceral power of Curry creating an iconic horror performance before our eyes.

06/09/2025

🎈 COMING SOON: "Send in the Clowns" 🤡

Adrian and Dion are BACK — and they’re heading straight to Derry, Maine... again and again and again. 🧠🌀

In the first official episode of Semester 4, they dive deep into the sewers of Stephen King’s It, revisiting three haunting adaptations:
📺 It (1990) — the iconic TV miniseries
🎬 It (2017) — the blockbuster reimagining
🎬 It: Chapter Two (2019) — the adult-sized sequel

There’s nostalgia, clownsploitation, and maybe even a few floaty promises along the way — but don’t expect them to hold their breath. 💀🎪

👀 Get ready — Episode drops Tuesday, Sept 2nd
🎧 Wherever you get your podcasts.