Dave explores Ken Russell's Altered States (1980) as #14 on his top-20 1980s horror countdown, summarizing the plot, key performances, and the tumultuous creative team behind the film.

He examines the movie's central themes — sensory deprivation, psychedelic experiments, evolutionary regression, and the inward search for meaning — ties them to real-world science and personal experience, and closes with a reflection on love and human connection as the film's emotional anchor.

The 1982 horror blockbuster that made America afraid of its own homes. We explore Spielberg's (or was it Hooper's?) masterpiece of suburban terror, the tragic deaths that haunted the production, and why the ghost story moved from Gothic castles to tract housing. From white flight to TV static, from swimming pool graves to the bodies buried under the American Dream—this is Poltergeist, the film that said: you're not safe at home. You never were.

Content warning: Discussion of domestic violence, child death, and suburban existential dread.

In this episode Dave explores Halloween III: Season of the Witch — John Carpenter and Deborah Hill’s controversial attempt to turn the franchise into an anthology and the film’s dark fusion of Celtic myth and corporate control.

He summarizes the plot (Dr. Dan Chalice and Ellie Grimbridge uncover Silver Shamrock’s plan to use Stonehenge-embedded chips in Halloween masks), explains why audiences rejected the film in 1982, and highlights its themes of commercialization, media manipulation, and nostalgia weaponized.

Finally, Dave traces the film’s cult rediscovery on VHS and DVD and argues that Halloween III’s ambition and prescience deserve a second look.