Shows / Secret Movie Club Podcast
Episodes
- Secret Movie Club Podcast
SMC Pod #235: Single Location Horror Films
The single location horror movie has produced some of the great horror movies of any scale. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill looks at a…
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SMC Pod #234: Detroit Horror!
The 21st century has given us a surprisingly fertile great horror sub-genre: Detroit horror! The Motor City which, in its heyday from the 1940's-early 1970's…
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SMC Pod #233: Zach Cregger's amazing horror movie run
Moviemaker Zach Cregger has been in the public eye for almost twenty years as a comedian in The Whitest Kids You Know, a sitcom actor, and fledgling comedy…
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SMC Pod #232: The Road Trip movie
The Road Trip movie is a fertile sub-genre that allows all sorts of variations. You get broad warm comedies like National Lampoon's Vacation, Eurotrip, and…
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SMC Pod #231: How to make political movies without annoying people
It's hard to make a good political movie. Or movie about political subject matter. You're always going to alienate a group of folks or worse. Yet the best…
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SMC Pod #230: Bringing back Cinema pop culture relevancy
Buckle up Secret Movie Clubbers, it's going to be a bumpy pod. Movies have always found a way back to pop culture primacy when the naysayers have prematurely…
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SMC Pod #229: Ernst Schoedsack, Merian C. Cooper, MOST DANGEROUS GAME, KING KONG, GRASS, & CHANG
Though not necessarily on the tips of every cinefile's tongue, the filmmakers Ernst Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper blazed a trail and crafted a certain kind…
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SMC Pod #228: Miles Williams & The Alex Theatre's return to 70mm
Artistic Director Miles Williams has been part of the great theater re-inventions in Los Angeles. In downtown Los Angeles alone, Miles was at the center of the…
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SMC Pod #227: Obsession, Backrooms, and Gen Z and Gen Alpha returning to movie theaters
Stop us if you've heard this one before. . .Curry Barker's dark horror comedy Obsession and Kane Parsons' sci-fi horror mindbender Backrooms are scrambling…
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SMC Pod #226: The Odyssey, The Epic, & Film Formats
Christopher Nolan's just released The Odyssey is another Nolan juggernaut, having made $700 million in just 12 days of release. It's also the first movie shot…
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SMC Pod #225: The Cult Classic Movie
A cult classic movie often wasn't a mainstream hit upon release. But over time, a devoted committed subculture grew around the movie with the belief, nay, the…
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SMC Pod #224: Movie Twists, shock endings, and comic buttons!
There are so many ways to end a movie. Some of the most powerful, yet hardest to do, are movie twists. This is where your entire reality and understanding of…
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SMC Podcast #223: Movie Structure-The 3 Act, 5 Act, Symphonic structure & beyond
Aristotle in his POETICS made a simple yet incisive claim-good dramatic work has a 3 act structure-a beginning, a middle, and an end. Horace in classic Rome…
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SMC Pod #222: 2025 Movies Pt 2 & Disclosure Day
Lesson learned. Each year produces so many fascinating movies; it's better to wait and see as many as possible before recording a pre-emptive "Movies of 2025"…
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SMC Pod #221: Internal vs. External Horror: Monsters Without and Within
John Carpenter explained it best. We're all seated around a campfire. The storyteller says, the evil is. . .out there and points into the darkness. That's…
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SMC Pod #220: Inverting one movie to make another (Gemini movies)
One of the most clever ways moviemakers make new movies is to take a movie they love and invert it-do the opposite of key aspects of the movie and problem…
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SMC Pod #219: The Music Video Movie Director Generation
In the 1980's and 1990's, David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola, among many others honed their craft and proved their vision directing 3 minute music…
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SMC Pod #218: From the stage to the screen-Adapting plays into movies
Adaptation is a tricky thing no matter the source in cinema. Novels, life stories, historical events, original ideas, short stories. Adapting live theater…
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SMC Pod #217: Directing the Action Film
The precision, patience, and technical know how needed to sell action filmmaking is underrated and under appreciated. Action directors like Michael Curtiz…
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SMC Pod #216: Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Russian Sci Fi Hard to be a God, and our family field report
Oh boy. This one is a movie hodge podge stew. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill announces the first dates of the SMC 2026 season. 8 movies, 5…
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SMC Pod #215: Soviet Sci‑Fi: Hidden Masterpieces from Solaris to Silver Globe
Soviet Sci fi is an undiscovered ocean of incredible cinema for folks here in the west who may not know many of these masterpieces exist. While Andrei…
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SMC Pod #214: Casablanca: A case study of how a Studio Team Built a Masterpiece
1942's Best Picture winner CASABLANCA, made at Warner Brothers, is ultimately the best evidence one could produce for how the old studio system of the 1920's…
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SMC Pod #213: Ken Loach & his 1969 masterpiece KES
British filmmaker Ken Loach has been committed to socially minded cinema for over six decades. From early 1960's TV work to his most recent (and possibly last…
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SMC Pod #212: Luis Buñuel, L'Age d'Or
Episode 212 of Secret Movie Club dives into the life and work of Luis Buñuel, tracing his surrealist beginnings with Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or, his…
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SMC Pod #211: Movies & AI
The AI disruption for movies is here. Poor movies, battered on the choppy seas of digital, streaming, COVID, and now AI, have yet another challenge to contend…
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SMC Pod #210: Frederick Wiseman-Master Documentarian
Frederick Wiseman (1930-2026) is a master documentarian who across 60 years made doc masterpieces about systems and institutions like TITICUT FOLLIES, HIGH…
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SMC Pod #209: The movie repertory theater, the video store, and the streamer
Across the age of cinema, the way a movie lover has been able to consume movies has changed. The movie repertory theater, the video store, and now the…
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SMC Pod #208: Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton-the start of two cinematic traditions
Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton are now often universally viewed as the two great silent film movie comedians. And their personal biographies, even their…
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SMC Pod #207: The Character Actor
The character actor is one of the most important yet least discussed aspects of cinema. Whether it's Thelma Ritter as a no nonsense feisty nurse in Hitchcock's…
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SMC Pod #206: Movies that capture what it means to be Jewish-American
Like all American tribes in the melting pot, Jewish-Americans express their identity in their art. Maybe nowhere as strongly as in cinema. Secret Movie Club…
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SMC Pod #205: The movies of 2025
Today we talk about 12 fascinating movies from 2025. Secret Movie Club founder.programmer starts with the movies he still needs to see (The Secret Agent, Marty…
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SMC Pod #204: The Two Stevens-Steven Spielberg & Stephen King
Yes, they're connected by name. Yes, they're connected by being born within 9 months of each other. Yes, they're connected by their crazy talent to bring the…
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SMC Pod #203: Classic Hollywood Christmas
Christmas movies are a genre unto themselves. And Classic Hollywood Christmas movies are a special part of that genre. Holiday movies made in Hollywood's…
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SMC Pod #202: The Italian Stylists
What is it about the Italians? The rich food. Thousands of years of incredible art and sculpture and music. Something's in the blood over there that produces a…
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SMC Pod #201: Blade Runner & dystopian sci-fi movies
Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi dystopian noir Blade Runner where a disillusionedd private eye/cop/robot hunter Harrison Ford tracks down and falls in love with…
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SMC Podcast #200: Lightning Bottle Movie Masterpieces
To celebrate our 200th podcast, we take a look at some of the less screened and spoken about movie masterpieces that give us "that feel". Movies like Chaplin's…
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SMC Pod #199: The Toronto Film Festival 2025 1st Person POV-Blake Winston Rice & his short DISC
Filmmaker Blake Winston Rice returns to the pod to talk about his most recent short, DISC, starring Victoria Ratermanis & indie phenom Jim Cummings and how it…
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SMC Pod #198: 10 horror movie discoveries
October is Halloween season. And Halloween season is always a good time to discover (or re-discover) some of the more hidden yet just as brilliant horror gems…
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SMC Pod #197: Is this Cinema Part Three: A Serbian Film
In the final part of our three part 2025 series, Is This Cinema?, we look at the 2010 boundary pushing shocking controversial A SERBIAN FILM co-wri & directed…
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SMC Pod #196: The Godfather trilogy & why it's a true trilogy
One of the greatest American movie trilogies has been right under our eyes for decades. Francis Ford Coppola's & team's The Godfather Parts 1, 2, and 3 form…
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SMC Pod #195: Paul Thomas Anderson's ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER & the 2025 theater experience
Sometimes you have to go see a movie in a theater no matter what. That's a great thing. Auteur moviemaker Paul Thomas Anderson's just released One Battle After…
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SMC Pod #194: Pixote, Come and See, and the real horror movies
It's one thing to be scared by a ghost story, vampires, or masked killers menacing horny teens in summer camps. It's another thing when you see a movie that…
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SMC Pod #193: Star Persona vs. Great Actors and everything in between
A movie star has "it". You can't learn it. You can't fake it. The camera loves you. The audience wants you. Great actors may never be movie stars but they…
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SMC Pod #192: Sunset Boulevard, Chinatown, & movies that capture the real Los Angeles
One of the fascinating ironies about Los Angeles is that it is often movies in heightened genres like noir that best capture what the city really feels like to…
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SMC Pod #191: Lorne Michaels & The Movie Impressario
The Impressario is an archetype the movie industry sorely needs right now. Lorne Michaels, co-creator and longtime producer of Saturday Night Live offers a…
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SMC Pod #190: The Children of Caligari-Persona, 3 Women, Mulholland Drive
1920's German expressionist The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari did more than inspire a whole kind of cinema-it also became the great-grandparent of a genre. The…
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SMC Pod #189: The Val Lewton RKO horror unit of the 1940's & Jacques Tourneur
RKO needed money fast in 1943 and they brought on David O Selznick protege Val Lewton to head a unit devoted to cheapie horror movies. The rules-use their…
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SMC Pod #188: Marlon Brando's ONE EYED JACKS (1961) & the eccentric Western
The Western genre is a home grown art form like jazz and rock and roll. And it occasionally produces really strange and wild movies. Marlon Brando's incredible…
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SMC Pod #187: The complex American character through 100 years of American cinema
On any given day, you could pick 20 American movies that would show a different cross section of the complex contradictory conflicting aspects of the American…
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SMC Pod #186: Rossellini's 1940's War trilogy: Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero & the thematic trilogy
Thematic trilogies are fascinating and exciting. Though characters may reappear, they are really trilogies around a theme or fascination or concern. Italian…
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SMC Pod#185: Steven Spielberg's JAWS & Why it's the exception to the rule
As everyone and their cousin is telling you these days, it's the 50th anniversary of Steven Spielberg's classic monster movie blockbuster Jaws (1975). Directed…
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SMC Pod #184: The Fantasy, Sci-Fi, & Horror genres (and how they are reflected in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings)
That's a mouthful! Today, Secret Movie Club programmer talks about the wonders and possibilities of the fantasy, sci-fi, and horror genres and how those…
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SMC Pod #183: Francesco Rosi's SALVATORE GIULIANO (1962, Italy)
Every now and then, you have to deep dive an amazing movie to celebrate it. Today, Secret Movie Club founder.programmer Craig Hammill sings the praises of…
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SMC Pod #182: The Cannes Film Festival with someone who's been there!
Blake Winston Rice @blakewrice had his life turned inside out when he found out his short film Tea had been accepted for competition at the 2024 Cannes Film…
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SMC Pod #181: Recent movies that give me hope
Recent movies like the Latvian animated instant masterpiece Flow, the hilarious and well thought out parody.satire.personal journey indie The People's Joker…
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SMC Pod #180: Is This Cinema Part 2 Part 2! Conversation on what is cinema
A movie podcast so expansive, so intense, it took several weeks to edit! Actor.musician.cinephile Andras Jones (Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Sorority Babes in…
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SMC Pod #179: Is this Cinema Pt II: The Human Centipede
We return to our Is this Cinema series to look at one of the 2000's most divisive horror movies: Tom Six's The Human Centipede (2009). The concept was so…
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SMC Pod #178: Gene Hackman - A helluva actor
The strange and still not fully understood deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife of 30+ years Betsy Arakawa may unsettle us for awhile or for always. But…
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SMC Pod #177: Roger Corman's Rules 2: The Spawning!
The one and only Edwin Cesar Gomez of @physicalmediasociety returns to the Secret Movie Club podcast fold to discuss American cinema producing legend Roger…
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SMC Pod #176: Adaptation Pt 2-The Haunted House movie
It's fascinating to see how the adaptation of a single novel, here Shirley Jackson's 1958 haunted house masterpiece The Haunting of Hill House, can have such a…