Top Plug of the Week

We just discussed Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo, on FlopTV, and tickets are still available! — $7/episode, $35 for the whole season (+ticket fees). A season pass gets you access to ALL of the episodes, even those you missed live! Following the live stream, all episodes will remain available ON DEMAND for ticket holders through the end of February 2025!

BOOOOOGENS!

We’re big horror folks here at The Flop House, so this is the most wonderful time of the year! In the early days of the podcast, we loved watching horror — even bad horror — so much that it seemed to make up half of our episodes. Ever since SHOCKTOBER became fully codified, it’s rare that we watch a horror film for the show out of season, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t watching on our own time!

Just as man cannot live on bread alone, movies should never be ALL garbage. A balanced film diet needs nutrition. So I’ve gone back through my (Dan’s) Letterboxed and compiled a list of horror movies for the spooky season that earned 3.5 stars or more from me (with the caveat that my ratings are HIGHLY WHIMSICAL and based in personal enjoyment, so there may be some “bad” movies in there, but they’re good-bad films I took joy in — I’ve designated such picks with a (GB). These aren’t only films that were released in 2024, just stuff I watched this year, because older movies deserve love too!

• I Saw the TV Glow (top pick of the bunch!)

• The Substance

• The House by the Cemetery

• The Manitou (GB… or at least wild/utterly bizarre)

• Cuckoo

• MaXXXine

• Longlegs

• The New York Ripper

• Fright Night (1985)

• Late Night With the Devil

• Cemetery Man

• Demons 2

• Dr. Caligari (1989 - very strange!)

• Creep 2

• Torment (1986)

• Inland Empire

• Alien: Romulus

• Ouija: Origin of Evil

• Messiah of Evil

• Stopmotion

• The Spider Labyringh

• Ghoulies II

• Cujo

• Infested

• Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (GB)

• The First Omen

• Prison (1987)

• Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (GB)

• Immaculate

• Destroy All Neighbors

• Suitable Flesh

• I’m Just Fucking With You

I’ve also looked up Stuart’s selections. Stu doesn’t give star ratings, just cute li’l “like” hearts, so here’s a list of horror movies he watched this year that won his heart:

The Substance, Afraid (by friend of the show Chris Weitz!), Cuckoo, Alien: Covenant, The Manitou, Oddity, Longlegs, MaXXXine, Fright Night (1985), The First Omen, In a Violent Nature, I Saw the TV Glow, Abigail, Mute Witness, Late Night With the Devil, Prison (1987), Immaculate, Lisa Frankenstein, Thanksgiving, and Frankie Freako (more of a comedy, but of course we both had a blast)

Elliott’s busy writing about Ghostbusters, so he doesn’t have time for Letterboxd shenanigans, but he’s writing about GHOSTS so he gets a Shocktober pass.

Boo!

Next on the Podcast:

Hear ye on main!

10/12 - Shocktober begins with our discussion of NIGHT SWIM, the film that asks “If a house can be haunted, then why not a pool?”

10/19 - Dan leads the next mini, quizzing Stuart on the bane of his existence — mid and post-credit scenes. (Thanks to listener Jon for the idea!)

Boys (and a Gal) on the Side

Stuart and Dan got a little freako, attending the New York premiere of FRANKIE FREAKO, a very silly movie about tiny puppet creatures, directed by friend of the show Steven Kostanski, and featuring brief cameos from the Peaches as some li’l robot men. It was a treat to see Steve, and the movie delighted the sold-out crowd. It’s a small independent film, so it might be hard to see before it’s available on home media, but if you live in a bigger metropolitan area, check it out — it might be playing near you!

Elliott’s run on HARLEY QUINN starts with issue #44, dropping on October 23! And kudos to him for an amazing job co-interviewing Robert Caro at the NY Historical Society, to honor the 50th anniversary of The Power Broker. It did my heart good to see Elliott up there moving Mr. Caro to tears with his terrific questions! The audio of Caro’s conversation with Roman Mars and Elliott should show up in their 99 Percent Invisible feed sometime next month.

Most Fridays, as his schedule allows, you can find Stuart painting models on Twitch. Meanwhile, Sharlene Wellington has launched her Kickstarter for “Jiggle Studio.” Check it out and help them reach their goal, if you’re so inclined!

The most recent installment of my personal newsletter, Dan McCoy’s Special Interests is all about Scrooge McDuck! That seems like the sort of thing you Flop folk might enjoy! Sign up to get new essays delivered straight to your email!

Extra Credit

And if you can’t get enough of me talking about Scrooge McDuck and Carl Barks’ duck comics in general, I’m on an upcoming episode of John Moe’s podcast Sleeping With Celebrities doing exactly that, in low, measured tones designed to lull you to sleep. Conk out to me discussing the Duck family genealogy!

You Made it to the End!

Here’s two photos from Elliott’s whirlwind trip to NYC to interview Mr. Caro. You may have already seen the first on our instagram, but folks seemed to really like it, so we’re putting it here too! It’s the three of us having lunch together — right AFTER we did our first Flop House photo shoot in… oh, fourteen years or so? We didn’t have any professional photos of what we look like these days for our various promotional needs, so we figured it was high time to rectify that. So please also enjoy a preview image of one of the pics from that shoot!