Farmer Vincent’s “fritters” or McConaughey’s robot leg? 🎃 For our Halloween Special, host Alex Parker and filmmaker Justin Peery tackle two of the weirdest, gnarliest cult horror flicks ever made: Motel Hell (1980) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994). One has a chainsaw duel and heads planted in a garden. The other has Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger before they became Oscar winners.

Filmed live at Fratelli’s Pizza in Redding, California. Only one of these movies might be good, and we argue about which.

🔪 IN THIS EPISODE
Motel Hell: Rory Calhoun, Wolfman Jack, John Ratzenberger and a $3 million budget that doubled at the box office
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation: the $600,000 budget, McConaughey’s “all right, all right, all right,” Zellweger’s scream-queen workout and a very unhelpful corsage
Rotten Tomatoes showdown: Motel Hell scores 63%, The Next Generation scores 15%
Why the Motel Hell script got so dark that Tobe Hooper nearly directed it
A movie so bad its stars’ agent reportedly blocked the release
Physical media, Arrow and Shout! Factory, and Dead by Daylight

⏱ CHAPTERS
0:00 Halloween intro
1:22 Where to watch and Tales from the Bucket
2:10 Meet Justin Peery
3:23 Motel Hell: first impressions
17:36 The vocal cord scene
20:54 Budget and box office
26:29 Wolfman Jack
33:49 The chainsaw duel
34:58 Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
36:50 Meet Renée Zellweger
42:54 McConaughey’s entrance
47:56 Leatherface
54:36 Arrow, Shout! Factory and physical media
1:02:14 Favorite McConaughey movies
1:04:12 Family dinner
1:10:12 That ending
1:11:45 Sinister Sundial movie club
1:13:50 Wrap-up

🎃 THIS HALLOWEEN
Fratelli’s Pizza Halloween event "Hella-Ween, 1774 California St, Redding, CA, October 31, 5:00 to 8:30 PM
Tales from the Bucket, a new horror anthology written by Cory De Silva, premieres October 31 on Creators Co. TV

📅 NEXT WEEK: a roundtable of four filmmakers on Avengers: Doomsday.

📺 Hard to Watch streams on Creators Co. TV (YouTube, Facebook, Rumble), plus Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

👍 Like, subscribe, and tell us which movie was harder to watch.

#HardToWatch #HalloweenSpecial #MotelHell

Hackers with mystical powers, a black cube, five laptops that are never turned on, and a naval destroyer that shows up in the sky over Chicago. This week on Hard to Watch, host Alex Parker takes on two seriously strange sci-fi flicks with a guest who came ready to win.

Tyler Lockamy, film liaison for Shasta and Tehama counties, brings “the apex predator of Hard to Watch”: Neil Breen’s cult-classic Fateful Findings (2012). Alex fires back with the 2012 Philadelphia Experiment remake, starring Malcolm McDowell. One film has a rabid midnight-movie following, the other aired on the Sci-Fi channel, and both have plenty to mock.

In this episode:

• Fateful Findings: Neil Breen writes, directs, stars and (almost) caters, on a reported $5,000 budget
• Why Breen’s “outsider cinema” might be important cinema after all
• The 2012 Philadelphia Experiment: wrong jets, Dutch tilts everywhere, and a flux capacitor wink
• Malcolm McDowell delivering the goods in a movie that doesn’t deserve him
• The real USS Eldridge legend, and why the original 1984 film is worth your time
• Plus a first look at the Sinister Sundial Film Festival at the Riverfront Playhouse in Redding, CA, and the Sundial Film Festival coming February 2027

Chapters:
0:00 Welcome to Hard to Watch
0:41 Meet Tyler Lockamy, film liaison
2:45 Fateful Findings (Neil Breen, 2012)
30:30 The Philadelphia Experiment (2012)
53:31 Festival talk and wrap-up

Find Tyler on Instagram: @tyler_lockamy, Film Shasta and Film Tehama. Festival info: SinisterSFF.com

Recorded live at Fratelli’s Pizza in Redding, CA, and streamed on Creators Co. TV, Facebook, YouTube, Rumble and X. Like, subscribe and tell us the worst movie you’ve ever finished!

Steven Seagal on acid in a cave full of nude women. A heat-seeking shark with a grudge against one family. Michael Caine in both. This week on Hard to Watch, host Alex Parker and documentary filmmaker John Stinson of Catbird Seat Productions watch two of the most baffling movies of their decades: On Deadly Ground (1994) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987).

In this episode:
🔥 Why Seagal directed, produced and (mostly) wrote On Deadly Ground, and how a Clint Eastwood script became a Greenpeace recruitment film
🦈 How Michael Caine pocketed $1 million for about ten days of work on Jaws: The Revenge, missed the Oscars for Hannah and Her Sisters, and bought his mother a house with the money
🎬 The bar fight, the slap fight, the bad ADR, the changing hair dye and the horse jump off a (painted?) cliff
🗣️ Seagal’s 40-minute environmental speech, cut to 7 minutes after a preview audience booed
🌴 A Christmas shark movie set in the Bahamas, with a questionable Jamaican accent and a very confusing ending
🍿 Which movie is the better date-night test

Rotten Tomatoes scores, budgets, behind-the-scenes trivia and plenty of jokes at the movies’ expense.

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro and meet John Stinson
6:14 On Deadly Ground clips and commentary
18:49 From Rainbow Warrior to On Deadly Ground
28:50 The 40-minute speech
40:12 Jaws: The Revenge clips and commentary
1:03:59 Final thoughts

📺 Hard to Watch is produced by Creators Co., a Redding, California indie film collective, and streams on Creators Co. TV. Find us on YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, X and Instagram.

👍 Like, subscribe and tell us in the comments: which is harder to watch, Seagal or the shark?