Kevin Roche and Jason Diamond, Midnight Terrors Podcast

[00:00:00] Halfling: Thanks for tuning into the Halfling and the Spaceman: Journeys in Active Fandom. We're having great conversations with people that have turned their love of fandom into something creative. We're fans talking to fans, and today we're talking with Kevin and Jason of the podcast. Midnight Terrors. Welcome guys.

[00:00:22] Jason Diamon: Hey, how's it going?

[00:00:23] Halfling: It's going great. Going great. How are you guys doing?

[00:00:27] Jason Diamon: I have to do good. I have to do a little quick correction that I always have to do. It's Bucky and Diamond, by the way. 

[00:00:35] Kevin Roche: Inside Joke. For our, for our show? 

[00:00:38] Jason Diamon: Yeah, for our, that's kind of like our nicknames for each other and so I've always said it's Bucky and Diamond, but he corrects me and says our correct names. Yeah, 

[00:00:47] Kevin Roche: we should clarify it. That's Jason's nicknames for us, cuz I still say Kevin and Jason on our show.

[00:00:52] Halfling: Well, I, I think just for simplicity's sake, we're gonna just go with, Kevin and Jason, if that's all right.

[00:01:01] Jason Diamon: easier.

[00:01:02] Spaceman: Okay. Hold on before we go any farther. Bucky and Diamond.

[00:01:05] Jason Diamon: Yes. 

[00:01:06] Kevin Roche: Mm-hmm.

[00:01:06] Spaceman: So this is the podcast featuring Kevin and Jason with Bucky and Diamond.

[00:01:17] Jason Diamon: Beautiful.

[00:01:18] Halfling: Uh, okay. Are you done Spaceman?

[00:01:20] Halfling: Okay. All right. Well, let's just go ahead and jump in and I'd like you guys take turns, and just tell us each, you know, a little bit about your backgrounds, and yourselves and Yeah. So whoever wants to start.

[00:01:35] Jason Diamon: I'll let Kevin kick that one off.

[00:01:38] Halfling: Okay. Kevin, on the 

[00:01:39] Spaceman: Go. Go 

[00:01:40] Halfling: Kevin. go. 

[00:01:40] Halfling: Kevin's on the hot seat.

[00:01:42] Kevin Roche: Right. All right. And this is just, just about me in general.

[00:01:45] Halfling: Yeah, just a little bit about yourself and your background, like, you know, your education there in classes that you were involved in that got you to where you are now. Anything like that.

[00:01:56] Kevin Roche: Okay, perfect. Me along, with Jason. We're based in, uh Charleston, South Carolina. And, I graduated college, about seven years ago from, uh, Charleston Southern University. I went to school for European history actually. So big, big history buff. And, I'm also a local musician around town and I work full-time and, I have many, many different interests, horror being one of them.

[00:02:20] Kevin Roche: So that's kind of what led to doing the podcast. And I'm all about, you know, meeting people and connecting with people at conventions and, through social media. And that's kind of what the podcast has become is a big culmination of, 

[00:02:33] Kevin Roche: of all of that.

[00:02:35] Halfling: Okay, great, great. And Jason, how about you?

[00:02:39] Jason Diamon: Yeah. My, my background's a little interesting. I was born and raised in Charleston. My father is a minister. So when I was younger, horror movies and stuff like that, , we weren't having foul language in the house or anything, , so that was a little bit interesting.

[00:02:57] Jason Diamon: So as I got a little bit older, I started, , hanging out. With some friends and then their place was like, kind of the house to be like after, school or whatever. Cuz their parents were never home. But one of my friends, unusually enough worked at Blockbuster. So he would start bringing all these horror, horror movies home that I had never seen.

[00:03:16] Jason Diamon: And I remember the first one that they made me watch was, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I remember we talk about this on the show. I remember watching like, you know, the VCR had the little timer on it to tell you how much was left in the movie. I was so terrified that I could not take my eyes off of that timer.

[00:03:34] Jason Diamon: I was like, when is this gonna be over? When is this gonna be over? What are you doing to me? So that scared the crap out of me. So they, they just started, they thought it was fun to, you know, find whatever they could, to just, just scare me like crazy. So that's kind of where my love story for horror, you know, kind of took off was from them and going so long when I was younger, not having any of that stuff or not seeing any of that stuff.

[00:04:02] Jason Diamon: It was just like new and interesting to me. And, you know, I started rather than being scared, like finding a lot of it like really funny and how far are they gonna take this? So that's kind of, that's kind of where I come from. You know, as far as, as far as the past, or as far as the podcast goes, that's just kind of where my love of horror came from.

[00:04:23] Halfling: So, well, you admitted though , that at first you were scared. 

[00:04:27] Jason Diamon: yeah, absolutely. 

[00:04:28] Halfling: What was the turning point? When when did I. You go from being scared to going, oh, this is, this is cool, or, you know, or, oh, that's cheeky, or whatever.

[00:04:38] Jason Diamon: Well that one is definitely, Comes from the Evil Dead. I remember watching The Evil Dead. None of us knew what it was like. My buddy just randomly picked it off the shelf, um, cuz it sounded cool. Um, and watching Evil Dead at first, and then there are some scary moments to the original Evil Dead.

[00:04:59] Jason Diamon: But once they started just going like crazy over the top, I was just like, oh my God, this is not like, this is funny. Like, and they know what they're doing. Like they're trying to go take it as far as they can. And so that movie was kind of a turning point for me where I started, you know, you kind of separate yourself from it and, and I, there's still some movies that I will not sit in a room alone and watch.

[00:05:27] Jason Diamon: So there are some really scary ones, but, I really like the ones that are just kind of fun and goofy and over the top.

[00:05:33] Halfling: Love, love, evil Dead. It, it was great. I mean, I'm, I'm kind of like you. I, it, I've not really been into horror, but watching that movie, it was just so over the top and you were just, you know, and he was just hilarious, you know? 

[00:05:50] Jason Diamon: Yeah, Bruce Campbell's amazing. He's one of my favorites.

[00:05:54] Spaceman: I, I loved him in Bubba Ho-Tep.

[00:05:57] Jason Diamon: yes

[00:05:57] Jason Diamon: sir. 

[00:05:58] Halfling: Bubba Ho-Tep 

[00:05:59] Jason Diamon: (I loved) me some Bubba Ho-Tep

[00:06:02] Halfling: yeah, 

[00:06:03] Jason Diamon: Peanut butter and banana sandwich.

[00:06:04] Halfling: there you go.

[00:06:09] Spaceman: Before we go on any farther, I think our listeners might would like to understand a little bit more about what is the Midnight Terrors podcast? 

[00:06:16] Spaceman: Kevin.

[00:06:17] Kevin Roche: Yeah. So Midnight Terrors. So I think, to preface and kind of go off what Jason was saying. So my background with horror started when I was 11 because when I was growing up, I had, I have older sisters and they're, you know, they weren't like avid rabid horror fans or anything like that.

[00:06:39] Kevin Roche: There would be some on in the background, like scream, or any of, or like, I know what you did last summer, any of those nineties, slasher type stuff. So I kind of grew up in that era and I can remember seeing scream on the television and when, when the killer throws a, chair through the window, to break into the house, I, I ran screaming out of the room because, uh, it was just too much.

[00:07:02] Kevin Roche: But when I got to middle school, when I was 11 in sixth grade, I had heard something about this creepy clown character that Stephen King made.

[00:07:14] Halfling: Oh,

[00:07:15] Kevin Roche: And I remember my mom telling me something about a clown that takes the shape of the thing you fear the most. I was like, that actually sounds kind of cool. And then this VHS tape made its way into my house and it was the 1990 version of Stephen King's it with Pennywise the Clown on the cover.

[00:07:33] Kevin Roche: And I remember hearing about it. Mm-hmm. The legendary 

[00:07:36] Halfling: Tim. Tim Curry. I, I, you know, I'm sure that you've seen the, more modern versions, but in my mind, Tim Curry, just, he was

[00:07:49] Halfling: it, 

[00:07:49] Jason Diamon: he's, some people are just always that character, like even if somebody else takes, takes up the role, you're just like, and, and we, we even meet fans that like, you know, people have their favorite. Michael Myers, like, and it's like, it's, it's a guy in a jumpsuit and a white mask. Like what? How do you have a favorite?

[00:08:08] Jason Diamon: Yeah, you walk stabs, you know, like, but you know, like, a lot of our fans are, a lot of our listeners like, are that hardcore into it, which is, which is kind of funny. 

[00:08:18] Kevin Roche: Yeah, absolutely. And, so Tim Curry, being Tim Curry, you know, is gonna give, quite the performance. So I asked my mom if I could watch this VHS tape and it was completely dark outside.

[00:08:31] Kevin Roche: And she said, reluctantly, yes you can, but please wait until morning. So I did that and I woke up on a rainy Saturday, which is the perfect, you know, setting for watching Stephen King's. It, it was a rainy Saturday. I was up at seven in the morning. I popped in the, it was two VHS tapes cuz it was a three hour TV movie.

[00:08:52] Kevin Roche: I pop this in, the first scare happens. I run screaming out of the room and I go, this is the scariest thing I've ever seen. And she's like, I told you. And I said, I'm gonna go back and watch it again. And, uh, and it just, there was no, there was no looking away from it. I don't know what it was, but for three hours I was sucked in or some big scare would happen.

[00:09:12] Kevin Roche: I'd run outta the room and then take a breather, then come back. And it terrified me for three months.

[00:09:18] Halfling: Oh 

[00:09:18] Halfling: yeah, 

[00:09:20] Kevin Roche: yeah, I, I mean, I couldn't go near like shower drains or sinks or sewers without being afraid of, uh, of Pennywise. But after I got past that initial scare of that and, uh, another movie, the American Remake of the Grudge, there was something that clicked within me where I was like, you know, that was adrenalizing.

[00:09:41] Kevin Roche: That was something that I would like to experience more. Cuz it's just fun once you get past the terrifying part. And so I just dove into horror and I saw, you know, Halloween, 1978 and you know, just all the classics. Friday the 13th nightmare on Elm Street, and it was all over from there. And then last year, so, early summer 2022, I had been to a horror convention about three years prior to that, but I didn't really like meet the celebrities.

[00:10:10] Kevin Roche: I was kind of just like, you know, exploring vendors and stuff like that. And so I didn't get the full experience of doing it. And then last May, 2022, I went to a horror convention called Carolina Fear Fest in Raleigh. And that was my first experience of meeting people that I'm a fan of that are in these horror movies that I love, and meeting vendors and meeting writers and authors and artists.

[00:10:33] Kevin Roche: And I was like so engulfed in the culture that I said to myself, I would like to have something that emulates this feeling of community from the horror genre. That's kind of where the conception of midnight terrors came. I was like, I, let's do a podcast and I'll talk to different people in the horror genre and we'll talk different movies with different guests, and I'll have a co-host and we'll go, you know, every week talk about something different in the horror genre.

[00:11:01] Kevin Roche: And I really wanted to have a co-host and someone to play off regularly. And Jason, you know, being my brother-in-law for nearly 20 years now has always been something of a curator for me. When it comes to my love of horror. Him being a little bit older than me, he would say, check out Evil Dead, check Out House of a Thousand Corpses.

[00:11:21] Kevin Roche: And I would discover a lot of my favorite movies because of him. So who better to call than to, than to bring him in as my co-host and for us to be able to play off each other as we have since I was, you know, 11, 12 years old. And that's basically what Midnight Terrors is. It's, it's a podcast celebrating horror and just this, this thing that we love and how it.

[00:11:44] Kevin Roche: Bleeds out into other parts of our life that we, we might not even be aware of until we talk about it.

[00:11:50] Spaceman: Jason,

[00:11:50] Jason Diamon: and when, when we were getting started too, like, like Kevin just came to me and he was like, I just, I just have an idea if doing a podcast. And I was like, well, that's cool. What do you wanna do?

[00:11:59] Jason Diamon: We need, we need something to do. And you know, like Kevin said, having known each other so long, I was constantly force feeding him content. And some of 'em, I would have to sit him down and say, watch this. And then when he would finish, we would sit there and talk about it for two hours, or he'd give me a phone call and say, Hey, I finally watched this.

[00:12:21] Jason Diamon: And literally that's two to three times a week. And so, I was like, why don't we just do this? Because we're gonna do it anyway. You're gonna call me, we're gonna talk about the movie for three hours. Why not record it? Uh, so that's kinda where it came from or where the idea came from.

[00:12:37] Jason Diamon: And we were like, where you gonna do, we do this anyway, so why don't we just record it, see if we can make some friends. 

[00:12:43] Kevin Roche: We always joke that, the conversations that you're hearing are conversations that Jason and I would have anyway for three hours, so we might as well put it in front of an audience and see if people wanna, wanna listen.

[00:12:53] Kevin Roche: And it, it just so happens that there's a good amount of people that do, and we've connected with people from all over the world at this point through social media that also love horror. And it's just natural, real fun conversations about like, oh, I love that movie. It brings back so many memories. Oh, this movie was terrifying.

[00:13:11] Kevin Roche: And, you know, then talking to people that are musicians and writers and how horror bleeds into their creativity.

[00:13:18] Halfling: Well, just as a, as a moment of shame for myself, my first horror movie was The Wizard of Oz, the the Wicked, which scared the, you know what, out of me. I had nightmares about her. Of course I was, you know, like six, seven years old at the time. But she, but she's scared, she's scared the bejesus out of me.

[00:13:46] Jason Diamon: Well, she is pretty terrifying.

[00:13:48] Halfling: uh, well, for a little kid, you know, that that's, I mean, that's the stuff of nightmares.

[00:13:55] Halfling: Um, but, uh, okay. So this is another question for both of you, um, because you've, you both have already talked a little bit about how you actually came into, to the love of horror and talked a little bit about the, you know, how the podcast came to be. But are there other types of fandom that you enjoy?

[00:14:15] Halfling: And again, this is for both of you. So, I mean, there generally there's, crossover and, and fandoms. So if you're a fan of, you know, sci-fi fantasy, you're probably gonna be a fan of. Of comics or whatever. I mean, so, do each of you have different types of fandom? Other fandom that you, that you've gotten into?

[00:14:35] Halfling: I.

[00:14:37] Kevin Roche: Oh yeah, I, uh, I think Jason, I'll go ahead and start, if that's all right. Um, that's fine. I, we actually were just talking about this yesterday when we were sort of prepping. For this, and we were trying to remember what our earliest fandom was. I think the one that both of us, even with our age difference can remember from our childhoods wa, or Childhoods, was Star Wars.

[00:14:59] Kevin Roche: We, uh, we, we both were fans of that original trilogy and I can even remember in the nineties having the triple VHS box set with all three movies in there and just watching that every single day. didn't matter which one I would just pop on any of the Star Wars movies and that was my day. And that led to things like collecting the action figures that they had and seeing if you could get as many as you possibly could, or reading spinoff books or, you know, if there were television specials where they were talking about Star Wars, you would just want to get immersed in that.

[00:15:38] Kevin Roche: And, Jason's got me beat on that. I think he lives and breathes Star Wars to this day. 

[00:15:43] Jason Diamon: Yeah. Oddly enough wearing my Mandalorian shirt.

[00:15:47] Jason Diamon: Uh, 

[00:15:47] Halfling: you go. Represent.

[00:15:51] Jason Diamon: but this one says the best dad in the Galaxy. So,

[00:15:54] Jason Diamon: um, 

[00:15:55] Halfling: you go. There 

[00:15:57] Spaceman: Quite appropriate for Father's Day. Yeah.

[00:16:02] Jason Diamon: No, Kevin's right. I mean, I like, definitely for both of us. There, there was a lot of different, there's a lot of different stuff that, you know, we got hardcore into, star Wars. For me, Batman is a big thing. So like, I have pretty much every Batman comic book you can get your hands on, unless it's like one that there's only a hundred copies of or something.

[00:16:26] Jason Diamon: But comic books in general and Batman were a big thing. And then, we both got into video games really hard. We both worked at GameStop, but I worked at GameStop. I was the store manager for seven years, and then I told Kevin to go apply and told my friend that ran that store. I was like, hire him.

[00:16:44] Jason Diamon: So we both worked at GameStop for a long time and we were constantly trading back and forth on games. But it's interesting like all, all of those, all those fandoms, like they have this, and this is one of the things that we've learned from doing this podcast, is like, you don't understand like, how deep the fandom goes.

[00:17:05] Jason Diamon: Like, I mean, there's some, I laugh at Kevin. I call him my encyclopedia sometimes because, uh, you know, he'll, he'll call me from a con and be like, dude, I just met such and such person. I'm like, who it that?

[00:17:19] Jason Diamon: And he's like, oh, it's the girl that played like the third cheerleader on the left in night of the Living Dead or something. Like, I'm like, how do you know this dude? Like, so yeah, I mean, over the years we've had a lot of stuff and I know for Kevin, music's a big one too. He's a musician.

[00:17:38] Jason Diamon: And he plays and sings around town all the time, and is constantly releasing new music and stuff like that. I'm a big music fan too. My brother was an artist manager. So I gotta spend a lot of time with some really cool bands. And I'm really hardcore into music too. So it's hard to keep control of it.

[00:17:56] Jason Diamon: You find something that you like and you, you just dive in. Well, 

[00:18:00] Kevin Roche: Jason, Jason hit on an important point there. For all of the times that you might think that you are like the biggest fan of something, there's always gonna be someone else out there who is probably a few steps ahead of you on it. And then you still learn, you still learn new stuff, you know, every time you bring up something that you're a fan of.

[00:18:18] Kevin Roche: And you know, being a music's a great example. So like in middle school, the record American Idiot by Green Day was like a life-changing album for me. And that was what made me want to pick up a guitar. And I go, this music's so great, I can't stop listening to it. I get into metal music and then people that are older than me go, well, have you heard of the bands that inspired Green Day or Slipknot or, or anything like that?

[00:18:43] Kevin Roche: And I go, no, not at all. And you know, Jason was actually a key component in that. And you know, sending me like, well go further back, see what bands inspired what you love. And so music definitely consumed me in that way. Probably the first fandom that I can remember really being engulfed in at a young age was Pokemon.

[00:19:02] Kevin Roche: I mean, I remember getting, uh, my first Pokemon card at like a pizza party for a baseball team or something. And, uh, I got me my first Charmander card and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. I was like, where can I get more of these cards? And then you find out there's video games and there's the TV show, and there's books and, all these different collectibles.

[00:19:21] Kevin Roche: And so it's hard to always pinpoint where like, what really compels you to dive into certain things. But once you do, you just, it's this need and this desire to wanna know everything you can and really be immersed in it.

[00:19:36] Jason Diamon: Well, the big question here is, did you catch them all, sir? 

[00:19:40] Kevin Roche: I still have never, I have never to this day.

[00:19:44] Halfling: well, that's, that's all the more incentive to just, you know, to just keep at it one day, one day, one

[00:19:51] Spaceman: One day 

[00:19:53] Spaceman: now, did you catch the Pokemon Go craze a couple of years ago where people were running around with their smartphones looking for,

[00:20:00] Kevin Roche: You know, I tried to, and I played it for probably three days, and then my phone actually crashed and deleted all of the progress that I had made.

[00:20:08] Spaceman: oh,

[00:20:09] Kevin Roche: up and said, I'm not doing this again. But Jason did. 

[00:20:13] Jason Diamon: Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was never, like, as a kid, I was never really a big Pokemon fan. I watched the show here and there, but I wasn't into collecting all the cards and stuff like that, but I just, everybody was raving about it.

[00:20:25] Jason Diamon: So I downloaded the game. I was like, it must be fun. So I started playing it and yeah, I, I got, I got pretty deep 

[00:20:33] Jason Diamon: there for a while.

[00:20:34] Kevin Roche: Yeah. And here's, here's me riding along with Jason to go to the store to get something. And he is like, ho, hold on man. I gotta stop off at this random store. And I'm like, why?

[00:20:43] Kevin Roche: He's like, oh, I'm not going inside. I just, there's a poker stop here.

[00:20:49] Halfling: so Well, I mean, Jason, you never, you never just walked down the middle of the street with your phone. Not even pay attention to traffic though, did you?

[00:20:58] Jason Diamon: No, no, I didn't get that

[00:21:00] Halfling: Oh, 

[00:21:01] Jason Diamon: with it. Uh, but I do remember, I do remember laughing cuz I actually, um, when the game came out, I worked at a, I worked at T-Mobile, I worked at a cell phone store and all of a sudden there's all these people coming in to buy portable batteries. And I'm like, what is the deal with this?

[00:21:21] Jason Diamon: Yeah, so this guy hands over, three portable batteries and I'm like, what are you, are you getting these for presents for people? Or like what? Cuz we never sold portable batteries. I mean, I'd sell one here and there, but not much. And he's like, no man. He's like, I gotta have him strapped to my belt so that I don't run out of power on my phone while I'm playing Pokemon Go.

[00:21:41] Jason Diamon: I'm like, are you crazy, dude, that you're playing that much, that you're killing your cell phone battery and three extra ones.

[00:21:48] Halfling: Wow, that is hardcore. 

[00:21:52] Jason Diamon: But yeah, that was, that was just funny. I, yeah, I remember people coming in and like, walking around with like five chargers on their belt. I was just like, you guys are nuts.

[00:22:01] Spaceman: That is kind of nuts.

[00:22:03] Jason Diamon: Yeah, there's, there's, there's a point where it's too far.

[00:22:06] Spaceman: Yeah, 

[00:22:07] Spaceman: I No 

[00:22:08] Spaceman: doubt, 

[00:22:08] Spaceman: no

[00:22:09] Spaceman: doubt.

[00:22:12] Spaceman: We talked about how long you guys have done the podcast. Um, we talked about how you got involved in the podcast, so, and, not sure how to explore you guys being brother-in-laws.

[00:22:23] Spaceman: Oh, no, no. Here's, here's a good question. 

[00:22:25] Spaceman: How long did it take after, 

[00:22:26] Spaceman: You were married, Jason, for you and Kevin to connect over horror movies?

[00:22:32] Jason Diamon: It was, it was pretty quick. Now, when I met Kevin, he must have been what, Kevin? 12, 13? 

[00:22:41] Kevin Roche: Yeah, that was 2005, 2006. I was, yeah, probably right about to be a teenager. So 12, 13, 14, something like that. 

[00:22:51] Jason Diamon: Yeah, and , they have really like tight-knit family. So I mean, at least once or twice a week, you know, me and, me and Kevin's sister would all, you know, gather at his parents' house and have, big dinner and then, Kevin and I would end up hanging out either listening to music or playing video games. 

[00:23:09] Jason Diamon: , but it took a couple of years, for me to kind of start stuffing,, the horror movies down his throat. Um, we always, we always talked to movies, but, it was kind of this, you know, standard stuff. Star Wars, you know, sci-fi stuff. But. I think by the time he was about 14, I, I really started, recommending movies to him.

[00:23:34] Jason Diamon: And I, I think that's when he picked up. So it was about three years before he got into the horror, like I did.

[00:23:42] Spaceman: Okay. Okay, So you're bringing up the next generation, right? 

[00:23:45] Spaceman: Huh?

[00:23:46] Jason Diamon: Yeah, exactly. Well, the, and I think the cool thing, about, you know, what Kevin and I do on the podcast is that there is, a pretty decent age gap between myself and Kevin. So we came up through different eras of horror franchises and I mean, now we've grown to like, love them all, but you know, he's talking about, you know, scream and, and slasher movies and stuff like that.

[00:24:15] Jason Diamon: And I'm like, no, dude, you need to be watching John Carpenters the thing.

[00:24:20] Jason Diamon: Um, which is probably my favorite horror movie. I can't think of anything above that. But, you know, just bringing all this stuff to him. And, one thing I kind of joke about, with us doing the podcast is I would give him a movie and I would ask him, like, every time I saw him, after I gave him the movie, I'm like, did you watch it yet?

[00:24:41] Jason Diamon: No. Did you watch it yet? No. Did you watch it yet? No. Um, so we joke that I like doing the podcast because it forces Kevin to watch the movie. So I get a little return feedback a lot faster.

[00:24:55] Kevin Roche: Yeah. You'll, you'll come to find, if you listen to our show that, or if you hang out with us just for a little bit, you'll come to find that I'm pretty hardheaded that, if I am really invested into something else, if you throw something else that I should check out at me.

[00:25:12] Kevin Roche: 90% of the time I'm probably in tunnel vision mode and being like, yeah, I'll get to that. And then I'll say that I'll do it shortly. And then sometimes it takes 10 years as Jason can vouch for, sometimes it takes a couple weeks or something like that. But the podcast does hold both of us accountable to, to watch, you know, whatever movie we picked for the show.

[00:25:35] Kevin Roche: And, diving into our relationship, Jason and I actually covered this movie a couple months back. I can remember he would recommend a lot of horror movies to me, but we weren't, we weren't really watching them together for a while. We were bonding over them, but not in the sense of like, let's have movie nights.

[00:25:53] Kevin Roche: And by the time we got to that, which is, you know, I, I tell Jason all the time, those are some of my, my favorite memories of us was let's, cuz I would go over to his place and it'd be like, let's stay up till all hours of the night and just watch a bunch of movies back to back. And the very first one that I can remember, That we really hit it off with was House of a Thousand Corpses, cuz Jason grew up with that movie.

[00:26:15] Kevin Roche: So he's a big Rob Zombie fan when it comes to the music and his movies. And that was the first movie probably in 2011 or 2012 or something like that, where we watched it late at night and I was just like mesmerized by what was on the screen. And that's when Jason and I started doing the late night conversations after a movie.

[00:26:36] Spaceman: Okay. I have a quick question though. 

[00:26:39] Spaceman: Rob zombie, have either of you guys seen the new Munsters?

[00:26:43] Jason Diamon: Yes. Yes. Absolutely 

[00:26:44] Kevin Roche: loved it.

[00:26:45] Spaceman: Okay. Recommend not recommend. Give me a thumb if you like it.

[00:26:49] Kevin Roche: it's true. I say, I say recommend, I dunno where Jason's gonna go, but I say recommend. Honestly, I think it's true to the spirit of the original while putting a, a modern twist on it. And it is very campy as you would expect from the monsters, but it is so much fun and such a throwback type movie that I loved it.

[00:27:09] Kevin Roche: I absolutely recommend it. Yeah, 

[00:27:11] Jason Diamon: I, I absolutely recommend it to, it, it's definitely, I will say it's not for everybody though. Rob Zombie made the Munsters cuz he's a huge fan of, you know, old black and white, fifties horror and, TV shows. So he's a huge Munsters fan. And when he went to make this, and I mean the movies low budget anyway because he always does the movies themselves.

[00:27:37] Jason Diamon: He shells out his own money for his movies. But, every, I had people complain, like they were like, it looks so fake and the backgrounds looked fake and. You know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, have you ever seen the monsters? That's what it looks like. You're not used to it being in color until the later years.

[00:27:58] Jason Diamon: But that's what it looks like. And, it just kind of had, you know, it's some more modern humor. Humor to it. And some of Rob's zombie's humor, he, he's just a weird guy. But yeah, so a a lot of people hated on it, but I, I loved it. I think it was true to Rob's zombie. I thought it was a great project for him to do, and I think it came out really well.

[00:28:17] Jason Diamon: And my kids watch it all the time. Mm-hmm.

[00:28:20] Halfling: Well, well, there you go. It sounds like we need to, we need to give it a watch. 

[00:28:25] Jason Diamon: Absolutely. 

[00:28:26] Spaceman: all 

[00:28:26] Spaceman: right.

[00:28:26] Spaceman: Now before I interjected, Jason, you were about to add something to what Kevin had said.

[00:28:31] Jason Diamon: Oh,, it was, he was talking about sitting there watching a house with a thousand corpses with me, and I remember, You know, like we're sitting there watching it and I'm, I'm kind of wanting to see his reactions and like every five seconds , he was like turning his head and looking at me and he is like, what is going on here?

[00:28:49] Jason Diamon: Like, what are you making me watch? What is happening? Like, he just kept looking at me, like back and forth and I was like, just wait, man, it gets even better. Um, and, and of course he ended up loving it. So, but I, yeah, I just, I just really, his, his reaction to watching that movie is just like, it's very vivid.

[00:29:11] Jason Diamon: I, I remember it all the time

[00:29:16] Halfling: Well that was probably almost as much fun as watching the movie itself as watching his reaction.

[00:29:22] Jason Diamon: exactly. Was watching him more than I was watching the movie. Cause at this time I'd already seen it 10,000 times, but, 

[00:29:30] Kevin Roche: That is one of the 

[00:29:31] Kevin Roche: joys that you get out of being a horror fan is that there's something kind of demented, but also very fun that you can say to someone, you need to check this movie out.

[00:29:44] Kevin Roche: And then you do a watch, a watch party or something, and you end up watching them and their reactions to the scares more so than actually watching the movie. And I've done that with family members and friends. Even with Jason, there's been a few times where there's actually one movie that we're going to cover sometime soon, but I've already seen it and I have told Jason, don't watch it until we're together so that I can see your, your reaction to it.

[00:30:13] Kevin Roche: So there's, you know, there's some jollies that you get in the horror genre getting to, to scare people secondhand with a movie that you love.

[00:30:21] Halfling: You're talking about ambushing people. 

[00:30:24] Halfling: That sounds like ambushing. Well, okay. So part of our podcast is getting our listeners to understand, creators journeys into becoming creators, not just fans. So with that in mind, what's the process for actually putting your podcast together? How does it come together?

[00:30:49] Kevin Roche: So, I mean, you wanna start with that, jason? 

[00:30:52] Jason Diamon: Yeah, yeah. I mean, to be very honest as far as like doing an episode, we go into the episode knowing nine, nine times outta 10. Unless we have a guess, we've picked a certain movie that we wanna discuss for the week. So that makes kind of that part easy.

[00:31:10] Jason Diamon: You got that outta the way. We know what we're gonna talk about. And then, Kevin's a little better at it than I am, but, even if it's a movie that I've seen like a hundred times, I'll go back and I'll, I'll rewatch it before we do the show. , and take notes. Just like bullet points, like things that I wanna point out, that maybe some people don't pick up on, or just something that looked visually really cool or just, you know anything that stands out about the movie.

[00:31:36] Jason Diamon: I, I tried to take notes to reference it, but outside of that, as far as, you know, us doing a show, like it's, it's non-scripted, you know, we got our little bullet points. We've seen the movie, we've usually talked about it beforehand. And we'll bring up the movie that we're gonna do and end up talking about it for three hours, just cause and then we'll watch it and then we'll do the show.

[00:32:03] Jason Diamon: Um, but it's different. And you're always trying to be entertaining. You know, it's, I had to get over it first. Like, when you listen to some of the early episodes, it was like, I couldn't even talk like, I was just like, it is almost like getting a spotlight, like blared in your face.

[00:32:20] Jason Diamon: But once I kind of got over that part, like we started feeling more, and, and I don't know if Kevin felt that way, but I did. And once we got past that part, you realize , it's really fun that you are creating something. You are making something, you're putting it out there. And when, when we started doing this, we honestly, we were like, okay, we're gonna do it because we're gonna have these conversations anyway.

[00:32:50] Jason Diamon: And we're like, I mean, we don't care if, five people listen to it like it cool, like we weren't really expecting anything out of it. But then, know, as the weeks go on, you just watching your followers on Instagram and the emails that you got coming in and it just, I, I don't know, it just grows.

[00:33:10] Jason Diamon: And, it's really cool having the podcast community in general. I mean, being on you guys' show, we've had so many people on our show that just listen to an episode and they're like, dude, you guys are great. We love your stuff. You know, I wanna be on the show or Come on, come on our show. So, you know, meeting with the other creators and supporting each other, like having it, it's a club man, and it's a huge club.

[00:33:36] Jason Diamon: You don't realize how many people are in there. But it's fun being part of like a creative crowd. Once you kind of get over the fear a little bit.

[00:33:44] Halfling: Kevin, do you have anything to add to what, Jason said?

[00:33:48] Kevin Roche: Yeah, I, think that, so I'm right there with Jason that in the early, cuz we've been com we're coming up on our one year anniversary as we're recording this. July 3rd, 2022 was the launch of our first episode. I didn't know at the time that that would be the launch of our first episode. We spent probably, so it was at the end of May that I came up with the idea for the show and cuz it was Memorial Day weekend.

[00:34:15] Kevin Roche: So then I called Jason probably while I was still at the con, but I was just, you know, done with the convention stuff for the day. And we started the planning then, and then we took pretty much all of June to get it together in terms of what we wanted to do, what the format would be, how often we wanted to put out episodes, how we would record them, and.

[00:34:37] Kevin Roche: To be quite honest, we did not know what we were doing when we started. Neither, neither one of us. I had a very short-lived podcast for about six episodes, probably four years before we started this one. And that was again, just kind of a fun little experiment. So we didn't know what we were doing when we started and we didn't know what we were getting into.

[00:34:57] Kevin Roche: We were like, this just sounds fun, let's just do this. We love po, we love listening to podcasts. Let's just give it a go. And we took about a month to prep and, uh, it was actually my mom that made us our logo. And our buddy Josh Mitchum, who's a local musician, made us the theme song that we use, uh, for the intro and outro.

[00:35:18] Kevin Roche: And from there we had just a long list of movies that we wanted to tackle. And I think July 1st last year, uh, it was the start of the 4th of July weekend. It was a Friday night, and we were like, all right, we're going to sit down and record. We recorded three, like, three episodes in one night, and we're up until all hours of the night.

[00:35:41] Kevin Roche: And then I was so jazzed, Jason's like, all right, it's like midnight. I'm gonna go to sleep. And, but it was so much fun recording that I got so excited to get it going that I st I stayed up, I t I think until three 30 in the morning editing the episodes that we had already. And then I put them out there through , the distribution sites.

[00:36:03] Kevin Roche: And then come Sunday, July 3rd, our episode dropped on Spotify. And I was like, oh, our podcast is out there now. And you know, again, starting off, we were very awkward. I mean, I make the joke all the time. The very first thing you hear, if you go all the way back to episode one, the very first thing you hear on our show is a voice crack from me with the first thing that I say.

[00:36:26] Kevin Roche: And we just left it in there because we. We have points that we wanna hit. But like Jason said, we don't script anything. Our whole idea behind the show is real conversations. And we gotta, we got a review very early on, like a five star review on Apple Podcasts where it said, just buds talking horror, all kinds of horror.

[00:36:48] Kevin Roche: And I was like, Jason, that's what we're doing. You know, it's, it's actually just real conversations about something that we love and people, we've had people say like, we feel like we're actually in the room with you all when, when we're listening to you. And we're like, all right, we're just gonna keep doing that.

[00:37:06] Kevin Roche: And we got more comfortable. And you know, it started with let's get guests that we know, like friends and family,

[00:37:12] Halfling: Mm-hmm.

[00:37:13] Kevin Roche: and we would just talk about a movie. It's pretty straightforward process. We would pick a weekly horror topic or weekly horror movie. And just dive on in and, you know, try to hit certain points from an analytical stance, but also just talking about why we love it.

[00:37:29] Kevin Roche: And then from there, it just became, we connected with podcasts from all over the us. We're connected with a podcast from Australia and a podcast from Ireland, and they're all buddies of ours now. And you know, from there it's just become this big community. And as we've gotten further into our podcasting career, we just, we get more comfortable behind the microphones and we still keep the recording process pretty simple.

[00:37:57] Kevin Roche: It's usually over Zoom or over the phone. And, you know, I'll use like a Zoom H5 recorder to record our audio. And, but it, it works. And, you know, I tell people all the time, it, it doesn't take much to do a podcast. You know, one of the, one of my favorite memories at, at Atomacon, where I met you, Roger and Janet was doing the Ask A Podcaster panel. We had people in the room that were like asking us questions about what it takes to start a podcast. And I told, we told everybody, it doesn't take as much as you think it does to make it happen. So if you want to do it, absolutely go for it. 

[00:38:33] Jason Diamon: Yep.

[00:38:34] Halfling: Yeah.

[00:38:36] Jason Diamon: The other thing to you, like kind of from the creativity side, you know, when we say we got kind of more comfortable, you almost turn into like a character almost.

[00:38:46] Jason Diamon: Like we're, we're still definitely being ourselves, but I definitely ramp it up by like five notches, you know, when we're recording, just because I do goofy stuff and a lot of times, you know, people on Insta, they'll just be like, man, diamond, what is wrong with you? But it was hilarious, like, and luckily, Kevin's got an easy job pretty much with the editing because, we found that with us, like even our, we even learned to like embrace, like messing up, like we'd screwed something up and then, you know, we'd put the episode out anyway.

[00:39:21] Jason Diamon: I would always just be like, I'm king of, leave it in, leave it in. Just leave it in. Um, and you know, people, people will come back to us and just be like, just be like, dude, that was hilarious. Like whatever, whatever it was that we did. So, you know, we don't like to mess with it much. We, we like

[00:39:38] Jason Diamon: to leave it alone and, and then let it be what it is.

[00:39:41] Jason Diamon: And uh, if that means that I get embarrassed and somebody laughs at it, that's.

[00:39:49] Halfling: Yeah. We have a very similar approach. We don't do a whole lot of editing. Well, I say we, but really, spaceman over there is the one that does the editing. But for the most part, we, we don't edit content. And sometimes the flubs are in there. Sometimes the jokes that might be a little inappropriate are in there.

[00:40:09] Halfling: I mean, you know, so

[00:40:11] Spaceman: Mildly inappropriate, 

[00:40:12] Spaceman: mildly 

[00:40:13] Halfling: inappropriate.

[00:40:14] Halfling: Mildly inappropriate, but we just gotta keep it, we just gotta keep it real. Keep it going. Yeah. But what sort of challenges have y'all faced in getting the podcast going and, were you able to overcome them or how were you able to overcome them?

[00:40:29] Kevin Roche: Well, I think Jason hit the nail on the head with a big one there. Just getting even. The thing with podcasting is yes you are. For our scenario, we are in a room by ourselves just recording over the phone and having a conversation with each other, but there's something. New about it where you understand that there is gonna be some sort of spotlight on you when this episode goes out into the world.

[00:40:57] Kevin Roche: So you wanna, you wanna make it more in depth, you wanna do your research and you wanna come off natural, but also hit certain points. But you wanna find that balance to the point that it's not reading from page after page. You know, you want to have the nice balance of fun and real, but also, serious and analytical at the same time.

[00:41:20] Kevin Roche: And, you know, we had to we had to find that balance and we had to find the comfort level to be able to, you know, not get nervous when we start recording. Cuz again, if you listen to our early episodes, we are, you can probably tell that we're nervous, doing it, but we're just, we're gonna do it.

[00:41:35] Kevin Roche: And, you know, here we are 50 episodes later with, it's like second nature at this point. So that was one big thing. And then from my side, just, you know, as, as one of the co-hosts, there have been scenarios where Jason has had to step away from the podcast for, you know, a month or so and had to, you know, tackle some life stuff and, you know, be a dad and, and tackle work and things like that.

[00:42:05] Kevin Roche: And in that, in his absence, I've had to learn the specifically, last September, he was away from the show for about six weeks and I was pretty terrified cuz I didn't know exactly what to do. And it was just down to me now and I'm like, there's two options. I can either take a break and wait till Jason comes back or try to do this with rotating co-hosts.

[00:42:31] Kevin Roche: And I chose the second of those options and I think. During that time I was, you know, again, pretty scared to not have my normal co-host dynamic anymore. But it also was a learning experience because the first guest that actually stepped up to be my replacement co-host for a few episodes was actually my mom.

[00:42:54] Halfling: Oh really?

[00:42:55] Kevin Roche: Uh, yeah. She, and she'll tell you, she's a, she calls herself the reluctant horror fan where she does not like to be scared, but she's actually found through the show and just from me talking about horror, that there are things in the horror genre that she actually likes. There's a show called Haunting, a Bly manner that we did for her first guest appearance on the show.

[00:43:19] Kevin Roche: And she's like, this is like a fun in-depth period piece romance horror show. And she liked it a lot. And that was kind of, Her gateway into that. And then she's like, oh wait, I remember seeing Cujo like in the theaters. Yeah, I'll talk about that. I'll talk about the new Munsters. I loved the Munsters growing up.

[00:43:38] Kevin Roche: I wanna see the new one. And so she was the first one to step up and be a rotating co-host for me while Jason was away. And then my brother came on, and then we got hit up by a few actors from LA who were making a scream fan film. And I brought in my, one of our good buddies, Mr. Jay, who's a rotating, uh, you know, frequent guest on our show as well.

[00:44:02] Kevin Roche: And he was my cohost for that. And then we interviewed the actors about the film that they were making. So for about six weeks I was, you know, learning to be on the fly and learning to have those rotating dynamics. And I think that was a pretty quintessential part of the show at that point for me, because I had to learn, it learned, it taught me to, keep me on my feet or to stay on my feet and to.

[00:44:26] Kevin Roche: You understand that not every show is gonna be the exact same, and you're gonna talk to people that you might not know all that well if you want to do interviews. But you do your research and you know, you put in the work and it comes out great. And I still think that that scream, the fan favorite episode is one of my favorite episodes I've ever done.

[00:44:43] Spaceman: I was gonna say we've met your mom, and your mom is pretty 

[00:44:45] Spaceman: cool.

[00:44:47] Kevin Roche: She is, I get, I brag all the time. She is, she is a very, very cool, cool mom, very supportive of, of all the, all the crazy things that I do. And she listens to our show on a regular basis. And it's very funny that very funnily funny and humbling for Jason and I that people can quote our episodes back to us like we quote movies and now people are quoting things that we said to each other as a joke on our show.

[00:45:15] Halfling: Well, the first episode that we listened to was the episode about M3gan. The movie M3gan, that you guys did. And we, we actually really enjoyed the movie. But we, we also very much enjoyed hearing you guys talk about that movie. 

[00:45:32] Kevin Roche: Thank you so much. 

[00:45:33] Halfling: so uh, so that, that was pretty cool. 

[00:45:35] Halfling: So actually let's just move on a little bit, because I did actually did have a random question, about this scariest movie that you have seen and, you know, reviewed.

[00:45:49] Halfling: And is there one that you will never watch again because it was too scary?

[00:45:54] Kevin Roche: So in terms of the movies that we've reviewed so far, I would say the scariest one that I can think of, which is actually still one of my favorites. It's probably in my top 10 favorite horror movies of all time. But it still gives me that, that creepy feeling and still scares me. And I actually, when we were doing the episode, I actually said to Jason, cuz we were recording that at about 11 o'clock at night, I actually kind of spooked myself while talking about the movie and talking about the scares.

[00:46:26] Kevin Roche: And I would say that the movie that still is the scariest that we've talked about on the show would be the first Conjuring movie. So, which is about a haunted house in the seventies in a farmhouse where there's some malevolent spirits there. And it's the story of, Ed and Lorraine Warren coming in to investigate.

[00:46:47] Kevin Roche: It's a very, very creepy movie. And, you know, there's been a whole, whole franchise that, has been spawned from that. But something about that first one, it's got a very Amityville horror feel to it. And I consider the original Amityville Horror to be one of the scariest movies of all time. So that, first conjuring, I think would be the one that I would consider the scariest movie we've talked about in terms of, is there a movie that, that I wouldn't watch again, it's difficult to say because my, and I think Jason and I are on the same page with this, my thing with horror is that, I don't like there's a lot of different subgenres out there and sometimes when people watch horror, they want the most disturbing, vile, gruesome thing that they can find.

[00:47:42] Kevin Roche: And I'm not really like that. I don't really, I like to have fun with the horror movies I'm watching, so if there's something out there, they're like people, the people will say, this movie's so gross and so gruesome. I probably won't watch it to begin with cuz I would still like to be entertained more so than just disturbed.

[00:48:01] Kevin Roche: So I don't know if at this point there's a movie that I would actively not watch again. Cuz all the horror movies that I like, I find entertainment value in and they tell good stories. They're fun, they've got good characters. But if someone is saying, watch this grizzly realistic gross horror movie, I'll probably just stay away from that just to. You know, you want, you wanna be entertained, you don't wanna just be disturbed for an hour and a half.

[00:48:33] Spaceman: What? What about you, Jason? Anything too scary to watch again?

[00:48:36] Kevin Roche: Um,

[00:48:36] Halfling: I.

[00:48:37] Kevin Roche: too scary to 

[00:48:38] Jason Diamon: watch again, will watch by myself, not watch The Exorcist by myself. That one's just a little. I do, there's a newer, a newer one that is hard to watch is hereditary. I don't know if you guys have seen that one. It's a fantastic movie, but more than then there's definitely some gory bits to it and some jump scares and stuff like that.

[00:49:08] Jason Diamon: But more of the thing that makes it is just watching the family. More specifically the mother just watching porn wailing. And it's just, it feels so crazy. And, I love, aria, but, um, that's one that's definitely hard for me to watch. 

[00:49:29] Halfling: Good.

[00:49:30] Jason Diamon: with, like Kevin said, like it depends on the mood that I'm in. Of , what I wanna watch. Sometimes I'm in the mood for, you know, something kind of funny. So I watch Evil Dead or Tucker and Dale. Sometimes, you know, I am in the mood for someone to kind of knock me around. You know, just with the power of the movie and, just feeling of helplessness.

[00:49:53] Jason Diamon: Like it's, it's a dopamine hit, you know, either way you go. But I can't, I can't think of at this point other than The Exorcist. And you know, like I said, hereditary is just hard to watch. I will watch it, but it's hard. I can't think of anything else that, that really scares me that hard anymore. It's pretty hard.

[00:50:10] Jason Diamon: It's pretty hard to get, get the best of me. You know 

[00:50:13] Kevin Roche: what, uh, Jason, as, as you're saying that, I still stand by everything I said, but there is one movie that. I guess people would argue that it isn't a straightforward horror movie. It might be considered more of a thriller, but it's definitely lumped in with the horror genre.

[00:50:30] Kevin Roche: A movie that I think is very well made, very iconic, and just a masterpiece of a film that I personally have trouble watching and probably won't revisit because it is deeply disturbing to me, would be Silence of the Lambs.

[00:50:45] Halfling: Oh, yeah, yeah, 

[00:50:47] Kevin Roche: I think that, you know, Anthony Hopkins and Ted Levine and Jodi Foster all fantastic in the movie, but the serial killer characters that are being portrayed on screen are so disturbing with how they're portrayed that it's very realistic, very, very jarring and very overwhelming that I think the movie's great and I love it, but I probably wouldn't revisit again because it's, it's, like I said earlier, it's very ghastly.

[00:51:17] Kevin Roche: It's very grim. And just hard for me to, to sit down and find entertainment value in it on a repeat watch

[00:51:25] Halfling: yeah. Anthony (Hopkins)

[00:51:27] Kevin Roche: Everybody 

[00:51:28] Jason Diamon: Everybody remembers Buffalo Bill?

[00:51:30] Halfling: Yeah. But Anthony Hopkins probably did a little too good of a job, you know, in this portrayal of Hannibal. 

[00:51:40] Jason Diamon: How about you guys? What's cheering for you?

[00:51:42] Spaceman: Oh, what's the, the scariest movie we won't re revisit? 

[00:51:45] Spaceman: Uh, 

[00:51:46] Jason Diamon: Yeah.

[00:51:47] Spaceman: You're gonna think that I'm a silly, a silly person. But, many, many years ago when the Halfling and I were much younger, she was a school teacher and she had to go off for these school teacher certification things ever, every so 

[00:52:00] Spaceman: often.

[00:52:01] Spaceman: And, 

[00:52:02] Spaceman: uh, I was at home by myself and I could not sleep. So I got up in the middle of the night, and watched this movie called The keep

[00:52:09] Spaceman: On television. I was watching it on a 19 inch television 

[00:52:13] Spaceman: and it scared the living. You know what outta me now, I've, I've, I've rewatched it again. It's not that scary. I don't know what it is about that movie, but yes, that, that's the one that scared me the most. I think., I think it, the Tim curry version was probably second on that list though, although, you know, I love Tim Curry.

[00:52:35] Halfling: Yeah. IT, is definitely up there as one. I'm glad that I saw it just because of his performance. I think he did an amazing job, which is, to his credit, you know, that I won't watch it again.

[00:52:48] Halfling: But, I'm trying to think of the name of the movie, but there was a movie that starred Scott Bakula, and this has been many years ago, probably in the early eighties. And it was sort of supernatural base. And there, there was a supernatural force at work, an evil supernatural force at work.

[00:53:13] Halfling: But there is a separate storyline about this serial killer named Butterfield. Butterfield. Butterfield was the scary thing. It wasn't this supernatural evil entity. It was Butterfield, because you could just imagine that somebody is like that out on the street somewhere doing these things that he was doing.

[00:53:46] Halfling: And I wish I could remember the name of the movie now, like I said, it's, it starts Scott Bakula. But I would not watch that movie again, simply for the character of Butterfield, because Butterfield was just horrific and he was human. That was the thing. He was human. So 

[00:54:05] Jason Diamon: He was just a scray guy.

[00:54:08] Halfling: well, I mean it, and again, it was because I could envision that there's somebody like that out there, committing the atrocities that he committed and, you know, the torture and all that.

[00:54:20] Halfling: I won't get into it, but, I've been surprised to say, you know, he, he would be the reason that I would never watch that movie again. But talked about, you know, the scariest, what about your favorite movie, and I think y'all had mentioned a couple of these, but just, to get one out there, what's your favorite

[00:54:39] Jason Diamon: Ah, man, you're not allowed to do that to us. don't, don't, you know, that question is torture for us. I think Kevin does. Well, 

[00:54:50] Kevin Roche: it's a, as I'm thinking about it, so we, I think we've touched on what we would consider our, our 

[00:54:58] Jason Diamon: favorite. Favorite movie? I'm gonna say, uh, John Carpenter's the Thing, from the eighties. That movie is just so much fun from start to finish. I love it because it gets going from the get go.

[00:55:16] Jason Diamon: They waste no time getting moving,, and kind of showing you what this movie is gonna be. And it is a big, sloppy mess. But, it's a very smart movie. It's very well written, and on top of it, just rather than it just being like a creature feature, which it is, there's all these elements, cuz I don't know if you've seen the movie, but they're basically isolated up in the Arctic.

[00:55:43] Jason Diamon: They're just some scientists, that are doing research and, The isolation of them, like not being anywhere near, like trying to get help and being stuck in there. And then they don't know who is, who, like who's the bad guy? Because the creature can make itself look like anyone of them. So it's, it's like even the guy next to you, you don't know if it's him.

[00:56:08] Jason Diamon: So there's just so many elements to the movie, great performance by Kurt Russell and the entire cast. But that's one that anytime that I feel like watching a movie, if somebody goes, Hey, you wanna watch the thing? Absolutely. And if I pass it on TV and it's already halfway through, still gonna watch it. 

[00:56:27] Kevin Roche: Yeah. And then on my side, Tim Curry's, It, we've touched on a few times, but that actually remains my favorite horror movie of all time. I actually have a tattoo on my arm of that movie because it's so integral to my intro to horror because it's the first one that ever truly terrified me.

[00:56:47] Kevin Roche: And then getting past that scare now it's one that I can watch on any day, and it just has that warm blanket feeling to it. And I actually, I did a Galaxy Con chat with Tim Curry about two years ago, and I got to tell him thank you for his role as Pennywise for what it, what doors it opened up in, in my own life.

[00:57:04] Kevin Roche: And another one that I would say is right behind it is John Carpenter's, 1978 Halloween. I think that that original movie still holds up beautifully to this day, and it's such a simple concept, praise man, terrifying teen girls. But it's that that childlike fear of the boogeyman that John Carpenter portrays on this blank character.

[00:57:35] Kevin Roche: That is still to this day, incredibly scary. And I love the Halloween franchise, but they, I don't think they've ever been able to replicate how scary Michael Myers was in 1978. And I just think that that movie holds up beautifully to this day. And then Jason, and you can, Jason, you can help me out with this.

[00:57:58] Kevin Roche: I was trying to think what's, what's our favorite that we've reviewed on the show so far? 

[00:58:05] Jason Diamon: Favorite that we've reviewed on the show so 

[00:58:07] Kevin Roche: far. Yeah. We talked about the scariest that we reviewed, which was the conjuring for me. What, what's our, what would you say our favorite like episode that we've done on a horror movie is? 

[00:58:17] Jason Diamon: I think our favorite one, for me, just because again, this was one that we got to go.

[00:58:23] Jason Diamon: And see together and have a good time with, was, Evil Dead. The New evil 

[00:58:27] Kevin Roche: Dead Rise. That was a good one. I, I would say that one and probably what I would consider one of our, better episodes would be it follows. I think that, again, super simple movie that is incredibly scary. But Jason and I really got to do a deep dive look into that film and uh, I think that's one of our, both, one of our top favorites for both of us.

[00:58:53] Spaceman: You know, the, the movie, 

[00:58:55] Spaceman: sorry, I just to look this up on, uh, I M D B. The movie that Janet was talking about, sorry, that the Halfling was talking about was Lord of Illusions. 

[00:59:04] Spaceman: It's nine, uh, a 1995 movie directed by clive barker. 

[00:59:09] Spaceman: So that explains why it was a little on the scary side.

[00:59:13] Halfling: Yeah, yeah. okay. All 

[00:59:16] Jason Diamon: Yeah, Lord of illusion doesn't get enough love. And the other one, especially cuz I'm a big fan of, sci-fi horror and we don't get enough of it. I like Event Horizon a lot and nobody really talks about that movie and Event Horizon is just absolutely fantastic.

[00:59:34] Halfling: oh yeah, it was, it was a great movie, but yeah, it was, it, it, it was up there with the, with one of the scariest because you, you had that sense of claustrophobia on the ship and you had, you know, this sense of, everyone started feeling this dread and, you know, you just knew. Something bad was gonna be happening and, but you didn't know what, 

[00:59:58] Spaceman: And the ship's design was practical but also gothic.

[01:00:01] Halfling: Yeah. But anyway. Okay. We need to get back on track.

[01:00:05] Halfling: What advice would you have to anybody maybe thinking about starting their own podcast?

[01:00:12] Kevin Roche: I would say first and foremost, don't overthink it. In terms of kind of what we touched on on that at Atomacon panel in the sense of it doesn't take as much, technical background. Or, public speaking experience that you might think to be able to do a quality podcast. And like, we've said, we've sort of had to learn on the fly to get more comfortable behind the microphone, but you learn that by doing it.

[01:00:42] Kevin Roche: And I, I would say just, just dive on in, you know, you can find a very simple recording set up and you can make a podcast happen in a matter of days. And then, so I would say don't overthink it. And then also just, you know, keep it, if you're overwhelmed by trying to have that public speaking element, you know, treat it like a real conversation.

[01:01:05] Kevin Roche: And cuz that's why I think a lot of us love podcasts is that it's just real conversations with people and, you know, just go off of what you know and just, you know, keep, keep it honest with your audience and keep it honest with your guests and your co-hosts and just have a good time with it.

[01:01:24] Jason Diamon: Just get out there and do it. Like, and, and you know, in, it's just because we try it and we still do stuff all the time, to improve the show. But you, you don't learn anything unless, unless you have a fail. I mean, we've, got a couple of episodes. I always listen back to 'em to see where I can improve, you know, as a host and, you know, listening back to some of them, I, I've got some of them where I'm just like, man, That was not the greatest thing on the planet, but I learned something from it. So you just gotta do it. You don't learn it unless you do it.

[01:02:03] Halfling: that's that's absolutely right. 

[01:02:05] Spaceman: Absolutely right. 

[01:02:06] Halfling: So Kevin, tell us where, people can find your podcast and listen to you.

[01:02:12] Jason Diamon: Yeah. 

[01:02:12] Kevin Roche: So we're on Facebook and Instagram for our socials. It's just Midnight Terrors podcast, and I'm always active on the Instagram, so feel free to send us a message or movie pick. You can also reach us at our email account, midnightterrorspodcast@gmail.com and send us show suggestions or topics or movies or anything like that.

[01:02:35] Kevin Roche: And in terms of listening, we're pretty much available anywhere that you can find podcast. We're on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. There's, uh, I always say there's, there's even a bunch of podcasting platforms that I'm not actually familiar with that, that were listed on because of the distribution that we use.

[01:02:51] Kevin Roche: So basically anywhere that you wanna listen to us, you can, and we're starting to, we have a a, a Vimeo channel where I actually uploaded our first video podcast, about three weeks ago. So we're on there and we're, I think we're gonna expand into YouTube sometime soon, but we're available pretty much anywhere that you get your podcast and we're always talking with people.

[01:03:14] Kevin Roche: So, you can absolutely reach us anytime.

[01:03:17] Halfling: Great. Well, we will put all that in the show notes.

[01:03:20] Kevin Roche: And I will put on the 

[01:03:21] Jason Diamon: disclaimer that we are not safe for work

[01:03:24] Spaceman: not 

[01:03:24] Halfling: safe 

[01:03:25] Spaceman: work.

[01:03:25] Spaceman: Absolutely. Okay. You guys are

[01:03:27] Spaceman: hilariously funny, but not safe for work.

[01:03:31] Jason Diamon: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I get a little crazy sometimes.

[01:03:35] Halfling: Well, spaceman, why don't you to use the phrase that Kevin uses, take us home.

[01:03:41] Spaceman: We appreciate you both taking time to talk with us today. We've had a great 

[01:03:45] Spaceman: time getting to know you and to hear all about your journey in active fandom. 

[01:03:49] Spaceman: And thank you to all our listeners for tuning in, and we hope that you've enjoyed and perhaps become inspired by today's guest, Kevin and Jason of the Midnight Terrors podcast.

[01:04:02] Spaceman: Thank you guys so much for joining us.

[01:04:06] Jason Diamon: Yeah. Thank you for having us.

[01:04:07] Kevin Roche: Thank you so much.

[01:04:09] Spaceman: All right, and this is the Spaceman over and out.

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