It's Only a Podcast - A Horror Movie Review Show · Christian Estabrook and Ian Nichols

Episode 207 - Lisa Frankenstein / May (2002)

·1 hr 31 min·5 clips

Christian Estabrook and Elle Willers start with a ridiculous question about what object you would sing into when you are alone. The answer is not subtle, and the conversation quickly veers into hatchets, face-mic fantasies, and a general commitment to being as silly as possible before the movie talk even begins. That opening sets the tone for an episode that likes to wander a little before it lands. Once they get to *Lisa Frankenstein*, the discussion settles into a review that fits the movie's own chaos. The banter stays fast, profane, and playful, but the criticism is clear enough underneath it. They keep returning to the film's dark comedy and gross-out energy, and to the question of whether the suicide joke is too whimsical for the subject. Their answer is that the movie earns it because the whole thing is so knowingly absurd. They call it a goofy girl movie, and that is meant as praise. The conversation connects it to *Jennifer's Body* and to a strain of horror that treats desire, vengeance, and bodily mayhem as part of the joke instead of a break from it. The episode also hits the movie's more outrageous details without treating them like decoration. Dick severing, rage, fanfic energy, and vibrators all come up, because that is the language the film is using. The hosts are into the fact that the movie keeps pushing the bit until it circles back around and becomes funny again. They spend time on the ending idea of becoming a dead couple together, which they treat as both deranged and oddly romantic. From there, the episode becomes a defense of movies that are so strange they will not behave like normal studio product, even if that strangeness makes them harder to sell. They are honest about the limits of that appeal, too. The weirdness is the point, but it is also the obstacle. Even so, the episode never turns smug. It stays warm toward the movie while still poking at where a listener might bounce off the jokes. The pace stays loose enough to feel like an actual hangout, not a formal review, which is part of the appeal. Christian and Elle can sit with a dumb image for a while, then snap back into a sharper read on tone. By the end, after the usual plugs and sendoffs, the message is plain: this is a movie worth seeing, and a conversation worth following.

As heard by us

A messy, funny horror hang that gives two oddball movies a sharp, sincere defense.

Christian Estabrook and Elle Willers start with loose, absurd banter, then settle into a sharper take on Lisa Frankenstein and May (2002). The episode works because it keeps finding the joke and the point at the same time, landing on a blunt case for absurdity, rage, vengeance,…

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Why you'd press play

For a spoiler-heavy horror chat that finds why the movie's dark jokes work.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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