Bargain-rack horror, taken seriously.
Half Price Horror treats scary movies as messy cultural artifacts, moving from credits and backstory into detailed plot criticism. The show favors bargain-rack oddities, franchise misfires, cult titles, and recent body-horror films, with John connecting craft choices to industry pressures and genre history.
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Half Price Horror is a horror film criticism show with spoilers, patience, and a fondness for the movies that end up on the less polished side of the shelf. John does not just summarize what happens. He starts with how a film came to exist, then follows that history into the choices visible onscreen. A franchise sequel becomes a story about studio calculation, old comics, title confusion, or a producer's long-held idea. A low-budget alien-abduction movie becomes an occasion to talk about regional texture, winter shoots, shoestring production, and why small details can make disposable material feel lived in. The show is often funny. It is also exacting. John notices when The Mummy borrows Egyptian mythology carelessly, when AVP repeats a story beat too quickly, and when AVPR keeps interrupting its alien outbreak with human drama that cannot compete for attention. He gives movies room to be trashy, but not room to be incoherent. That balance matters. The show has affection for cult cinema, exploitation energy, franchise monster fights, gross practical excess, and the stubborn ambitions of horror filmmakers working with limited resources. It also takes wider context seriously, including production histories, industry trends, public controversies, and the cultural expectations placed on women in film. Recent episodes cover Predators, The Mummy, AVPR, Almost Human, AVP, Class of Nuke 'Em High, Alien: Resurrection, and The Substance. The range is broad, but the method is consistent. John moves through a film scene by scene, then keeps stepping back to ask why this choice, why this structure, why this reference, and why this failed or worked. The pacing is conversational, with room for stray observations about cooking shows, physical media, and the strange afterlives of genre franchises. The jokes land because the analysis is grounded. Half Price Horror suits listeners who want horror treated as craft, commerce, memory, and pulp pleasure all at once. It makes the bargain-rack premise feel less like a gimmick and more like a way of finding what culture leaves behind.
Made for: For horror fans who enjoy spoiler-rich film criticism, franchise history, production context, and close attention to genre logic. It especially suits listeners who like cult oddities and big studio misfires examined with equal care.
What sets it apart: Half Price Horror pairs scene-by-scene recap with production archaeology, so the criticism tracks both what happens in the movie and how the movie got that way. Its strength is treating cheap, strange, or compromised horror as worthy of detailed thought.
A deep dive into the half-price horror rack of the local used bookstore, coming away with classics, cult treasures, and the strangest stories the genre has to offer.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
John combines production history, narrative criticism, and dry humor to show how horror films are built and where their stories strain.
Half Price Horror treats a scary movie as both a finished story and the result of choices made long before filming. John moves from production history into close plot narration, testing characterization, continuity, mythology, and structure while keeping his own judgment plainly…
A franchise sequel becomes a crime scene, with John tracking the studio fingerprints.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A spoiler-heavy, franchise-aware discussion that gives Predators extra context while keeping the show's conversational drift intact.
Half Price Horror treats Predators as more than a spoiler-heavy recap, using the film to move into franchise history, Robert Rodriguez's early rise, and a clearer sense of what the movie is aiming for.
A spoiler-heavy autopsy of The Mummy's franchise ambitions and shaky Egyptian mythology.
Half-Price Horror treats The Mummy (2017) as more than a failed monster movie, using it as a snapshot of franchise logic at full tilt. John connects its setup to the post-Guardians of the Galaxy appetite for shared universes, then moves into a spoiler-heavy read of Amunet's…
A detail-first takedown of a franchise sequel that keeps undercutting its own human drama.
The review is strongest when it centers AVPR Aliens vs. Predator Requiem as a title stripped of punctuation and shaped by studio caution. It stays with John's focus on the subtitle choice, the heavier hand from the studio, and the top-down feeling around the setup, then carries…
John's deep dive finds the cold, shoestring, fiercely physical machinery behind Joe Begos's first feature.
Half Price Horror treats Almost Human as small-town horror shaped by rough, practical independent filmmaking. John follows Joe Begos's debut from its September 10, 2013 festival premiere at the Toronto Film Festival into the film's bursts of violence, while the DVD commentary…
A spoiler-heavy dive into The Substance as body horror and industry panic.
Half-Price Horror treats The Substance as a story about female panic, aging, and the cruel arithmetic of being seen, with Coralie Farge's turning 40 used as a sharp hinge.
A cramped sequel and its tangled making get a careful, spoilery read.
Half Price Horror treats Alien 3 as a study in how a sequel can be shaped as much by its troubled making as by Fury 161 itself. Jon keeps the emphasis on the long road from concept to screen, moving neatly through the writing credits, the superscripted Alien Cubed joke, and the…
A sequel breakdown that ties Sarah's return underground to the script, the credits, and the film's uneasy inheritance.
The episode follows Sarah back underground and treats Half Price Horror's look at The Descent, Part 2 as both a sequel breakdown and a character study.
A deep dive into the 1987 film Predator, exploring its origins and connections to 'The Most Dangerous Game'.
A spoiler-heavy deep dive into the 2024 horror prequel The First Omen, discussing its development history and production delays.
["Half Price Horror's John treats Predators (2010) as the payoff to Robert Rodriguez's 1994 Predator sequel pitch and his $7,000 El Mariachi origin story.
Host John of Half-Price Horror delivers a spoiler-heavy critique of The Mummy (2017), tracing how Universal's attempt to build a Dark Universe franchise after Guardians of the Galaxy's success led to a rushed, tonally confused production.
A spoiler-heavy deep dive into the 2007 film AVPR: Aliens vs.
Half-Price Horror host John reviews Almost Human (2013), the shoestring-budget debut feature from writer-director Joe Begos, made in Rhode Island with a mostly non-union crew and financed partly on Begos' own credit cards.
Host Jon reviews the 2004 film AVP: Alien vs.
A deep dive into the 1986 Troma film Class of Nuke 'Em High, discussing its improvisational filmmaking style and cult status.
A spoiler-heavy deep dive into the 1997 film Alien Resurrection, with a critical discussion of Joss Whedon's legacy and personal controversies.
Half Price Horror's The Substance episode centers on Coralie Farge's 2024 film about Elizabeth Sparkle, Sue, and a seven-day body swap built around an anti-aging serum.
Half-Price Horror's Alien 3 (1992) episode argues that the movie was built through rewrites, deadlines, and director turnover rather than a stable plan.
Half-Price Horror covers The Descent Part 2, the 2009 sequel that played in Europe in December 2009 before a U.S.
A spoiler-heavy deep dive into the 1980 horror film Without Warning, discussing its creators and low-budget production.