Author Topic: Pseudopod 530: The Madness of Bill Dobbs: A Tale of Snuff Movies and Cannibal...  (Read 5322 times)

Bdoomed

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Pseudopod 530: The Madness of Bill Dobbs: A Tale of Snuff Movies and Cannibal Cults

by Sean Pearce.

“The Madness of Bill Dobbs: A Tale of Snuff Movies and Cannibal Cults” is a Pseudopod original and the author’s first sale.

SEAN PEARCE is a graduate student, studying philosophy. This is his first published story, and he still doesn’t quite believe he’s managed it. He is a contributor to the art collective, Project Praeterlimina. You can find their blog at the link and their Facebook page here.

This week’s reader – Kyle Akers – is a voice actor from Kansas City, Missouri. He has contributed to podcasts like Pseudopod, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, and NoSleepPodcast. He also produces and performs in his own improv podcast called “The Counselor.” Prior to voice acting, Kyle toured the country as a professional musician, singing and playing bass guitar for the electro-pop band Antennas Up, which enjoyed success through several national television show placements and commercials. Since then, Kyle has dabbled in long-form improv and audio production while performing weekend gigs with Kansas City cover band The Magnetics.



Pseudopod wants to direct your attention to a project by one of our Authors, Greg Stolze. This is a good time to go back and relisten to episode 317, Enzymes.

YOU is a novel, set in the universe of the democratic horror game Unknown Armies, which pits readers against a book that hates them while situating them in the person of a middle-aged businessman named Leo Evans.

Leo is divorced, a fan of racquet sports, and a cultist of the Necessary Servant—a quasi-religion he freely admits seems silly, except for the way it grants him extra senses and paranormal abilities. The chief cultist, however, is his ex-wife, and the two of them clash over a key question of what it means to truly “serve” with integrity.

In the process of hashing all this out, Leo must survive a couple attempts on his life, come to grips with an enchantment that makes him hate the person he previously loved most, and deal with lingering issues between himself and his son.

This novel is Kickstarting in February, check the trailer at www.gregstolze.com/you



Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.



“Eaters is regarded by some as a flawed masterpiece and an underground classic. To others, it is vile, racist, ethically bankrupt, and derivative.

It makes for peculiar viewing. The plot follows the formula of the Italian cannibal movies for which director Bill Dobbs had an unashamed fondness. An anthropological expedition into the Amazon jungle encounters and brutalises a tribe of ‘savages’ in the name of science, and find themselves pursued, captured, and finally gruesomely eaten alive.

(The film was originally going to be released as Dark-skinned Cannibals of the Tropics, though thankfully someone more enlightened than Dobbs suggested the title we now have. It almost goes without saying that Dobbs has been unanimously described as a completely unrepentant racist.)”



Listen to this week's Pseudopod.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2017, 02:50:44 PM by Bdoomed »

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


HugoFitch

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Good episode, not as good, but perhaps inspired by Soren Narnia's Knifepoint Horror episode, "Undead" (Jan, 2012).



DerangedMind

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I enjoyed the story, and loved the narration.

Unfortunately though, it didn't do much for me in terms of horror.  With the academic style of the story, it just seemed too detached and impersonal for me.



Unblinking

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Hm.  

Well, the story was very effective in terms of convincing me it was the metanarrative that it was pretending to be.  It was written very convincingly as a sort of dry explanation of a mediocre horror film that was a ripoff of what was probably a much more effective horror film that almost no one has seen and maybe doesn't actually exist and which was only remembered at all because the filmmaker was also an effective conman.  

The movie did sound generally unremarkable and racist and like he was just using his conman skills to play it up.  The story said that the fact he was in an asylum suggests that it wasn't just him manipulating things, but I don't think that it is a stretch to imagine he set some things in motion before he was committed--set off the rumor mill while he was still out, or paid someone to start something later.

I don't mean any of that as a jibe against the author--I honestly think that it was exactly what it was trying to be--and really the most difficult thing in writing is to effectively convey your idea.  It's just that I didn't find that thing it was trying to be very exciting.

« Last Edit: February 24, 2017, 02:44:58 AM by Unblinking »



cwthree

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Reply #4 on: March 01, 2017, 07:08:29 PM
Creepy and unsettling, made more so by my mind's desperate efforts to fill in the gaps left by the missing "original" film. Great writing and narration. Thanks for this one!



hollyberry29

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I really, really liked this one!! The clinical approach to it was brilliant, I love when stories leave some things to the imagination. Sometimes details and descriptions ruin the imagery in my head. I almost wanted The Gods Eat Men to be real, just so I could see the film that drove Dobbs nuts. Almost :D



Metalsludge

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I have a soft spot for mysterious films or texts that drive people mad kinds of themes, so I had to enjoy this one a bit. That said, it does occur to me that it's easier to write generally about the mysterious film and leave it open ended, than it is to actually tell a more complete story with solid conclusions.

Chambers got around this with the King in Yellow stories by making the mysterious media just part of the narrative instead of its only focus. Hometown Horrible, presented here on Pseudopod, gets around the problem by, likewise, revealing the existence of the killer media during the story and using it as a means to draw things to a conclusion. In Final Girl Theory, published elsewhere but also presented on Pseudopod, the evil media is used to examine aspects of exploitation films and film fandom rather than just the mystery behind the media.  These are all ways to avoid the Mystery Leading to Nowhere dead end that these kinds of stories can be in danger of falling into.



Sgarre1

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Another one coming in the Spring season as well!



davidthygod

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That was fantastic.  Maybe its because I am a history buff that loves the history of the unknown, dark, and hidden, but this worked in an epic way for me.  Others will find this slow and without payoff, but that is the point.  This made me want to do research.  Great job, great story, great tone.  Good job all the way around. 

The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.


Moritz

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a bit late, but I recently listened to this story and enjoyed it a lot.

When I was a child, I never watched horror movies but saw those creepy 1980s posters in the windows of video rental shops (back then, in Germany you had to be at least 18 to even enter any video store). Horror movies were a big forbidden mystery to me, but I was also too afraid to try to watch them. At around 16, I was not only old enough to see most of them but more and more TV channels would have (censored) horror movies. Until the early 2000s, many horror films were still heavily censored here. I often heard about snuff movies and stuff like faces of death as a teenager. Even watched an 18-rated documentary about such films at school once (I must have been 18 at the time). Transgressive films still hold a huge fascinating for me, though I never really cared about actually watching those films, the idea just fascinated me. The actual horror movies I like are the mysterious ones, the psychological ones have the strongest effect on me. Needless to say, this story was very nostalgic for me.



TCM

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This was a fun tale and interesting to listen to, but it didn't strike fear or amazement in me. I didn't get a sense of mystery or a yearning to understand what was truly going on like I sometimes do. The knowledge that was needed to write this story was also very obviously there and researched. 6/10 rating