Four Favorites: Lars Nilsen on Weird Wednesdays, Switchblade Sisters and Buster Keaton

Noirvember continues with Austin Film Society lead programmer and exploitation genre fan Lars Nilsen , who dives into the muck and the grime, the farts and the fights, the stunts and the songs of his four Letterboxd favorites: Touch of Evil ; The Switchblade Sisters , The General ; and Phantom of the Paradise . Lars chats with hosts Gemma and Slim about his new memoir of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series— Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday & The Birth Of The American Genre Film Archive — on sale now from Mondo . Also in the conversation: tiny men doing huge stunts, the cult of Jessica Harper, old folks and young folks partying together, the best genre film of 2021, shout-outs to Shudder and Kier-La Janisse, and aiming for that ‘car-crash experience’ with cinema audiences. Links: The Letterboxd list of films mentioned in this episode; reviews from Wood on Touch of Evil , Timcop on The Switchblade Sisters , Wes on The General , COBRARocky on Phantom of the Paradise ; Letterboxd lists Femme Dirtbag/Burnout/Hessian Personal Canon , Anxiety-inducing comedy of errors , Train Cinema , Movies That Get Batshit Insane/A Shocking Genre Shift , Rian Johnson’s 70s Musical Extravaganza! ; Warped & Faded on Mondo . Credits: This episode was recorded in Austin, Pennsylvania and Auckland, and edited by Slim. Facts by Jack . Booker: Linda Moulton . Transcript by Sophie Shin . Theme: ‘Vampiros Dancoteque’ by Moniker .