GUTTER STUDIES

Tom
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Philosophy

This is the audio feed for Gutter Studies: a video-essay project exploring the pleasure, history, and meaning of low cinema. gutterstudies.substack.com

  1. Jun 22

    Jump to the Left, Step to the Right

    For fifty years, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has endured as a midnight ritual. The first thing any fan or critic wants to talk about is the cult following and audience participation elements: the costumes, callbacks, inside jokes, the flying props. And that’s all good fun. But the carnivalesque cult following around the film often impedes the more interesting critical questions we can ask. After all, what is the text of Rocky Horror actually about? And how does that relate to its cult elements or the cultural situation we live in today? My new video essay argues that underneath the fishnets and the floor show, Rocky Horror is a timeless story about sexual politics; specifically, about the cycle of radicalism and reaction that drives so much cultural history. Rocky Horror is about liberation. But it’s also about the price of that “absolute pleasure: the backlash, the violence, the collapse. It’s like a microcosm of the sociopolitical pattern we keep living through, even as we navigate the present transition from the high woke era to the so-called vibe shift. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

    Jump to the Left, Step to the Right

  2. Jun 1

    Hellraiser Bloodline: The Refuge of Fantasy

    We’ve arrived at the final chapter of Sweet Sweet Suffering ! I’ve long had a soft spot for Hellraiser: Bloodline. It features my favorite cenobite, Angelique, and has always struck me as the franchise at its most narratively ambitious. To this day, Hellraiser: Bloodline has a reputation problem. Pinhead in space, a troubled production, a director who took his name off the film. Critics and fans wrote it off at the time, and it’s been unfairly dismissed ever since. But viewed carefully — and through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis we’ve been using — Bloodline is hugely interesting, in my view, actually completes what the first two films started. Because once you understand the paradox of desire, and once you’ve descended into the system that produces it, a final question naturally follows. If desire can never truly be satisfied, and if the Real underneath it would annihilate us, how do we live with desire at all? The answer, according to Lacan, is fantasy. Not fantasy in the casual sense, but fantasy as a psychological structure: the fragile screen that gives desire a shape, shields us from the traumatic Real behind it, and allows us to keep going, to keep wanting, to keep living. In Bloodline, this idea takes the form of a type of cenobite we haven’t seen before: Angelique. This video concludes the philosophical arc that runs across three Hellraiser films. I’ve been a lifelong fan of these films, and even before I started Gutter Studies I always wanted to sit down and figure out what the series meant to me. These three videos are it. I hope these essays have contributed to your own enjoyment and understanding of these movies, some of the most distinctive and fascinating in all of horror history. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

    Hellraiser Bloodline: The Refuge of Fantasy

  3. May 4

    Hellraiser: The Paradox of Desire

    Welcome to Sweet Sweet Suffering: A Three-Part Video Essay on Hellraiser! In part one, I argue Hellraiser is not about demons. It's about desire, and best understood as mapping to a specific theory of desire from Jacques Lacan, one of the twentieth century’s most provocative and influential thinkers. Over three video essays, I'll go deep into the Hellraiser franchise — not just as horror films, but as a surprisingly coherent philosophical argument about what it means to be a human being. Each part focuses on a different entry (parts 1, 2, and 4). (I skip Hell on Earth because I don’t have anything interesting to say about that one.) In my reading, Hellraiser, Hellbound, and Bloodline each elaborates its own Lacanian concept. Hellraiser is about desire.Hellbound is about the Real.Bloodline is about the role of fantasy. The first talks about desire as a certain paradox: what happens when you actually get what you want? The second descends into the psychological system that produces desire. The third reveals the fragile illusion that allows us to live with desire at all. The framework is Lacanian psychoanalysis — one of the twentieth century's most challenging and rewarding bodies of thought. But no prior knowledge required. If you love Hellraiser and want to go deeper, this is for you. And if you've always been curious about Lacan but didn't know where to start, it turns out Hellraiser is a fantastic entry point. 🧠 Takes this as an opportunity to revisit one of the most interesting horror films of all time. Part two, covering Hellbound, drops in two weeks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

    Hellraiser: The Paradox of Desire

  4. Feb 13

    Every Jason Kill RANKED

    This is one of the last videos I’ve had in the vault from my Youtube days. It started as a silly idea for a kind of audacious clickbait project. I didn’t realize how wildly time-consuming it’d end up being. And it was kind of a maddening project too. Many times along the way, I felt uncomfortably deranged for even attempting such an obscene exercise. But it ended up being good practice for me as a video editor, since it involved wrangling and sequencing a huge number of clips in specific order. I can’t say I’m necessarily proud of making this. But I did make it, so here it is for your sick enjoyment. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

    Every Jason Kill RANKED

  5. Feb 2

    GUTTER TALK #3 - Best of Horror 2025

    In this audio-only episode, I’m joined again by Cynthia to count down the best horror movies of 2025. The conversation is 100% spoiler free—and I think also free of pretentious jargon! WDYT - was 2024 or 2025 a better year for horror? Many are asking. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

  6. 11/04/2025

    His Pain, Her Performance

    This is part two of a video series analyzing Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. You can catch up on part one here, or you can jump right into this one. Part one focused on Clover’s classic reading of the slasher film and her coining of the term Final Girl. Part two explores so-called “occult horror,” which includes ghosts, demonic possession, black magic, and the like. Clover’s take on occult horror is a useful complement to her analysis of slasher films, exploring the way male-driven arcs reflect the same underlying tendency we see in the female-driven spectacle of slasher films. These two currents defined horror movies in the 1970s and 80s, and Clover argues that both draw on the same underlying anxiety: an unconscious fear the two sexes are one. 0:00 - introduction 1:45 - Don’t Look Now (dir. Nicolas Roeg 1973) 2:32 - white science and black magic 3:27 - the too-open female vs. the too-closed male 4:40 - sex in slasher films vs. reproduction in occult horror films 5:54 - The Exorcist (dir. William Friedkin 1973) 7:20 - Witchboard (dir. Kevin Tenney 1986) 9:44 - Possession (dir. Andrzej Żuławski 1981) 10:40 - summary and critique of Carol Clover’s analysis 14:08 - conclusion - slashers compared I started this project a while back now, and do plan on finishing it out with two more installments. For a change of pace, the next installment will focus on Clover’s chapter on rape revenge films. You can expect a content warning! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

    His Pain, Her Performance

  7. 08/11/2025

    The Surreal Nunsploitation of Bruno Mattei

    This is video takes a close look at the nunsploitation work of Italian trash-cinema legend Bruno Mattei. Filmed at the same time, with the same cast, and the same set, these two movies provide a useful contrast when it comes to the variations on nunsploitation. Both are atmospheric and provocative in their own way; one offers psychologically complex and cerebral sexploitation; the other is a full-on unhinged Italian horror. Viewing them together also provides an amusing window into the sausage-making of Italian exploitation film. My previous video on nunsploitation provided an overview of four films that I thought represented the best of the genre. I still think that the geographic and chronological structure of that video provides a thorough picture. But since making that video, I realized that Mattei’s True Story absolutely needs to be part of that category. Other than The Devils, this one has become for me the epitome of the genre. I don’t think that’s necessarily a common take. If you have a chance to watch this one, I’d like to know what you think. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

    The Surreal Nunsploitation of Bruno Mattei

  8. 07/14/2025

    Beyond Women

    Russ Meyer once claimed that his films dealt in female archetypes that went “beyond women.” This video attempts to understand what he meant by that. I’m reposting this one from the Gutter Studies vault in honor of Tura Satana’s birthday last week. Tura is best remembered today as the star of Faster Pussycat, and she remains an icon in exploitation film history. This was actually the very first video essay I did as part of the Gutter Studies project. I’ve taken the opportunity to clean it up a bit, but it’s overall the same video. I’d love to do more videos on Russ Meyer. He was definitely my gateway to exploitation film, and I’ve seen just about every one of his movies. Let me know in comments, email, messages if you’d like to see more Russ Meyer on here. In particular, I’d love to do a deep dive on his roughie masterpiece Lorna (1964) and to revisit his big-budget Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). Looking back, he didn’t always have the most consistent career, but when he was interesting he was interesting. In the meantime, check out my Letterboxd list: Lust and Profit: Russ Meyer ranked. Sources Dean DeFino - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Cultographies) Jimmy McDonough - Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gutterstudies.substack.com/subscribe

    Beyond Women
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Ratings & Reviews

5
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About

This is the audio feed for Gutter Studies: a video-essay project exploring the pleasure, history, and meaning of low cinema. gutterstudies.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Tom
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    27
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Tom
  • Show Website
    GUTTER STUDIES