On this latest episode of The Horror Obsessive Podcast, my cohost Sean Parker and I are joined by writer, director, producer, game dev, and all-around amazing entrepreneur filmmaker Michelle Iannantuono to discuss her movie Livescreamers and some surprising ways the 1985 comedy mystery Clue influenced it.
If you’ve had a chance to catch Livescreamers during its festival run or if you’re familiar with Michelle’s previous film, Livescream, the Clue influence might come as a bit of a surprise. Aside from the quirky comedic vibe, Clue is a fairly standard murder mystery whodunit based on the board game of the same name, but Livescreamers couldn’t be more different, basically set as a bunch of pro-gamers playing a cursed video game, getting picked off one-by-one, and slowly realizing what it is that’s killing them. So on the surface, these two movies seem to be worlds apart.
But if you dig just a little bit deeper, you’ll see that they share a lot of the same cinematic DNA. In our conversation with Michelle Iannantuono, we discuss the parallels between the character setups and the ominous New England mansion worlds of both films. On top of that, we also debate the merits of the bizarre threefold ending of Clue. Michelle provides some exceptional behind-the-screams insights into the work that went into creating the video game world of Livescreamers.
As always, Sean and I start the episode by going over some of the biggest and best news to hit the horror world in the last two weeks. For example, we talk about Sean’s recent interview with Larry Wade Carrell, the director of the documentary The Darkside of Society, and we briefly discuss the releases of Project Eerie and Malibu Horror Story, two great new films putting a fantastic spin on the found-footage format.
After this episode, The Horror Obsessive Podcast is going to take a little break, but don’t worry, Sean and I aren’t going to disappear forever. We’ll be back soon enough with more podcast episodes, so keep an eye out for our return in the not-too-distant future, and you can always catch up on some of the fun conversations that you may have missed.