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Monstrous Flesh: A Horror Film PodcastAuthor: Monstrous Flesh
A fortnightly podcast dedicated to exploring the origins of horror tropes, the folklore behind it, and the representation of women and non binary folks within it! In each series we deep dive a particular theme or trope, and we dissect it to an inch of its life! Hosted by Dr Megan Kenny and Clelia McElroy, and edited by Adam Hynes. Language: en Genres: Film Reviews, TV & Film Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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The Lords of Salem (Zombie, 2012) with Payton McCarthy-Simas
Tuesday, 25 November, 2025
We are joined by a very special guest: Payton McCarthy-Simas, author of That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film, to dive deep into Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem (2012) — a hypnotic, polarising, and deeply uncanny entry in modern witch cinema.Payton brings their expertise on American witch narratives to unpack the film’s hallucinatory imagery, its lineage in Puritan panic, and its portrayal of witchcraft as both a site of feminist resistance and profound horror. We trace the film’s depiction of addiction, grief, and bodily vulnerability, and explore how Zombie reimagines the witch’s coven as a force that is at once communal, grotesque, and defiantly powerful.Join us as we interrogate whether The Lords of Salem offers liberation or damnation; how the film echoes real histories of persecution; and what it means to place a woman at the centre of a cosmic ritual she cannot escape. Expect discussions of trauma, ritual spectacle, psychedelic horror, and the complicated politics of representing female and non-binary bodies within witchcraft narratives.Tune in for an episode that’s part cultural excavation, part fever dream.****Payton is an author, programmer, film critic, and video artist with a focus on horror and genre film. Their writing has been featured in The Hollywood Reporter, Film Daze, and The Brooklyn Rail among others, as well as spotlighted in The New York Times, CNN, and RogerEbert.com. Her short films and screenplays have been featured in several film festivals as well as shown at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. She is also the author of two books of nonfiction and film criticism, One Step Short of Crazy: National Treasure and the Landscape of American Conspiracy Culture (2024) and That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film (2025). Payton holds a Masters in Film and Media Studies from Columbia University and is a member of the Online Association of Female Film Critics and GALECA.***Editing and theme music by Adam Hynes @adamnarrowsFollow the hosts of Monstrous Flesh on social media @monstrous_flesh and @monstrousmeg
