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In this episode of Castle Talk, Jason chats with former Brady and Gidget Caryn Richman, who plays a key role as a psychic who may be in over her head in the new film The Puppetman on Shudder.
Posted in: Horror, Interview, Movies, Podcasts | Tagged: Kevin Tenney, Witchboard
Witchboard Director on How to Exploit the Satanic Panic
Jason chats with Kevin Tenney, director of the 1986 cult film Witchboard which comes to the ARROW platform, available to subscribers in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. As Tenney discusses, Witchboard was perfectly timed to take advantage of the early-to-mid-80s American cultural fascination with the occult and "Satanism," so that oracular toys like the Ouija board were familiar to everyone. This "Satanic Panic" amounted to free advertising for a movie about Ouija boards. The problem was that once Tenney realized that he'd created the first Ouija horror film, he had to sweat bullets over whether another one would come out before his did.
Witchboard concerns a trio of friends whose lives are turned upside down by their use of an Ouija board to contact the dead.
The director also chats about the cast of the film, which was his directorial debut. He had a string of good luck: star Tawny Kitaen became a music video star between filming and the movie's release. And lead Stephen Nichols, an unknown when he was cast, had become a breakout star of Days of our Lives by the time the movie came out. The result was a wide release for Witchboard, which became a cult hit that holds up well today.
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Jason Henderson is the host of the Castle of Horror and Castle Talk Podcasts, the editor of the "Castle of Horror Anthology" series, of which the newest Volume is Thinly Veiled: the '70s, a collection of horror stories based on 70s TV and movies. He is the author of The Serpent's Nest: Young Captain Nemo from Macmillan Children's Books. His new horror series "Surf Mystic," under the pseudonym Peyton Douglas, debuted with the novel Night of the Book Man in 2020.
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