Longtime Friends Share Their Love of Retro Horror on ‘SlashBack Cinema’ Podcast

A horror movie podcast may be the last place you’d expect to hear about home improvement, but “SlashBack Cinema” is an exception. Discussing the famous scene in 1976’s The Omen in which demon spawn Damien knocks his mom over a stairway railing, hosts Ryan Dreimiller and Shanny Luft noted that the barrier clearly wasn’t built to code. In an episode on 1988’s Night of the Demons and its 2009 remake, they expressed shock at a scene in which characters strip a room of old paint “in a matter of seconds.” Never mind the demonic symbols revealed beneath — the true horror is the lead poisoning.

This refreshingly practical attitude stems from experience. Dreimiller, of Waitsfield, and Luft, who lives in Stevens Point, Wis., are both 53 and own old houses, they said.

Over their 35 years of friendship, the two men have also connected over pop culture — movies, comics, video games. Recently Dreimiller and Luft brought one of their shared obsessions to a larger audience with “SlashBack Cinema,” which takes a fondly humorous look at the horror movies of their youth, aka the golden age of VHS.

Since October, the duo has posted 33 episodes, covering ’70s and ’80s cult flicks such as Basket Case, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Thing, Videodrome, Night of the Comet, Tremors and Suspiria. They’ve taken a seasonal deep dive into Christmas-themed horror, including the more recent Krampus. They’ve quizzed each other on retro topics such as “Speed Racer” trivia and consumer prices in 1990 (average movie ticket: $4.75). And they do it all in 20 to 40 minutes per episode — unlike many other movie podcasts, where rambling discussions stretch over an hour or two.

“I’m a big proponent of edited podcasts,” said Luft, who also interviews experts on a podcast called “No Cure for Curiosity.”

“He never invited me on that podcast,” Dreimiller said with a chuckle.

The two friends road-tripped together at 21 and “kept in touch over the years,” Dreimiller said, as their lives took them in different directions. In 2024, Dreimiller found himself at a turning point — out of work, dealing with a parent’s illness and “looking for a creative project to dig into.” On a cross-country trip, he visited Luft, a professor of religious studies and an administrator at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.

The two started “shooting the shit,” reminiscing about “the stuff that brought us together as kids,” Dreimiller recalled. Suddenly, they had an idea: “‘Let’s do a podcast.'”

Retro horror seemed like a natural niche, something they could talk about for hours. “A lot of these movies are awful,” Dreimiller said, “but a lot of them are fun, too.”

Unlike many pop culture podcasters, the two friends lack standup or improv comedy backgrounds. But you wouldn’t know it from their fast-paced and funny rapport, which they say was inspired by Tom and Ray Magliozzi, aka Click and Clack, on NPR’s “Car Talk.” The podcast’s website offers a downloadable bingo card of phrases that recur in their banter, including “iconic,” “creepy,” “campy,” “Stephen King,” “VHS vibes,” “over-the-top,” “schlocky” and “epic!!”

“We get a kick out of just hanging out together and talking,” said Luft, whom Dreimiller called “the most hilarious person I’ve ever met.”

They make a point of not discussing the movie before recording, and they don’t reveal their overall ratings — “stabby scores” — until near the end of each episode. “It’s fun when we have different reactions to movies,” Luft said.

Some of the films — such as Re-Animator — they’re seeing for the first time. On other episodes, the hosts compare their childhood or teenage reactions to a movie with their mature ones, weighing the relative value of novelty and nostalgia.

Dreimiller grew up in an evangelical Christian home where horror movies were forbidden, so he had to “sneak over to a friend’s house and watch them in the basement.” The excitement of those viewings “lodged in my younger brain,” he said.

Luft loves the “DIY vibe” of older horror cinema, a spirit he sums up as “If you have latex and ketchup, you can make a horror movie.” Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson got his start with just such a no-budget effort, Bad Taste, to which “SlashBack Cinema” devoted an episode.

While the two friends revel in the camp of classics such as Killer Klowns From Outer Space, they also broach more serious topics. For instance, on a recent episode discussing the incomparably strange 1977 Japanese film House, they lamented how rare it is to discover something genuinely weird in today’s focus-grouped, franchise-ridden pop culture.

Such conversations are as meaningful for the hosts as for the audience. “Guys in general are not good at picking up phones and talking to each other,” Luft told Seven Days. The podcast has given them a “reason to interact. It feels like we’re in high school again.”

Luft said the podcast recently hit 1,500 downloads and has 50 to 60 listeners each week, with a demographic that leans Generation X and male. The friends take suggestions for future episodes from a growing audience that eats up the nostalgia.

“We love it when people share their own memories,” Luft said.

Like many Gen Xers, Luft and Dreimiller often wonder how their lives might have been different if they’d had creative outlets such as YouTube in their youth. “SlashBack Cinema” embodies their resolve to seize the day, Luft said: “Instead of talking about what could have been, let’s do it now!”

“If we can grow [the podcast] to a point where we’re making money, fabulous,” said Dreimiller, who’s now the creative director at Vermont State University. “But we just want to have fun doing it.”

This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2025.

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