Out on the rusty, blood-soaked roads of horror podcasts, where every third microphone appears to be broadcasting from a basement illuminated by Halloween lights and unresolved childhood fears, there exists the delightfully unhinged institution known as My Bloody Podcast. It occupies that rare cultural space between a graduate seminar on horror cinema and three friends arguing in a video store that no longer exists.
Certain movies function less as entertainment and more as a personality test. Mention Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) in a room full of film fans, and someone will inevitably lean forward, lower their voice, and begin talking about John Carpenter as though they’ve just discovered fire. They’re not entirely wrong. Before Halloween, before The Fog, before Escape from New York, and before They Live gave us perhaps the greatest fistfight in cinematic history over a pair of sunglasses, there was a police station under siege and a filmmaker quietly inventing himself.
That’s exactly where My Bloody Podcast lands for Episode #196. Bryan Kluger, Preston Barta, and Chelsea Nicole welcome filmmaker Jeremy Herbert, whose terrific new vampire film Blood and Rust is now prowling its way across screens everywhere, to discuss a movie he revisits before making every one of his own films. It’s the sort of creative ritual that sounds eccentric until you remember filmmakers are, by necessity, gloriously eccentric people.
The conversation wanders, as all worthwhile conversations do. There are vampires. There are bagels, which somehow belong together with these subjects. Then everyone locks the metaphorical doors and settles in for a wonderfully obsessive deep dive into Assault on Precinct 13. Discussions cover Carpenter’s impossibly confident direction, the chemistry between characters who barely have time to flirt before bullets start flying, the film’s relentless tension, its bursts of shocking violence, and, yes, that ice cream scene, which is the moment that still causes audiences to collectively forget how breathing works.
It’s less a review than a celebration of the kind of movie that reminds you why low-budget filmmaking can sometimes feel richer than productions with ten times the money. Carpenter made a masterpiece out of limitations. This episode happily spends its time explaining how. Come for the vampires. Stay for the bagels. And leave wanting to rewatch one of the coolest siege films ever made.
You can find My Bloody Podcast wherever podcasts lurk. It’s a reminder that great horror can be transcendent, bad horror can be fascinating, and arguing about both is often more entertaining than the movie itself.
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Thank you for listening.
WRITTEN BY: BRYAN KLUGER
Bryan Kluger is an entertainment critic, writer, and podcast host with a deep love for film, horror, and pop culture. His work has appeared in outlets such as Arts+Culture Magazine, High-Def Digest, Screen Rant, The Huffington Post, The Drudge Report, Fark, and Boomstick Comics. He hosts My Bloody Podcast and Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, along with a weekly radio show, where he brings sharp insight, humor, and an unabashed passion for movies to every conversation.
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