Horror Favourites – Mike White

Founded in 2011, the Projection Booth podcast — www.projectionboothpodcast.com — has been publishing weekly deep dives into cinema boasting coverage of “everything from the art house to the outhouse.” We grabbed its host Mike White and got him to talk horror,

Celebrating twelve years in March, the show has hosted a cavalcade of celebrity interviews featuring Hollywood luminaries like Jeff Goldblum, Elliott Gould, Ellen Burstyn, Willem Dafoe, Sir Michael Palin, Sir Tim Rice, John Waters, Ed Harris, Luke Wilson, Chris Elliott, Bruce Dern, Nicholas Meyer, William Friedkin, Julie Taymor, Joe Dante, Mojo Nixon, and more. Some of the interview subjects find the experience of talking with the Projection Booth’s host, Mike White, so fun that they’ve returned as guest co-hosts.

As the editor of the independent magazine Cashiers du Cinemart, White takes pride in his independent spirit and DIY attitude. The Projection Booth is the only independently produced podcast that consistently places in the Top 20 of Apple Podcasts’ Film History chart.

“I hope every episode is as entertaining and informative as it can be. It helps that I have a raft of talented co-hosts that bring a wealth of knowledge to every episode,” White says. His goal has garnered The Projection Booth the nickname of “The NPR of movie podcasts.”

When he’s not podcasting about film, White has recorded several commentary tracks for blu-ray releases of The Thing, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Jacob’s Ladder, and David Lynch’s Dune. “I try to bring the same amount of dogged research and preparation to the commentaries that I do to each episode of The Projection Booth,” White continues.

In 2022, he co-founded Weirding Way Media, a network which hosts The Projection Booth and many other shows he co-hosts including The Shabby Detective (all about TV’s Columbo), From the Files of Police Squad, and more.

Below Mike White tells us all about his favourite horror film:

“I’ve never been a big “horror guy” but I must give off those vibes. When I worked at Blockbuster Video in the early ‘90s I often had customers who would ask me for my favorite horror movies. As I live to disappoint or expand cinema knowledge (depending on your point of view), I would also recommend three titles: Bob Clark’s Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. Those customers never asked for my opinion again.

Polanski’s second feature film, Repulsion (1965) stars Catherine Deneuvre as Carol, an aesthetician who lives with her sister in a small London flat. She lives in a world where she feels disenfranchised. She’s catcalled on the streets, her glass in the bathroom has been invaded by her sister’s boyfriend’s razor, and she’s plagued by the moans of someone else in the building having sex.

When her sister leaves town, Carol begins to have a mental breakdown. She starts seeing more cracks wherever she goes as if something might burst from behind her walls. She has a horrific (if not problematic) fantasy of a man bursting into her apartment and raping her. Polanski presents this in such a way that it could be viewed either as fantasy or reality. One of the most striking shots of Repulsion comes when Carol imagines hands reaching out of her apartment walls to grab her. This would be echoed twenty years later in George Romero’s Day of the Dead albeit not as effectively as Polanski would do it.

Along with The Tenant and Rosemary’s Baby, Repulsion is the first in a three-cycle series of Polanski films referred to as “The Apartment Trilogy” which shows protagonists who live amongst the world that are tormented by those around them. Images like faces distorted by kitchen appliances filter through all of them.

Poor Carol is referred to by fairy tale names like Cinderella and Little Miss Muffet though she reminds me more of Lewis Carroll’s Alice, however there is no rabbit to follow. The only rabbit in the film is skinned and rotting.

Repulsion is a slow burn and definitely not the kind of horror film my customers were looking for but it’s still one I recommend.”