Those who aren’t in the Kansas City area may not be aware that I co-host a monthly live podcast at the Stray Cat Film Center. The story of how I came to succumb to the curse of being a middle aged white guy and therefore co-hosting a podcast is a roundabout one, but basically I took over co-hosting duties of the Horror Pod Class a few years ago.

Tyler Unsell, my comrade in arms, started the Horror Pod Class along with a fellow teacher as a way to explore using horror films in the classroom. They invited me on a few times and, when the previous co-host had to take a sabbatical, Tyler asked me to take over – an arrangement that eventually became permanent.

Somewhat unbelievably, we started hosting the podcast live at Stray Cat some four years ago, in March of 2022. The first movie we showed was 976-Evil (1988). The way it works is, we show a free screening of a movie, and then afterward we do the podcast live, discussing the movie and whatever themes and lesson ideas we take from it, and also doing various themed giveaways.

The podcast also goes out online like a normal podcast, but for me, ever since we started hosting in person, the importance of the podcast qua podcast has dropped to almost nothing. I’m grateful for our listeners, and I hope that you all enjoy the show wherever you get your podcasts, but for me, hosting live is really what it’s all about. I love bringing movies to people, and I love interacting with the audience in person.

Last year, we tried out our first themed year. It was Tyler’s idea; something that came to be known as our Yearbook Series – every month, we did a movie from a different decade, starting with 1925 (we showed Maciste in Hell) and working through 2015 (we showed Crimson Peak).

This year, Tyler suggested another theme: the Year of Monsters. Every month, we pick a different iconic monster type and we show a movie featuring that critter, then discuss both the movie and the history and themes of said monster afterward.

Here’s the catch: We don’t tell anyone what movie we’re showing in advance. There are hints on the Stray Cat website and our own social media, but the movie remains under wraps until it’s showtime. All you know is what monster we’re covering that month.

Given that it’s only February, we obviously just started, and we kicked off the series with vampires. Since that screening is already over, I can tell you that we showed Return of the Vampire (1943) to a literally packed house, none of whom had ever seen it before. It was amazing.

For the rest of the year (with our usual break in July, so Tyler can go teach a summer course that also happens to be about monsters) we’ll be covering a different monster each month, from mummies and lab experiments to aliens and kaiju.

The way the breakdown in labor at the Horror Pod Class goes is that usually I pick the movies, with Tyler’s input of course, an arrangement that works for him because he has an actual life and, therefore, has not seen as many horror movies as I have.

That’s what we did this year, too, with one exception. I gave Tyler carte blanche to pick the movie for the month we do zombies (it’ll be in August), because zombies are his favorite subject. So when the zombie month rolls around, you can blame him.

We worked together to assemble the list of monsters, though. A few years ago (in 2012, so quite a few years ago, as it happens) Mike Mignola did a series of covers for his various Hellboy-adjacent titles that was called the Year of Monsters. (Thanks to the generosity of Stu Horvath, I have a big poster of the mummy one framed on my office wall.)

I used that less as a checklist than as a guide to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything, though there are some he did that we ultimately didn’t do (there aren’t any witches in our lineup, for example), and some we did that he didn’t.

In fact, we had too many monster types to choose from, and had to nix a few that we would have loved to have done. But, we all have to make sacrifices.

This month’s screening is on February 25, and our monster subject is werewolves. What movie are we showing? Well, obviously I can’t tell you, but the hints on the Stray Cat website will absolutely give it away for anyone who knows the movie at all: “It’s part of a long-running franchise; it takes place in Australia; and the werewolves in it are marsupials!”

Those who know how wild this movie is will be unsurprised that I can’t wait to share it with a crowd. For me, that’s what this is all about, like I said. And this one’s going to be quite an experience.

In preparation for this episode of the Horror Pod Class, I also spent way too much time trying to definitively run down when the silver bullet became the way to kill werewolves. The results are more inconclusive than I would like, but the answer may surprise you!

Really, though, I’m looking forward to everything that we’re doing for the Year of Monsters. I love sharing movies with the folks who come out to the Stray Cat Film Center, I love monsters, and I will keep doing this kind of thing forever, if they’ll let me.

If you’re local to the Kansas City area – or happen to be passing through around the last Wednesday of the month, which is when the Horror Pod Class usually happens – come out to the Stray Cat Film Center and let’s watch a monster movie together!