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Archive for October, 2025

Episode 673: Rock, Paper, Fangs

October 31st, 2025 | Robin

The Gaming Hut pays tribute to Halloween by envisioning a game pitting classic monsters against the non-Euclidean horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos.

The Cinema Hut Fantasy Film Essentials series rounds out the 1990s.

And the loss of Portland bibliophiles is our hero’s gain as Ken’s Bookshelf groans with his recent Powell’s Books purchases.

Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!

Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.

Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.

The official CatStronauts board game features cooperative play that’s only 30-45 minutes long, for 1-4 players ages 10+. Designed and illustrated by CatStronauts comic book creator Drew Brockington and available now from Atlas Games!

Make room on your shelf and in your heart for Page Turners, Robin’s game of dramatic interaction for one player and one GM, coming soon from Pelgrane Press. Explore the intensity of emotional storytelling driven by a single protagonist with scenarios ranging from Shakespearean comedy to tragic vampire love, written by Robin, Sarah “Sam” Saltiel, Ruth Tillman and Wade Rockett.

Get caught in the spiral with God’s Teeth, a new set of pulse-pounding Delta Green scenarios dripping with the once and future corruption of a nation swirling into cruelty and spite. From a government panopticon to alien worms to an app-driven mass shooter, your agents have nothing to fear but every screaming headline.

Play spies, skirmishers, and saboteurs in the battle for the future of the Thirteen Colonies in Flagbearer Games’ thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated 5E compatible roleplaying game Nations and Cannons. Jump into the early actions of the war with the new campaign guide The American Crisis, available as a PDF or for print pre-order.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Gothic Giallo, Satanic Piano, and a Hallucinatory Steppe Quest

October 28th, 2025 | Robin

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

Recommended

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Film, US, Joe Talbot, 2019) Aided by his aspiring playwright best friend (Jonathan Majors), melancholy nurse Jimmie Fails (Jimmie Fails) sets up a squat in the gorgeous Fillmore District house where his family once lived. Big music cues, poetic shot composition, and an initially Beckett-like dialogue rhythm build a haunting style for a story of loving a city that doesn’t love you back.—RDL

Qas (Film, Kazakhstan, Aisultan Seitov, 2022) Afraid to leave him unprotected during the 1931 famine, a gravedigger takes his eight year old brother on a mission across the trackless steppes to seek aid in the district capital. Strikingly composed hallucinatory survival quest.—RDL

Good

The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (Film, Italy, Giuseppe Bennati, 1974) Relatives, lovers, and hangers-on of the rich aristocrat Patrick Davenant (Chris Avram) arrive at his family’s ancestral mansion, now a long-disused theater, and trigger its murderous curse. Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians provided the basic outline of several Italian “someone is killing these rich jerks” movies; Bennati’s version aims for gothic horror that begins as undertone beneath the giallo murder mystery and ends up as the key note. Less gory than most gialli (modulo one murderous crucifixion), this one prefigures the American slasher with ample nudity, weirdly masked killer, and idiotic victim behavior. Carlo Savina’s score is a real standout, adding lush theatricality to the sordid goings-on.—KH

The Mephisto Waltz (Film, US, Paul Wendkos, 1971) Music critic Myles Clarkson (Alan Alda) allows himself to be cultivated by dying piano maestro (and secret Satanist) Duncan Ely (Curt Jürgens) despite the misgivings of his wife Paula (Jacqueline Bisset). This Rosemary’s Baby knockoff has great potential, sadly mostly squandered by Alda and producer Quinn Martin, who over-indulges his TV-movie sensibilities. The hip Satanic cult swaps Duncan’s soul into Myles’ body, but Alda is smarmy with either soul in him. Bisset completely out-acts Alda, and Paula outclasses Myles so much as to deform the story. There are some great scenes of Satanic party goings-on, and Jerry Goldsmith turns in a score (of increasingly atonal Liszt riffs) far better than this movie deserves, enough in fact to give it a solid Good rating.—KH

Tigers are Not Afraid (Film, Mexico, Issa Lopez, 2017) A girl whose mother has been disappeared by the local cartel joins forces with kid orphans of the drug war — and a source of dark supernatural vengeance. Strong performances from a preteen cast drive an uncompromising social realist ghost story.—RDL

Okay

Psycho Beach Party (Film, US, Robert Lee King, 2000) Perky teen Chiclet (Lauren Ambrose) pursues her surfing dreams despite sexist beach bums, a serial killer rampage, and her latent multiple personalities. Easy-target spoof turns the gay subtext of the beach party movies into text. Adapted from his stage play by Charles Busch, who appears as hardnosed cop Monica Stark.—RDL

Not Recommended

Customs Frontline (Film, Hong Kong, Herman Yau, 2024) In tandem with his bipolar mentor (Jacky Cheung), a duty-bound customs officer (Nicholas Tse) takes on the heavily equipped forces of a ruthless arms dealer. Gigantic action sequences held together by morose, catharsis-deficient melodrama and an earnest anti-war message about a conflict between made-up countries.—RDL

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Episode 672: I Mostly Like Cowboys

October 24th, 2025 | Robin

Now that Ken has finally seen it, beloved Patreon backer Justin Mohareb can pitch his Kpop Demon Hunters question to the Gaming Hut: how could it be used as a game, and how would that be a Feng Shui campaign?

Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else features a chat with Richard Ruane, designer of Sherwood and Moonlight on Rosewood Beach.

Fantasy Film Essentials of the late 90s screen in the Cinema Hut.

Finally estimable backer Mark Kenney assigns Ken’s Time Machine to keep Benedict Arnold on the side of the American Revolution.

Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!

Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.

Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.

The official CatStronauts board game features cooperative play that’s only 30-45 minutes long, for 1-4 players ages 10+. Designed and illustrated by CatStronauts comic book creator Drew Brockington and available now from Atlas Games!

A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!

Get caught in the spiral with God’s Teeth, a new set of pulse-pounding Delta Green scenarios dripping with the once and future corruption of a nation swirling into cruelty and spite. From a government panopticon to alien worms to an app-driven mass shooter, your agents have nothing to fear but every screaming headline.

Play spies, skirmishers, and saboteurs in the battle for the future of the Thirteen Colonies in Flagbearer Games’ thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated 5E compatible roleplaying game Nations and Cannons. Jump into the early actions of the war with the new campaign guide The American Crisis, available as a PDF or for print pre-order.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Snowy Witches, an Evil Cat, and a History of Crime Fiction

October 21st, 2025 | Robin

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

Recommended

Evil Cat (Film, Hong Kong, Dennis Yu, 1987) When his nemesis, a body-possessing feline spirit, emerges for its  its semi-centennial rampage, a dying wizard (Chia-Liang Liu) hastens to train a young chauffeur (Mark Ho-nam Cheng) as his successor. Pell-mell ghost action comedy dishes up all the genre-hopping, tone-shifting and extreme lighting of its period, while toning down the broad schtick by a notch or two.—RDL

A Quiet Place: Day One (Film, US, Michael Sarnoski, 2025) A despondent cancer patient (Lupita Nyong’o) attempts to survive an invasion of NYC by sound-seeking alien monsters while saddled with an anxious law student (Joseph Quinn.) A rich cinematic text layered with references and resonances, this horror disaster movie stands as the best prequel ever made, taking only what it needs from the franchise it extends.—RDL

The Snow Woman (Film, Japan, Tokuzô Tanaka, 1968) An apprentice woodcarver (Akira Ishihama) does not suspect that his loving wife (Shiho Fujimura) is the killer frost spirit who, struck by his handsomeness, once broke the rules to spare his life. Simple, sublime practical effects underline the beauty and horror of this Lafacadio Hearn adaptation.—RDL

The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (Nonfiction, Martin Edwards, 2017) Edwards charts the development of the mystery genre from 1901 to 1950 in 100 (actually 102) book essays. Each entry provides a spoiler-free plot hook, a note on the work’s influence in the genre (the criterion for inclusion is a book’s importance more than its pure merit), and a brief summary of the author’s career, making it a trifle crowded and necessarily incomplete on all those fronts. Fortunately each chapter (they begin historical and turn thematic) provides more context and more titles; only Edwards’ parochial neglect of American authors (5 out of 102, 6 counting John Dickson Carr) mars this handsome and useful work.—KH

The White Reindeer (Film, Finland, Erik Blomberg, 1952) Anxious for her new husband (Kalervo Nissilä) to quickly return from the snowy uplands, a young woman (Mirjami Kuosmanen) performs an ill-considered sacrifice, becoming a murderous witch able to assume the form of a white reindeer. Horror folk tale told with an ethnographic simplicity.—RDL

Good

Litan (Film, France, Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1982) During a village festival revolving around the wearing of creepy masks, a frightened woman (Marie-José Nat) tries to avert her nightmare premonition of her surveyor boyfriend’s (Jean-Pierre Mocky) death. Despite its epic body count, this dreamlike excursion into reality horror is more about surrealism than scares. Easily repurposed into a Yellow King scenario.—RDL

Okay

Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters (Film, UK, Benjamin Field, 2024) Interview subjects provide comprehensive info on Hammer Films’ creative phases and personnel, but are undercut by distracting visual devices and cutaways. Worse for a film history documentary, the clips are carelessly chosen or used as gags.—RDL

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Episode 671: Steve Is Hell

October 17th, 2025 | Robin

The Gaming Hut examines parallels between killer dungeons and horror movie slashers.

Impelled by beloved Patreon backer Jurie Horneman, the Tradecraft Hut looks at the career of financial fraudster turned Russian operative Jan Marsalek.

The Cinema Hut’s fantasy film essential series continues to bask in the golden era of the 1990s.

Finally the Conspiracy Corner takes a good squint at the medbed theory.

Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!

Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.

Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.

The official CatStronauts board game features cooperative play that’s only 30-45 minutes long, for 1-4 players ages 10+. Designed and illustrated by CatStronauts comic book creator Drew Brockington and available now from Atlas Games!

A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!

Get caught in the spiral with God’s Teeth, a new set of pulse-pounding Delta Green scenarios dripping with the once and future corruption of a nation swirling into cruelty and spite. From a government panopticon to alien worms to an app-driven mass shooter, your agents have nothing to fear but every screaming headline.

Play spies, skirmishers, and saboteurs in the battle for the future of the Thirteen Colonies in Flagbearer Games’ thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated 5E compatible roleplaying game Nations and Cannons. Jump into the early actions of the war with the new campaign guide The American Crisis, available as a PDF or for print pre-order.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Play Dirty, Short Spy Stories, Livestreaming Horror, and Meta-Reacher

October 14th, 2025 | Robin

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

Recommended

Black Angel (Film, US, Roy William Neill, 1946) To clear her wayward husband of a death row murder rap, a loyal wife (June Vincent) teams with the victim’s alcoholic songwriter ex (Dan Duryea) to get close to their prime suspect (Peter Lorre.) Cornell Woolrich adaptation ticks along as slightly off-kilter for its first two acts, then spins into full nightmare noir.—RDL

The Calder & Behrens Stories (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1962-1981) Calder and Behrens, both middle-aged British WWII veterans, do “distasteful” jobs for a special counterintelligence committee using a combination of fussy brio and unfussy brutality. Perhaps the hardest genre in short fiction to pull off is the espionage short, and Gilbert succeeds virtually every time at bat. Only when read in rapid succession do the stories seem even slightly formulaic, but good luck reading one short and not immediately inhaling both volumes.—KH

Freeway (Film, US, Matthew Bright, 1996) When cops haul off her crackhead mom (Amanda Plummer) and stepdad, an irrepressibly survival-minded at-risk youth (Reese Witherspoon) hitchhikes to Grandma’s house and is picked up by the sinister Dr. Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland.) Fairy tale retold as blackly comic juvenile delinquent flick derives its charge from the contradictions between the director’s gleeful midnight movie impulses and the absolute commitment of its deeply stacked cast.—RDL

GonJiam: Haunted Asylum (Film, South Korea, Jung Bum-shik, 2018) Click-hungry college age ghost hunters livestream their illegal exploration of a derelict mental hospital. Familiar premise skillfully executed, for example by cleverly establishing how the characters can be shooting their found footage from every possible angle.—RDL

Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery (Film, Canada, Ally Pankiw, 2025) Documentary traces the origins, explosive growth, and loving vibes of Sarah McLachlan’s late 90s feminist touring festival. Focuses primarily on the show’s emotional impact on artists and audiences, while laudably finding time to depict it as a business enterprise.—RDL

Reacher Said Nothing (Nonfiction, Andy Martin, 2015) Martin, a Cambridge lecturer in French literature, watches thriller author Lee Child from the first keystroke to the last as he writes Reacher novel number 20, Make Me. An extremely interesting look at one writer’s process made even more interesting by Martin’s simmering undertone of flailing to justify his own project to himself. Reacher would never.—KH

Good

KPop Demon Hunters (Film, US, Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans, 2025) Demon-hunting kpop trio Huntr/x (Arden Cho, et al.), accelerate their project of locking demons away from human souls, leading the demon lord Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun) to retaliate with his own boy band Saja Boys (Ahn Hyo-seop, et al.). Delightful animation and catchy songs do the necessary in this somewhat rote urban fantasy story that could use a skoosh more violence and horror to cut the anodyne flavor.—KH

The Last of Us Season 2 (Television, US, Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann, 2025) A shocking event sends Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and her new ride-or-die (Isabela Merced) to Seattle on a mission of vengeance. With a high level of execution, this downbeat post-apocalyptic western took me to a place I did not particularly want to go, leaving me with the feeling that the filmmakers chose to punish the audience for a characters’ sins .—RDL

Play Dirty (Film, US, Shane Black, 2025) Master thief Parker (Mark Wahlberg) assembles a crew including regular sidekick Grofeld (LaKeith Stanfield) when an accomplice who betrayed his last crew (Rosa Salazar) points him to a treasure taken from a shipwreck. Terrible Parker movie; kinda fun Shane Black movie.—RDL

Okay

Play Dirty (Film, US, Shane Black, 2025) Heist planner Parker (Mark Wahlberg) survives betrayal by freedom fighter Zen (Rosa Salazar) and recruits his old crew including Grofield (Lakeith Stanfield) and Ed Mackey (Keegan-Michael Key) to get his own back. Ridiculously awful CGI in an early scene sets the low bar for this clunker, which in addition to miscasting Parker decides to make him Dortmunder to boot. Flashes of cleverness persist, annoyingly.—KH

Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City (Film, Japan, Takashi Miike, 2010) The schoolteacher (Shô Aikawa) who once saved the world from alien parasites as a striped costumed hero resurfaces as an amnesiac in the grim police state future of 2025. Sequel dives right into freaky tongue-in-cheek imagery without a pause to shape the narrative.—RDL

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Episode 670: The Ghost of Cromwell’s Head

October 10th, 2025 | Robin

The Gaming Hut looks at the peace paradox, in which players successfully negotiate their way out of a conflict and then feel let down by the anti-climactic result.

Ken and/or Robin Talk to Someone Else features Lyla Fujiwara, project lead on the Cosmere RPG.

The fantasy film essentials series returns to the Cinema Hut for a bumper crop of late 80s classics.

Finally at the behest of beloved Patreon backer Gray St. Quintin, the Eliptony Hut explores the rich weirdness of Cambridge.

Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!

Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.

Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.

The official CatStronauts board game features cooperative play that’s only 30-45 minutes long, for 1-4 players ages 10+. Designed and illustrated by CatStronauts comic book creator Drew Brockington and available now from Atlas Games!

A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!

Get caught in the spiral with God’s Teeth, a new set of pulse-pounding Delta Green scenarios dripping with the once and future corruption of a nation swirling into cruelty and spite. From a government panopticon to alien worms to an app-driven mass shooter, your agents have nothing to fear but every screaming headline.

Play spies, skirmishers, and saboteurs in the battle for the future of the Thirteen Colonies in Flagbearer Games’ thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated 5E compatible roleplaying game Nations and Cannons. Jump into the early actions of the war with the new campaign guide The American Crisis, available as a PDF or for print pre-order.

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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Wednesday, Edgar Allan Poe, and a Murky Found Footage Reveal

October 7th, 2025 | Robin

Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.

Recommended

18×2 Beyond Youthful Days (Film, Taiwan/Japan, Michihito Fujii, 2024) Ousted from the company he founded, a Taiwanese video game designer takes a trip to Japan, meandering his way to the home town of the girl he loved half his life ago. If you’re going to spin an essential plot point around Shunji Iwai’s 1995 Pinnacle Love Letter, you’d best deliver a beautiful, evanescent drama, a challenge Fujii more than meets in this exploration of travel and memory.—RDL

Devo (Film, US, Chris Smith, 2025) Arts documentary profiles DEVO, the band who took a Dada sensibility hardened in the Kent State massacre and the industrial dolor of Akron OH and briefly managed to inject it into the pop culture mainstream through such delivery systems  as Warner Brothers Records, SNL, MTV, and The Merv Griffin Show. Freedom from choice, it’s what we want.—RDL

La Dolce Vita (Film, Italy, Federico Fellini, 1960) Tabloid journalist Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) spends a week in his native environment, the celebrity party scene of Rome, and finds himself dissatisfied. Lush and beautiful, this episodic film allows Mastroianni’s layered acting to convey his character’s emotional journey; a stellar supporting cast fills out this slice of the sweet life as Fellini’s story adds the amaro. Vital if not quite transcendent, this must-watch remained on my list of unseen shame for far too long.—KH

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait (Film, Canada, Adrian Langley, 2025) Antique dealer Whitlock (Michael Swatton) interests old-soul artist Ava (Pragya Shail) almost as much as his oval portrait interests area thief Julian (Paul Thomas). Adaptation of the Poe short-short expands in the direction of crime and melodrama, with a nicely satisfying ghost story underneath both. The score by Andrew Morgan Smith perfectly evokes the mood of this Hammer-Hallmark blend that plays out like the 1960s B-pictures it’s modeled on.—KH

Poison in Jest (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1932) Visiting old friends in Pennsylvania, detective sidekick Jeff Marle discovers a house full of deadly pranks, secrets, and (soon) a serial poisoner. Carr lays on the atmosphere thick in this breathing-space novel written the year before he launched his Gideon Fell series. Not as polished as his later masterpieces, but featuring surprisingly strong characterization for Carr.—KH

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Film, US, Jeff Rowe & Kyler Spears, 2023) Adolescent humanoid martial arts chelonians (Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon) who yearn for acceptance in the world of humans battle a monstrous fly (Ice Cube) who plans to destroy it. Kinetic animation and an innovative visual style bring fresh energy to the franchise. I especially loved that the action scene featuring Splinter, voiced by Jackie Chan, follows the rules of a classic Jackie fight.—RDL

Tribe (Film, US, Dan J. Asma, 2025) Retired professor Devon Adams (Asma) heads into the Cujamaca Mountains outside San Diego in search of an explanation for his cult-raised best friend’s suicide. Asma cuts big-budget trailers as his day job, which makes this one of the more effective found-footage films even as the editing is so good that it can break suspension of disbelief. The big reveal is appropriately murky, conspiratorial, and apocalyptic, and Asma picks powerful visuals that overlap with the story suggestively without drowning it.—KH

When the Tenth Month Comes (Film, Vietnam, Đặng Nhật Minh, 1984) Undone with grief on learning that her husband has been killed in action in a border clash with Khmer Rouge Cambodia, a rice farmer enlists a schoolteacher to help conceal his death from family and neighbors. Heartfelt drama with touches of mystical realism examines the dynamics of trauma suppression.—RDL

Wednesday Season 2 (Television, US, Netflix, Alfred Gough & Miles Millar, 2025) Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) trains her knack for investigation on undoing her psychic vision of werewolf roommate Enid’s impending death. Avoids the sophomore slump by devoting more screen time to the perfectly cast other classic Addams characters and with a tightly plotted arc rarely seen in serialized streaming.—RDL

Good

Beyond the Drumlins (Film, US, Dan Bowhers, 2025) Archaeology professor Rust (Michael Kowalski) leads four others into the woods to find an archaeological site for next semester’s dig. Wisely downplaying interpersonal drama, the film depends on the scares to work, which is great until you discover that it’s all the same scare over and over. Some of the segments very effectively spook, and the mysterious structure in the woods is an all-time irruption that absolutely sells it, but as a whole the film never reaches takeoff.—KH

The Bowstring Murders (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1933) When the eccentric and awful Lord Rayle is found strangled with a bowstring in his own armor museum, alcoholic criminologist John Gaunt is called in to solve the case. A borderline locked-room mystery solved with Carr’s traditional brio, but the setting is too over-the-top to be believable, and Carr doesn’t put in the work to keep the cast real enough for us to really care who the killer is.—KH

The Harbor Men (Film, US, Casey Malone, 2025) During the outbreak of a hallucinogenic virus at the docks, vaccine denier Steven Dorre (Aidan White) retrieves a mystical musical instrument from a murder scene. For a while, Malone’s inventiveness and creepy visual sensibilities carry you along, but whatever payoff you thought was coming peters out in mysticism instead of horror.—KH

Okay

Maggie Moore(s) (Film, US, John Slattery, 2023) Widowed small town police chief (Jon Hamm) investigating the murders of two women with the same name tentatively romances the next door neighbor (Tina Fey) of the dumbass perpetrator (Micah Stock.) Nick Mohammed stands out in this blend of rom com and Coenesque neo-noir with his atypical delivery in a stock character role, the deputy who acts as Hamm’s confidant / sidekick.—RDL

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Episode 669: His Botanist Turns On Him

October 3rd, 2025 | Robin

The Gaming Hut becomes a pit stop as beloved Patreon backer Aser Tolentino asks how a tabletop game might reproduce the spectacle of Formula One racing.

In the History Hut we ask if Elizabeth Bathory was framed.

Robin shares his KARTAS-friendly discoveries from this year’s Robin and Valerie International Film Festival in the Cinema Hut.

Finally at the behest of estimable backer Bob J. Koester, Ken’s Time Machine gets mixed up with that most fossilized of controversies, the Prototaxites Feud.

Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!

Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.

Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.

Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.

The official CatStronauts board game features cooperative play that’s only 30-45 minutes long, for 1-4 players ages 10+. Designed and illustrated by CatStronauts comic book creator Drew Brockington and available now from Atlas Games!

A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!

Get caught in the spiral with God’s Teeth, a new set of pulse-pounding Delta Green scenarios dripping with the once and future corruption of a nation swirling into cruelty and spite. From a government panopticon to alien worms to an app-driven mass shooter, your agents have nothing to fear but every screaming headline.

Play spies, skirmishers, and saboteurs in the battle for the future of the Thirteen Colonies in Flagbearer Games’ thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated 5E compatible roleplaying game Nations and Cannons. Jump into the early actions of the war with the new campaign guide The American Crisis, available as a PDF or for print pre-order.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Film Cannister
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Flying Clock
Robin
Film Cannister