Podcasts

Podcast: Heather O. Petrocelli on ‘Death Spa’

August 30th, 2024 | By Matthew Monagle

When Certified Forgotten is firing on all cylinders, it sometimes feels it’s because we’re having very smart conversations about very stupid movies. That is certainly the case in this week’s episode, where Heather O. Petrocelli, author of Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator, joins us for an episode on Death Spa. Academic conversations about audience identities followed by a raucous conversation about one of the silliest and goopiest horror films of the 1980s? That’s Certified Forgotten in a nutshell, baby.

After the tragic death of his wife, gym owner Michael Evans (William Bumiller) wants nothing more than to disappear into his, ah, relationships at work. Unfortunately, Michael cannot operate the facility — a fully automated marvel of modern technology — by David (Merritt Butrick), his former brother-in-law. So when his customers start falling victim to a series of glitches in the machine, Michael suspects that David may be on a path for revenge. Written by James Bartruff and Mitch Paradise, and directed by Michael Fischa, Death Spa is a prime example of “gym-sploitation” run amok.

In this short excerpt from the episode, Heather explains why there are still some parts of Death Spa that deserve to be taken seriously:

“It’s got this weird, dated discourse around disability, but at the same time, as someone now who’s been like disabled by COVID, it also has this very delicious response of vengeance from a disabled person […] I was like, oh, this is actually a great like disability revenge story where Catherine will get all you motherfuckers.”

The Bruiser episode of the Certified Forgotten podcast is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or the podcast platform of your choice.