Podcast: Jarrod Hornbeck on ‘Out of the Dark’

Who better to find the line between trash and treasure than a Full Moon Features expert? On this episode of Certified Forgotten, we are joined by Jarrod Hornbeck, cohost of the Charles Band-centric podcast Puppet Masters / Castle Freaks. Hornbeck explains why he's chosen to spend his time celebrating the films of a low-budget maestro while also talking about Michael Schroeder's erotic thriller Out of the Dark, a film he now has a personal connection to almost four decades after its initial release.

Who you gonna call? Suite Nothings! That’s right, everyone loves California’s hottest phone sex hotline – even the young mix of aspiring actors and models who make money on the side by talking dirty to strangers for five dollars a minute. But when someone starts turning their wildest fantasies into a deadly reality, the girls find themselves the target of a serial killer who stalks the streets of Los Angeles dressed as a clown. If anyone at Suite Nothings is going to survive, they’ll need to rely on photographer Kevin (Cameron Dye) and actress Kristi (Lynn Danielson-Rosenthal) to solve the murders and take on the killer before it’s too late. Shaped like a Brian De Palma film, and featuring the final onscreen performance of Divine, Out of the Dark is an exemplary piece of ‘80s trash.

In this short excerpt, Hornbeck shares his thoughts on why Out of the Dark still flies under our collective radar even as every other thriller from the 1980s seemingly finds its audience.

It was made at a time where horror was starting to change a lot. There was a lot more emphasis on the supernatural at that time, and even the big franchises were, for lack of a better phrase, jumping the shark a little bit. So this is a movie that came out to very little fanfare and was forgotten for a very long time.

The Out of the Dark episode of the Certified Forgotten podcast with Jarrod Hornbeck is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, or the podcast platform of your choice.