The Point Radio: The Soska Sisters Serve Up Scares For Cash

Incredibly talented, especially adorable and defiantly twisted. They are The Soska Sisters, Jen and Sylvia, accomplished horror film directors, Marvel Comics writers and now creators of a terrifying new game show. The Twisted Twins spill the news on HELLEVATOR and how much fright it takes to grab $50,000 on The Game Show Network. Then Matt Passmore, star of USA Network’s SATISFACTION, lays out a few spoilers for what’s ahead on season 2 of the steamy drama.

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Transcript

The Point Radio. Hey, it's Mike Raub. We're here to spend some time with the Twisted Twins. The SUSCA sisters are here to talk about how they got into the scary stuff and what's ahead for them. Plus from USA Satisfaction, Matt Passmore is here and he lays out the spoilers.

Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. Unique, adorable, innovative and certainly twisted.

There's some ways to describe horror film icons, Jen and Sylvia SUSCA, who are taking themselves away from the big screen for a bit and getting into competition TV with a new show on the game show network called Elevator, where contestants become part of a horror film and maybe pick up $50,000 in the process. I asked the sisters to describe to me how this game works.

Well, what happens in Elevator is three friends come into our abandoned slaughterhouse, get on our Elevator, and that's when the interactive survival horror experience starts. Yes, they have to compete individually, which they don't know up until they come in. And I suspect season two, they'll be aware. And each challenge increases in difficulty.

Now, if the contestants are capable of completing their challenges, they get an opportunity to compete in the final level, the labyrinth, which is really where all hell breaks loose. And they have an opportunity to win another $22,000 there. All right. So what are some of the terrible things these people have to face?

I had to know. Absolutely, Mike. So one of my favorite scares is that we put a black bag over one of the contestants' heads, and then when we pulled it off, he woke up in a medical bathtub covered with lunatures. I'm also proud to say that we have Chris, who is the creature handler from Fear Factor, on board for the show.

So snakes, spiders, tarantulas, hissing African cockroaches. They're all in the show. Wow. I know. It's an amazing experience. I think a lot of people are surprised how exact these challenges are,

because it's almost like living through an episode of Saw. Everything is very, very scary, even even the hardcore horror bands. And that's part of the fun of it. They compete live. We don't edit it. Well, of course, we edit it afterwards, put it together.

But they go through the game show, and whatever happens just happens to happen. And they have no idea what they're walking into. That's true. So all those screens are genuine screens, Mike. So how did it all get started for Jen and Sylvia? What was the first time they were really scared?

You know, the first time I was ever scared, a spider crawled out of a cupboard, and I remember running out of a coin, and I saw my grandfather and my dad outside. I told him there was a spider. I was so scared. My grandfather hadn't survived World War II, just looked at me and said, so? After that, that changed how I interacted with Fear.

As little girls, black on video stores actually existed, we would go in the highly decorated horror movies section and look at all the movies and make up what we thought they were about until eventually when we were 10, our mom let us rent Poltergeist, which was designed to terrify our children.

Yeah, I'd really like to blame my mom for that, because she loved horror movies and Stephen King, and when she let us watch Poltergeist, we were able to keep our cool for a little while and pretend we weren't scared until, of course, bedtime,

because that's the scariest time for anyone that's terrified already. And then she did something that just changed our lives forever. She said that everything that happened in that film, there's a writer, there's a director, there's actors, and there's prosthetic artists that made all of the scares,

it's their job to scare you, and there's like, whoa, mom, back up a second. It can be a job to scare someone, and that was just it for us. Yeah, fast forward a few years later, literally, it is our job to scare people. Wow. They've given us some pretty frightening scenes on the big screen,

but I asked them what their favorite all-time horror film scene was. Oh, wow. I would have to say, classically, the greatest horror film ever made is The Exorcist. The way that they made it, I mean, they didn't have CGI to put the breath in the air, when the room was cold, they actually froze the room,

the effects still stand up, and they've never seen an exorcism movie that scared me as much as The Exorcist. Oh, no, absolutely. My favorite horror movie would probably be American Psycho, directed by Mary Herring, because that is what got us into directing horror movies.

I saw they were trying to kick her out of Toronto when she was shooting there, and she defended the artistic merit of this film. At the time, I didn't know what the film was, I didn't know who she was, and then when the movie did come out, I watched it, and I thought, oh, what a smart satire, and how selfish she is alive.

That would be the most quotable horror movie ever made. Oh, absolutely, but yeah, we watched like three horror movies a day, Mike. We binge-watched everything, because we're just so hungry for it. In the past, the sisters have worked with the folks at the WWE studios, directing Cino Evil 2 and a new action film called Vendetta,

and that's a relationship that's still going strong. Oh, yes, absolutely. We have great relationships with the WWE, and this week, this Sunday, how a whole nacelle is happening in LA, and you better believe we'll be there, and I hope to finally meet my hero, The Undertaker.

This has been a very long plan to meet The Undertaker, Mike. I'm hoping it's finally happening. This better happen, I'll kill you. I'll just do it, but I don't need the undertaker. Oh, I have a surprise for you.

Jen and Sylvia also have a love affair with comics. Oh, well, our first comic book with Marvel worked really well. It was at that Secret Ward, journal number five, and it was so successful, we asked this cut to come back, so we're just going to decide which one that'll be, but we are huge comic nerds.

I'm already elated that I even got an opportunity to write for them to continue writing. It's a stream come through. And we also have an original comic book coming out next year called Kill Crazy Mimso's Attack, which is a throwback to Grindhouse horror.

Yeah. And that's with one of our favorite Marvel writers, Daniel Lane. He was the one who created Wolverine's Son, and he does a lot of stuff with Deadpool, so he's just fantastic. See, the sisters have their best in Vendetta and See No Evil 2,

both available on DVD, Blu-ray, and video on demand, and see new episodes of Elevator every Wednesday on the Game Show Network. The flight radio. Luke Skywalker broke the Internet. All that and more and what's going on in pop culture.

All that buzz did lead to something. It looks like the Gilmore Girls is returning from the dead. Thanks to Netflix, that is, the streaming service is developing a revival with the series' creator and her husband. The revival will be four 90-minute movies.

No word yet on when production will begin or which parts of the original cast will return. All right, so it's two months away, but it pretty much almost broke the Internet this week. Of course, we're talking about advanced tickets for Star Wars, The Force Awakens,

and again, Fandango saw traffic surges seven times their normal peak level. Other ticket sites also experience either outages or huge jam-ups at the first start of the week. And it all came down to a lot of other records being broken, including the one for IMAX screenings with more than $6.5 million generated

and domestic ticket sales for an estimated 390 IMAX screens in North America that'll show the film on the opening weekend. Add this to your scoreboard for what's going on so far in the new TV season. ABC has given the back nine to the Ken Jeong comedy Dr. Ken. They've ordered nine more episodes of the series

because, well, it's been averaging pretty well. 6.6 million viewers among the coveted 18 to 49-year-old age bracket. The next round of Marvel's True Believer's Line will feature Deadpool. There'll be 10 titles released in January all for a dollar apiece. And they'll reprint some iconic stories featuring the character,

including New Mutants number 98, some issues of cable and Deadpool, and others as well. All 10 issues, as we said, will be $1 and will be in comic stores in January. A couple more TV casualties. First, ABC has decided to not bring back their summer series, Rookie Blue, next year. That would have been its seventh season, but this past year, the network feels

that the show reached a natural conclusion. Meanwhile, low ratings has brought down defiance on sci-fi. That show will not be coming back for a fourth season due to just about an average of 1.1 million viewers for this latest season on sci-fi. On a completely other side of the coin, AMC's Walking Dead returned for season 6

and brought along with it some 19.5 million viewers. 12.8 million of those were in the coveted 18 to 49 age group as well. More records were said again as Walking Dead clocked in with again the largest season premiere on AMC. The point, the point. Seduction, greed, sex, it's all there in the USA series Satisfaction,

heading into its second season with new episodes on the network right now. I talked to leading man Matt Passmore about the show and asked him to describe how things are for those who are a little late to the party. Satisfaction starts off with Neil Truman, who seemingly has the American dream, is not happy in life and feels like the trackings of the society that we live in

have really made him lose touch with himself. So he bores his job out of the water, grums to tell the person that means most to him, his wife, and finds her in the arms of a male escort. So that sends Neil down a journey of self-discovery and trying to find out how this happened and what happened to their relationship and stumbles into the world of male escorting itself

in his journey in the questions that he got. So where do we find his character in season 2? So season 2 picks up straight after season 1 finished. So Neil and Grace have sort of reconnected in a way they're about to run off to Italy. And one of Neil's former clients, so to speak, her husband is walking into the house with a gun in his hand.

So there's that threat, and there's also the threat that he's going to blow the lid off everything that they've been doing, or certainly that Neil's been doing behind their back. So the secrets are nice, all piled up. And it all gets blown out of the water, so to speak. So the new season really shoots off with this new energy and quite a fearlessness.

All right. Well, spoilers notwithstanding, I asked Matt to talk about more on what's on the way for the season. Well, it gets weightier. There is a new energy that comes into season 2 and a fearlessness, and I say that in the way that, you know, this couple has been driven by fear, you know, fear that the other person will find out, fear that they'll lose each other. And season 2 certainly starts with all that getting blown right out of the water.

So both characters are striding forward, and while they're saying, well, you know, the worst has happened, so, you know, I'm not afraid of anything. So they're really powering into this next season. It really shoots off. So why is a show like this so hot? Is that a comment about, well, relationships and the society we have today? Yeah, I think the show really deals with a lot of issues that everyone can relate to in whatever part of life they are. I mean, this is a – it's a weird world we live in, and there are so many things to ask of us,

especially if you're a provider and you have kids, and the last person you really think about after you've taken care of everything else is yourself. And then if you really touch with yourself, what do you bring to a relationship? So this series really does deal with that. And then, of course, it's the Secret, and Lies, and Trial, and Infidelity, which, you know, seems to be quite a topic these days. Look at the whole Ashley Madison thing. So it's – yeah, it really sort of lifts the lid on – in an absurd way, it lifts the lid on what's going on in relationships these days. Matt's had a successful run on TV. Previously, of course, he was on The Glades. And now with satisfaction, I was curious as to what kind of roles he really looks for.

I usually look for – well, I look at the character that I may be playing and whether it will be fun to play. And I mean fun as in, you know, either the fun character to play or is, you know, someone going through a cathartic crisis in their life is fun as well. But it's normally the story that appeals to me initially. And with satisfaction, what I thought was really endearing from the very start – one, I thought that it dealt with all of the things that both men and women deal with, you know, just trying to get by these days. But the endearing thing was that when Neil does find out about this stuff, that with his wife, he doesn't blow the marriage out of the water. He doesn't confront her and destroy everything. He actually looks deep within himself and actually starts asking questions, how did I bring this about?

And that was the connection when I first read it. I thought, well, this is interesting. And then talking with the executive producers, Sean Jablonski, who created it, said it's a postmodern love story. And I first went, what? But that seems to be the theme through the entire series. No matter how far they push the envelope and how unorthodox they are, there is this genuine love underneath it. And, you know, as an audience, we watch and go, like, how far can they push this thing?

But it's all in this realm of self-discovery. So as far as acting goes, if there's any kind of dream role he can have in any kind of medium, what would that be? You know, I never got to try my hand at Hamlet. I started out in a theater, and it's just one of those roles that encapsulates everything that you want to go through. You know, it's such a cathartic thing for an actor to do every night on stage. So I think, yeah, it might be a boring answer, but I think I'd go with Hamlet.

Well, you've got some experience. There's no small amount of infidelity in there either. So there you go. Right now, it's just a bit of murder, and yeah. There you go. See, Matt, in Satisfaction, new episodes air every Friday on USA. And catch up right now with the USA on demand and the app USA Now. The point, the point.

Well, they didn't drop as much as comic books did, but graphic novels also took a little bit of a slide when we look at the sales in comic book stores for the month of September. Graphic novels dropped 8.8% when compared with the same month in 2014. And again, with Marvel Comics taking up six of the top 10 slots. Those top 10 best-selling graphic novels in stores in September include the Saga Trade Paperback Volume 1 from Image at number 10, and number 9, the Joker Endgame Hardcover at number 8, Batman the Killing Joke Special Edition Hardcover, at number 7, Mad Max Fury Road, the Trade Paperback from DC, at number 6, Avatar The Last Airbender Volume 10, at number 5, Batman the Trade Volume 6, Graveyard Shift.

Chrononauts number 1, the Trade Paperback from Image came in at number 4, the Batman Hardcover Volume 7 Endgame was at number 3, at number 2, the Descenders Trade Paperback 10 Stars from Image, and the number 1 best-seller also came from Image as well, that's the Saga Trade Paperback Volume 5. And we're back here in a few days.