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Welcome to Kicking the Seat!

Ian Simmons launched Kicking the Seat in 2009, one week after seeing Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia. His wife proposed blogging as a healthier outlet for his anger than red-faced, twenty-minute tirades (Ian is no longer allowed to drive home from the movies).

The Kicking the Seat Podcast followed three years later and, despite its “undiscovered gem” status, Ian thoroughly enjoys hosting film critic discussions, creating themed shows, and interviewing such luminaries as Gaspar NoéRachel BrosnahanAmy Seimetz, and Richard Dreyfuss.

Ian is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association. He also has a family, a day job, and conflicted feelings about referring to himself in the third person.

Vampyres (1974)

There’s a lot more to Vampyres than the cheap thrill of watching voluptuous, bisexual blood-suckers stalk prey in the English countryside. Okay, “a lot” may be pushing it, but director José Larraz and writer Diana Daubeney rise above mere soft-core erotica by presenting their children of the night as eternally bored predatory animals. For Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka), sex and dismemberment are but a means to momentary relief from a life spent in the bowels of their broken-down castle, forever dodging the sun and horny motorists’ pick-up lines. Throw in a handful of unsolved mysteries that hint at a sinister history we’ll never see, plus running commentary by a pair of voyeuristic vacationers (one skeptical that anything odd is afoot, one drawn to the seductresses she sees skulking about the woods), and you have a dreamy 70s mash-up of Hellraiser and Blue is the Warmest Color.

Inferno (2016)

Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991)