175: Movies That Never Had A Chance

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Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power. What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown, I'm Brian. I'm dave i'm lucy i'm alan i'm ben i'm bo and i'm greg. And we are back for another session of the caffeinated movie. Geek cappuccino my butt i still drink coffee.

The last fucking thing you need is another cup of coffee. It's time for the caffeinated movie. Geek we are coming to you live via digital recording from green room coffee and espresso bar where we will get together drink coffee talk about movies that never had a shot and Once again, we have Alan here from Green Room, so we will ask you, Alan, what blend of coffee are we drinking this week? Sumatra. Oh, that's not even a funny name.

Come on. That's all I'm saying. Make it a Sumatra Sarsaparilla or something. Whatever. Sumatra.

You're going to drink it. Damn it. He's right. I'm drinking it now. Sumatran Rat Monkey.

There we go. That I like. See, we can get on board with that. I wouldn't drink that. You can market it.

It's like you come in feeling dead, but you drink it, and then you're alive. See, that would work, actually. It's a lot about coffee. If you knew it, you wouldn't drink it. Which we're going to go into right now.

If only when you drink it, somewhere you have 40 acrimonious.... So, before we get into our topic of the week, we've got a story that we were going. To touch on. Greg, this was you and I. This was.

A while back when we were at Taxi Driver, and after our fun-filled tie-in episode, we were leaving the theater. Now, do you want to set the scene? Well, first, I don't get the best sleep. You're both looking at me and smiling already, and I don't know what's getting ready to happen. It's all Bo's fault.

It's all Bo's fault. No, we're at his showing of Taxi Driver, and out front, they're showing a movie. Trailers or whatever. But I think it was the whole movie this time. I think it was the whole movie.

Oh, no, never mind. I know. I get an idea. And so I. Know I've seen it or seen parts of it, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it, and I'm like, but I've got to go sit down for the movie.

And then it's still on two hours later when we're, you know, I guess it's on a loop. Still on two hours later when we're leaving, and I stop, you know, like a movie geek, and I'm still watching it. And it's like a scene that, I mean, it's just... It's a guy and a motorcycle and two kids, and it's a very specific visual you've got there. And then we get this conversation.

Yeah, I say, you know, I know it's a movie about a car, and a car. That's killing people, you know, like a Christine sort of thing. This is all I'm remembering bits and pieces of it. And I don't even know if I've watched it, so I'm sitting there going, I don't think that's Brolin. You're crazy.

I know it predates the film adaptation of Christine. I don't know about that. It does. It does? Okay.

And I go, you know, I couldn't place the name. And I said, you know, the guy that plays Pee Wee in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I was like, Roland? I'm not thinking clearly. It's two o'clock in the morning and I'm supposed to get up in two hours.

And so we're walking out and he goes, whatever. That's a that's one of those Disney movies, you know, because it. You know, the girl from Witch Mountain is in the film. And he goes, that's one of those live-action Disney movies that they made back then. About killer cars.

No, that's the one about the killer car. Because we haven't seen the killer car yet in the clips that we're getting. But we leave. You all are turning out the lights. Our movie geek conversation is funny enough, if you're a movie geek.

But the one that we overhear just a piece of. No, you deliver it. Basically, then we walk past these other people who are kind of having that same thing, only they're a few levels down on the geekdom because one looks up and goes, that's E.T. The girl from Witch Mountain rolling in the middle. Of E.T., I was just like, how?

And they're younger, so it's, you know. That's E.T., So now just every time, you know, several messages back and forth. No, dog, I was E.T. And then so that there was that story. And then it reminded me this just happened to be like a day or two before that was I was I was because we were getting all prepped for the taxi driver episode.

And I was telling somebody, again, someone who was not a big movie geek. And in their defense, they were telling me about stuff I had no idea about. So, you know, they were very knowledgeable in their area. But in movies, we got to... I was like, oh, and this week we're doing Taxi Driver.

And they went, is that the one based on a TV show? And all of a sudden, it hit me. Taxi? I was like, so now suddenly it's flashing through my head. Judd Hirsch is the Taxi Driver.

Judd Hirsch with the mohawk, yeah. And then I started casting. I'm like, okay, Danny DeVito's the Peter Boyle part. Mary Lou Henner can be Sybil Shipp. Yeah, okay, well, we can make this work.

All right, hold on. So. I don't know. It's funny when you get different levels of geekdom hanging out together. It's like, how doesn't that parody exist somewhere?

Yeah, you would think. That's the main thing. Oh, so yeah. I just thought. Both of those were quite amusing.

But I like that you're saying, it's this movie about this car. It's called The Car. The Hell You Said. Yeah, I went home and I looked it up and I sent him the IMDb page for it. And it's funny because I kept mentioning it.

I was like, it's about a car. It's about a car. It's a car. I don't know what it's called, but it's about a car. It's funny then that I would bring up The Car in this episode.

Y'all were having this parallel conversation about The Car. Memorable film for. Silly as it is. So yeah, I just thought that was a fun way to kick it off. Movie geekdom.

Not that we don't have enough of that on this show. Alright, with that we will take a break and we will be back with this week's topic. Let's all go to the lobby Let's all go to the lobby Let's all go to the lobby To get ourselves a treat Delicious things to eat. The popcorn can't be beat. The sparkling drinks are just dandy.

The chocolate bars and the candy. So let's all go to. The lobby to get ourselves a treat. Let's all go. To the lobby to get ourselves a treat.

Evil has visited the earth in many forms. Now it returns as the car. There was no driver in the car. I know why he didn't go into the cemetery. The ground... was hallowed.

Who knows what it wants? They all know nothing can stop the car. This is Wade. We can't let him through no matter what. Stay in close.

You have to stop. There's nowhere to turn. The car, he's in here. Nowhere to hide. No way to stop the car.

Coming May 26th and 27th. Wonderfest. In this, their 22nd year, Wonderfest is still the annual expo for model and toy collectors. with a huge display and competition for plastic kits and garage kits. This year, in addition to all the events, they are also welcoming actress Joanna Cassidy from Blade Runner and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as well as Bill Moseley, Julie Adams from Creature in the Black Lagoon, and designer and illustrator Eric Chu, who redesigned the Cylons, Raiders, Vipers, and much of the universe for Battlestar Galactica. Plus lots of other guests and activities.

So go to wonderfest.com and check it out yourself. Listen and understand that Metal Mikey is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear.

And it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are an Action Attraction fan. Action Attraction. Your home for all things action.

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Sounds better. Hi, I'm Dee Wallace and you're listening to Movie Meltdown. It's part of your problem, you know, you haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies. And now, on with the show.

Skies are crying. I'm watching, catching teardrops in my hands Only silence as it's ending like we never had a chance Do you have to make me feel like there's nothing left of me? Yeah, Brian's response was, here it is, it's the car. And he's like, whatever, that's E. Whatever, that was totally E.

That was totally E.T. You're so stupid. Ronnie Cox is the head scientist. All right, we're back, and it's time for The Grind. The Grind.

In this segment, we discuss a specific topic or question related to movies. As often as possible, we'd like it to come from you, but you guys kind of slack off and you never really come through for us. So once again, we go to our own group. If you have any, feel free to email us at geeks at movie meltdown. But this week's topic for the grind comes from Dave, who is seated here amongst us.

And after a recent incident, we'll say at the box office, thought that we should discuss movies that never had a chance. Dave, would you like to kick this off? Certainly. With that incident, more than likely? They've had me gagged in the back because I won't stop talking about John Carter, which should properly be called John Carter of Mars, and it's the most recent and probably most famous victim of this situation.

Certainly the biggest deal that they've made. Yeah, it's one of the most expensive movies ever made, but oddly it seems to be one of the most profitable flops ever made at the same time because it's made about $ 270 million. Darn. Yeah. Don't you hate when that happens?

Less than a week into its run, Disney was proclaiming it publicly through places like the New York Times that it was one of the biggest disasters in box office history. Which seems kind of unprofessional. Yeah, it's very unproductive. Yeah, that too. What I think it all boils down to is it's a war of personalities, and it was a war of personalities between Andrew Stanton, who made Disney something like, I don't know, half a billion dollars or more, with WALL-E and Finding Nemo.

He was given his dream project a few years ago. This film had been floating around for decades. People had been trying to make John Carter. It went through a lot of different directors and finally ended up at, initially I thought, at Pixar. I thought, oh, great, perfect, that'll be good.

And then it turned out Disney wanted to take it live action, and it would be their avatar. And they let him run with it. And there was no ceiling on this budget, which was a mistake. Yeah. But then they dropped the ball as far as promoting, as far as trying to put it out there.

And it really was going against the grain of the regime that was in charge now. The one that greenlit it was gone. And Richard Ross, who's an idiot, who was fired like two days ago. I was really happy to hear that. he had it in for this film from the beginning and he didn't like any of the choices Stanton made so Disney literally did not market the picture they went with a very quiet low key marketing no merchandising which this is this is Disney. And if ever there's an action-oriented movie with alien characters...

With dozens. Of characters and spaceships and, you know. Playsets of the monster fight, you know? That was my first indication that something was really strange. Yeah.

Because, you know, usually you're going to see toys in the stores two, three months before the movie comes out and nothing was coming out for John Carter. And I don't think this was a choice that Stan made. You know, they kept trying to lay the blame on him while we were behind him in his choices for marketing. And this is all BS. It's Disney.

And ultimately, what just came out a few days ago, was that Ross had spoken ill about the picture before it was out. It's the whole people just love to tear into something. The media loves to tear into things, and that's what happened. So cohorts all over the place, publications that are actually linked to other studios, love to watch disasters take place. They started talking about what an awful movie it was, and it isn't an awful movie.

It's not a perfect movie, but it's a really good adventure film. I had fun with it. And they just sabotaged it at the box office. And what came out was that this had been going on for quite some time. And Ross was attempting to blame Pixar because of their style of filmmaking, which is lots of reshoots, but lots of pure digital reshoots.

And successful movies. Yeah, super successful movies. Everything they touch turns to gold. And John Lasseter, who's, of course, head of Pixar, is also chief creative officer at Disney. He didn't like it. and what I like is the fact that Pixar kind of takes care of their own.

So he and everybody else on the board shot back, and Ross is out of a job, and I'm very happy. It's a little too late to actually save the movie in the popular eye. It just opened in Japan. It isn't doing great, but it did great in Europe. It's still doing well.

There's a huge drive to get it to the audience that needs to see it. But it's one of the Probably the most classic case of a movie that was sabotaged and a movie that didn't have a chance. And there's a long history of those, but this is probably one of the biggest. And I think there's a lot of different levels to it and reasons as to why things didn't work out. Some of it's from the inside.

Some of it's totally from the audience side. So I thought we could just throw a lot of them out here and just sort of have it a roundabout on all of these different ones. Yeah, certainly with John Carter. I mean, it's a 100-year-old book. And a lot of people haven't read it.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, who created Tarzan, actually, it was his first book. And a lot of genre authors and filmmakers over the years have basically pirated this story. And it's appeared in a lot of movies you've seen already. But therefore, people looking at it thought, well, I've seen this before. But the thing is, they hadn't seen the original.

And Disney could have obviously promoted that fact, that this was sort of the mother of all science fiction pictures and made people understand it to a degree. It doesn't take much to educate an audience to a blockbuster. But they just chose not to. They really wanted to let it fall. So they could write it off.

Because they are not interested in doing, at least Ross's regime was not interested in doing a lot more of live action filmmaking. They had beaten Pirates of the Caribbean pretty much into the ground. And this was going to be the first of a trilogy. And they didn't want to look at spending this kind of money on live action pictures. Not when you can get a huge return off an animated film.

Mm-hmm. So it just didn't fit with what they wanted to do, so it was kind of a sacrificial lamb in that case. But it's happened before. That's what I said when we first started talking about this online a long time ago. Again, they set everything up themselves.

If you can't afford to invest $ 300 million in something, then don't. If you're setting up to throw that much money at something, how many movies anymore are blockbusters? Think about it. Every weekend something comes out, not that often is it like oh my god this is a huge hit every once in a while a few times a year maybe but i mean don't bank on any of these movies making you back 300 million and that's you know before you throw money in advertising and just yeah to me it's sort of their own fault for doing that it's like really this movie didn't need that much money thrown at it i think it could have been made for half of that. I don't know that I actually believe some of those figures.

They talk about spending $ 100 million to promote a film. They obviously didn't, this picture. But they love to throw those big numbers around and make it sound like a loss to the average person. But film production at Disney is something like 7% of the company's income. So it isn't that big a deal to them, really.

I think it's just indicative of the way that things have been going with films in the past, really, about 15 years or so, ever since home video and especially DVD things come out so quickly, studios don't care if something has legs. It's like if it doesn't cash in on that first weekend, they chalk it up as a failure. So it's like they try to pimp it out, and again, they don't care whether it's going to be good or not, too. It's like, can we dupe people long enough so they'll come and see it on that first weekend and make a bunch of money? And somewhere along the way, like with Carter, where they're like, eh, we don't think it'll work, they just drop it.

Yeah, and then Bo and I, you know, Bo still works in film exhibition, and I did for like a dozen years. And you've seen less and less emphasis on what goes on in the theater. They really don't care about theaters. It's that first week. It's the first weekend, and it's where the money's coming from.

And they stopped doing previews for critics. Yeah, I mean, I can't think of the last time. Because used to, we would have previews for critics. I mean, you're talking at least once every couple weeks, if not more so, but now. I think it's been probably a couple years.

They don't want to take the risk of a bad review. They opened Battleship overseas before they did in the U.S. market. Nice. Because they didn't want it to take a beating. It's Battleship.

I was ready for that movie to die when I saw the first review. Just like, I just kept staring at it going, is this another Transformers movie? I mean, I didn't know they were making another one. Might as well. And it's like Battleship.

And I'm like, okay. And then they tell me it's based on the board game. Based on the board game with aliens. I don't know. Remember the aliens in the board game?

When they made Twister into a movie from the board game, it was kind of an odd adaptation of the game, but I enjoyed it. I thought they went a very artistic way with that. Left foot green. Paxton screaming out. Spin again!

But I remember, like, before John Carter, it was, like, a couple weeks before it came out, like, the few reviews that, I was looking at Rotten Tomatoes, and the few reviews that leaked were all fresh, which I thought was odd. Like, I want, like, it was for, like, a couple days, it was, like, 90% fresh or something. I thought it was going to be really, like, I was like, oh, wow, you know, critics are loving this. It makes me wonder, like, do movies sometimes, like, strike a deal, like, saying, like, we'll only, you can only review our movie if it's a positive one, that's all we're going to release? Because I'm noticing that with a lot of really bad movies, like, they'll start out Again, I'm speaking from only Rotten Tomatoes, and that's the only source I have, but these really awful, not like John Carter wasn't awful, but these awful bombs, they'll have 90%, 85%, and you think they're going to be really good based on the first six or seven or ten reviews or whatever.

Well, I think those early reviews are objective, and I think the ones that come later are sort of a mob mentality. And you've also got, when it comes to genre films, you've got, You've got fanboy backlash. It happens a lot. Where the people who should be liking this film don't. And it's usually for really stupid reasons.

The same with, like, Watchmen was another one to work on a couple years ago. It was dumped right in March. And, you know, it's like, yeah, I like the graphic novel, but I sit there and I watch the film, like, I enjoy this too. I thought Watchmen was about as good an adaptation as you could do. Yeah, I mean, I can't stand any time somebody is obsessive about something being... you know, dogmatically like a literal adaptation of the book.

It's like, no, it is just that it's an adaptation. It's for the director to read that original script or material and trying to figure out how to make it work on the screen. And sometimes it's better. He improved on it. Yeah, the end was better.

Making Doc Manhattan the threat instead of some bogus alienation. It's a way better movie. But you'll see that. You'll see when a movie's release date is. And if you see anything in February and March...

They have no confidence. Same with September and early October. It's considered dead zones. And really January, too. You associate January with being all the stuff that's released for the Oscars.

Technically, that was released in New York and L.A. Before Christmas, anything that's released for the first time in January, it's pure crap. Or at least the studio has no confidence in it. But actually going to something that was released in February, and it's always my thing that I kind of go to any time we're talking about book adaptations versus film, would be Mothman Prophecies. Because there is a movie where, really, the main characters in the film are not in the book.

I mean, they're interpretations. Yeah, it's more or less a fictionalized version of a straightforward movie. But to me, it's a successful adaptation of the book, even though it has not that much to do with it other than it creates that atmosphere of what the hell is going on. because really the book is just an objective collection of just really creepy shit that was happening in West Virginia at the time, and they actually made that into a coherent story. But I remember reading the reviews, and one of the main criticisms by critics who reviewed at the time was they said, well, I don't like it that it doesn't give you a resolution at the end. It's like, well, there is no resolution to what happens because nobody knows.

That's what being scary is all about. That they like wrapping things up and putting that. Bow on them, right? I mean, that movie had one of the most terrifying scenes I've ever seen in any film. And it's something you have to press pause.

I don't know if you want to see it. It's like where Richard Gere slams this door. And there's a mirror on it. If you press pause right there, there's a weird face or a creature staring. And it's terrifying.

You have to look really close, but I was like, that was really effective. I like them. Yeah, for me, actually, the stuff that was the creepiest in the film for me is the same stuff that was the creepiest in the book, and that is when it was the people telling the stories as to what they'd seen, because that's what the book is all about. They're allowed to actually tell a tale. An anecdote that someone had told John Keel when he wrote it down.

God, that's freaking creepy. There's the one story that's in the book that isn't in the film I thought was terrifying, where this fellow was watching television and it slowly fades to static, and in his dog that's never barked in his life starts freaking out and so he opens up the door and he sees these red glowing eyes like nine feet off the ground the dog goes running straight towards and he hears this yelp and then the eyes just go up and he never sees his dog again i mean that stuff When it's all to the imagination, it's so much creepier than what they show you. But very few films, directors want to do that, or studios. I mean, you know, The Haunting, the original Robert Wise haunting. Blair Witch did a great job.

At the beginning of that, where they're going around interviewing people, they did a great job of building up the. Oh, yeah, the whole documentary, the mockumentary that was done about Blair Witch, I think is actually. Better than the movie. Yeah, yeah, because he. That was genius.

He got people to buy it. People totally bought it. Up until you saw that girl on Steak and Shake commercials, you were. Like, wait a minute. People were coming out swearing it was Baxter.

We were running it at Baxter. We were messing with people. We were making those little stick people and putting them in people's cars. We would leave them made of straws. We'd watch them.

It was summertime and they had their windows down. We'd watch them freeze. Freak out I remember when we were showing I was standing in the back waiting to clean the theater up and this kid had snuck in because I remember I went to go sell him the ticket he wanted it for Blair Witch he was way too young he was by himself and I told him no but he snuck in he was sitting in the very back of the theater it was during the last couple minutes and his feet were. Pulled up like around his chin and there were tears like streaming down his face and I remember thinking love to just grab him just the mental image of me even doing that him screaming and everyone turning around and i just had to walk out before i started cracking up at the end of this very terrifying moment in the film but.

That that i mean you know people talk about that i don't know it's kind of almost make it a joke i guess now i don't know maybe it's because of the sequel but i That was a scary movie. Yeah, before you knew what was going on, going in for the first time, like when it was first released, not knowing anything about it, it was very terrifying because it just seemed so realistic. We had gotten back from our honeymoon. We were gone in South America for a month. We'd seen nothing leading up to it.

And my roommate at the time, before he moved out right after my wife and I got married, he had left it up on my computer, like the website that they had devoted to it. And I was like, let's go see this movie. It's showing at the theater. This was in Bloomington. And we didn't, you know, we were like, well, it's probably fake, you know.

But we didn't have any of the buildup to it or anybody talking about it leading into it. So it was. Pretty interesting experience. Yeah, it's kind of the antithesis of what we're talking about. It's a movie that cost nothing to make.

I think Artisan bought it for a million bucks. I think it cost $ 10, 000 to make. They paid off well for the filmmaker and then they went and did a great job of guerrilla marketing. That was probably the first push on the internet. It's still considered to be the most successful independent film of all time.

Budget versus intake is the most successful picture. That's a case of somebody doing something right. That was Artisan, who I think right before they were bought by Universe. I'm not sure. That was pretty much the movie that made them the company that they were.

It's a movie that lucked out. There was a movie that tried to do that a few years ago, The Fourth Kind, an alien abduction movie. And they created an. Entire backstory, like a website for the city and everything that had all these things on it. And that was completely faked, I found out.

No, it's based all on real events. They said so. But they tried to do that, and it didn't do a good job. They had two sets of actors, one that was supposed to be the real footage of this stuff happening, and then the other that was Mila Jovovich. And um i think it's.

The mark that yeah blair witch hit. I think it's just also it's harder to get people to like believe in aliens as much as like you know the occult or like i mean that's why so many people were freaked out by the exorcist because there's like i mean even if you're not religious there's like a weird i don't know just from me speaking like you still feel like like you feel like just this the sense of Satan in the movie, you know what I mean? It's just chilling. And there's something that you couldn't quite get that from a movie about alien induction probably. They've taken a couple of ideas that have been bouncing back and forth here, both about taking something that's kind of terrifying in real life and working it into a film, as well as less is more in a horror film and still going back to what we started with, with obscure films or just films that were overlooked.

Session 9 I think does all of that very, very well. To where, I mean, they work in a lot of myth about what took place in insane asylums like the 70s and 80s. And they also take that less is more factor into the film itself. And it's just a very terrifying, psychologically terrifying film. And it's a film that, for the longest time, seems to be able to go either way.

And then decides it is going to be supernatural at the very end. It depends on how you read it, too. You can still make an argument. But all those terrible Waverly-based movies came out after. Well, they've already made the Waverly movie.

It's called Session 9. And it was great. Yeah, that's one of my favorite movies. I love that. But I would say with Brad Anderson, all of his films really have never received decent recognition because, I mean, The Machinist was a fantastic film.

Christian Bale lost more weight than he did for The Fighter. Terrifying. And Trans-Siberian was also overlooked. And there he had a budget. And it was sort of this Agatha Christie to an extent.

But Have they promoted any of the, because that's one of those, I caught all of those. I never saw ever on TV or in the theater any trailers or advertisements for any of those movies. It was always on like an independent DVD. I think they were all like Sony Pictures classics. They were just.

Even Trans-Siberian, which you would think like. I mean, it had a large budget. And a recognizable cast. It might have been artisan. I don't know.

I remember I was in California. I was at Universal CityWalk, and I remember seeing a poster for it. And that was it. There was a poster up. And I'm like, well, this looks cool.

It's like a horror film. No promotion anywhere. That's the only promotion that. Ever took place. There was one poster hanging.

A poster. Next to B.B. King's barbecue. The funny thing is, the thing that sold me, because I was looking through trade magazines, and I just... wheedled the powers that be into us getting it. I was reading it and it was just like a crew of asbestos workers are cleaning out an abandoned insane asylum and strange things happen.

That was the only blurb. I was like, I like this. It's just so eclectic sounding already. It's just very gritty and you almost feel like this invisible observer that's there while all this is going on. I think that's what makes it even creepier.

Because you can tell he's watched a lot of horror films because he has a bunch of build-ups where you're waiting for something to jump out and it's like, nope, not right now. I like some of the bigger titles to work the opposite in when they're a huge release and it still doesn't do what it should. One of the ones that, and we kind of mentioned this on the Knowing a Little Too Much About Celebrities episode, But I think it's a perfect example of it from the audience standpoint. War of the Worlds. I think, you know, how can that go wrong when you're looking at the pitch?

It's Steven Spielberg directing a movie about aliens. It's scenes of cities being destroyed. It's like it's what every general movie-going person wants to see. And yet nothing really, especially for a Spielberg movie, it did nothing. And I think it's all Tom Cruise.

I think it was all... In general, people were getting tired of Tom Cruise at that point. But if you, and that's why I was like, I wanted to check the date on it. In May of 2005, he was on Oprah. Jumping on the couch.

In June of 2005, War of the Worlds came out. Tell me there's not a connection of people going. Oh, I'm done. I think one of the weirdest parts is that I don't think the film was even going to get made without him in it. I always talk about the Tom Cruise module.

They plug it into the production when it gets made. And I think he was excited and wanted to do it, and so they did it, but then he kind of sabotaged his bizarre behavior. And it's kind of a dark film for that kind of a picture. Though, it's got a lot of flaws towards the end. Yeah, I felt it peaked in the first 30 minutes.

It's not bad, but. It's authentically scary when the Martians are first showing up, but when you're trapped in the basement with Tim Robbins, you really feel like you're trapped in the basement with Tim Robbins. It goes on. Well, that's when suddenly the movie's pace slows down to a stop, and then you have to have the probe moving around. It's like, this is. you know twice.

Yeah exactly it's spielberg's bag of tricks this is the velociraptors in the kitchen i can't. Think of any like set pieces at all past where they come up out of the ground and are killing people like after that i can't remember what happens like action wise like it's it's all blank for. Me of course my problem is i was sitting there watching with my dad and he's one of those people to where he picks up on what isn't right right away he just is constantly whispering. It to Oh, God, stop. Because already I was like, I was trying to like it, even though.

I love the old George Palin. I knew it was going to be dedicated to it. But like, you know, the whole scene where the guy stands up and he's recording it through the VHS thing. He's like, oh, it's so cool. My dad's like, it's in the MP.

Just take care of all that. I'm like, stop it. And then just, you know, even when it got to the point to where they're on the boats or on the boat with all the cars and that, and he's like. why do they need all the cars on that boat? Couldn't you fit more people on? Because remember, the EMP killed the cars.

I'm like, stop it. I'm trying to concentrate. The whole time he's doing that, I was just like, all right, I've given up on this movie at this point. Your dad is like a script reader. That's the stuff I don't think about until later on.

He's looking for that right away. It's just like, no, no. Well, that's one of those, I think it didn't even matter whether it was good or bad. It's like there were so many people that just wrote that off beforehand because it was just another Tom Cruise movie. And yeah, it never had a shot in him.

It sinks in with the public long before it sinks in with the producers. That you should stop putting this man in every picture. The public gets. Tired of it. That's what my wife won't...

She's like, no, don't spend $ 1 at a Redbox on him. Don't do it. Just... I don't bring it in the house. She hates him that much.

And that continued. Like, I think I remember referencing that before of like that string of like six or eight movies that like, he just wasn't like, they still kept giving him these huge $ 40 million paychecks or more and, and putting him as the lead in all these movies. And like, nobody ever saw the, um, last mission possible film as well as the third one. Um, not a one of those. I mean, they were successful, but I don't think they, they took off the way they wanted them to.

Yeah. And, um, The whole series never took off. The way they wanted it to. That's true, too, but these last two have actually been very good movies. Everybody likes the last two.

They just get very entrenched in their belief about what somebody can do in the box office. I feel that way about Jennifer Aniston, and that's what made me so sad about Wanderlust, because that was billed as a Jennifer Aniston movie, which I think is actually a box office killer when, in fact, it was a state movie. So anybody that would want to go see a movie that the people from the state did... stayed away from it because they didn't know and thought it was a Jennifer Aniston movie. I saw that trailer. I wouldn't have touched it.

Fortunately, I see everything. Even with Paul Rudd in it. I was like, this has got to stop. It wasn't actually people start marketing stuff as Jennifer Aniston films. Like, I want to go see the new Jennifer Aniston.

Nobody says that. I don't even know if it's ever. She still gets. Money and they still. Yeah, she's the Tom Cruise.

And just to put in perspective how much people don't want to accept Tom Cruise the same way They did. He did the Tropic Thunder thing. Everyone thought that would reinvigorate his career. He was reinventing himself. No, if anything, that just made him a weirder person.

It did. It was funny, but still, it's Tom Cruise. He's a weird guy. Funny enough, I feel like I had this conversation on the show, but I don't think it was. We were talking, and we figured out that in Tropic Thunder... that character that he's portraying outwardly is really who Tom Cruise is on the inside.

He's that ugly and that nasty. Of a human being that looks like Tom Cruise. Maybe that's why people responded to him. Because they liked him in that role. I would say the same thing, but for Magnolia.

I think that one's close. I think that one's real close. Well, while we're on that tangent from one to the other, another one that definitely falls in that category, Battlefield Earth. That should have that should never have gotten a chance. But not because it's a bad movie it is but it didn't matter because I don't think again I don't think the producers or the actors putting this together realize how anti Scientology middle America and everywhere like everybody that's not involved in it really has a problem with it and really does not want to support anybody who has anything to do with it.

It was a film that was Good Lord, like 15, 20 years in pre-production. I remember seeing signs in bookstores back in the early 80s. Travolta was supposed to play the Barry Pepper role when he was young, and he got so old he had to be the old guy. They had a contest that you could be in this film. I'm talking like 1981, 82.

I saw these Walden. Books back when they were first pumping out the L-rhymes. What's a bookstore? Exactly. Exactly.

And it took that long, and by the time it came out, absolutely no one was interested in seeing this picture. Now, Scientology had plenty of money to pump into it. Yeah. It didn't stop. It was all those things.

I think it was another one of those. He was in that same Tom Cruise situation where he'd made way too many movies in that span of time since Pulp Fiction. People were like, okay, number one, I'm sick of John Travolta. Number two, he's super into Scientology. He's backing the hell out of this movie.

Mm-hmm. And I don't want to support any of that, you know? I think it's one of those that audiences were not on board from the get-go. And no matter how good the movie was, it also turned out to be a train wreck. Yeah, I mean, the only thing I've never seen the film whatsoever, the only thing I remember of it is the trailers and just that image of Travolta just doing like this, you know, 30s serial villain laugh into the camera.

I was like, really? Yeah. It's bad. His accent is just like, is this, like, is he trying to be funny? Like, you can't, it's...

I think, like, Roger Britton, like, he, like, summed up perfectly where it's like, it's like sitting next to someone on the bus who smells really bad. That's the experience of watching. I'm like, yeah. It seems. It's just another, you know, example of a product of something that comes from such an insular way of thinking that they just throw it out there.

It has nothing to do with what people want to see or. But all the people that backed it were the same people that believed that it was their story that was going to revolutionize or people were going to wake up and. You know. No. Finally.

Right. And I watched it. I said, okay, I'm going to watch it. completely try to get rid of any preconceived ideas i have about it and let's just watch it as a sci-fi movie and it's bad yeah it's. Bad but to put it in perspective even that had toys in the stores did it yeah take that john carter we showed you jesus so yeah that was just one another little tie in between those two actors. Actually, speaking of movies where they were blockbusters that also were kind of a mess, but had toys in the stores of Last Action Hero, which.

Was a great movie. I love that. I like Last Action Hero because it's just such a, you know, it's Schwarzenegger parroting himself and making fun of himself within his own film. And it has like sort of a. We'll never get that level of entertainment ever again in action movies.

That late 80s, early 90s the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies where they were just, like, dumb fun and, I don't know, like, it's just, action movies today, they won't reach that level of just pure joy that, like, running man or true lies has or last action. Hero well i feel like those were self-aware it's like they knew they were about awareness it's like they knew they were about you know the explosions just for the sake of explosions versus you watch you know like michael bay i feel like he takes himself just way too seriously i. Think nobody's more impressed with him than. He i think the only director that's around that actually still falls to that category that i swear it doesn't take himself seriously but I have this argument with other people is Roland Emmerich.

Because some people are like, no, I think he does take himself seriously. I'm like, I don't think so. You watch 2012 when all of California is collapsing. You know he's just laughing. That was a fun movie.

Early on, I think Independence Day, he probably still was like, yeah, I'm making a great action movie. But by the time the day the earth froze or whatever the fuck that is, I'm just like, what was that one? Yeah, Day After Tomorrow. I was just like, when he's writing in the wolves running around on the ice, I'm like, okay, that's funny. Come on.

Wolf attack. good, like more than I expect to be, than Anonymous was. Did anyone see that? No. And that's why I was so intrigued. I was expecting it to be so terrible.

And I watched it and I was like, you know what? I think that one perfectly fits into this category, actually. I think you're about to have an objection here. I mean, okay, maybe it is terrible, but my expectations were so low. That I was just like clinging to any like little clever like thing.

I was just like, oh, okay. After this is done. It looks interesting, you know, like in period piece, but. I can't even. Lace into you because I feel like I willfully forgot it.

Like I left the theater. It's one of the very few films that I felt super, super tempted to walk out of because I literally, I started rolling my eyes and like, and then by the time I left, see, I said, I don't even have a valid case because I can't remember the film. All I remember is that it was just like, Oh, they're just going to make this as, salacious and preposterous as they possibly can. And that's entertaining in and of itself. Yeah, you have to just go with that.

The movie does not respect Shakespeare. And his work. He actually did write it. There's no debate. The movie's like, well, there's a chance.

No, there's not. He wrote it. What are you talking about? I think that's a perfect example of this, though. That's one of those that I remember seeing the trailer, whatever movie I saw, it was in the theater. and it got to the name at the end, and people laughed.

And they were just like, Roland, you're making a period pink Shakespeare. It was fun. I mean, there was kind of a corniness to like, what's his name, Rice Evans? Am I pronouncing it right? His role was a little bit, it was kind of fun.

I think it's Risa Vaughn. Risa Vaughn, sorry. And yeah, I mean, you could kind of like, it was kind of fun how they worked this kind of fictional, this preposterous story into actual history, and didn't even, care how accurate it was. They threw it all out the window. I just kind of took it in with a grain of salt, I guess.

Surprised at how not terrible it was. I will re-watch it. Keeping in mind the thesis that Roland Emmerich is self-aware. There's some bad parts in it, too. I mean, I'm like, in the first, like, I mean, there was, for a good 15 minutes, the first 15 minutes, I was like, this is going to be terrible.

But, you know, it just kind of slowly grows. It's like, okay, this is interesting. For me, I'd have to get over my distaste of Risa Fonz, though. I just do not like. Him in anything.

He seems like he'd be just a real dick in real life, and he brings that kind of.... I feel like he channeled. It well for him. And during Love, I feel like he at least channeled that sort of creepiness. That movie has one of the greatest opening scenes I've ever seen in any film.

Yeah, that's one of those that I don't think it had a shot past the trailer. I think everybody saw that, and it just reminded me while we were talking about Devil. I remember seeing that trailer and it goes through the whole thing and people are like, oh, okay, this could be interesting. He wasn't even the director, but they slapped his name on that trailer. And an audible groan.

And yeah, everybody. Everybody in the theater just went, oh, God. Was I with you? Maybe. Was it Predators or something?

Yeah. And I laughed everyone else. Everybody laughed at him. It was the same thing I saw. It was Scott Pilgrim versus the world.

It was a big crowd and you actually heard people murmuring, because it looked decent. And as soon as it came up, the audience groaned, and everyone laughed at the fact. That everyone groaned. I like that that was happening in theaters all across the nation, yet he still keeps getting money to make movies. And as much as his movies, his latest, I mean, besides Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, which was good.

But everything else he's made has just been terrible. I hope that someone at some point just went up and gave him a hug. The world hates you here. It's amazing that he hasn't killed himself. I feel like Unbreakable was his best and that one got overlooked.

That's my favorite comic book movie of all time. It is a great origin film. It's the only origin film that I think really works. You don't know who this guy is. It's necessary.

And that's a movie that they didn't promote. They were counting on just his name at that point after Sixth Sense. And we screened it late one night at Baxter, and I was shaking at the end of that picture. And it's a movie that was so good it didn't need the surprise ending. It could have ended with him lying down next to his wife, and it could have gone black, and it would have been just as good a picture.

And that's where he peaked. And that was also, I guess, in a way, his least performing film. So what we're saying is it's only a matter of time before there's an M. Night Shyamalan movie with Tom Cruise and Jennifer Aniston. You're ready.

That's going to be a period. Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson made the same movie together, and that movie will be awesome because of it. One of the films that actually parried that whole mentality was The Player, Robert Altman. That's a great player. I love The Player.

That's one of my favorites of his in general, yeah. Which sends up Hollywood. And the whole point in that, you've got a director who wants to keep his movie pure, and they keep wanting to cast Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts. And when the film is finally made at the end, well, there's Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts in the roles. It's supposed to end with someone dying in the gas chamber, and now Bruce blasts it open with a shotgun and saves her.

And has that great line, I'm sorry, traffic was a bitch. That sums it all up, man. If there was ever a movie made that would play it at least art houses like Baxter forever, is if you made it to where it starred Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, and Sandra Bullock, all of them are in love with George Clooney. That movie would run forever. This does sound good.

Get it directed by Clint Eastwood, there you go. At least, yeah, baby boomers would go to it forever. Oh, God. I remember the odd phenomenon when Big Fat Greek Wedding, we talked to her, played for a year. It brought a lot of people back to the movies, but it brought the wrong people back to the movies.

People I don't want in my life. I had a nice little old Jewish lady who was sitting there watching Gangs of New York, who wandered out kind of dazed. She's like, why does it have to be so violent? And I'm like, it's called Gangs of New York. It's rated R, and it's by Martin Scorsese.

And that's when she said, well, why can't all movies be like Big Fat Greek Wedding? Because we're lucky. There's only so much John Corbin. We were talking about the star power thing. That's just so common working in a box office.

People walk up, like even with Iron Lady, they just walk up, two for Meryl Streep. They don't care what the movie's about. they do like a while always saying Meryl Streep yeah or a while you know it was just one for George Clooney. Like And that's why movie posters were reduced to big pictures of people's heads. I remember Air Force One, it was a big picture of Harrison Ford's head with a little airplane. It's about the plane.

It's got a plane. It's Die Hard on a plane. I remember when I first saw the trailer for Speed, I laughed and laughed. I was like, oh, Keanu Reeves is an action star? Now that's only...

I was wrong. But, you know. The whole phenomenon of underperforming and underpromoted movies goes so far back. The summer of 82, the big genre summer of 82, which is one of the biggest ones in my life, two movies didn't play well. Blade Runner, no.

And one movie didn't play well at all, and that was Videodrome. Because Universal decided that we were too dumb to appreciate that film. It didn't open here. They had the poster up at Showcase, but it never opened. I had to win a year and catch it at a midnight show in Lexington.

I love how you said that with disdain. In Lexington. At the Kentucky. At the place they should be too dumb to get. That's basically the implication.

They still have spittoons there. They were always a cooler town, I must admit it. They showed all the John Waters movies that the Vogue didn't even get. Now I hear they have Harry Dean Stanton films. That's right.

Do they? Who would put something like that together? But just those decisions made by producers, well, this isn't going to play in Louisville, Kentucky. And so you're deprived of my favorite Cronenberg movie forever. Usually it's been Universal.

Those were both, I think, Universal releases. No, not Blade Runner. Somebody today, they were asking, it was the movie Pariah, which just came out, and I haven't seen it yet. But I've had a couple people tell me it's good, and Someone was like, did y'all even play that faction? I was like, no.

They decided not to even release Into Louisville for that. Now, again, it goes back to the money. If it doesn't make the money in New York, L.A., Boston, Chicago, the big markets. They don't even bother with it. I feel like another Cronenberg movie that didn't really have a chance, its legacy, I guess, more so, was Existence.

It came out the same year as the matrix, which even if the matrix hadn't come out the same year, it's, I'm not, that's not to say that it would have been this big movie. Cause it was, it's definitely a weird kind of independent film, but I feel like just, you know, like dark city also came out like a little bit before that, like the matrix just came and just, you know, killed off any, you know, action sci-fi movie within that came out in the same radius. And like, maybe it would have had like a more, uh, just successful, just kind of, uh, Life afterwards, like on DVD, say, or something. Anything that had an alternate, sort of an alternate artificial reality got buried by The Matrix. Cronenberg kind of has a history of that.

I mean, Dead Ringers really didn't get much recognition at the time either. I mean, even Jeremy Irons didn't get any kind of nomination at all. He actually won the Oscar the next year for playing Klaus von Bulow, which is a movie, unfortunately, nobody thinks about anymore. But I remember when he got the Oscar, the first person he thanked was David Cronenberg for the year before. I thought that was pretty cool.

I at least remember promotion for that one, but I don't remember anything for Existence. That one just limped out. That's kind of like his video game version of Videodrome. It is a good picture, but they weren't behind it. I mean, it's definitely up there.

I mean, it might be my number two favorite. It might be top of the video. Before or after Crash? After. Crash was in 95, and I think Existence was in 99.

Crash is a big one that, you know, I love Crash. Yeah, and they hated it at Cannes. Oh, yeah. Well, they gave them the special award for audaciousness. They created an award.

It's on the poster. So they actually did like it, even though it was wigging them out. Yeah. But the studio had no idea what to do with it. It opened Louisville, and it should have opened at Baxter, but it opened at Showcase.

And on the way in, they were apologizing to me. They were saying, now, if you don't like this picture, you can have your money back. And I went in there, and it was just me and two film critics, C.D. and Archie, and a couple of normal guys. Quote, unquote. Quote, unquote.

Not if they were going. To see Crash. The normal guys had to get up and leave at some point. It was just too much for them. But we're all like gawking, you know.

We're like, this is great. And about two weeks later, it came to Baxter. And we actually did pretty good business with it. But it was just, you know, not promoted. Still, Cronenberg's one of those guys that let him make these amazing movies.

Yeah, I mean, look at his last film. Although his last film was, you know, kind of hit and miss in Dangerous Method. But still, it. Wasn't really promoted at all. Especially considering that, you know, he... been nominated for you know we've been nominated best picture for eastern promises and before that was history of violence i mean both of them were fairly successful for cronenberg films and here he's making something with you know fosbender and vigo again and um you know.

It's historic it's not going to get behind that but um and it even picked up you know nominations here there but Even amidst Oscar season, it just dropped. That's usually the case, actually. I mean, how often does anything that's that kind of period piece thing, number one, do that well before it hits video, and number two, get a big push from a studio? It's just that's not what they're... I can't believe they keep making as many as they do.

It's interesting to see how this next film, if it picks up any kind of recognition whatsoever, because it looks like it's going back to old times. Cronenberg. Sometimes it'll be, you know, Star Power or something gets a film made. I mean, one of my favorite top ten movies is Master and Commander. And that's the only reason I'm assuming that got made is because Crow was behind it, yeah.

Because of Crow and because of the director. And it's a great, great smart adventure picture. But it's about stuff people were forced to study. I don't want to think when I go to the movies. You know, Napoleonic War.

And it really didn't do anything. It did not do anything. And it was going to be the first of a huge franchise, all those great books. And they built the ship and it's still down there in Baja and sitting around. Waiting for the reboot.

Yeah, and Fro keeps trying to get a script on. It's never going to happen. But I love that movie immensely. And a lot of money went into it. But it's history and they can't get the kids excited.

That's what I feel like just now. Any costume drama that's not I guess, based on, I guess, a Jane Austen book, or, I mean, like, they just, they don't make the same money that they used to, really. That's the one I, like, if, say, if, like, Age of Innocence, which I don't know how much money that made, like, you know, if that came out now, like, you wouldn't. No, nobody would pay attention. They would say, oh, that's an Oscar movie, and they'd get nominations for it, but nobody would go see it in the theater.

That's something I'd even thought about with, um, topsy-turvy you know mike lee had a fairly decent reputation i mean it did well our first weekend but after that i mean it dropped off and no one really talks about it but i mean it's a pretty tremendous i think it's one of his biggest undertakings and it's an amazing period piece just about the making of the mikado but you know who talks about it but i just sort of dropped off the map so if. It wouldn't got that nomination i think most people would never even heard of it you know. It's like whenever they make a period piece and then they try to pimp somebody's name in it. I think the one that comes to mind most humorously is Gillian Anderson after she left X-Files.

She did House of Mirth, and they were just pushing that as her big push into drama. Yeah. She's like the poster. There's a little plane next to her head. I believe she is a dramatic actress.

Well, then there's other ones that can't repeat the success. Like, I was thinking of, again, one of the bigger ones in this category would be The Postman. A couple years before, puts out a big three-hour drama and does a great job with it. And somewhere along the way, Waterworld comes out. And then that trailer comes and people are just like, I don't want to see that.

Post-apocalyptic postman. It's funny that, I mean, he was such a big deal a few years earlier in Hollywood. And by the time A Postman came out, he was almost a joke already. Yeah. That's weird, I mean, to have just gotten Best Picture and a few years later, like, I mean, seriously, since then, his career has never recovered.

He's never gotten back to that level. I think it was Waterworld that sort of did it. It became like the joke or the stain on his career. It is. You just really can't get back from it, even though one that was pretty decent was Open Range that he did.

Yeah, that's right. Well, he kind of came back as a character actor. Good Western. Did some good work. I still like the Western.

What's the one where he was murdering people? That got a weird. Oh, yeah. That was, again... It was entertaining.

It was not a bad performance out of him. And that's another one that. Was supposed to have been the first in a series, but it just dropped off. It's one of those that, again, I'm like, he's still out there, he's still making movies, but nobody cares anymore because of these movies. And, yeah, Postman was like, what, lost $ 62 million, according to...

Yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah. But yeah, for somebody that had just won the Oscar. Well, also another movie like that where just the tarnished reputation of the star just I think killed any chances the movie had was Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage. Yeah.

Which I thought was great. I mean, I'm a huge Herzog fan. It's already one of my favorites. And it just kind of, it's been reduced since just that period. Walmart parking bin kind of.

I don't think there were that many hardcore Abe Vigoda fans to where they were like, no, I'm not going to see this. Yeah. I mean, everyone was just like, oh, Nicolas Cage, that guy who's in everything. Yeah, exactly. They worked against him doing a really good job.

And even if you see the trailer, if you take out-of-contact scenes from the movie, it still looks like a really bad Nicolas Cage movie. You have to watch from beginning to end to just realize what a weird, just kind of... trippy just kind of masterpiece it is it's nicholas cage. Doing almost a parody of nicholas cage for me but that's. What works so well yeah it's so great in it it's like he's richard the third or something like i don't yeah it's just positive and his voice gradually changes like by the beginning then so he like has a different voice by that point he like goes this weird transformation it's i thought it was brilliant yeah. That was one from, was it last year, I think, or something?

A couple years ago. I mean, there's been some recent ones that I felt like nobody saw. You know, Attack the Block lasted like a week. Oh, that was such a good one. I'm so glad I got to catch that at Baxter, too, because it came and went.

I think we were like one of the only people in town showing it, and it's like, okay, this has, you know, the crew behind Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, a couple of very successful films behind it, and it's about essentially a group, you know, it's like the Goonies meets, you know, aliens or gremlins or something. It was just such a clever concept and very well done. Nobody saw it. It's a great movie. People were applauding when it ended.

It got no press. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to do a review of it for the Louisville Cardinal the next week, but I couldn't because I found out it had left. No one can see it now in the city of Louisville. Well, look for this on DVD.

They're just producing so much now. I constantly marveled at that from when I was a kid. We'd have a big summer, and a big summer, being a genre fan, might mean you might get three or four pictures. But now there's 30 or 40. Sometimes there's ones going up against each other the same weekend.

It all gets lost if they're spending so much money. That's what I think was the case with Attacker. The Block, it's just there were so many other big movies that were catching people's attention that this very clever little film, it was just that it was a little film that didn't get seen and it should have had legs. And made it last. It's also like in the shadow of Super 8.

It's kind of like the other side of the Super 8 scenario. That was a film where it had a lot of great potential, but it let me down. I was more interested in the story of the kids and what was going on there than. visually it's impressive but yeah it's going on with this creature it's got its problems but it's a good it's a good watch but again you can't compare that to what they were doing with with no money in attack the block and it to me that one hits way better it comes off as a much better. Movie yeah people were appropriately calling it the movie super h and because it was the whole thing was just an escalation of just it got better and better and just super a was the opposite for me i thought i liked it but it just kind of deflated yeah gradually until this you know by the Final sequence, I just, you know, there was no motion for me.

It felt flat. It's got a lot of good stuff in it, but it doesn't come together. And it was even more a disappointment because what came before that was so great, like what preceded it. I was like, oh, this could be like the next, you know, Spielbergian masterpiece. Like this is like E.T., It had moments of just brilliance, like some of the best scenes I've seen in any movie in the past five years.

That's the thing. As soon as the kids' story ended, you started to lose interest. It's like once they're showing you all the supernatural or monster stuff, it's like, I'm actually getting bored of this. I want to go back to the kids making their little movie. Yeah, like that scene where the town's being bombed, and they run into that house, and they make some kind of weird joke about, like, we have to– Like, I have to get a drink of water.

Like, I'm thirsty. And, like, they're just, like, yapping at each other and talking over each other. I'm like, this is brilliant. Like, this is the Goonies all over again. It's, like, reinvented.

Or when, you know, the train's coming. He's like, we've got to get the train in the back. That's production time. Yeah, it's so great. And this kind of reverts back to, like, oh, this is kind of like Cloverfield.

Like, the monster isn't that imaginative. It's not so much fun anymore. And it's just, like, it's weird. It's like it's eating people. Like, that's kind of horrific.

I didn't know it would be, like, such an evil alien. Like, I wasn't expecting that. It was... Kind of threw off the tone, I guess. And then they change gears with it, and by the end, it's not...

It does switch tones a lot towards the end of the movie, which I think that's what ends up hurting it in the long run, is if it could have kept one or the other, I guess, but the fact that it totally changes gears on you towards the end there. I just thought it was such a soulless film. It was like you took every Spielberg movie and just put it on shuffle, and it just divested the whole thing of any meaning or. I think the kids worked that first half hour or so with the kids I liked but yeah the alien end of it there's not much to. It people were saying like in the end credits where they finally show like the whole movie a lot of people were saying like this whole movie has more emotion and genuine I would have.

Watched that than the movie before like they could have made an hour and a half of that. The actual actor kids had actually made that movie and I was like well that's what true filmmaking is this. Has heart and soul pure inspiration and everything else was just like you know copycat from Spielberg yeah. And it was almost cynical in how much it wanted to make us remember those good films from our childhood. It was based on, it was like, you know, kind of preying off, like, you know, just the whole era right now of nostalgia that we live in.

And I still do think it had real moments of just, I thought were brilliant. It did have good stuff in it. It came out, but like, it was too flawed and it was too, like. Uh, derivative. What y'all are both saying is what works in Spielberg's earlier set where you watch like Raiders of the Lost Ark of Jaws to where basically he's making stuff that he loved growing up.

He reinvented that. Yeah. And so, um, this was just like copy. But I mean, again, as you're watching that, it's like, okay, that right there, it's like those kids are making what they've grown up watching. That's, I'm totally invested in, you know, can bond with that.

And really, I don't, I can't think of a movie where it's just been about kids trying to make a film. And that's why I thought it was so clever up until the point where it's like, Oh, the story's over. Now this is actually the real movie. Exactly. That's what everyone I talked to, I saw my group of friends, what they loved about it, because they were all film geeks too, they're like, we loved how it was about a bunch of kids trying to make a movie.

It was about that for most of the movie, and then it just kind of. I think that's pretty much what sold it for a lot of people when they saw the trailers. I mean, that's what made me want to see it. It was a great trailer. That's sort of the reverse of everything else here.

It got sold perfectly, and then it didn't deliver. It didn't deliver, yeah. That train sequence actually made me laugh, though, because they're. Like, production value, production value. Production value.

Oh, man, that train's going to be overkill. But when the train comes, it was like CG. It was a terrible-looking train. And you're like, well, maybe if you'd shown us a real train after you kept talking about how a real train would be great production value, maybe that would have worked. But cg cost a lot of money.

Like the the most like it's explosive horrific like extreme train wreck that could ever happen in like in the world like happens on screen there like you can't get any more ridiculous. And i even kind of had high hopes like even after the train wreck it's like you have the teacher and he's half dead and i'm like oh that's a teacher who got killed in the gremlin and he's another science teacher that's also going to kill my monster and so i thought it was like another wink to the audience like okay this is gonna be kind of a fun thing it's just No, it started taking itself too serious as the movie went on. It's just it didn't work. This is kind of, I don't know if the movie deserved or would have ever made anything or deserved for everyone to see, but probably the movie that got the biggest screw job of any movie of all time.

As far as I'm concerned. There can't be a greater national event to have messed up a movie other than Collateral Damage. Because that was scheduled to be released right after. Way to go, terrorists. Right in the week after September 11th.

And, you know, terrorists bombing a building in a movie kind of screws up your movie. And I watched it. I mean, it's not the best movie. I still haven't watched it. Again, that's how bad it got hurt.

I couldn't finish it. Really? Actually, I would say the first two-thirds of it, I really liked. Now, once Jamie Foxx suddenly becomes Mr. Badass and he's taking on this killer.

Assassin, I'm like, yeah. Oh, wait, wait. Are we talking about collateral or collateral damage? Collateral damage. This is the Arnold Schwarzenegger terrorist wolf of villainy.

We may be at the root of the problem right now. I mean, it's on the level of Commando when you talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger. I know what you're talking about. It didn't have, like, that kind of fluffy, fun, goofy quality. Like, it felt more cynical.

Like, the later Arnold action movies, like, kind of starting with 680, started to become more self-serious and just, like, had. This douchebaggery, like, vibe. Do you know what I mean? Like, it was like Arnold Schwarzenegger was preaching to us, like, you can't, like, Science is evil. This is wrong.

I don't like it. I think that's why his box office started trailing off. There was nothing left to do except become governor of California. But actually, in that same vein, that's actually what happened to Donnie Darko. Because Donnie Darko was released in the fall of 2001, and it got pulled from a lot of theaters.

Because of the plane issues. Yeah, which I always liked that overreaction that occurred at the time. There was another film that was a phone booth. It was about the snipers. Yeah.

They just yanked that right. Yeah. Well, I remember we had the trailers and posters for Spider-Man where you're looking at the 20,000. That was in the first trailer. We were all like, let's hang on to this.

I remember that trailer, seeing that, too, and you could not find it anywhere after that. Yeah. It's a good trailer, actually. Yeah, was that supposed to be an actual scene from the movie? Because it was very elaborate.

I don't think so. That was specifically for the trailer. It's a great trailer. I almost wondered if that actually was made by Raimi as like a pitch to producers. Like, hey, I can do this.

And then he just cleaned it up later on. Might have been. Speaking of Raimi, what was Darkman? Yeah, I love Darkman. I feel like, I mean...

I don't know about when it came out because I was like. I think it was expected to be the next Batman. Exactly. I feel like a lot of people thought it was too much like Batman or something. Like, at least people I've talked to have seen it.

Was it successful when. It came out? Not tremendously so. I mean, I saw it when it came out. So I don't know if it's fair to say it didn't have a chance.

It was kind of in that kind of Wild West period before the franchises were building. So here's an independent superhero kind of film. Yeah. And I like Raimi a lot, so it was nice to see him do something like that. Yeah.

They pushed it like that. They had a lot of advertising. Cause somewhere I have a t-shirt that's a big purple image that says, who is dark man? And they had that push of, they had buttons and t-shirts and they did a lot of promo at the time. Yeah.

Yeah. They had a lot of formal on it too, that they were hoping it was going to catch on like that. And it, it just never did. It's a fun movie though. I really like it.

So you and I, before the show, we're talking about something that was a throwback to a genre that, um, really hasn't exploited that much anymore, is 13 Assassins. It was going for the old samurai film genre. And Takashi Miike, who's just made these very surreal, gory, you know. Cult films. Yeah, you make as many movies as he has every year.

Eventually you're going to make something amazing, odds are. And I think this one is the one where he hit the jackpot. It's a great movie, yeah. And it was just something to where I think it lasted, again, a week in Louisville, and that was about it. Well, again, I didn't even think it played here.

Because they don't... That's what I'm saying. But you wouldn't know that, because nobody puts the word out on that. And, again, that's another one of those foreign movies. I mean, how often does a foreign movie get a push from any...

In this country. It doesn't happen. The studios, too, because... you'll find out on a Wednesday, hey, you're opening this on Friday. And it's like, we didn't even know it was coming down the pipe. We don't have any posters for it yet.

It's like, whoa, overnight, just some posters. Nobody showed them. Nobody knew. That's why back in the era of the calendar house, you could let people know there was a whole system in place, but it's not. That way anymore.

Six weeks out, you could be like, oh, I want to see that when it comes here. Even now, a lot of calendar houses have that trouble because they still try to pull that. And so calendar houses can only have maybe a month out, and that's about it. as opposed to saying two to three months' worth. A lot of people plan. And, I mean, I think it was the best action movie of last year for me.

It's a great movie. It's really well put together. Do we want to hit some of the other big, ridiculous ones? Yeah, why not? Again, ones that sometimes the people behind it bring way too much baggage.

How about Geely? Yeah. Way too much baggage. Let's see, it lost about $ 66 million. First of all, who invested $ 77 million in that?

I'm sorry, because I don't see it on the screen. I guess it was all for their special guest cameos. I don't know. That's one of those, and that's what it comes into. Before you ever found out what a terrible movie it is, and it is bad.

The dialogue in there is cringeworthy. But before you ever got to that, people were already like, I'm so sick of these two. I'm so sick of people jamming two stars names together. And then putting it on every late-night tabloid news show that, you know, they were so sick of people that it killed it. It reminds me, what was the film that Guy Ritchie made right after, I mean.

He'd... Swept away. Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the same thing.

He'd been hitting it strong with, you know, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. He was sort of building his reputation, and then suddenly he's making that crap. Well, you know why. I just went off on this the other day. She sucked the life out of him.

Yeah. I don't know what happened but i mean he he yeah was a pretty successful and seemed to be having a good ride as a filmmaker and like everything that came after that and then soon as they weren't together anymore sherlock holmes came and he made a lot of money again i was just like she was killing him i don't know it's a very strange scenario. Going back to kind of what um you were saying earlier in the way and we were talking about um dead ringers and just films to where somebody put in a great performance, but nobody saw the movie, and then in turn didn't see the performance, I would actually, one I wrote down was Felicia's Journey. Oh, yeah. Because it's so funny, if Bob Hoskins comes up in a conversation, and someone's always like, oh, I love Bob Hoskins, about, well, have you seen Felicia's Journey?

Well, no, I never even heard of it. It's like, that's the movie he should have not only been. Nominated, but won an Oscar for. No, Super Mario Brothers. That's my favorite.

That's me and Dennis Hopper. I love those. Films that was promoted as something very, very different. We had so many walkouts on that, I remember, because it was pushed as, and you watch the trailer. It's kind of like a romance.

Yeah, it was. It's like this Irish girl goes to England to try to find her boyfriend to tell him she's pregnant, and Bob Hoskins helps her. And it's like, yeah, that's what it's about. But he's also a serial killer, and basically he's trying to get close enough to her so that way he can convince her to get an abortion so then he can kill her. Yes.

Well, that's Adam and Goya, wasn't it? Yeah. That's the thing. Those are people who obviously aren't familiar with this movie. They're not cheery.

That's just not how it works. But, I mean, it's just an astounding performance by Hoskins because he's genuinely terrifying in a lot of points. But at the same time, he can just be chipper and upbeat. It's like turning on and off a switch with this role. He's an example of an actor where there's a total disconnect between different generations of how they perceive him.

With me, for a. Long time, I just knew him as Smee. And then, after that, I was like, oh, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I'm like, oh, this movie's awesome. This is even better than it.

I thought that was as good as it got for Bob Hoskins. I don't know. That's pretty high on the list. I didn't know about this, Lisa. I didn't know about it.

Long Good Friday. Long Good Friday, yeah. That's no Roger Rabbit. A little bit of history there. Well, it's another good performance that no one saw the whole wide world with Vincent D'Onofrio playing Robert E.

Howard. It's like one of the great tragic roles. That film got zero release, zero promotion. Played Louisville before Roger Ebert was shot in Chicago. And a fantastic score.

And it's a heart-tugging movie. I mean, it's the first thing that, what's her name? The first big picture she had, we'll call it a big picture. Helena Bonham Carter? No, Renee Zellweger.

And she turns in a terrific performance. It's her first real role. And that's saying something these days. She was very good, because she's playing a girl from Texas. You know, she can't go wrong.

But that movie was just spectacular. It's one of the only movies that I can't watch it without crying. And no one saw it. Well, that's all of D'Onofrio's career. He got the nomination.

His most recognizable role is Men in Black. He's done all these amazing dramatic performances. Or The Cell. The only things that they've seen him in is Men in Black, where he acts like an idiot the whole time. He's entertaining, but it's not really something you want people to remember you for.

I remember that movie played The Vogue. It didn't even last a week. They actually cut the run halfway through because no one was in the auditorium. Of course, you mentioned D'Onofrio. I think Dangerous Lives of Alterboys was another one that nobody saw.

Yeah. It's a good picture. It's not the best adaptation of the book. Yeah, I still like the book a whole lot more because that's one of the only books to where I'll tear up reading it because it's just such a heart-wrenching story. But it does capture the energy of growing up and being that age when you're a kid.

No release. Just kind of dumped out. Just kind of thrown out. Good pictures. We want more on the horrible list.

Horrible? We haven't even touched Heaven's Gate. Are we skipping that one because. It's too big? Heaven's Gate has a terrible reputation and it doesn't deserve.

It's another like Dune. It's more of an interesting... It's still interesting. You can see how it's flawed in this movie. It's so unique.

There's no other movie... It's too indulgent. It's too self-indulgent. But there's a lot of good in there. Michael Cimino is too...

I think, you know, good of a director to just, you know, you can't dismiss his movies. Just because, by default, they're going to look and, you know, just feel just totally different than anything else you'll see. But that did so bad, it kind of killed his career. It did. Well, was that before or after Poco Greenwich Village?

Did he do that? I think that was before, maybe. I think it was before, and then he did that weird Mickey Rourke movie. Yeah, The Home Invasion was a remake. Oh, yeah.

Which I thought was, like, it was highly flawed. Desperate Hour. Desperate Hour, yeah, I was going to say. But I was glued to this. It was on TV, and I caught it.

It was really, you know, it kind of gripped me. It's one of those things where a guy will produce something that gets all this acclaim, and then they'll let him do what he wants to do. In this case, there was no control over it. Apocalypse Now, you can throw in that. Yeah.

Everyone considers it pretty much a masterpiece, you could say. It took a long time, yeah. And I'd say Coppola really never recovered from that. No. To the point now that he really isn't a very good filmmaker.

No. If you've seen anything he's tried to do the last couple of years, it's. Hey, don't talk bad about Jack. Come on. Coppola's Virgin Suicides, another one that lasted about a week, but you watch it now, and it's just for a directorial debut on Sofia Coppola's part.

It's very good. Yeah, I still can't figure that out. And then, of course, once Lost in Translation came out, then she got. recognition. It's like, no, go back and watch her first film. I like the films a lot.

It's just she was a complete surprise when she pulled off. In a way of bad, I'm going back to your all's jump on me at the beginning as I will bring up the card. It is like my favorite B movie. It really had nothing to do with the movie it was the people walking past so it was no knock on you. You know anyone I show it to it's definitely one of my most leased out DVDs that I have in my collection because I've always shown it to people and I was like god this is such a fun film why have I never seen it before because you know it actually is kind of high budget for a B movie it's like it was Universal actually they considered it to be their big 77 summer picture but it was the summer of 77 and everybody was going to see Star Wars not the car so As a result, I don't know how it did at the time, but I think it probably lasted about a couple of weeks.

It was around, but back then movies were around. Back then there was no place for them to go. There was no video market. And there weren't 10 more coming out the next week. Movies would play weeks, if not months.

Star Wars was in theaters for a year and a half. And then re-release. It's just the way things were back then. I remember the car and getting a lot of TV advertising. assuming you did okay. For me it's just one of those films to where i mean there's so many horror movies that exist to where a they take themselves seriously which this one doesn't and b you always have those obnoxious characters you really can't stand and this one it picks them all off i mean i'm sitting here the whole time thinking oh well thank you movie you set up this annoying character it's like god i have to sit through and listen oh no okay well thank you very much i mean and um and there was that whole line of Jaws rip-offs.

And a lot of people say, well, it's just Jaws on wheels. And it's like, yeah, it kind of is. But, you know, out of all those, I mean, I like Whim, Girdler's Grizzly. Mm-hmm. And, of course, Jaws of Satan.

That's just like this weird mix of Jaws and Exorcist. Mm-hmm. I guess everyone wanted a Fritz Weaver vehicle at the time. But, you know, I think the car is the most successful of those attempts. The car reminds me of almost a Jack Arnold movie.

You know, just, you know, a monster running around the desert. Mm-hmm. I think it works really well. A lot of great visuals just because they chose Utah and just the scenery around it as being their background. Almost like the sort of John Ford influence as well, where it's just they're letting the landscape be part of the film, which is very, very weird for just a movie about it's Satan in the form of a car killing people.

That's it. I'm fine with putting that on the list somewhere down the line. I think we need to watch it. Well, there was other ones that I was thinking were also on that star vehicle situation, and it's one of those that you, for years there, put out pretty decent, or at least watchable movies, and then all of a sudden, like, they start to drop off, but studios keep giving them projects, and you don't know why, and people completely start to write them off for years. And I guess the grand, you know... finale of that for this particular actor would be the adventures of pluto nash but i mean that's 2002 they'd quit watching him for almost 10 years like it was a good study drop off of his movies where people did not care don't put him as a lead in a movie because we don't like him anymore you know professor was like his last yeah swan song and even then that was almost like a comeback in the middle there it's.

Like the sequel to twins now coming down the pipeline. I know that again they keep giving him stuff and and if he if he could get back to that state where he started we'll see but i mean he has not been there in a long time but and and that one went so unrecognized that i don't think i even realized It lost $ 112 million. I don't think I even paid attention to it enough to realize it bombed that bad. This movie's just vanished. We don't want to talk about it.

That's a huge deal. But to me, all of his were like their meat daves and all of that stuff. Nobody went to see it. Norbit. Yeah, nobody went to see it.

The Haunted Mansion movie. Yeah. That's another one of those that Pirates of the Caribbean could have been that same bat, but no, they found a way to make millions of dollars off that. Haunted Mansion? No.

Oh, there's a connection with that to my favorite subject, John Carter. I wasn't aware. Do you like that one? The same regime. that wanted to kill this, they were going to crank up a new live-action version of Captain Nemo. I actually remember us talking about this a year or so ago.

It was Will Smith. I think that could work if you did it right. You don't know. There's a difference. It could do either way.

It could work, and then it could make money. I've got no problem with him as an actor. I think I can do great stuff. Not in that role. The same with.

Talking about remaking Oldboy with Will Smith. Spike Lee and Josh Brolin. Spike Lee is insane. You know, back in the 80s, they wanted to do Creature from the Black Lagoon. Carpenter was going to do it, and they wanted Eddie Murphy to be in it.

Mm-hmm. Vampire Brooklyn. God, I'm walking out of the room. I can't do this. There's a lot of projects where you.

They get that name. That's all they think about. They're 10 years out of date. They want to plug it in, and it's just going to be a disaster. There was a period where Naomi Watts was going to be in a Michael Bay remake of The Birds.

Thankfully, that died. I forget. Actually, they were talking about remaking Don't Look Now with who. Was going to be in. Yeah, and I can't remember who was going to be in that, but I remember reading it.

I was like, Kiefer Sutherland. I mean, it was just in name. Yeah. But in a way of stuff to where it's been kind of going back to Battlefield Earth and even John Carter, a sci-fi film that the book has a huge following that's been in production hell for like a decade, Ender's Game, and they still keep talking about that. But, I mean, Ender's Game keeps changing hands and all this stuff.

Isn't that filming right now? Like, they have set picks. Allegedly. That's what they say. The kid from Hugo, I think, is my name.

Yeah. A similar book is Stars My Destination, which is one of my favorite science fiction books. They've been trying to make it for 40 years. The problem with Ender's Game is that's going to have to at least be PG-13, because that is a gritty book. And they're going to want to market it to kids.

I don't see how they're going to make it work, and I think that's been the holdup for so long, is they realize if you do it right... It's got to be gritty, but at the same time, if your kid is a protagonist, you're going to want to market it to kids. They haven't been able to figure out that. Well, it's the whole reason that the PG-13 rating came to be. It was, we've got to make a movie that's a little edgy, but we've got to make that money.

And Jaws was the first film. Jaws, if you look at it now, you've got severed heads and legs floating around and hands on the beach. This is our material. Back then, they wanted so badly to make money that they made it PG, but they put that first warning I ever saw on a poster. Maybe too intense for your children.

May scar all of the kids who see this. They may not be able to take a shower for six months. Even Raiders has scenes of people just getting point-blank shot in the head by the Nazis, their heads exploding. That should have been a PG-13 if it existed. Temple of Doom was actually one of the ones that sort of catalyzed.

Temple of Doom was even worse. It made them and Gremlins were like the two that sort of catalyzed the creation. Of that PG-13. Yeah, we need something. Yeah.

Well, they want to market it if it's a genre picture. We talked about Dune. Universal wanted to make it. They made action figures, you know, from a David Lynch movie. There were action figures, and there was a sandworm toy, which looked like a sex toy.

And there was, you know, all this other stuff. I don't know what you're talking about. I play with my eraser head action figure all the time. It's just like watching a weird bad dream about a movie take place. It's like they're actually doing this stuff, but they're making the movie.

You remember the Blue Velvet breakfast cereal? All the pieces look like little ears, and you pour the milk in, it turns red. The funny thing is now, you can actually see McFarlane Tours releasing a Blue Velvet line, just because they're weird like that. Sure, I'd buy them. Like an Elfman, you know?

But going to PG-13 down the road is Expendables 2, to where the first Expendables, I mean, it was just over-the-top violence, because it was both an homage and a parody of the films from the 80s with all these icons, and then the studio was like, shit, that made money. We could have made more money if it was PG-13. So now the expendable's to it's under the PG-13. Oh, it's going to be PG-13? It's going to be PG-13.

But they're already saying, well, no, the DVD will be unrated. I mean, they're already worried about selling the DVD before the film's cut. Multiple-tier marketing. Get out of jail free card. Those kids who saw it will be a little older, so they can get in, and then the adults will dig the uncut stuff.

And then later I can double-dip and buy the DVD and see a whole different movie now. Parents still take their kids to, I mean, Predators. Yeah. I mean, there was a kid that was three in that film. Wow.

With his parents. It's front row. And I was going, this kid is going to be, I haven't, they haven't started it yet, and this kid is going to be scarred. But they also had, like, a newborn. It's screened right now.

But, yeah, and the same movie, I was in, like, one of the stores, Target or something, like, the day they released Predator's. Hey, Dad, look, it's the Predators movie. I mean, he knew. So he'd obviously seen it because he's talking about what scenes were in it. So it's at least two parents that have taken kids to that movie.

Well, for me, I do that as like working. It's a judgment call for me. And there will be times to where I'll basically weigh the argument. Okay, what is going to cause more complaints? Letting this kid in to see this movie from other people who are seeing it or refusing the parent the ability to buy this ticket.

Because I did that with a couple of parents on Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Because there was this woman bringing in like... Oh, God. I'm scared. No, she had like a 10-year-old daughter.

And she's like, two for this. I said, I'm not selling you tickets for that. She's like, well, she sees violent movies all the time. I'm like. I can't sell you a ticket for this.

To me, I think it looks tacky if you're selling tickets to that knowingly. Because I remember I saw, against all my wishes, I was just with a group of friends, I saw Last House on the left, the remake of it, and um at stony brook and there was a father there who had like a little like six-year-old girl sitting on his lap the whole time during like the five-minute rape show that's just going on i'm like why would you bring your kid to this how are you going to explain this rape scene to them later on. You won't have to they'll do this being a therapist. It's like your kid gets home from third grade or you know a day at third grade it's like what do you want to do You want to watch Irreversible? I'm going to watch that later.

Okay, cool. I can't imagine. I freaked out when I was seven and I saw the scene in The Omen where the guy gets his head cut off. I flipped my shit. I was seven.

I was in the comfort of my house. I can't imagine seeing a movie like Last House on the Left in a theater at five years old. That would have scarred me. My first midnight movie, I was eight. and a friend's dad took me to see Gremlins, and Gremlins isn't bad. It's PG still.

It should be PG-13. It should be PG-13. It was not traumatizing, but I came back, and I'm supposed to go to sleep. I'm at a sleepover, and I'm like, this is pretty creepy. This drive's going to get me.

I remember that one as well, because I remember I was, I guess, about six or seven, and we were having a sleepover, and the parents had rented Gremlins and watching it, and it's just the mental images of like, Spike with the table saw, the chainsaw, fighting the hardware store that's just, you know, the blood and the grittiness. Yeah, I just showed that to Allie. She's six. She was like, couldn't wait to see it. And then she's in it going, And then, yeah, you're watching The.

Blender, and you're like, she hasn't asked to watch it again. No. No. But, yeah. Which is why, actually, I like Gremlins 2 a little bit better than the first one, and I would assume that was something that probably failed at box office.

You didn't do what Gremlins did. That's a movie to watch, and I'm like, okay, this has an even better sense of what it is than the first one was. Because the first one, I feel like there are a lot of points to where Dante didn't know whether to make it horror or comedy, and I feel like that right there is like Dante at one of his best ones. I still think Matinee is his best, which is. Definitely from nobody.

Yeah, I love Matinee. But Gremlins 2, I mean, it's So self-aware and just all the different cameos and nods to just, you know, movies. Of 50s and 60s. Yeah, by that time he decided to make it a fun picture. Yeah.

He still had the reputation of a pretty kind of edgy horror director. You know, The Howling and other films like that. But yeah, matinee. Did anyone even see that when it came out? I rented it when I was little on VHS.

I just remember John Goodman and Giant Ants, and that's it. I can't remember. I remember liking it, but it was just so long ago. It's a good movie. It's something that I didn't see until I was about 19 or 20.

But at that point, I'd already fallen in love with 13 Ghosts and the Tingler, and so I'm glad I actually discovered it after I'd fallen in love with William Castle, because it's totally in a modern. Equivalent to him. We had Joe Dante as a guest at Wonderfest, and I remember. Joe told Bob Burns, well, I made this movie for you. He says, unfortunately, you're the only one who saw.

It. It's such a great film. It's weird thinking. I saw probably the longest string of obscure old movies, probably when I was under 10, just because I went to uh, just the movie rental place. And I'm just like rent VHS is every week.

Like I remember I watched like the great Ewok adventure when I was a little kid, like no one else. Like, yeah. Like, like critters too. Like just weird or like Mac and me. I saw Mac and me when I was like a little kid.

Like I'm glad somebody can't believe. I saw the box. I remember seeing it when I was a kid and not liking it. And then just recently, um, somebody showed me a clip on YouTube. I was like, like, God, this is even worse than I remember it being.

There's, like, in the 80s, like, there's all these, like, Canadian, like, horror movies or, like, alien movies that are just, they're all, like, kind of slight rip-offs of, like, a famous horror movie or alien movie that came out. And there's just so many of those. And they, like, I felt like the video store I went to was just full of those. Well, that's what it was for. Boom, they came out.

The late 80s were the end of that era. Yeah. So much good junk being put out. There's nothing like that now. Just, you know, late night cable.

I mean, that's actually something that's been, like, my project recently is thinking, okay, what video covers do I remember burning themselves in my brain when I was a young kid and trying to track those back down? Because that was an era to where box art sold, and people just cranked and stuck out like crazy. It was always the horror movies that really left an impression. Like, I remember the cover for, like, you know, Leprechaun, you know, when I was a little kid. Or, like, there was, I went to this place, it was called Movie Warehouse, it was a rental place in Owensboro, and, like, It was really cool because they gave you free popcorn and everything.

There was, like, a turnstile if you went in. And they had this, like, darkened adult room. It was for adults only for the horror section. And they turned the lights off. It was so scary.

And they had this cardboard cutout of, like, a gremlin from Gremlins hanging, like, from the ceiling. That used to terrify me. I was always just too afraid to go in that room. Like, you know, me and my sister would, like, dare each other. We couldn't go near it.

Like, there was a picture of Hellraiser next to it. It was just, like. I don't know. Yeah, my vivid one was the cover for Phase 4, just the hand and the ants coming out of it, which really isn't a major component to the movie at all. And that's something that, God, I don't know how many people have even seen that one, but that's, you.

Know, you start talking about Saul Bass. It's the only movie directed by Saul Bass. Which is funny also that it doesn't have any credits in it, in the opening credits. That's what it's supposed to be all about. Exactly.

And that's actually a film I would love them to put out a, wider release because allegedly there was a more 2001-esque ending to it that test audiences were like just completely flabbergasted by that they cut it out and you can see clips of it in the trailers but on the film itself nothing well. I think the uh this this topic again we can probably do a whole another episode but we should probably round this one out is there any last ones you needed to get in on the uh movies that never had a chance. Um actually um You were talking about The Exorcist 2 earlier. I thought The Exorcist 3 was highly underrated. That's true.

Yeah, it's a good movie. Very scary, I thought. George C. Scott's awesome. I feel like, I mean, again, I don't even know if I was born yet when it was like the early 90s when it came out.

I was born in the 90s. But, I mean, I would think a lot of people probably just dismissed it because The Exorcist 2 was such a bomb. And they're like, oh, 3, like, you know. Well, 3 is the legitimate sequel. I mean, it's directed by the author.

It was directed by William Peter Blatty. He was actually a very good film director. Another film I was going to just bring up was 9th Configuration, which is an awesome picture he did that nobody saw. That's on the list, too. Yeah.

I mean, just one of the best, and nobody saw it. But, you know, it was a legitimate sequel. Exorcist 2 was just nothing. But it was still fiddled with. It really is Exorcist 2.

Yeah. It's based on his novel Legion. Yeah. And, uh, it's, it's kind of a, you know, it's kind of a smart movie about the real battle between good and evil. Yeah.

And it, it's got one of the scariest scenes of all time where. The confession? Well, the confession. Well, that and the shears. The hallway, the long shot down the hallway and the figure comes out with the big shears.

That, that always gets people. And it goes against a lot of conventional direction, which is one long shot. That crazy old lady on the ceiling. Oh, yeah. Freaked me the fuck out.

So that's, it's a good movie. Yeah. Um, The flip side is a kid's movie we talked about earlier. It's The Iron Giant, which is one of my favorite movies. Everybody I know gets every time he launches up to sacrifice himself.

And it's a film that was completely bungled by Warner Brothers Animation. It was their last motion picture, full feature. The trailer was so generic you couldn't tell what it was. And it's a Jennifer Anderson movie. Exactly.

And, you know, it's Brad Bird, you know. Yeah. And it went nowhere. Only the big difference in that is that Warner Brothers realized that they made a mistake and they actually apologized publicly for how much they bungled that movie. They did.

It was a great movie. It's one of those, yeah, everybody I know loves that movie. Like anybody who is into that type of movie or even is just a movie fan is just like, that's a great movie. And you do wonder... what did you do to like, totally like, you know, a movie that's this beloved after the fact, it's like, what did you do to screw up the market? Well, when I thought back and re and cause I bought it not, I mean, not long after my son was born, you know, and on DVD.

And then I thought, I, and when I read the back and realized how new it was, I thought this had to have been old. You know, it seems like it has the feel it has. Um, and it, yeah, it, The only thing I can think is that was also right about the time there was a big push of anime in this country. And there's still a lot of people that were not anime-friendly. They just did not like that.

They didn't want the weird style that Japan was throwing on the animation. And I think a lot of people thought that's what it was. I don't think they realized that it was... american made and that it was a property you know pre-existing and you said well i think it got swept up in all that stuff and at the. Same time i feel like cell animation was kind of going downhill because toy story had come out before that basically you had this huge peak of cell animation like beauty and the beast lad and lion king and then suddenly here's toy story yeah and suddenly now this is the new medium by which you can have you know talking things and animation is through computer generation and suddenly it's like Well, no, here's a great film that's still cell animation.

Everybody was hopping on to CG. Oh, cell animation, yeah. In a boat at the time. Yeah, I mean, it's... It's why Warner Brothers got out of the business.

They're like, well, we're not going to keep this division open. But they produced the. Best film they'd ever done. Vin Diesel's best performance. I was going to say, he will never make a movie.

I wonder if he just every day thinks, yeah, I'm never going to make a movie. He's going to go make seven. How hard I try. But one last one I'll mention, just because in a way of one of my favorite screenwriters, Terry Southern, something that I think is lost in the shuffle between Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider is the loved one.

I think just because That's a movie to where it's so ahead of its time and so bizarre that I don't think a lot of people look back on it, even though it's got amazing performances by Jonathan Winters and pretty much the whole cast that's in it. But, I mean, you'll talk to people who are fans of all those films, and they've never even heard of it. I had heard rumors about it, and then one night, I think it was after Ted Turner bought the MGM library, he started showing stuff on his channels, and one night it was on TNT. And I was like, wow. Yeah.

It's almost John Waters. It is so edgy. I think it's my favorite Terry Southerner's script. It's just so much fun and just so bizarre. The whole scene where Rod Steiger is Mr.

Joy Boy brings Miss Thanatogen home to meet his mother, Mrs. Joy Boy, and she's just sitting there eating the entire suckle pig and watching food commercials. It's like, God, this had to have gone over everybody's head in the 60s. For me, it was billed as the movie was something to offend everyone. I did.

I mean, like one of the best kickers is right after, um, they break up and it's basically, um, if you've never seen it before, it does for Hollywood entertainment and the funeral industry, what, um, Dr. Strangelove did for the cold war. And, um, there's just this fantastic scene. Uh, Rod Steiger is this very effeminate head and bomber. At this, uh, mortuary whispering glades.

Yeah. Whispering glades. And, um, right after he and this thanatogenous breakup, I love the scene to where there's this body sent down. It's like, this is from Mr. Joy Boy, and she picks up this note on this corpse covered in a sheet that says, this is how I feel right now because of you.

And she uncovers the sheet, and he's made up in this dead body with a really sad exaggeration. It's just such bizarre humor at the time. Sold. When they bring in. A sick film.

Yeah, somebody walks up to Mr. Joy Boy, and they're like, we've got a mother-daughter suicide. Which one would you like? And he's like, oh, I'll take the infant. And somebody else is like, oh, Mr.

Joyboy loves children. He grabs the baby. Yeah, he's just swooping around with his dead baby. Oh, wow. This is like, you know, this is about.

1962, I think. 65. It was the year right after Strange Love. Yeah, it was right after 65. And it's just, you won't believe it.

People must have flipped their shoes. Something like that. And it's a huge cast of very strange people. Liberace plays a casket salesman. That's how I always describe it.

Well, it's Liberace playing a casket salesman. Sold right there. That's how weird it is. It's amazing that you should mention that because I just saw Candy for the first time yesterday and I had no idea what I was getting myself into and was blown away by it. It sounds like a very similar sensibility.

Dark, dark. Because it's a novel by Yvonne Waugh, but I've never read the book, but the movie is just through the roof. Weird, weird. Yeah. Alright, do we want to round it out with the big one?

Which is, I only wanted to end with this one because according to this, it is confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest financial disaster in all of movie history. Anybody have a guess? Tron? 1995. Cutthroat Island.

There's another one of those bringing way too much baggage to a movie. Trying to also do a weird... Switch on the... It's a feminist pirate movie, I guess. Just badly made by your lame husband.

So, yeah, it lost close to $ 105 million. Wow. That's a lot of money. I have very, very vague memories of sitting through it and dozing half the time at the drive-in, waiting for whatever was coming on. Last after it.

Same here. I remember my parents watching it on pay-per-view when it came out and I just fell asleep. Yeah. Lost enough to bankrupt Carol Kofischer, so. Wow.

There you go. Yeah, I just remember seeing the preview and Shay just like, nobody asked for this picture. Yeah. There were no pirate movies. And I love old pirate movies.

We want Geena Davis as a pirate. Babe, that could be awesome. What's this? Watch it. Could be.

It's not, but. Not directed by her husband. Not directed by her husband. You just see how weird it gets, you know. It's just weird, yeah.

Where select couples are wielding so much power. And it just makes Matthew Mulvaney look bad. He could have had a good career, and that killed it for him. He's still got the Dark Knight Rises. He's just now kind of recovering.

It took a long time for him to even get roles after that. Well, I think that should round this one out. But again, there's still plenty I'm sure we've missed, so we can keep that for a sequel somewhere down the line. Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week.

Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening. I never had a chance. I thought you cared for me. But now I.

See I never had a chance. I.... Though you never told me so Somehow I know I never had a. Chance I knew we'd have. To part For I could always.

Reach your lips But. I could never. Reach your heart. My dream about romance ended in a friendly chat, but more than that, I never. Had a chance.

Thank you. Thank you. Renny Harlan, the guy that directed Cutthroat Island. Oh, yeah. He's done nothing but stellar films.

I mean. Yeah. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!