191: Show Us on the Doll Where the Movie Touched You

Hello, this is Peter Mayhew, listening to Movie Mountain Down. Music It's showtime. The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. Our nuclear reactor pumping.

Out one million kilowatts of power. My name is Dewey Finn, and no, I'm not a licensed teacher, but I have been touched by your kids, and I'm pretty sure I've touched them. Way down among Brazilians, coffee beans grow by the billions, so they've got to find those extra cups to fill. They got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown.

I am Brian. I'm Dave. I'm Beau. I'm Greg. I'm Ben.

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 from Nancy's Bagel Grounds where we will get together, drink coffee... And talk about movies that touched us in a very special way. We'll get to that later. So... Okay.

Ooh. What, you didn't... You make it sound scandalous when you say it that way. You didn't have that? Brad, I'd say this was a Divinals episode.

I don't know. So, yeah. Yeah, so while we're having our coffee here, I will throw it out there. Dave, what blend of coffee are we drinking this week? This is Fisher's and Fowler's.

We better enjoy it because I think I've rounded this one out. So this might be the last batch for quite a while. So enjoy your fishers and followers. A little bit of hint of chocolate in there. Sure.

Welcome to the coffee review. The aftertaste. A little citrus. I get a little citrus. Smoky.

All right, so this one we're guessing we're going to ramble on like we do. So we're just going to get right into it. It is time for The Grind. Once again, it has been a little while, I guess. In this segment, we discuss a specific topic or question related to movies.

As often as possible. We'd like them to come from you, but that rarely happens. If for some reason you actually had a question or topic you would like us to address, email them to us at geeksatmoviemeltdown.com and we'll see if we can work them in. Since you didn't, this week's topic comes from Beau. I'm sorry.

No, no. It's a good one. We just have to word it right because as we found out earlier, we all take it a different way or we take it the way we usually take everything straight into the gutter. So you originally said we should reminisce on the first movie that touched us in that special way. So I think, as I put it earlier, trying to specify, the first movie that just clicked with you and you saw it differently than the way you'd seen movies in the past, you sort of fell in love with the whole idea of movies, and it inadvertently turned you into a movie geek.

So that's kind of the general. Area we're headed for. That's what I was shooting for. So. With that, I guess we will get it rolling.

If you're ready to. Go, Dave, you can go. I'm ready to go. It's very, very early in my life in this case, and that is King Kong, the original King Kong. Definitely.

And it's all a part of a particular... It's not just that film, but it's all a part of a particular week in my life when I was four. Channel 3 movies, local wave TV, the 4 o'clock movie that a lot of us grew up with. They had a stop-motion week, or a stop-motion monster week. And at the age of four, you're still not able to actually define what's real and what's not in a movie.

And that week, I saw mostly Harryhausen movies. They came from beneath the sea, and they showed Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and I think they showed 20 Million Miles to Earth, but they capped it off on Friday with the original King Kong. And since I was four. The big finale, as. It should be.

And, you know, it all leads to that anyway when it comes to Harryhausen. And all week I was pretty, you know, entranced by what I was seeing. I knew there weren't dinosaurs, yet I was seeing, you know, dinosaurs. And really didn't know how it was being done. My family didn't really know how it was being done.

They were trying to explain to me, well, that's not really real. Those are camera tricks. How so? Smoke and mirrors. Smoke and mirrors, kid.

It just pinned me to the TV that week. And King Kong was the big one because it had everything that I loved in it. It had dinosaurs and a giant gorilla and this great adventure movie. But it fascinated me with the mystery of how it was being done. And then the climax on the Empire State Building, I suddenly... cared about you know this creature this character that wasn't human and was a monster and i should have been afraid of monsters but at that final you know moment when it's being you know gunned down on top of the the building uh there's all the sympathy and it's you know it's for a puppet yeah and uh that hit me very early and stuck with me always It's effective.

That idea, I think, they've latched onto over the years, and you've seen them tap into that little scenario over. And over again. Definitely. Like I said, it became kind of a lifetime obsession. I became a huge stop-motion fan, and working through Wonderfest, and working on the book and everything, got to know Ray Harryhausen, and these are all stories that we all tell each other all the time.

Just the grip that movie has had on our lives. And They did Son of Kong, I guess, within a year of that coming out, which is a fun movie, but it's nowhere near that level. But as I always point out, nobody else made a movie like that, and Hollywood is based on imitation. Back then, nobody else could make a movie like that. The only people who could make it were the people who made that film.

So it really still stands as a very unique achievement. They tried remaking it, and it never quite works. I know. I was going to say, as a child, I did have quite an affection for the De Laurentiis version. I know I am the scourge of many things everywhere.

I saw it when it came out, and I was young still. I kind of appreciated it, but no, it's not King Kong. It's not the same, but again, I think, number one, it still works that same way. You do still feel for Kong. Sure, yeah.

Again, I think that was at the point I was sort of working with enjoying the cheesiness of specific movies, and there's definitely a lot of cheesy aspects to that one, but I don't know. I kind of liked what they ended up doing with that one. It's not the same as the original, but... I think it still works on a level, not necessarily the same level. I've softened on that movie a little over the years.

Not King Kong Lives, but. I was just going to say, King Kong Lives is interesting on a whole other level. It's a different type of movie. That was my introduction to King Kong, actually, when I was a little kid. I was like, oh gosh, I was probably two years old and I remember going to my grandmother's house, it was in Mayfield, to her house, and it was playing, I think, on TNT in her den.

I just remember, and that was my introduction to like, you know, The character King Kong or just, you know, a giant ape in a movie. And it was amazing to me. Like, I realize now it's a terrible movie. It's still amazing. It doesn't come close to, you know, doing justice to the original.

But in the same way, when you're a kid, it has that same spirit where you think it's real and you're seeing a giant ape fight monsters and, you know, swing, you know, on vines. In a jungle. Or have sex. Does that happen? I don't even remember.

Oh, my God. There is a mate. There's a monkey love scene. Yeah, okay. Might not have been on the TNT version.

God, that's such a bad movie. I can't believe it. I think they cut away. We get Linda Hamilton instead. Same difference.

They had an alternate TV version. We know what's going on. Monkey action we know we know that was uh you know that was gillerman too i mean he the guy who did the what the 76 kong made that as well yeah maybe the last thing he ever did but. I mean yeah i vividly i still vividly remember that sequence where he those redneck oh yeah hunters are in the canyon he comes and eats them all and that just had a huge impact on me like seeing that as a little kid i was like whoa he just ate those people that's so real destroying rednecks yeah yeah. Yeah, it was the same with me that week with Beast from 20,000 Fathoms when the Rattasaurus bends down and eats the cop.

Yeah. That was a big shake-up. Oh, yes. Wow. You see a guy actually get eaten by a monster.

Yeah, they didn't really pull punches back in the day. They did what they could do. King Kong was still kind of everywhere. in popular culture when I was a kid. You know, it's the 60s, so the cartoon was on, which was kind of a fun adventure cartoon. And they'd made Godzilla vs.

King Kong, which is a great fun. Terrible. Very, very different style. We saw that at school. They used to have Friday night movies at school, and they showed Godzilla vs.

King Kong, a huge hit with us. So it was still kind of everywhere. They showed it on 16? 16, yeah. That was great.

That era, from around the third grade through the sixth grade, out where I went to school, they had Friday night movies as a fundraiser. And we know Jerry Siebel. Jerry used to run those... over in this part of town. And a friend of his used to run them over in the south end where I grew up. And they were 16mm.

But what was cool is these guys from an earlier generation tried to recreate the experience of Saturday matinee for kids on a Friday night. So we were only paying like a quarter to get into the movie. That's great. But they had a huge concession stand set up with all kinds of candy and popcorn and pickles and everything. And that's where they made their money.

But he would show the national anthem Filmed in 16mm with the jets flying over. Everybody would stand up and salute the flag. Wow. And then he would show a cartoon. He would show Three Stooges shorts.

And he started serializing Flash Gordon. That's awesome. Which kept kids coming in. That is so cool. And it was great.

It was something that, you know, it had skipped two or three generations. But we were lucky enough to have that. And they started out showing kid movies, you know, Disney-type stuff, and a lot of talking and screaming going on. And usually the projectionist would have to get on the mic and say, if you don't shut up, I'm going to stop the movie. You can settle down over there.

And then they showed, I believe it was, oh, it was Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. That was it. And it wasn't what was scheduled. They couldn't get hold of whatever that film was. Instead, they showed Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and people went wild.

Yeah. And then they realized we should be showing monster movies and Godzilla movies. So we saw, you know, Destroy All Monsters and all kinds of stuff like that from that point on. That's amazing. And no telling how many kids that affected that same way.

I mean, you don't stop and think about it, I guess, when you're throwing something like that together. You just hope it's fun. But, yeah, that seems like it would have a huge impact on, like, that entire generation, at least in this area. Yeah, you know, and it was kind of everywhere. I mean, that, I don't know how many schools were actually doing that kind of thing, you know, back in the 70s, but as far as the television exposure, there was so much more of it, you know, when I was a kid.

You know, I'm pushing 50, so it was everywhere, because it's what was fodder for regular television. I mean, movies on the afternoons, movies at night, movies on the weekends. We grew up with that kind of stuff, and Younger folks have not had as much exposure. It's been through cable, but then it's been pigeonholed into certain networks, and it's just not as omnipresent as it was because, frankly, they want to make money selling it to you on a DVD or pay-per-view, things like that. It's totally different.

And I guess. For a long time there, they just didn't have that bank of programming that was just sitting around waiting to show reruns. All they had were movies for a long time. It seems like. Most of the stuff being run in the 70s were shows from the 60s.

Reruns for Andy Griffith and Beverly Hillbillies and stuff like that. You had game shows. I think in the mid-70s, they started reaching back and showing stuff like You Bet Your Life, Gotcha Marks, which I would stay up and watch at night, or Sergeant Bilko. Really good shows from the 50s, but that was rare. It wasn't until WDRB locally started showing kind of a unique concept of TV as it used to be in the early 80s, where they would set aside a weekend and do nothing but classic television and classic movies.

Was this Ray Fouché? Ray Fouché. I remember that. He would host. It was a good show.

Yeah. And then I think they even did it for one whole week one summer. It was like everything. And the ratings went through the roof. Huh.

Because people hadn't seen anything like that. There were no nostalgia channels. Sort of the predecessor to Nick at Night. He was. And I talked to the manager, interviewed him years ago, and he talked about how difficult it was to talk the distributors into giving him like one copy of a show.

They wanted him to buy the whole run of whatever he was running, Route 66. I just need one Lucy. That's it. You know, The Outer Limits was on and stuff like that. It was the first time I'd ever seen any of that stuff.

I'd read about it all my life. So we were lucky in that, you know, that stuff was sort of commonplace. But I do remember it being a normal thing that they would show movies on regular television. Everybody had that Sunday night movie. CBS or NBC.

I mean, everybody had movies. Yeah, they always ran. And it's like, when's the last time that's happened? Nobody does it. Yeah, it's rare that you'll see a network.

The CBS Friday night movie was like a religious thing for me as a kid. I mean, that's Planet of the Apes. All those films were big premieres. This is like 1973. Yeah.

Back when you had to wait usually five years for a movie to make its way to television. That was the television premiere of Planet of the Apes. It's also going to be pre-VHS or anything, so it's a big deal when it's being shown. That's the first time people have seen it. It was made since theater.

The television premiere was 73. That used to be very common. Remember how long it took? Well, you probably don't. You weren't born.

How long it took for Star Wars to make it. That's what I was going to say. I remember Star Wars, the years between that Cable premiere, because Cable was still kind of getting its feet, and it was a big deal when it finally made its way to Cable. Growing up, I remember it was a big event when they would do The Wizard of Oz once a year. Or Gone with the Wind, my mother would.

You would plan a whole year around seeing that. It was even, my grandmother would cook dinner and everyone would come over and we would watch wizard of oz after we had dinner you know it was an event wasn't just yeah you sit down. Yeah the only one they still do i guess is is ten commandments that stills. They do that at brown easter easter. I think abc does that still as a yearly event that's used to be you know much more common and you know movies used to play in theaters for over a year you know star wars played at showcase for i think 62 weeks.

Now it's all about just making money on DVDs. It's almost as if showing it in theaters is like to advertise what. You can buy on DVD. They might as well just put that promo at the beginning of the movie. Available in two months on DVD.

That makes so much sense about The Wizard of Oz, that being a yearly event, because that explains how my parents, when we taped it on VHS, they would, you know... not make me and my sister watch, but we would all have dinner and have an event, and it was a yearly thing of watching Wizard of Oz. I'm like, you all probably did this when it wasn't on VHS, so you're. So stoked that you can watch it now that you passed it on. That's what basically gave the movie its reputation, was television. Wizard of Oz was not a hit when it came out.

It was kind of a flop. Really? Yeah. MGM, it was a freak. It's a very freakish movie.

It's not particularly musical. and it's a little too scary to be a fairy tale for some kids. It's true. And MGM took a big risk, and it really didn't pay off very well. It wasn't until television. It was up against Gone with the Wind that year.

Yeah, everything was out in 39. Annihilating. Yeah. Wow. You can't compete with that.

They spent a lot of money on it. Stagecoach wrote a lot of films in 39 that were huge. That's true. Gone with the Wind was the big one. Yeah.

Gosh. That's true, that I guess Wizard of Oz is not quite a musical. Like, it starts out as a musical and just kind of, gives up throws it in there towards the end like yeah i never noticed. It though it's an amazing movie but i had that same thing i had the i mean the yearly thing and i think it is i think it's because they made it almost an annual event that that's part. Of what built up its reputation too is just having it be almost like clockwork the same time every year it would come back around and then it had been a year since you've seen it so all the family would get together so yeah.

We we try to do with movies that i love or i'm trying to introduce to my kids and you know it's the first time they've seen it um like with et i brought home reese's pieces as well because i want it to be more than just a sit down and watch experience i want it to be something they remember yeah you know i'm planning i still haven't waited for any still waiting for indiana jones and there's a the kids go on a. Feed them insects. That's Temple of Doom. First one, you just drag them behind the car. I've considered starting them with Temple of Doom instead of.

It's more of a kids movie. When I was a kid, that was the one I liked the best because it's like, oh, that's the one where they eat the bugs. It's probably the most cereal-like. Right. Yeah.

But there's a playground that I take the kids to and there's one of those conveyor slides that they hold onto and swing and Um, my son even said he knows the idea and the ideal of Indiana Jones and he was swinging on it and said something about, I'm like, We're going to go there. How am I going to introduce this? Because I want to get it right. Do you already have the music playing in his head? Have you introduced him to it and he won't even fully understand why?

It's in his subconscious. Now I want to whip. That's where I want to go with that. That's cool. I want it to be right when they experience it.

He needs to be terrified of snakes first. He might start by traumatizing the child. Just throw a snake on him every couple of days. Work your way up. Because I don't want them to just go, oh, yeah, that's... that was a bad movie.

Find some kid at the playground who's French to start stealing all of his toys from them. He has to deliver the line every time. But yeah, making an event, that's what makes you a movie lover. Like I said, that whole week when I was four and then, you know, There are jumps from that in my life. I go up to Planet of the Apes in 1973.

That was huge. And it was another genre thing. And I'm seeing guys in makeup, and I'm wondering how they did that. It still looks amazing. A couple years later, it's 2001.

That got re-released theatrically, and I saw that when I was 11. It just blew my mind. But I understood it. That's more than most people. And then Star Wars hit.

And that was another just huge step. But it's all events. and and raiders as well yeah which is a movie nobody was expecting to do much from i was a member of the star wars fan club and we would get the the monthly bantha tracks little newsletter you know and they actually that's cool yeah and they actually sent out passes for the sneak and they're basically saying well if you like star wars you might like this they were hesitant about it there's an indiana jones thing in there for for raiders and I saw that, but a sneak at Showcase, and we were all knocked flat by it, you know, just wow. And those kind of events, to me, haven't happened theatrically in a long time. Well, I was thinking as you said that, because we were talking about, you know, the event, having it be an event does still sort of make you the geek, and I think it's like we're watching it change.

So now I think we even brought this up in the video store closing episode that, like, People have just shifted to a different place. It's like now you see people creating that event at a convention and you see them like creating it at, you know, when they have the stuff they do in Austin or when they do the now that they'll kind of MST3K movies. It's like they've turned it into like a different kind of event. But it's still like it's it's you know, they're still searching for that same thing. thing to be a total geek about. Yeah, and that's the whole thing about just seeing something in a theater in general is it's about the communal aspect of it.

It's a shared event. Because otherwise there's really no sense to see anything in theaters nowadays because so many home systems now, I mean you can get a decent TV and sound system and that and it's going to show up a lot of local theaters. But it's about seeing it with a crowd of people where it's just that shared experience, especially if it's something to where you're seeing it with couple hundred people that have seen that movie before and you all like it. I think going off that there is a camaraderie of these are the people that I'm seeing it with and that's why it's with cell phones or showing up late mentioned before that's not it's not the insult of you're disturbing me from watching the movie it's we were supposed to be watching this together.

Yeah, everyone's alienating themselves from each other. How dare you pay attention to someone or something else? We're in this together. It's just wrong. You're on my team.

You need to be paying attention. Well, that and it's, it also kind of, yeah, it interrupts the process too to where, I mean, you've forgotten about the world. If it's a good movie, you forget about the world around you and the world outside and you're suddenly engaged in this and then, Just that little light on the cell phone, suddenly it snaps you back to reality for just a moment. You feel cheated because all of a sudden it's like, I was in the zone. I mean, it's gotten to the point where I'm willing to sit in the front of the theater rather than see that bright cell phone light in the corner of my eye just distract me.

I mean, I can't stand it. You could actually put up cell phone blockers. We've looked into it at the theater, but... They're illegal in the U.S. Dang patriot act.

Cuts into those profits just a little too much. I mean, in Europe, that's actually very common to have cell phone jammers in every single theater. Oh, wow. That's kind of badass, actually. It's like James Bond gadget.

Slightly more acceptable than the just breaking everyone's hand that pulls out their cell phone that I was just thinking. That's a step we need to take. That's standard managerial protocol. That's how they watch movies in Iran, isn't it? Go ahead, answer that.

That's what I heard, at least. Oh, well. Do we want to move on to Beau? All right. It's actually funny listening to Dave.

I realize that mine is very, very similar because my first, I mean, he mentioned Rage of the Lost Ark, and I've got the little fragment of a memory of seeing just at my grandparents' house, and I was probably about three at the time, but it was on my dad's side of the family, so it's a huge, like, you know, he's one of seven and there's tons of cousins, everything. Well, all the adults were like in the living room with the door shut and I go walking in and I realized that sort of setup could make it a really weird story based on what could be on the TV. But I remember just like sneaking in the door and walking around the recliner just at the moment when you're seeing Colonel Dietrich just like melting.

That's just burned in my memory. And my mom looking over and she just like shooed me out. Of the room really quick. And I was just like, Oh, I didn't see. And then later on, I remember it was this thing.

It's like, Finally, after I'd watched a lot of movies, it was this reward system. We'll let you see this movie because you were curious about that one time. But for me, the most distinctive memory I have for a movie early on was Tarantula. The old one with Leo G. Carroll and Joan Agar and that.

It's because in the early 80s, when I was growing up, you had... Memories of Monsters on WHAS. So Friday nights, what they would do is they would show just old, like classic universal horror films. And being young, my mom wouldn't let me stay up that late, but she would record them on VHS for me. And so that way, when I woke up on Saturday mornings, I mean, I didn't watch cartoons at all.

I would watch what she'd recorded on Memories of Monsters the night prior. And for some reason, the reason that Tarantula sticks out is also what I would watch on Saturday mornings is TBS would do Super Scary Saturday, where Al Lewis and his Grandpa Munster motif... He would also show movies, but usually instead of him going for the classic Universal stuff, it was like whatever cheap sort of shitty knockoff movie he could get. And so. What he showed that day was Giant Spider Invasion.

So I think because it was two giant spider movies, the two synced up. And for. Almost two decades, I had no idea what the other movie was. And just finally I saw it as an adult. I was like, oh, my God, this is the movie, Giant Spider Invasion.

That's it. But for me, not only would I do that, but there were a couple kids across the street where their parents would do the same thing for them and another kid a couple streets over. And so every single Saturday morning we would watch Memories of Monsters on VHS and then Super Scary Saturday in our own respective homes. And we would get together that afternoon, hang out, play, and just talk about the movies we watched. And it was just a great thing.

So I kind of consider myself lucky that I actually was able to watch movies with the last local horror house. That was the last example of that kind of programming in the novel. From, I think, around 83. I think that ran longer than people think. I've had people tell me it ran through like 89 or so.

I was going to say, I'm pretty sure probably this year I think would be 85 or 86. I want to say it was 85. I remember being in kindergarten when I watched those two. But, you know, for me, it was just an awesome thing just to have my parents actually tape that stuff for me and let me watch that type of stuff rather than just being very paranoid about, you know, me watching horror films. But, yeah, that was always the sort of Saturday morning ritual I remember seeing, you know, The Blob, Day of the Animals, you know, just a lot of films where I'm even surprised they let me watch them because they're rated R.

But I guess it got trimmed down for TV. Yeah, probably so. But, yeah. And I think just probably the reason it also sort of was burned in my memory is we actually lived in a house that was infested with brown recluses at the time. So just the problem with spiders was also sort of an issue because I have these very vivid memories, these little things like my mom pulling back the covers to put us to bed and there were like a couple in between sheets.

Or my dad putting on the oven mitt in the kitchen and one just climbing up his arm. And it's just a surprise that nobody ever got bit by brown recluses when we were there. We actually just had to essentially abandon the house when we moved because we kept trying to treat them and they would never go away because once you get them in the house, they sort. Of breed in the walls. Yeah, yeah.

Is this out in Fairdale? Uh-huh, out in Fairdale. Did you know they had to close the post office out there? Because of brown recluses. For months.

They just reopened it because of brown recluses. I mean, I think it's just a major problem because... I thought it was an excuse to save some money. They're in the walls. Yeah.

Yeah. Very much so. Yeah, it's terrifying. They probably just had to gut the whole thing and. Then redo it.

I was like, wow. I thought it was, they just lived in cardboard boxes in the basement. But no, they're everywhere. So, I mean, that also kind of got the fascination and just, you know, spiders and stuff like that in general. So I think just everything sort of synced at once.

And as such, I mean, that's why I've been just a fan of horror movies. And Tarantula is a very early memory from the Channel 3 movies as well. They ran that and Creature and, you know, Deadly Mantis and things like that as a kid in the series too. Yeah. Tarantula is the one that really stood out.

Also because of the makeup. Yeah. Leo G. Carroll gets really scary looking by the end of the movie. And you mentioned makeup and probably the other one that stood out the most from my childhood as you could probably guess is Dick Tracy.

Just because I think that's the one where I suddenly took more of an interest, less than kids' films and more stuff that was aimed at, I guess you could say, older audiences. Because I remember seeing the preview for it, and one of the previews that I saw for it was on the front of Plenty, I Shrunk the Kids. It was a really lousy preview. And I remember at the time talking to my brothers, it's like, why don't they just keep making Kids movies, why are they going to make stupid stuff like that? Just because it was a bad preview.

I remember seeing that at the South Park Drive-In back in the day before that went out. Because that was the usual Friday night rituals. We would go to the South Park Drive-In since we lived right there in Fairdale. But, no, I actually ended up getting a sticker book back when Panini used to do all those little sticker books. You just unfold them and put the stickers in.

And just seeing the villains and just staring at them. I remember just staring at these photos and just like, it's amazing. My mind couldn't process it, like how it was done. And then, um, I ended up, my mom bought me the making of book. And so I was just reading about all this makeup process that they did.

And I was just like, this is awesome. And then she took me to see it on my birthday, which mine is at the end of July. And again, it's back in the data where stuff wouldn't just last a couple of weeks. I mean, nowadays it would only be in theaters two, three weeks, but at that point it had been in theaters almost two months. It was still at showcase Louisville.

So, I just remember seeing it and being completely blown away by all the villains within it. So was that the first time the fact that makeup effects existed clicked with you? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I'd seen all these horror films, even like Planet of the Apes. I loved Planet of the Apes growing up, but somehow looking at that to me as a kid, I just saw it and I was like, oh, that's just somebody in an elaborate mask.

Yeah. You know, seeing Dick Tracy and then seeing these people where they look like human beings, but they're just completely twisted and contorted. It's just, that was the first time my mind was like, how does that work? I can understand how they make monsters. It's just somebody in a lot of stuff, but how do they make somebody look like a human, but not a human and all of that.

But then I got into the comic books and just staring at the comics and just realizing they took something that was like two dimensional and then brought it into the real world too. It just, completely astonished me as a kid. It's amazing. Look to it. It was, it, it almost didn't even fit.

Cause I can remember when it was released and the whole buildup to it, it just didn't fit with anything. I did not know how to market it. No, it wasn't. And they, I think they hung their hats on the stars, and the people that were going to love it weren't going to care about the stars. They wanted it to be the Batman of that summer.

Yeah. They really did. They marketed it like it was Batman, and it wasn't. And getting Danny Elfman to do a score kind of like it, too. Yeah.

And even Dick Tracy fans. If you talk to any Dick Tracy fan that was probably 20, 30, or older when they saw it, they hate the movie. And it's mostly because, to me... I grew up and I love it because it's, I got the nostalgia factor, but you know, they put characters like flat top and itchy and that and there, and it's just, it'd be like, what if you made a Batman movie to where the Joker was the main villain and like the penguin and the Riddler and all them were just his henchmen that were in there for about 10, 15 minutes where they got killed off. People would just complain about it being bastardized.

And it's the same thing there. Cause you know, you have like, you know, the brow who's in the movie for like a minute at the beginning, but in the, um, comic strip, I mean, he was, the major villain that lasted that year, and he was a Nazi spy. So they just. Changed all of the backgrounds of these characters basically to suit, putting as many of them in there as possible. But even so, I still love it for the fact that rather than just having one in there and wondering how they have done that with everybody else, you get to see a good two dozen of these prominent villains done in makeup form.

We've got it on the list, so at some point we can return to it in its full form. Full episode glory. Oh, Dick Tracy? I'd love to watch it again. I specifically threw it out there.

It's like going to be pouring kerosene on. A flame for me, man. Okay, we'll hold off and come back then because I've had that on the list for like a couple of years. I'll have you over to my house. Once you see my house, then you'll realize how bad it is.

There's a shrine there. Well, it's an entire room. Let's go to Greg's. Then I guess. Are we going to break it up?

Yeah, I guess we can take a break here and then come back with the rest of the story here. Come on, come on, come on. Come on, now touch me, babe Can't you see that I. Am not afraid? What was that promise that you made?

Why won't you tell me. What she said? What was that promise that you made? Now I'm gonna love you Till the heavens stop the rain. I'm gonna love you Till.

The stars fall from the sky For you. And I. I'm Chili Dilly, the personality pickle. Packed in a jar for the freshest flavor. Served cold in a sack for you to savor.

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Even science was stunned. The new atomic miracle should have been mankind's greatest boon. Instead, when such power to cause phenomenal growth proved dangerously unstable. Man was confronted with this most shocking blunder. The isotope triggered our nutrients into a nightmare.

A blunder that transformed a tiny insect into the 100-foot spider that was now ravaging the panic-stricken countryside. Tweet Audio, your source for high-performance, noise-reducing earbuds. Available in three styles and seven colors. Durable and designed to sound great for both music and those chatty podcasts, like the one you're listening to now. Tweaked Audio earbuds come with a one-year warranty, and now there's a special deal for Movie Meltdown listeners.

Just go to tweakedaudio.com, and when you check out, enter the discount code MELTDOWN. Then you'll get 33% off and free shipping. Tweaked Audio. Sounds better. Dave, I do not get superheroes.

Oh my god, I don't get you. What don't you? Towerbot here. Well, the meatbags were going to say that if you're a geek and like podcasts, then you could try Tower of Technobabble at www.toweroftechnobabble.com. Then this started.

Well, it's up to you. I'm gonna get my taser and put a stop to this. Towerbot out. Okay, monkeys. It's nap time.

Hi, this is Dick Miller, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown. Hi, this is Grandpa, and I will be your host for Super Scary Saturday on the Super Station. Doug McClure braves firestorms, scary monsters, and other ugly creatures. It's a fantastic journey. Where on Earth can we be?

At the Earth's core. So join me, Grandpa, for Super Scary Saturday. 10.05 Eastern on the Superstation Saturday morning. This is. 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. This is the night, yeah. This is the night.

This is the time, we've got to get it right. Touch me, touch me. I want to feel your body, your heartbeat next to mine. Touch me, touch me now. Touch me, touch me now.

All right. So we are back and we're moving on to Gray. My movie isn't as early on in my life as the two of you, and I'm guessing probably Brian's as well. Definitely mine. I had wonderful images.

I was a movie fan as a youth kid, You're right. I collected. The moment we got a... I was in second grade and we got a VCR was like my first movie epiphany. I was recording anything and everything I could.

I couldn't believe it. I begged my parents to go to the video store. I watched the Muppet movie. At least 100 times. It's no joke.

I've seen that movie. And I had a copy of Crawl, and I watched it every week. Every week. They previously mentioned Crawl. Right.

Also got around to renting that on VHS when I was like five or six. That was an experience. I think everyone here at the table loves Crawl, save. I didn't say I love it. It was an experience.

I just think it's funny because it keeps bringing it up on my Netflix now because I watch Starcraft. I can see why the two, yeah. And I love the kids in the neighborhood. We all watched Red Dawn when it came out on Showtime and we reenacted the movie every day. Those were movie lover moments.

But when I think I took the task of when was I, I think, cross over into movie geek. I'll jump forward to high school and a buddy of mine from high school, we didn't go to, you know, football games and basketball games or the mall or any of that kind of stuff. Friday and Saturday, we would go to the movies. Sometimes we would go to see two movies. And I think Back then I saw every movie that was released.

It was that this is what I'm doing. And I think my parents thought I was just wasting time, but no, I wanted to see everything I could. And well, that was allowed in to see. And, um, I had seen Batman and I had seen Beetlejuice and I loved both of them. Um, but the moment I think I became the, I guess, geek is I saw, uh, Edward Scissorhands with a friend of mine.

And I think I finally kind of opened up to the, that there's a visual style and it's connected to a director. And I could see that. I mean, it was clearly, you know, I knew what I was seeing. I knew, and I was, it was sitting in the theater. I was like, wow.

And I was wowed by the story. I was wowed by the visuals. The music especially was a huge part of that film as well. Not a perfect film. It's not even one of my favorite films.

But it's the moment. And I remember every Sunday night, we have a lot of cousins. And we'd all go over to my grandmother's house. And all the kids would hang out in the kitchen and eat snacks and watch whatever show. you know, raunchy Fox show was on like in living color or whatever. And we'd kind of talk about what we did, you know, Friday and Saturday night.

And I was the youngest of the group. And I'd mentioned that I'd gone and seen Edward Scissorhands and the, um, just made fun of me. Like I was the biggest geek in the world for not only going to it, but liking it because the, just from the sound of it, it sounds like. A chick flick or something. Yeah.

It's about a hairstyle. It was just released that weekend and nobody really knew what it was or where it was coming from. And, um, I mean, and it went on for like weeks that, Oh, here comes Edward scissorhands kind of thing. And I went back and saw the movie and that was the, you know, that was the movie that I finally sought out directors. And then I, and, because I remembered several films as a kid, seeing them on Showtime and tapes and stuff like that.

All of a sudden, I was like, oh, I do like Joe Dante movies. I was like, he's made that and that and that. And so it just starts making that list. I didn't have the internet or anything like that, but I would go even to the video store. It was called Movies at Home in New Albany, where I grew up.

It was a horrible movie store. But. I would go in and the clerk was a movie geek. And I would say, I like Joe Dante movies. And he'd go, here you go.

And he would show me all of them that I hadn't seen. And then I would, he'd say, have you ever seen and just the next director. But it was because of that movie and because of that moment of his style is so unique and so accessible, I guess, for the, you know, almost like a freshman grad you know, lit class of we're going to, you know, you're going to read John Steinbeck or something like that. And once you've read a John Steinbeck book, you know what John Steinbeck is going to even say in the next paragraph. And so that, and, and honestly, that's why I even studied.

I got a literature degree in college. We didn't have a film at the school that I went to. I don't even think I would have thought of that at that point, but it was that same sort of thing as when you, latch on to story and author or director, and you love one and can seek them out, it's just the greatest thing you can do. And I think that's, to me, that's what makes that movie geek is once you found that moment and that thing that can, that epiphany, that one thing, that to me was my moment. Yeah, that's actually, you mentioned that and I realized I had something similar.

And also when I was in high school and it was my art teacher, Basically, I would just go in and shoot the shit about movies and that while we were just in art class because it was pretty open. And he'd mention, just because he was like, you're really big into movies. I was like, yeah. And he said, you ever seen Dr. Strangelove?

I was like, no. And he goes, not everyone finds it funny. He said, again, most people in here wouldn't find it funny at all. But he's like, you should check it out. And I remember just having my mom rent it.

And of course, you know, when I said, I want to, can you rent Dr. Strangelove for me? I mean, it sounds like it's something dirty, but you know, kids in high school too. It's like, my teacher told me to rent this. It's for school.

Oh, your art teacher. Yeah, exactly. But I remember that being the first time to where, you know, I was like just impressed by the directorial style and wanted to find more films like that. I've even got like this I've still got it at home because I just found it the other day sorting through stuff. This painting that I did, it was like a blacklight painting because most of it's black, save everything else is in neon colors.

And it's a big multicolored atom bomb going off. And you've got Peter Sellers as Mandrake, as the president, and then as Strangelove himself, just like the three in the foreground and all that. And I was like, man, how many kids probably even just painted stuff like that. In high school? That's funny.

My art teacher in the sixth grade, she heard I saw 2001 and actually loaned me the soundtrack. So yeah, there's a connection with that. She was just... happy that anybody going to Fairdale Elementary was into something like 2001. Just to kind of encourage that. Strangelove was the very first VHS I bought, and more than likely, as far as I can recall, I probably bought.

It from you. Yeah, over at Suncoast. Yeah, you going in and talking to the movie clerk, that's actually how I got to know Dave. He was that weird kid who came in and was buying Outer Limits episodes, which really predated your existence by 30 years or so. Yeah, yeah.

I was probably stocking something on the other side of the ship. While you're talking about that, how much did I learn as well from customers? That's true. It's the reverse. They come in and say, you may have even suggested something to them, and then they come in and tell you eight different things that you haven't seen.

And you first of all feel like an idiot for not knowing what they are. But second, you're like, oh, I've got to see all of them tomorrow. But you know 99% of the time the people coming in are idiots and they have no clue about anything. So you get that one that's just like, oh, but you need to see this. And they'll kind of one-up you, but it's not even like a geeky, I know more than you, it's just that sharing your movie you love kind of thing.

I've actually got that with customers at the theater to where we even, like, I'll see them maybe once every couple of weeks and we'll exchange DVDs just because we trust each other enough to loan them out to one another. Well, if we're doing the school thing, I mean, that did, I, it won't mess with my other one that I'm going to, but yeah, mine was still later. It was, it was not as early as grade school. It was high school and I, there was a film study class and we did, I think there was one teacher there that, was really into film and he created that whole class and did a production class later. And I think that was the first time I kind of saw that, kind of what you were talking about, Greg, that saw the art involved in it.

You know, it's like I loved sci-fi and I loved, you know, action and big dumb stuff that you like when you're kids, monster movies and, you know, drive-in kind of stuff. But I think it's when I got there and he started pretty early on, you know, with, you know, early history of film and moving his way in and we hit, And again, cliche, but we hit Citizen Kane. And I sat there as a high school kid going, holy shit. It was just like the amount of planning and work that went into just making one shot. Mm-hmm.

Or I want this to look like this in this frame, and that technology doesn't exist, so I'm going to create it. The stuff that he did, it did kind of change that, and I think from that point on, I really did start looking, and again, I guess I'd watched all the older stuff in the genre sections, but it did make me want to go back and watch what I guess would be more classic. Most high school kids don't want to go watch movies from the 30s that are just cheesy classics, but suddenly I did. And I was like, this, that part kind of opened up. And I don't think I'd ever even thought about that kind of stuff from that artistic angle until, until he, he started that class.

And I sat there and was just like, wow. And we went through a lot of stuff and it covered the early stuff and then even got into early Coen brothers at that point. So it was, it covered a pretty big spectrum there. And I think it's what made me sort of the you know, the more artistic end and the technical end and that kind of stuff all kind of came into play at that point. And you just mentioned just picking stuff up at video stores.

I mean, I think anybody who had formative years in the 80s or just went to video rental stores a lot during the 80s, I mean, it was just such a memorable time because they're That was the first time you could actually walk in and just pick almost whatever movie you wanted. 90s, too, actually. I mean, it dragged in. I mean, I was kind of old school. I mean, a lot of my friends...

I was still watching, like, renting VHS. I think when DVD players came out, it wasn't... Our family didn't get one until, like, over 10 years later. I mean, we were really behind, but I was. Doing that for a while, and it was.

It was great. Yeah, I just have so many very memorable moments of just looking at VHS covers, especially the Roadrunner video over there on Southside Drive because they had probably the largest horror collection. Yeah, they had a lot of exploitation. Yeah, and of any rental store in this area. And I remember actually just methodically going through trying to find Giant Spider Invasion because I remember seeing it when I was younger.

And just not knowing what it was, just anything that had the giant spider on the cover. I'd rent it. So that's how I ended up seeing Kingdom of the Spiders and all this other stuff, and still in vain, never finding that one. Spider Invasion is the one with the Volkswagen, right? Yeah, it's the Volkswagen covered with fur, and there are people inside, and so they're moving the giant.

That's great. Nice. It's got Alan Hale, the skipper, the main hero of it. Think i've seen this on mystery science theater yeah. Well that's the thing i'd actually it wasn't until mystery science theater in like my 20s i just all of a sudden was watching that episode i was like oh my god that's it this movie that i've been looking for forever that's it that's totally it and i still have a couple fragments of other stuff to where i still have yet to figure them out i remember seeing from back in that era most recently i was just um downloaded i just like to make a big like five to six hour trailer disc of horror trailers just every now and just throw it on the background that way you're cleaning around the house just something to kind of keep you entertained and i threw on one of um the um insta area was the loch ness monster i can't even think of the name of it i've bought a bootleg now but i just saw the trailer i was like oh my god i've found like all sorts of people who research them like mark barry and I told him, I remember this dinosaur movie in particular had this scene and this scene.

He's like, is that it? I'm like, I saw it when I was like six. That's all I can remember. It's just that moment where you see the clip and you're like, oh my God. It wasn't a dream.

It was real. That's it. Because you remember all the way back to then, it's like it could be a dream. It could have been some weird dream you've just associated with being an actual film. But the only one I think yet I have to find a copy of that I remember the name of is The Boy Who Cried Werewolf.

Oh, yeah. They just ran that movie. a few weeks back on Sven Gulli. Really? Yeah, I was stunned. I turned it on.

They were actually showing that. Weird. But you're talking about VHS, and it's like, you know, there's, it's almost like, you know, the whole thing with vinyl now. Yeah. There's a certain romance to putting on an album.

There's the physical interaction with the medium that you kind of had with VHS as well. You had to get the cassette out, you had to rewind, you had to put it in the player, and the motors had to start turning. You had to wait for it to roll. Yeah, and it's just sort of a more real, visceral experience than the digital experience. And both have their covers to where a lot of the time it was the artwork that sold you on it, even though you didn't know what it was.

Oh, yeah. Going back, it's part of making the movie an event. I mean, it's what it's doing. Yeah, we would get together and just, you know, throw in money and rent a couple of horror films. And it would be stuff that you hadn't ever seen or hadn't seen since you were a child.

Like you said, the cover art. The 80s was like the era of the airbrush. They had all these obscure, awful horror films that suddenly had to market again. They hadn't been marketed since the drive-in days. But, you know, I could go out and find three on a meat hook on VHS.

Wow. I've been looking for this one. It was cool. Do you want to move on to yours? Oh, sure.

I mean, I guess since.... When I was little, it was most like 90% of the movies I watched were not even movies. They were just cartoons, VHSs of cartoons. Some of them might have been educational or just shorts or something like that. But 90% of the stuff I watched was animation when I was little.

But that played a big part in getting me into actual movies because that made me realize that, wow, you know, you get that dream feeling. You feel like I'm experiencing someone else's imagination on a screen. The first, probably the most, the earliest example, I guess, would be, I can't remember the title. It was this six-hour-long VHS of cartoons that my mom bought me. But there were a lot of specific cartoons on there.

It was ranging from Bugs Bunny to old 1930s cartoons like Small Fry and There's this famous one about the two crows who get in the radio. I think you actually see a segment of it in Kill Bill 2. It's a Fleischer cartoon, I know. Exactly what you're talking about. It had the one where the poor couple during the Depression go out a night on the town.

I don't remember what it was called. They capped it off. The very end of the six hours was this creepy, weird I remember the name of it. It was called Have You Got Any Castles? And the concept was just all these libraries.

It shows this library on a winter's night, and all of a sudden all the books, all the works of literature come to life. Like Old King Cole came out and started singing, and Fu Manchu, and what else? Dracula, and all these scary villains came out and started dancing, and it creeped me out. But at the same time, it left this impression that. that kind of got me addicted to watching just, I mean, I guess, you know, movies definitely, but just, you know, anything cartoon or anything, you. Know, I.

Guess like that. I don't know, but just that VHS is the one that comes to mind. Also, Pinocchio. That was different because it was a step up. It was the first cartoon I watched that wasn't just, you know, Bugs Bunny doing gags.

It was actually telling a story, and because of that, it kind of stayed in my mind. Like, I remember. moments from that where Jiminy Cricket at the opening, he's going through all the clocks, the sounds and the intricacy of the animation. There's actual camera movements that were telling a story. You don't even think about the camera when you're watching Saturday morning cartoons. So that was a big deal for me in terms of immersing me into a story that was over 15 minutes long.

Yeah. So, and then as far as, you know, getting into live action movies with actors and directors and everything, there was kind of this hodgepodge, I guess, trio of movies. And two of them were actually, because McDonald's had this thing in the 90s where they would give you a free. VHS with a meal. Well, I remember that.

I remember that. And this wasn't like, it's not that old. It was like 93 maybe. But one of them, like they had Wayne's World, Back to the Future. And those two movies, Back to the Future and Wayne's World, I would watch them over and over and over until I could just quote them, and they became one of my two favorite movies.

And of course, E.T., that was a big one. But I guess probably what got me into movies was just kind of probably being afraid for a big part, because I remember E.T., there were scary parts in there that like I hated watching them. I wanted someone else to watch them with me, but it was kind of, it was exciting. And I had never experienced anything like that before. So something about being afraid of something on a TV screen that, that, that stayed with me.

I think that was a big part of it too. And that goes back to like the, the villains coming out of the book spines and that cartoon that, that creeped me out. And, left a big impression on. Me as well. I remember that cartoon.

It's reminiscent. There's another one that's kind of similar. It's a Silly Symphonies one. It's called The China Shop, where you have almost like this weird sort of China demon that the other China characters have to stop and it starts breaking them. There's a whole kind of subgenre in the 30s where books or inanimate objects or things would come to life after hours.

Yeah. I was always fascinated with that stuff, too. And it's that attraction-repulsion thing where you're like, this is scary, but it's cool. Yeah. And it sort of receded.

And then when it came back, now you've got, like, Toy Story, but it's all for the sake of cute. Whereas there, it's... I mean. those old Silly Symphonies cartoons, I mean, they're entertaining, but at the same time, you can look at it and be like, this is sort of nightmarish. There's a gothic quality to those, and this was an old cartoon, too, and it was just such a dark, weird way to end this six-hour. Run of life.

It made the whole thing, the package just stay with me. I was like, man, that was, that one cartoon, I would literally fast-forward through six hours, which takes forever on a VHS, just to get to that, but it was so exciting. It's sad that I used to try to push people away from those because they were usually recorded... Well, they were obviously already recorded in EP, and they would always be bringing them back because they had terrible picture quality. Oh, yeah.

Tracking would be rolling everywhere, but still, a lot of cool stuff in those. Luckily, I didn't take it away from your mom and totally ruin your life. You know, that was a common... Well, you probably did. You know this is an EP, right?

Oh, yeah. You know. Sometimes you would tell people, you'd be like this. That's why it's four bucks. Well, and like feel it.

No, feel this one. There's no weight to it because it's no tape. So yeah, it's sad that, I mean, we think about stuff like that where EP is not going to make any, it's going to be about as useful as LP to kids now. It's like they're all just outdated technology. But there was a lot of cool stuff to be found there.

One of those cheap public domain EP tapes. Yeah. Good Times Video had a lot of weird stuff out that you weren't going to find anywhere else because it was public domain. Oh, yeah. So if it was the only way you could get it, I would buy it.

Yeah. So a lot of good stuff like Curse of the Demon. Mm-hmm. For some reason, Columbia had that on a cheap EP for the longest time. And then finally they put out a nice, you know, slow speed one.

Which. Yeah, as a kid, you think everything's real, so you don't recognize things like bad quality or rip-offs. I'm sure if I were to go back and dust off VHS and play it, I'd be like, oh my God, I could never sit through. Of course, one of my favorite EP tapes, I've still got it, even though I own it on DVD, just I have a nostalgia attached to the tape, is The Abominable Dr. Fives, which is actually, I've got it because you recommended it.

And that's probably the first time to where I saw a movie And I ended up seeking out all the other movies that had Vincent Price in it. It's like I'd seen him. Before, but it's like that was the movie to where I was just like, this dude is fucking amazing. I remember that run of tapes. We were all looking forward.

And what they did was they were promising them out. at sp and then they ended up dumping them all out on ep. That was masquerade death was in that we. Grabbed a bunch of the sps as soon as we could and held on to those and uh you know the great unwashed got the ep tapes but but yeah that was i remember that stuff you know suddenly hit it had been you know. 20 years since anybody's and just the style of the movie too is just so characteristic that's why you know now that tim burton's announced he's remaking the bubble doctor fives it's like. You know what?

Oh, no. If you like the movie so much, because it's obvious. I mean, you can tell you grew up loving Vincent Price. Your first little shorts you did with Frank and Winnie, that had, I'm sorry, not Frank and Winnie, but Vincent had Price narrating it. Now that he's remaking Frank and Winnie, there's a character that's basically designed to look like Price.

He was in Edward Scissorhands. It's like you've seen enough of Price films to where you could make something that is a price film without remaking it. You can make one that's an homage. It's like, there's no need to just make something brand new. And of course it's going to have Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

That's already been announced. It's like, if you love the movies that much, why bastardize? See, that's the thing. I think a young Tim Burton would have done that. Cause you look, I mean, he's got a specific style, but he does his own thing with Beetlejuice.

You know, I think he would have done something like that when he started. And now he's just gotten lazy. Well, yeah. We do throw a lot of blame at the director's feet, but part of this is studios. It's studios.

They will not let you make an original picture. That's true. But at this juncture, I mean. I mean, people with power can't make original pictures. I mean, you know.

I mean, he can remake his own movie. Yeah. They'll let you do that. As long as it's, you know, 15 years or older, they'll let you remake. I was going to say, I think he has a decent enough track record, though, to where if he said, I have an original story, but it's going to have Johnny Depp in it, it's like, look at the formula.

He's made money off of all those other ones like that. You know, it's just. The need to necessarily. But the corporation's always going to remember stuff like Ed Wood. Once again, best film.

Yeah. Probably his best movie ever. Didn't make the money Disney wanted it to make. And I don't know exactly how big of a selling point it is to have, you know, a Bottle of Dr. Fives remade.

I mean, how many people just know that title offhand? Plus, it's one of those. Movies, too, to where it's... I've always, when I've described the Bottle of Dr. Fives to people, I'm like, this is the movie to where you can tell Burton watched it as a kid.

Yeah. And he's been trying to remake it ever since because it has that weird sort of surreal gothic nature to it that is very characteristic of Burton films, but predates him by a good 15 years. His name gets attached to so many things. For years it was Old Dark House he was going to do, and I dread it. He's attached to something else now, and it keeps going through the cycle.

I don't know. I think that's part of it, though. I think he just... I think he had more promise when he was younger, and he just gave up on it. And I guess money will make you do that.

You know, you stay employed. He's tired, and it's easy to do this. Your lifestyle requires you to keep making money, so they're going to let me make this, I'll do it. He's got to support that not-a-wife. I would still see Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, though.

They've been talking about that forever. They're still talking about it. Well, now I think he wants to produce it and hand it off to somebody, and I'm kind of better with that idea. I was like, if it's somebody who loves Beetlejuice as a property, it's like I'd rather see him do that than have him do a half-assed job of his own property. It's almost like.

Fred was talking about a few weeks ago when someone does an impression of someone that it's never even close to what the impression is, but everybody gets it. assumes that that's what that impression is. Like the Richard Nixon impersonation. Nixon doesn't sound like that at all, but everybody has the same Richard Nixon. That's almost what Tim Burton movies have become now. It's what people expect a Tim Burton movie should look like, and he's just like, okay, I'll give you what you expect.

Oh, it's rubber-stamped, yeah. It's almost like a parody of himself. Well, you saw that, was it College Humor? A little short, it's very funny. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Burton pitching the film idea. All of his creative team are like, Is it something original? No, no, no. We're going to take something that's already scary and make it scarier. And it's like, do we have any of that cloud white left?

The guy holds up like the five-gallon bucket of makeup right here. Danny Elfman, what you got? He's like... It's so close to reality that, you know. It's really how it happens.

It's the sad part. Well, if we're ready to move into mine, I specifically left it towards the end We've had someone join us here, so I'm going to bring you in right now, Ben. This is a different Ben, not the one who was previously here. He doesn't know what podcasts are. I really don't.

He doesn't have one of those mics at home. I'm what you call the weak link in my little show. This is Ben, who we're going to bring back in in a couple weeks here. We're going to have a whole Bigfoot episode that we're bringing him on board for, but... For the moment, you're here, and I knew we're going to have crossover anyway, so we're all telling our movies that touched us as a child and changed our lives kind of stories.

Wait, wait, what? Was it a good touch or a bad touch? Yeah. Show us on the doll where the movie touched you. Where the movie touched you, yeah.

So I figured I'd go ahead and save it until you got here because I'm pretty sure, especially since I just heard you talk about it on your show, His show is Tower of Technobabble, by the way, so we'll start playing ads for them now, too. We're working on a whole plan. We'll get to that later. Love me. Love me.

No, not a chance. But I know something you do love, and it's probably the same as mine. I know it's even more cliche than the last movie I mentioned, but among geeks, this is the holy grail. This is what did it for most of them. You should just keep building it up for the next five minutes.

Star Wars. Oh, man. Well, it's because we're of a certain age. Yeah. But, I mean, everybody that hit at that right time, it, like, flung open those doors.

And you were like, whoa. It's like you just were not prepared for that. So, I don't know. We're reminiscing on Star Wars. It's sort of like, I don't know who exactly decides where the BC stops and AD starts.

But that's just sort of how I always saw the whole geek thing in regards to, you know, Star Wars. Yeah. It's like that, uh, happened and everyone was like, Oh, you can do it like that. And you don't have to have a synth. You can have an orchestra.

I just, but I was just a little kid. I don't know. I was what? Five, six. Yeah.

I'm, I'm asking you as if you were there. Yes. I was also there. Yeah. Possibly in the same theater.

We don't know. Actually, I do know what theater I was at, but I remember. What theater I saw in par, uh, But one of my earliest memories is being in the theater watching Star Wars and turning around and hiding in the seat whenever the Tusken Raider popped up. I distinctly remember the fabric of the seat and just grabbing my hands and you know, putting my little fingers into it. Because that was horrifying.

It was great. But, yeah, I think you're right. But it is such a cliche. It's almost like you want to take the whole hipster geek thing. Oh, Star Wars.

Well, actually, I was more, you know. Star Crash. What was that movie you guys talked about? The classic that is Star Crash. That'll be on the stars.

When I see space, I see it in color. No, I mean, that's the thing. I almost feel like, because when we first suggested that, that's what I thought. But it was like, hey, let's do that. And I'm like, shit, aren't we all going to have the same movie?

But then I was like, wait, Greg, what's yours? Okay, we're cool. But yeah, I mean, I kind of had, you know, again, the art. And it's going backwards. It's like I had my artistic phase that I mentioned in high school, and I had like the the genre geeky stuff.

Like, I remember when Cable hit, and how many times did I fucking watch Beastmaster? I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell you. I bought my first blank VHS specifically to record Beastmaster so I could then have it at my disposal whenever I wanted to watch Beastmaster. As if it weren't on enough.

As if it wasn't on constantly. That's the joke. Home box office. Hey, Beastmaster's on. So...

So, my. I don't know. It's like you had that phase and then you kind of, you know, I, my weird driving movie phase, although Beastmaster kind of fits that, but like the, the death race 2000, I had a weird obsession with that as a kid. So it's like, there's all those, but if you go back before that. Yeah, but it's the signature moment.

That is the signature. And I almost think you have to be a certain age for you to really get that. And, uh, it's like I was, I was telling the guys on our little show, um, I think one of the reasons I collected the action figures and saved all the books and everything, it was because you couldn't see the movie over. I mean, my dad was a cheapskate. He only took us to see it once, and that was it.

So after that, the whole reason I was getting action figures and saving the packaging is because I was desperately trying to just remember what this thing looked like. I was trying to hang on to those feelings, and I never did that with any other movie or tv show it was just it was it was almost like this prophet came out of the sky told you something profound and you didn't have a rock and chisel to write it down what did that guy say and you're trying to remember it over and over and so because of that it almost became like this uh archaeological thing you know okay i've i've. Got this luke's luke skywalker. Packaging From the picture, this happened in the first part. You're trying to rebuild it.

I think because of that, it just ground in these obsessions that I've never been able to get rid of with most things in life. Kids today have it dead easy. They pop in the DVD and just watch. It over again. We say this every week on the show.

I think that's what it was. It was because I was trying to burn into my memory It made me collect things. It made me notice things. It made me talk about things. Which actually makes me wonder if obsession is as common among kids as it used to be.

Because basically you need to have limited access to material for that obsession to develop. Now that everything is just all out there on the Internet. It's essentially disposable. Yeah, exactly. And there's like 20 other distractions from what you could choose.

Star Wars did something that... Even movies like it since have never done it. It gave you a universe, too. A whole universe for your imagination to run around in. You used those toys and things to do that.

And it was lived in before you ever showed up. You didn't have VHS. If you were lucky, you had a Super 8 projector. And you might get a condensed eight-minute version of Star Wars to watch at home, but that's pretty rare. But again, it was just an hour, hour and a half out of your life.

It was gone. What the hell just happened? And you just said how kids today probably don't get as obsessive because of that. Every now and then, you always get this question for people that are our age and they now have kids. It's like, what order are you going to show the Star Wars movies in?

I think that if you really want your kid to have the real Star Wars experience. You. Wait until he's about seven, eight, show him the movie once, and then throw out the DVD. Never again. And then it's like, okay, here's some pictures and action figures now.

You try to relive it the way Grandpa did. You can get that movie again when you grow up and get a job and buy your own damn Star Wars. There you go. Only then will you really appreciate it. Well, to set it in a... entirely different time and place that it was um yeah when i went and i went that i guess weekend that it opened like you know and i got and again my parents were pretty cool because they bought me the program book oh yeah does that even make sense.

To kids now what is that i don't even know that's. The thing they they did it in four movies back in there because i remember in the lobby albert peon was talking about he got the 2001 2001 program book and sat at home looking at it and that was me with the Star. Wars I still remember having the Masters of the Universe programs like for Alien and uh. Wait you guys are saying that in movie theaters they actually would sell programs in. Like the lobby popcorn area.

And it started with like Cinerama type pictures in the 50s like Ben Hur and things like that and they would do it All the way up into some of the early 80s. But Star Wars, yeah, I was there. This is a very informative podcast. That's amazing. People were informative.

I'm guessing that it cost money. That's why I. Never got it then. It was $ 2. 25.

I swear I will never forget sometime in the 80s when Star Wars first came on TV. My dad, hand to Oprah. I swear he said this. He pointed at the TV script and said, you know, look at this. If we had only waited like five or six years, we could have saved a bunch of money.

Wow. A bunch of money. You're not winning any fans over for your dad on this episode. He doesn't listen to the internet. Come on.

That's a young man's game. Come on. What are you talking about? It opened on Wednesday the 25th. Yeah.

And I was keeping track of it. I was watching. 12 or 13 when it came out. Okay. And keeping track of it because it looked really cool.

I even cut the ads out, you know, before it came out. And then we got there on Saturday, and there was this long line, you know. And I was like, whoa. Has this ever happened before? And it was me and a friend and his dad.

And we're like, what is this, all for Star Wars? And the guy's like, yeah. He said, this is my third time. And we just stared at him. He said, you'll understand after you see it.

And we got the program books, and that's when I started looking through that program book, and I started seeing the goofy names, like R2-D2. They spell them out. Yeah. C-3PO. C-3PO.

This is Obi-Wan Kenobi. Yeah. And I was like, this is not what I think it's going to be. It was like, you know, Tom Fonix. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I still remember how that program smelled. I mean, that's how intense that experience was. Yeah.

Fresh ink on that program. I mean, you were trying to remember that. Yeah. Because it was gone. You couldn't replay it.

It was. Oh. Somewhere I still have it. It's... The cover has completely disappeared at this point.

It got ripped off. But the entire rest of it is still in pretty decent shape. It has a long piece with a long version of the Young Coast. Yeah. It has all the characters in it.

It's pretty awesome. So, whenever you guys went to grade school, did you ever have, like, the... scholastic book sales coming through and you know and you could always get the big kind of coffee table story of star wars picture book you know i i got that i've got the hardcover. I still have it it's a sad part it has got. So much duck tape holding it together it's sad but my thing was i just i distinctly remember in summer sitting on the couch having a fan blowing on me and just slowly reading it and studying every frame of every picture and just trying to remember man there was a. There was an LP of the story of Star Wars narrated by Roscoe Lee Brown.

And it had a flip book through there. And my wife has that memorized, which is one. Of the reasons I married you. She can sit there and reel that off. Because it's got dialogue and sound effects, but it's got him narrating.

It's awesome. Geeks, it's good to know there are girls out there for you. I have a very weird memory of that. Regards you, Greg. Actually, I remember you telling me that you were too young to see Star Wars when it was in the theater.

And one of your first memories is actually Empire, whenever the snow speeders are going over the mountains. And you said that you could feel it in your chest. Yeah, because I was. It was 1982? 80.

80, that's right. Because I would have only been five there. And I remember my neighbor. They were taking me without my parents to see it at the drive-in with my sister. My sister had to take me during the movie that was before it to see it. to go to the bathroom and I was first time that I'd gone to the bathroom publicly without my dad, you know, all that kind of stuff was all in that scene.

Big night. You walked in a boy, it came out a man. The lady, the lady that took us was doing the Darth Vader voice before I, you know, I had gone to see star Wars, but I was much too young. I was two, two and a half or whatever. And yeah, I, And Empire is the movie for me, when you put it that way.

And I have the Empire picture book. And when you think, while Ben's going over this with Star Wars, I had probably both that and Jedi. And my friend Damien and I had stolen my sister's tape recorder. You know, the old school tape recorder. They all looked identical with the push and play and record button.

The one that I taped Star Wars with? You know, we did that with Wizard of Oz. But anyway, I just realized that was my first podcast. Damien and I stole the tape recorder and we sat in my room and we read through the Star Wars book. books the empire strikes back in return of the jedi and kind of riffed on it as we were going and made little jokes and oh no that didn't happen here that's happened here and we we kind of talked about the movie and how awesome it was and and what toys we were going to get onto the tape and i you know 15 years later listen to this thing i still have it just love listening to us talking. About don't you release that sadly i did that it was with my cousin but she was way more theatrical so ours was more like sketch comedy like we were doing like skits and we had like fake commercials and like it was it was it was way more of a show you know it was it was again it probably explains why i'm here now again i i ask.

You you guys if you had had the actual movie on some sort of a format where you could play it and see the actual movie. Do you think he would have done all this stuff? Probably not. I think it does change things. And it makes me wonder how different these next generations are going to turn out.

Because it's little things like that. Or I was just talking about the other day that, like, there are also, I know of a child who was about two and could not ride in the car without a movie on. Like we're going two blocks down. Why would I, she was throwing a fit. And I'm just like, we're, we're doing that kind of stuff to our society too, where it's like, we're so distracted with stuff and little kids that are coming up now, it's so ingrained in their daily life that I'm just like, I don't know that we realize how drastic things are going to be in like 20 years when these kids are growing up.

And it also makes me wonder too. I mean, you've got the obsession, you know, stuff like, you know, twilight and that, but you know, is it like, I can't figure out if these people are obsessed over it because they've been waiting for it or because all their friends in high school are also obsessed about it. It's almost like going after a certain clothing trend or something like that. There's an automatic community. Yeah.

You know what it might be? It might be like going to church for them. they basically have read all of the holy tomes. They have talked about all the spells and the prayers in it, and now the big movie's coming out. So it's like going to Mecca. It's going to the big religious service with all of the fellow acolytes.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this. I was going to say, the only time I can think of a movie playing in theaters where it's like a religious ceremony going there is Rocky Horror. It was always that way. Well, you know, it's like, It's like the crazy Baptist snake handling versus the very traditional Eastern Orthodox. Yeah, that's pretty accurate.

I was there every week. That's what it seemed like to me. I accidentally brought a snake to an Episcopal service. I was embarrassed. You would not believe how awkward that was.

I brought a snake to drive you Miss Daisy. Very embarrassing there. It bites. Nice. But, you know, to get back to the whole you think kids they get it um i've got a new nephew um through marriage uh not that i married my nephew.

We don't order we don't endorse such things sort of. Came with the whole you know getting married thing but he's about uh seven he was a huge fan of the clone wars cartoon but he had never actually seen star wars so i was like oh i can't believe this is perfect i get to show him i get to show someone stars so i had him come over we got pizza we closed all the windows, made it dark, tried to create the theatrical experience, popped it in, and he was bored. This is episode four? Watching it with a kid today made me realize how very slow it is in parts. They're so used to this.

Everything's hyperkinetic now. There's no buildup. And I think maybe we were just a different generation. hype it because that's the thing my nephew like loves the stuff like everybody just keeps buying him like the toys and he's seen probably the cartoons on TV and he knows like the commercials and like the Legos but it's like then like my dad was like you haven't even watched the movie he was giving him shit and then I was like he tried to watch and got scared by parts of it and I'm trying to remember if it was four or five I know he was kind of I think he started watching Empire and was scared by the Womble and he's like five or six minutes i'm like it's pretty yeah i think i think maybe there's a certain level that kids are again maybe we're a little easier on kids today so maybe they're not ready for i don't know it's like a weird mixture sometimes kids are brought up in a weird rougher world that like we didn't have a clue but at the same time i think sometimes they're sheltered a little more it's kind of hit and miss it's like your kid may fall into a totally different category yeah.

I had something similar to what he was talking about. It was my very first year teaching, and during testing, they were having the upperclassmen testing, and so they just told freshman teachers, bring in some movie to show the kids. It's going to keep them interested. It's not going to get you in trouble, essentially. So I brought in Rage of the Lost Ark, because I was like, okay, that's PG, and it's an awesome freaking movie.

And then I. Put it in, and it was, I swear to God, this girl raises her hand, during the fight when he's fighting the big, tough Nazi who has the plane spinning around. And I was like, you know, you go to the restroom. She's like, no, this is boring. Can we watch something else?

I was like, this is boring. Well, another girl in that class, I almost instinctively hit this child. I don't know if I should admit. That as a teacher. I can't blame you for that.

But it was in the very opening sequence, and I swear to God, People, when I tell this story, they think I'm bullshitting them or making them up. Like, no, this is true. Somebody said this to me. It was when Indiana Jones was running away from the tribesmen right after Belloc has taken the fertility statue at the beginning. And she just makes this comment.

She's like, this is stupid. They just ripped that off from Family Guy. I was like, oh. It's like, now. I have to kill you.

Think about that. Think about time. And how that. It's like, I saw Family Guy first, so clearly it's the original one. The guys who made The Simpsons, they were always talking about how they ripped off so many things from Citizen Kane, so many camera shots, but now kids have seen Simpsons before Citizen Kane, and they think Citizen Kane is doing The Simpsons.

And now, you know, Simpsons has been on for 20-some-odd years, so everybody else is just like Simpsons already did. Nobody can write anything from this point on that doesn't feel like they ripped off The Simpsons. Didn't you just feel a little peace that you'd die whenever you were like, these kids think these movies are boring. And it was kind of reminding me of when my dad, you know, there'd be something on TV like an old Flash Gordon black and white thing and he would get me to watch it and I would find it. boring and kind of cheesy but i'm sure whenever he was a kid it was the greatest thing. Ever so every now and then i mean i'll show i don't really show that many movies i do a film club after school and that's usually the more appreciative kids but um in my ap class ap bio i'll show coin of scotty once a year and every now and then i'll get the kid where they'll just be like That blew my mind.

Can I borrow the other two? And I'll loan him the other two. I'm like, sure, go watch the other two. He's not as good as Quentin Scott. That's kind of the exceptional kid, you know.

Especially in high school. And I even actually tell him when I show Quentin Scott, I'm like, I'm not going to lie, probably about two-thirds of you are going to be bored or the music's going to drive you up the wall. But there's like a third of you in here that are really going to dig what you see, and that's what I'm shooting for. It's weird in this, I guess, to Ben's story, it's weird when it goes the other way. because now I've gotten to the point where I'm such a geek, like, I'm still tied to, and it shows the difference between geeks and, like, regular people, because my dad was there with me when I saw it that first time, and it was pretty rare that I, and it's still pretty rare that I go back to the theater and see a movie again.

I will usually just go see something else, and now that you can watch it at home, I'll catch it, you know, I'll own it later, watching a million times there, but it's rare that I, and then I never did, and Star Wars was one of the few times, and I had I don't know if it was that same year. It was kind of that same story of Yubo. It was my birthday, and it was still playing in the theater however long it was. Or it could have even been a re-release like that next year or something whenever they brought it back out. But I remember going back a second time with my dad and having this really great experience like it was just the two of us.

And it was that bonding thing of us watching Star Wars together. I'm picturing you and your dad in the Andy Griffith show scene walking into the movie theater. And we had that bonding Star Wars thing. And it's funny that he still sort of has a level of it, but he bought the whole box set of Blu-rays that just came out. And I won't do it because they're the bastardized version.

And I saw it and I was like, no, that's bullshit. I was like, no, I'm not giving him money for those wrong versions. I'm like, if he puts out the real one, maybe I'll give him a lot more money than I've already given him. So it's funny that he's gotten so relaxed about it. He's like, whatever.

He doesn't care. He's not this hardcore geek that won't let go of that. So again, I don't know if that's a generational thing. How old is your dad about? What did you say?

Is he in his 60s? Yeah, he's got to be about 60. What does he think about episode 1, 2, 3? Kind of the same thing. My dad's the same way.

Not as hardcore as I am. They're there. They're okay. He probably... Again, I think he got that set, so he's got them, but again, they're not as good as their first ones.

They're just entertainment. It's also like that pretty much everybody here at this table is almost trying to do the same thing that was done for us when it comes to you're trying to show somebody something they haven't seen before, so that way they can also sort of experience that magic. Because I do it with the film club with my students at school. I mean, you were saying you do it with your kids. I know you, Dave, do it with Allie.

I'll scar my nephew, I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, it's just... My daughter, it's so weird because she's seven, but she will respond much more strongly to something from the 50s. She digs tarantula and creatures from the Black Lagoon and the Invisible Man. That's awesome.

She's been like that. But I will try to show her something like Empire, and she's like, it's kind of boring. Turn off the color on your TV. She actually does that. I've got my fourth setting on the TV.

It's just black and white. At times, which really warmed my heart, she said, you know, it's kind of cooler in black and white, Daddy. I'm like, I love you. Smart kid. Awesome.

But she'll, you know, you talked about doing the tape recording ritual, which I did and you guys did. Yeah. She does it with the iPad. Wow. She'll take parts of movies.

I guess it's good that it's still going on. She'll make her own little movies, and I'm thrilled about all that. Yeah. I have to do the same also at school. I have a shelf where once I bought the Outer Limits on DVD, I still kept all the single VHSs I have, and I've just got them there on the shelves.

And it's like, I have a note there for students, like, you want to borrow one of these? Just tell me which one you want to borrow. What is this? It's an object. How do I?

What's this? Rectangular. Is this a book? Device. Try to open it.

I think my dad has one of these. He keeps it in his drawer. This is amazing. Do you teach it like the sci-fi? We're the words.

This is amazing. Only your class. Pretty much. Do you guys have like a Quidditch team at that school? I wish.

Oh, but no. I mean, yeah. I can also pinpoint that as if the movie geek part of it, the collector. Geek, is directly. I mean, everything was made...

Again, it was the first... It changed the world of marketing from that point on. It really is. From that point, everything changed about marketing a movie. Yeah.

I had everything. Again, the collector's cards, I think, was another way of rebuilding the movie. And like, ooh, and this is from that scene. And then you put them in order and you retell the story. All of us have vivid memories of just getting toys.

Because I remember for us, we would reserve them or order them through Sears and go and get them back when Sears was. Well, like I said, there was no marketing in place for Star Wars when it came out. Nobody had any confidence in it. There was nothing. And it didn't hit until, they didn't get the Halloween costumes out until Christmas.

And I remember seeing Darth Vader. Really? Yeah. What did they look like? They were in typical VAC form, you know, Ben Cooper costumes.

But was it actually a Darth Vader where it said Darth Vader? Oh, yeah. Mine said Darth Vader. Just in case. Because I had Darth Vader.

Chewbacca and a Darth Vader and Vader and Skywalker and all those. But I remember there being a stack of Darth Vader costumes at Airway, which became Target. Yeah. And it said, be Darth Vader this Christmas. And they were selling like mad.

Toys didn't hit until the following spring. You had to go out and buy that weird Kenner cardboard box at the local toy store. The early bird thing, right? The early bird package, so you could afford to get the figure shipped to you in March or April of the next year. Well, and that first year worth... worth of stuff that came out and they were like play sets were a piece of cardboard and a plastic stand like they really were not.

I remember the cantina but son of a bitch. I wanted it I wanted it I wanted that cardboard the. Cantina was nothing it was like what a rip off. I think they got the first books and things out right around Christmas like they got the blueprints the Star Wars blueprints of the sets and then they had the making of book by 78 I still have that but it was real slow to take off The novelization was the only thing that had been out before the movie. I just don't see a kid who's into a sci-fi movie that just came out now.

They wouldn't go to these lengths. They don't have to. It doesn't occur to them. I had taken a. Plastic tube out of my father's golf set.

It kept the club separate. It was a clear plastic tube and I took Um, it was right after the little snap glow lights and I found a way to tape them in there for, for my Halloween costume and tape them in there and break them right before we went out in the dark and I taped them all up and carried it around and it looked horrible. It was the best lightsaber anybody could come up with. And it was in our neighborhood. It was legendary.

It was like, you know, because my mom sewed an actual Jedi cloak. And that's all I had was a cloak and this two glow sticks. Awesome. Awesome costume. But great, great coffee.

Think about it. You made your own lightsaber. You are technically a Jedi. According to the bylaws of the Jedi order. You and I can do that.

Which means we need to kill you. So this podcast can become more powerful. I've been waiting for that step. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it, now you can walk into the store and it lights up, it glows, it.

Extends, you can make all the sounds. That's the thing, my nephew has that and hasn't seen the movie. Loves to beat the hell out of his sister with it. You know, I'm just like, it's weird to me that that stuff is carried over even when the movie's not there. You know, that's what a weird, like, following that it has.

It's like, it has a following even if you haven't seen the movie. You know what lightsabers are. You know what the TIE fighter does. You know, it's, That loops back, too, to the whole idea of what's going to become of these kids in the future years. It's like, why obsess over making something when you can just buy it and all that, but it doesn't require any imagination.

Because to you, it's like you really cherish that lightsaber that you made because you figured it out. You made it work. And now it's like, if you had it, some other kid down the street could have something that's more elaborate. With most films, there's something like that. I turned so many shoeboxes into spaceships.

See, I had that. I had one that was probably like Girl Scout cookies came in it or something. The big one, the case. And then I cut, again, this tells you where it was, because I had the Boba Fett before Empire was out. And then I had to cut a hole in the top so the Boba could shoot out the top of this jet pack.

It was the one you had to order in the little box? You know those plastic eggs that pantyhose came in? They made the best escape pods for our team. For Mork, sure, but I mean. Especially if.

You have the little clear dome on one end. Then they can see where they're going, sure. It was kind of weird having a eight-year-old kid going, hey, Ma, why don't you get more paintings? Yeah, that's what it was for. At least you weren't trying to look for pods from Star Crash.

Is that me asking your mom to do something completely different? Buy some random crap, Ma. I have never seen that movie, but I heard you're all's podcast, and I watched the trailer. The podcast is almost as good as what you're saying. It's magnificent.

God love them. They thought they were making a good movie. I would get irritated at my mom when she bought a different blanket for my bed because the old one had been the perfect desert color, and that was always my Tatooine. Oh, that's original. Damn you, Mom.

Yeah. Bedspread. What the hell is wrong with you? I had a brown carpet in my room, which I had G.I. Joe and Transformers and Star Wars all together.

And it wasn't, it was never done well. And so it had a, um, uh, a bow in the carpet. I called it a wave that you could push around the room. And so I would make it, you know, sometimes I would make it a, a tactical Hill that people, you. Know, we have to take the bow, right.

There are all. Different things you could do, you know, with the, with the wave in the room to set up your figures. And, and, um, I remember one day my dad had cut and tacked and everything back down, and I was so disappointed that I'd lost this malleable, you know, play set that I had. An entire galaxy is ruined. I used to love it whenever my parents would buy a new appliance, a new thing for the oven, because that meant that there would be white styrofoam packing that would be a perfect hot space, because it had these little compartments in it.

We could do this forever. Hours and hours. So I guess, if we've gotten the essentials of our Star Wars love out of the way, we should probably wrap this thing up. I'm sure we will return to these memories in any future episode. Okay, kids, get out your decoder pins.

Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. It is time for the Movie Meltdown Secret Circle reveal of the next exciting feature. In the next couple of weeks here, we're going to come back and our sofa theater feature is... Bigfoot. Now, granted, that doesn't give you much of a clue as to what the hell the movie is.

So to clarify, it's called Bigfoot. It's from 2012. The director is Bruce Davison. Bruce Davison directed it? Yes.

We'll get to that. Well, you could say he directed it. But, yeah, just look for the one that's got Danny Partridge and Greg Brady in it, and you'll know you're on the right track. Danny Partridge. Anything else this week?

I think we've covered all the memories we can and reminisced on all the movies. That touched us in a special way. Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week. Same geek time, same geek feed.

Thanks for listening. We've been here too long, trying to get along, pretending that you're oh so shy. I'm a natural man, doing all I can, my temperature is running high. High at night, no one in sight, and we got so much to share. Hope is.

Fine, if you got the time, but I ain't got the time. Yeah! Do you wanna touch? needs a little joy. All you do is sit and stare. Begging on my knees, baby, won't you please run your fingers through my hair?

My, my, my, whiskey and rye, don't it make you feel so fine? Ride on, gone, don't. It turn you on? Can't Oh yeah! Oh yeah!

Yeah! Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Fred's going to show up in a big golden dildo and she's going to break through the window. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios, with the opening music performed by The Empires.

For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!