197. Mega Fire Birds

Welcome to another episode of the Feminine Critique. I'm Emily. And I am Christine. And today, we have quite a show for you. Indeed.

This is, it's got firepower, it's got... It's got tanks. It's got helicopters. Helicopters. It has got a Tommy Lee Jones proving that he has always been 60 years old, even when he's not at all.

And Christine and I can handle a lot of things. We're pretty tough broads, but I don't think we could do this on our own. So we brought in the big guns. We are thrilled to have back with us the one and only Mike White. Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here.

Thank you so much. Ah, yeah. mike picked these movies everybody mike picked. Oh oh somebody else picked them that's for sure well so to be clear now mike um i feel like everybody who listens probably knows but mike does the projection booth podcast you've been doing it now for 18. Years no just uh 15 15 years yeah um how many episodes are you up to now do. You know.

Oh, like 840 something. And then there's like all the special episodes we do, which were, I'm just posting my 742nd. So 1,500 episodes. At least 1,500. And when we say like, I mean, there's podcasts that have probably 1,500 episodes in 15 years, but they don't have like six hour episodes, which you have been known to do from time to time.

This is not like if we did 1,500 episodes, which we haven't, and we've been doing this for about the same amount of time, frankly. We don't have any idea how many episodes we've actually done, by the way, because occasionally I've posted the same number. And at this point, if you add in stocking stuffers, obviously that adds up the numbers quite a bit. But by the numbers, this is episode 194 or something like that. And in reality, there's no way we've only done that many, but still, but still, we have not done the amount of hours.

And the thing about this podcast, which you're all listening to, and I deeply appreciate it, is that I just basically show up. That's kind of what I do. That's not what Mike does. No, no, no. Mike makes me feel bad about how little research I do.

Yeah. You do the research when you come on my show, though. That's perfect. No, I do. I do the homework when it's there.

But when Emily doesn't assign me anything, I'm like, woof. I assigned you a book once and it took you. You were like, I need another week to do this. I need another week to do this. I was like, geez, I can't even do a book club podcast.

What book was it? I remember we did The Ruins. Oh, shit. Yeah, it took me a minute to get through that. It did.

It did. Yeah. No, but Mike, when he puts an episode together, it's incredible because you really do. You share the movie. You find a dozen movies that are related to it or pieces that are related to it.

You find film discourse, articles, everything. And it's so fun because you're not just like, oh, I'm just going to watch this movie and talk about it. You really are diving into so much of what's around it, what came after it, what it influenced. And it is thrilling and exciting. So I had said to Mike, hey, You do so many movies, obviously, so I don't know what you haven't done because there's only so many movies made.

And what is something that you would not probably do on the projection booth? Because then we'll be happy to do that with you. And what led you here? We're doing 1982's Megaforce and 1990's Firebirds. Well, I kind of lied because both of these movies were on the list of things I wanted to cover eventually.

It's just that there's probably a few hundred movies in advance before that yeah yeah and um i've been a fan question mark of megaforce since i was a little kid and they had the i mean they bought so many ads for the back of marvel comic books and probably dc as well it was insane like you always saw Deeds, not words and Ace Hunter and the girl there and just, you know, all the motorcycles flying out at you and all this kind of stuff. I could have sworn it would have been in 3D. Took me years to see it. And then when I did, I was just like, wow, this is garbage. And with Firebirds, I think there was a friend of mine recommended it and I just threw it on there.

I knew it was Nick Cage and helicopters. That was the only thing I knew. So I'm sorry. I think they actually made a really appropriate double bill. And I don't know how much you had known that going into it, especially having not watched Firebirds.

But they both are of this ilk of that era of like Reagan era. I mean, 1990 is now Bush, but it feels very Bush. you know, just left of that, or right of that, however you want to say it. Very right of it, yes. Well, like, yes, oh my god, yes and no, because there's also things about this, like, I don't want to jump ahead to Firebirds, but like, the opening quote about basically America's job is to help other countries, it's very ironic that that was what conservatism was in 1990, because, I don't know, it seems like things have changed. But anyway, they do go well together.

They are both... Not good movies. I think we can all agree with that. But they, they're something. One, I would definitely watch again in life.

The other, I will, I would like use as a bet for somebody, like if they lost the bet, they'd have to watch it. So that's always good to have in your hand. Yeah, I mean, Firebirds was boring. And that's my review. I don't think there was anything overtly wrong with it.

We'll get into details about it. Really? Oh, really? Wow. I wasn't like, like, this is the, it was just really boring.

What was wrong with it? Should we do the plot? I want to know what you guys didn't like about it. Well, I don't know. Do we want to do a flip and instead start with Firebirds just to get that one out of the way?

Yeah, let's do it. Since Megaforce might be a better way to end on. And I can't do a plot for this one. I'm so sorry. I don't know what it's about.

Helicopters, the movie. But it wasn't even cool. The helicopters weren't even cool. Look, I'm getting ahead of myself. So the year is 1990.

Nick Cage is a pilot in the army, right? This is like the normal American army. This is not a megaforce army. It's not made up. It really kind of blended my head.

Also, a question for everybody. Which ones did you watch? What order did you do them in? I watch these in the order that we are now discussing these. Oh, so you did Firebirds and Megaforce.

Yes. Christine. I went classic chronological. Yeah. Megaforce, Firebirds.

I did too. And boy, was that a mistake because I wanted this to be dumber. I thought this was going to be the clear winner of the two based on the cast alone. I am a Tommy Lee Jones gal. So I was really excited to see him in something in this time period.

And yet it feels like he was not in it. Yeah. Oh, he makes his presence known for me. I mean, he is channeling. I'm trying to remember when Under Siege came out because he's basically doing that same Under Siege cartoon character.

I feel like Under Siege is 92. I mean, I know this is too late for cocaine, but it just feels like he's on something in these films. It's funny with Tommy Lee Jones because he's one of those actors that you watch and you realize like, I'm always watching Tommy Lee Jones, right? You can never shake who that is. And it's specifically his voice.

He has such, he has that Texas twang that he can adjust a little bit, but like he says words in a way that I have never heard another person say words. And it makes it always like movie star. And he's always so watchable. I also would have preferred if the entire movie was him because I did want to kill Nick Cage for most of this. But it's...

It's also everything you watch where you just watch it. And I forgot how Harrison Ford-like he is in this of just wondering, does Tommy Lee Jones like anything? Because it just feels like he, and also it's his character. So he's supposed to be 40 years old, which is very depressing because Tommy Lee Jones always looks 60. And for him to be playing technically younger than all of us in this movie.

And when you realize, it's just very disorienting. He was 44 at the time. He's at my age. He's almost your age, Christine. He's a few weeks younger than me.

A few months younger than me. And a month will be the same age. And I just felt like it was a real highlight of how differently people age now. True. Very true.

So let's give the quick plot breakdown. Mike, would you like to throw it out for us? Oh, gosh. Don't worry. Christine won't, but I will.

Yeah, please, please. All right. So it's 1990 and drugs are everywhere, guys. Drugs are really bad. We know they're really bad because they keep telling us they're really bad.

We never actually see any of the effects of drug cartels or what it's doing to anyone. But basically, there is this segment of the army that is dedicated to wiping out cartels. And so in the opening, Nick Cage is flying. He's part of a training force for... South American, Central American countries so that they can learn how to, like, fight the cartels by helicopters.

Didn't quite get that, but sure. And his men are shot down by this, like, what do they call him? Was he the Scorpion? Or was that the evil, the bad guy who we never actually get to hear speak? I kept screwing up the bad guy's name.

I think it's the Scorpion is the type of helicopter. Oh, that's the plane. Okay. Right. So I just also called him... the guy scorpion.

Well and the guy has the worst name it's eric stoller is his. Name yeah it's not very intimidating i'm. Like call him like ernesto or or uh you know give him like a russian name or something you know well. But not to be the name police but tommy lee jones's character is named brad little right so that they can occasionally make a. Joke make all those puns about his last name little.

But like, it's totally Jones still. I have eyes. See, I liked thinking about the Eric Stoller slash Scorpion because you never hear him speak. You just keep, you see him flying a plane and he's like, every time he flies a plane. But then the best is when the beginning they're showing, like they're doing the briefing where they have the slideshow.

I love slideshows in movies and they're going through it and they're saying, you know, this man is a mercenary and, he has no morals and they're just showing picture after picture of him like snarling and looking angry and I just love sitting back and imagining the photo shoot that that actor got to do for that like just okay today's the day you're gonna come in and we're gonna put different soldier hats on you and you're gonna look mean now I need you to look mean but look left like I just I love knowing that. That was a day of shooting the one that they it's like a glamour shot where it's like real up close on his eyes I was. Like What is this? You would think. Like they'd be, you know, surveillance shots from 300 yards away or something where it looks all grainy and that, but yeah, the closeup of his eyes, I was like, Oh my.

Gosh, we had filters and everything. So, so this happens. And then the army is like, boy, we have to really deal with these cartels. And Nick Cage, who's just a young soldier says, and I want to make a personal point that, you know, these men volunteered to, And we need to avenge them because that's how, you know, the army should function. So now Tommy Lee Jones is like an ace helicopter pilot, but he's 40 years old.

So his job is to train all of these helicopter pilots so that they can continue on these missions and help wipe out the cartels. And Nick Cage obviously is like, you know, the number one best boy of I'm going to be a helicopter pilot. Yeah. Except I have bad eyes or I have confusing vision and nobody's ever pointed that out to me, which seems like something they would have pointed out to him at some point in like eye testing for being an army pilot. But anyway, along the way, he also has a little bit of conflict because his ex-girlfriend, played by Sean Young, is also a helicopter pilot.

She's like a lower level, so she's a scout pilot. And he continues to sexually harass her until she finally gets it. Don't sexually harass her. That's a note I have. You ladies like that, though, right?

I mean, eventually, like, you just can't. Like, you gotta, right? Oh, I wear you down. Okay, yeah. You can't just do it one day, like, in front of your superiors and the whole army base.

No, that's nothing. You have to do it another day in front of your superiors and the army base. And then you have to do it on, like, a really important test mission that's determining whether you're going to be part of this elite force. That's when you do it over the speaker so that everybody, presumably, that's monitoring this can hear you very explicitly harass your ex-girlfriend. Yeah.

Okay, good, good. I was taking notes, so now I know. So that happened. But then the other part of that is that then you have to show a little tiny bit of vulnerability. Okay.

Not about, like, being a man, but just about, like, the thing you were trying to do, right? So he fails his big test because, again, apparently nobody told him he had, like, a lazy eye or he had a dominant eye coordination thing. Oh, the scene of them discovering that with the finger guns. Yep. Man, what a revelation that was.

That was like the moment in A Beautiful Mind when you realize that he has psychosis. Spoiler alert. Oh, yeah, right? And it's just like, wow, what a– just a bombshell. Oh, look at that.

When she used a finger gun, she closed the one eye. Whoa. That's all it takes. And then also, like, not only does that solve his eye problem, but then, like, Sean Young's like, oh, yeah, okay, we're totally a thing again. Which, again, Sean Young, you can do so much better.

I know– The industry treated you rough, but you did not. You deserve so much better than Nicolas Cage in this movie. Does she, though? In this movie? Well, I'm just saying the acting.

And I know we'll talk about the acting, but the level of acting, especially from Sean Young. She needs a very specific, hands-on kind of director, I think. I think sometimes a performance kind of needs to be yanked out of her. And if someone's not going to yank it, you kind of get like a cardboard cutout of a pretty lady. And it just kind of felt like that here.

I think she plays a replicant really well. But other than that, I mean, she I mean, I don't know if you guys remember the film No Way Out, the Roger Donaldson film with Kevin Costner. She gives some of the clunkiest line readings I thought I had ever heard her give. And then I watched this movie. Holy shit.

Now, I will grant you the performance she gives in Ace Ventura right up there. Yes. Great. Laces out. But this one, holy shit.

This performance. Wow. Well, here's the thing. How hard must it be? And one of the things I found was the New York Times review of this movie.

Which, it was not favorable. This movie, nobody liked this movie. It did not do well critically or commercially. But the New York Times review, I found this quote very interesting. I forgot who wrote it.

I didn't cite who wrote it, but here it goes. Mr. Cage insists on acting. Mr. Cage simply won't quit.

He never listens to or sees anyone else in a scene, being too busy monitoring his own utterly mysterious attention-getting responses. Mr. Jones and Miss Young don't have an easy time of it. Acting with Mr. Cage is a ruthless business.

It's like sharing the screen with a cheetah. Wow. That was very well written. Yeah. When you think of it, like, as much as, yeah, like, Sean Young's not doing much in this movie, but also, like, can you imagine acting alongside Nick Cage in this movie?

Oh, no. I've seen a lot of compilations. Especially with him. Yelling at her. I mean, I'm the greatest.

I'm the greatest. I'm the greatest. I'm the greatest. I'm the greatest. And if anybody's thinking that, like, you know, I something happened in the recording and I'm like skipping.

No, he screams that for about two minutes during one scene. I've seen a lot of compilations of crazy Nick Cage performances. There's one that's fantastic where he's wearing like sunglasses and a really cheesy like pencil mustache or. You know, of course, the classic Kiss the Vampire, where he's, you know, A, B, C. This is missing from those compilations because he is like a raw nerve in this performance.

And it's funny because I'm like looking at his filmography now and thinking through where this fell in his career. Because he had been obviously like, you know, he's a Coppola and his early films were primarily like based on that he was working on. with Uncle Francis in a few things. So he's got The Cotton Club, he's got Birdie, The Boy in Blue, Peggy Sue Got Married, a movie I adore. And he's still Nick Cage in it, but it somehow works because that movie is just so good that it finds a way to make whatever he's doing fit into this thing. So then you have Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, Vampire's Kiss, Time to Kill, Wild at Heart, Firebirds.

He goes from wild at heart to this movie, which seems a bit wild at heart, you might say. It's like as a career choice, I guess I'm trying to think of like, because I guess Top Gun is what, 87? I want to say 86, 87. Yeah. Yeah.

And this is obviously very much a Top Gun shoot-off. You're saying that there's similarities between this film and Top Gun? Wait, I guess he is kind of a maverick, isn't he? You gotta tell me, because I have never seen Top Gun. Nor have I.

This is channeling Top Gun very, very hard. That's so what I gathered. When I watch Top Gun, I'm gonna be like, that was so much like Firebirds. What a rip-off. What a Firebirds rip-off that was.

Well, and... The all. Of the excitement of flying planes really fast and going upside down and doing all this kind of stuff. I mean, it's, you know, it's Tony Scott, like just going crazy and using all all the style pulling out all the tricks but this one it's like helicopters and this isn't blue thunder it's not air wolf it's just some helicopters it's kind of like making. A movie about motorcycles and then watching Two years later, somebody make it for a little less money with a lot less charisma with bicycles.

Well, can I make a point to maybe the only two people that I could make this point to that I think would agree with me? So this movie had helicopters, and I don't feel like they did anything cool with them. It feels like when they don't have the right director for a step-up movie. It's like, are they dancing? I can't see.

They're not showing them. It felt like that. Oh, yeah. 100%. I had no idea where these helicopters were in relation to each other.

I'm just like, there's a helicopter and there's a helicopter. Are they even on the same planet? That one's brown and the rocks are brown. And half the time it didn't establish even like who was in what plane with who. Right.

Because it's always like a two-person plane, but the opening, the very opening, I'm like, there's four helicopters, right? No, there's two guys in each helicopter. Oh, I didn't know that. It's poorly done. It's very poorly done.

Yeah. There's no identification marks for these people. Even like, even with Top Gun, you had like the name, the call signs on their helmets and things. So like it even reinforced like, who is that in that helmet? Oh, it's, it's Tom Cruise.

It's Maverick. Oh, that's Valcom. It's Iceman. Okay. I'm getting this.

And there's, you know, there's moments and, top gun spoilers for top gun like when goose dies and it's like oh wow that was a big moment and that was a real uh you know emotional center of this film and now it's personal for maverick kind of thing there's just no stakes in this movie whatsoever. No and even it's funny because it starts off very heavy in the like we're doing this because of drugs we're doing this because america's fighting drugs And Nick Cage has this moment of very, like, proudly, respectfully standing up in a room filled with military men and saying, you know, this isn't my place to say, but we need, but this is wrong and we need to pay them back. And so, like, there's a, okay, like, again, it's not a sentiment I agree with, but there is at least, like, an attitude at the beginning of America, rah, rah, this is why we're doing this, this is why we're making this movie and telling the story.

And After that scene, never once does Nick Cage... And note that we're not saying their character names because we don't care. We didn't learn them in this movie. Brad Little. Except for Brad Little, right.

Never once in this movie does Nick Cage say, and this is for this guy who died, and we're going to do this the right way, and this is for... He just wants to be a pilot, right? He just wants to fly and get Sean Young back? All of this sort of sentiment of why we're doing this... is just not there. And it just feels like, why at that point?

It doesn't help either that so many of these flying scenes aren't even flying scenes. They all take place in a simulator. And that's not just me saying like, Oh, it's a simulator. It's not the real thing. It's no, that the film is literally set in a simulator for so much of it that it's like, yeah, there's no, again, no stakes.

It's like, Oh wow. You crash in the game. You didn't crash in real life. Then they don't even come close to crashing. Like the only time they do is during the, like the, the training where he discovers his eye thing.

And even then, like I thought, I thought even at the beginning, cause I think Tommy Lee Jones says like, Oh, this helicopter can take a certain amount of whatchamacallit force. Like if we crash at this amount of speed or force, we'd be okay, but we're not going to try that. So I was like, okay, we're going to do that, right? We're going to see that happen. And no, we don't.

Yeah. And there's no setup and payoff. You should have had something where it's like, oh, if this happens, like to show it, right? Not just a verbal thing. And then, yeah, bring it back.

You see when Iron Man goes up so high that he starts to ice over and then he does the same thing to Jebediah Stone in the third act. You've set it up. You're paying it off. There's no setup and there's no payoff for this movie. And we haven't even mentioned the director, which, again, is a bit telling.

So it's David Green, who made a few films, but more, I guess, did more TV. This was looking like his filmography. Like, I don't, nothing here rings a bell to me at all. And this was a Disney production. Not Buster?

You don't know Buster with Phil Collins? No, not really. Shockingly, I do not. When I was looking through his filmography, it was the first time I ever even knew Phil Collins was in a movie. Oh, really?

He plays the titular character in this movie. Yeah. Hey, man. Who knew? Good for Phil Collins.

Yeah, David Green knew. Oh, yeah. Phil Collins is in Hook. What am I talking about? Isn't he?

No, he just did the soundtrack. He might be. A lot of people are in Hook. He might be. Yeah, a lot of people play pirates in that one.

Like even Glenn Close. Oh, yeah. That's one of those like cinema trivia games I always pull out. I'm like, this is Hook. Now I'm going to start talking about Hook, which is a better movie than this one.

I am more familiar with the writer or one of the writers for this, Nick Thiel. I had interviewed him for an episode we did on B.I. Warshawski. Um, so he did one of the many drafts of VR Warshawski. He also did the associate, the one with Whoopi Goldberg.

I don't know if you guys remember that one where she plays an old white guy. It's one of the, yeah, it's like based on a story that goes back to at least the thirties. And then, um, what else was the other thing that he did? Um, he worked, oh, he really came into his own with the show Voyagers. Um, the one where it was, the older guy, Barnabas, I want to say, and the young kid, and they travel through time.

They've got this watch that they move through stuff, and they always run into historical figures. Okay, vaguely familiar. Yeah, that was the one. The show was really good. I liked it.

I actually went back and rewatched it. And the other star of the show, the Phineas Bogg character, John Eric Hexum, he's the guy who as a joke, picked up a gun and put it to his head because he knew it was full of blanks and shot himself in the head with the, yeah, with the, the blank came out and killed this guy. I learned you don't do that from chain letter two by Christopher Pike. Yeah. My friend, Brendan Lee told me that one.

Yeah. Yeah. We all learned her lessons. The different Alex Baldwin came around. Yeah.

But the associate is so funny. If you want to do like a fun Whoopi Goldberg double feature, you should jump in Jack Flash and The Associate. I totally agree. I did a whole month of Whoopi Goldberg movies last year and The Associate was so close to being part of it. And I ended up going with Theodore Rex instead of The Associate and I really learned my lesson.

But at least I had a fun time learning everything I could about Theodore Rex of all things. Yeah. Well, okay, so now if you're playing, like, flick chart, right? Theodore Rex, Firebirds. Which one wins?

Theodore Rex. Yeah. I would probably watch Theodore Rex again, just because it's a car crash, but it's an interesting car crash. This is boring! Yes, yes.

Yeah. I think my favorite part really was Tommy Lee Jones being miserable at his surprise birthday party. Yes, yes. Like, it's just his, you know, he doesn't really, like, clearly all he wants to do is fly. And damn it, he's 40, so he doesn't even get to do that.

He has to teach these little shits to fly. And he doesn't, like, he's trying to put off seeing his wife and kids. And it's his birthday, so he's begrudgingly going with her to friends. He's like, oh, can I just go home? She's like, no.

And then the door opens and it's a surprise. And you feel it in the moment, right? You feel a surprise party when you really just want you to go home and eat ice cream and go to sleep. And that for me was the high point of this movie, which is a bit of a problem. I thought the idea of him needing to learn how to use the navigate the helicopter with his like eye dominance thing i thought that was an interesting idea but then like it was the only thing the movie.

Did and i was like is this a guy and it got solved in one. Month yeah like it seems weird yeah but i thought that was kind of interesting they could have tugged on a thread a little bit more with that mike what was your favorite part of this movie. I mean, that part, I thought that part was going to be my favorite because I always enjoy the whole montage of Rocky when he's learning how to box with his right hand instead of his left hand. And it's like the big surprise for Apollo Creed. No, no.

I mean, Nick Cage harassing Sean Penn or that Sean Penn, Sean Young. That would be a different movie, but I would see it. It would be. Yeah. Him harassing her in the laundromat was, I mean, This movie, if you like cringe, this is the movie for you because it is just cringe after cringe.

But I mean. Oh, yeah, because that's when she's like, you wanted somebody who would have babies. Like, you wanted a wife who was going to be home and cook you dinner and have babies. And he's like, yo, my mom did that. Why wouldn't you do that?

Because I'm in the army and I don't want to do that? I mean, he is an unfrozen caveman in this movie. I mean, I don't... I understand... that sexism is still bad and i understand that it used to be worse but my god this feels like 1920s like oh a woman can't have the vote you know it's. Very regressive in a really weird way.

And it's like this is reagan's america i guess because. I mean you have like female pilots which is cool and even tommy lee jones like Because when they first quote-unquote introduce Nick Cage to Sean Young, and Nick Cage is clearly pissed off, and Tommy Lee Jones is like, what, you don't like women in the military? And he's like, no, no, no, just that one. Where you're like, oh, cool, Tommy Lee Jones is cool with it. And he does seem like never does he sexually harass women.

But just even his birthday party, she's there in kind of a skimpy top, and it's kind of like, oh, all the women seem to have to be very flirty there. And it just feels, I don't know. Just blah. And especially when the next scene we have Nick Cage. Again, like, how embarrassing would that be in your workplace if your ex-boyfriend did that?

You really just unlocked something for me, though. When we were talking about Buster and Phil Collins, I didn't realize or I kept thinking like, why are there Phil Collins songs on this soundtrack? So there we go. That makes a lot more sense. Cause I was just thinking of what might've been my favorite scene, which was the dance and just seeing that incredible eighties band with like the guy with the sunglasses, the long hair, the vest and everything.

It kind of reminded me of like a Tommy Wiseau up there. Oh gosh. My husband just went to bed. Otherwise he could tell me. what's the name of Jimmy, Jimmy Hart, Jimmy Hart in WWF? Oh, the long black hair, right?

The megaphone. Yeah. That's what I was getting those vibes, but yes, I forgot. Cause that, that is that point when I was watching and thinking like, you know, this is what, this is like in all of the complaints we have about like losing the human connection in the world. And, you know, no, no DJs, just, just like computers playing playlists and stuff.

Like, you used to be able to go into a bar and there were people playing music that you wanted to hear. Not, oh no, it's open mic night. Cook, we have to go and eat fast and go. Like, imagine that. Imagine going there and dancing.

It used to be a society. Yeah. There's also a really bad love scene in this movie. I just thought maybe we should talk about it. It was really bad.

I just wanted to get it out there and be done with it. Yeah, I think I was blending my smoothie when that love scene was playing because it just feels like it goes on forever. This was what, PG-13 by this point? 1990? I think so.

The funny thing is, I was aware of movies in 1990. This was one of those where I never even knew this thing existed until years and years later, probably like 20, 30 years later, before I knew that this movie even was a thing. Yeah. Well, I mean, it didn't do well. But it was, again, like it wasn't a cheap movie.

It was, I believe, Disney was a Touchstone movie. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. So, I mean, it's like a pretty big production company, but it does make me wonder, I wish I'm not fast enough at this to figure it out. I'm so curious what else it like was competing against when it was out in the theater.

Oh, I saw that. I think, was it Back to the Future 3 or am I thinking of Megaforce? 1990. No, 1990. That would have been this one.

Yeah. Okay. I was reading it. The film Back to the Future Part 3 opened in first place in And then something about Total Recall as well. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And I saw both of those. I was working at a movie theater and those both were playing at the theater I was working at. Oh, I saw Total Recall. I went with my...

I don't know how either of us were able to get in because this is 1990. I'm eight years old. My brother would have been 13. I didn't see it because. I was eight.

And somehow he... I don't know how this all arranged, but... my brother went to see Total Recall with me and took me in and we sit in the theater. I don't know how we got tickets. I don't know. I remember like the movie, he's like, I have to go to the bathroom and just stay here.

And I was like, what if somebody comes in and realizes that I'm eight and that I should not be here? But they didn't. And I loved it. And obviously it's Total Recall. So yeah, imagine having the choice of seeing Total Recall or seeing Firebirds and imagine being like the person that picked Firebirds and then realizing later in life, like, Like, imagine, like, picking a date.

Like, hey, you want to go to, yeah, let's go see a movie. Which one do you want to see? I don't know, maybe Firebirds. And, like, just imagining, like, a Mr. Destiny moment of what life would have been had you taken your date to Total Recall instead of Firebirds.

Or Sliding Doors to mention another episode I was on. Well, true. But that was, oh, well, yeah, Sliding Doors moment. I'm like, well, you couldn't see Sliding Doors in 1990, Mike. It didn't come out yet.

Yeah. But you could see Mr. Destiny. So, okay. That's fair.

Fair. Yes. Was it? I don't know. Like, it was 91.

Yeah, probably. It was definitely before the sequel, Destiny Turns on the Radio, or Mr. Destiny Turns on the Radio. All right. On that note, do we have any more to say about Firebirds, the lost classic that is not really a lost classic?

If you like really over-the-top Nick Cage performances, you really need to check this out. Yeah, if you're a completist, you need to, 100%. Yeah. They do a thing around here every year called Nicholas Uncaged and show Nick Cage movies and everybody dresses up and all this kind of stuff. A few years ago, they had one of the stuntmen from Ghost Rider there and he set himself on fire on purpose.

Not because of the movie selection. Because he watched Firebirds. Right. But it's an event and I could see possibly, possibly, watching this with a bunch of rowdy people and having a good time, but that's stretching it. That is really stretching it, I think.

I think you would almost have to have a bunch of people who have already watched a movie, like, oh, I've already watched Megaforce, or watched something to get you in the mood, and maybe there's alcohol, maybe there's gummies, like, there is something to, like, Loosen you up and say, like, hey, guys, it's okay. We can talk back. We can... Because I think this could be in that way if you had the energy for it. Like, you could have a lot of fun with how ridiculous those Sean Young scenes get.

But it takes work. It doesn't do it... The way Megaforce is like, no, you sit down and, like, this is a dumb, fun movie. This one, you have to work for it to get there. Yeah, you really...

You shouldn't go to, like, the MoMA screening of this. Yeah. No, no. The Alamo screen house where they're giving props to throw or something. There you go.

Yeah. All right. So before we go on this one, favorite unhinged or favorite Nick Cage performance. Anybody have one? Oh, just overall?

Yeah. Oh, gosh. That's like a really big question. I know. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Like my favorite funny one is Wicker Man. Like that's my favorite joke. But he's been in stuff I really liked him in, like, for real, and I'd have to think about that. Yeah, same.

I mean, we were watching this, and my wife was saying, now we need to watch Snake Eyes. And so, and I love Snake Eyes. I, honest to God, love Snake Eyes. But him going, go Tyler, go Tyler. Like, that's probably my favorite Nick Cage moment.

I think for me, it's Peggy Sue. Oh, he's so good in that. He's very good in that. Or Moonstruck when he does that. Johnny's got his hand.

Johnny's got his bride. You know, we know that he'll never stop giving because he seems to still be in debt. So we will still have many Nick Cage performances to celebrate. I don't know that he got any residuals from me renting this on Amazon. Did you guys watch it on Hoopla or on Amazon?

I watched it on Hoopla. Okay. I downloaded it illegally. Honestly, good for you on that one. So I continue to struggle with my library services because it shows, right, on Just Watch, it says it's available on Hoopla.

When I logged into my library to try to find it, it would not take me to it. And it was not showing up as, like, it's not available on my Hoopla, apparently. I don't know what Westchester did to the library system to, like, blacklist itself for canopy and hoopla but we weren't good enough for this movie so. I i told you i couldn't get a ton of stuff when i moved into this district so i still piggyback off my seattle stuff because like the big cities are the only one getting uh uh what is this movie called again. Firebirds two words two words by the way yes.

Yes don't screw it up don't look for this is all one word. You're not gonna watch performance. Yeah yeah that caused riots when it premiered and so did this one i'm sure. Missed opportunity to like play the firebird during this movie right like i get that we were going for a more Phil Collins-y vibe, but you're called Firebirds. Oh, the music did not fit what was happening.

No, whereas Firebird would have probably fit. Oh, well. Okay. How about we take a quick break and come back and talk about Megaforce! Thank you.

We can take a break, or we can... All right, so going back to a great year, 1982, the year. Of Christine and my birth, with. A movie that does a lot more with a lot less than Firebirds. And it is Megaforce, which I feel like you can't just say Megaforce.

Like it has to come out as like Megaforce, right? So Mike, you have a relationship with this movie. Well, yeah. Like I said before, I saw it advertised everywhere when, or at least a lot on comic books of the era. I bet you I could pick up a comic book right now and it'd probably have a Megaforce ad on the back of it.

Cause it was, you know, I'm 10 years older than y'all. So I'm 10 years old reading comics, seeing that ad everywhere. But I think I knew somewhere that it was very cheesy. And when like the dorkiest kid that I knew went to see it and loved it, I was like, okay, cool. This probably isn't the film for me, but when it showed on cable, you know, probably a few years later, because it used to not be a guarantee that you could just see movies like that.

And also cable really, it was in its infancy around there, at least around me. But when I finally did see it, oh my gosh. Wow. The jokes are, the amount of humor that they have in this. I mean, there's a lot more humor in this than there is in Firebirds.

That's for sure. But it just feels like it was written by a 10 year old sometimes. So the whole, if you don't have less on, you have like that joke. That's it still is with me today. All these years later.

Now, Christine, had you ever seen this? I had not, but last year I screened the documentary and, about it for a film festival. So I have a very strange approach on this movie. Fascinating. Mike, have you seen the documentary?

I have not. I've got the big deluxe box set, but I didn't break into it. I hope that documentary is part of that. So I can't remember the name of it. I'm a big jerk.

Sorry, everybody. But there's a documentary, Megaforce documentary, maybe making Megaforce, but it's one of those really personal ones. And it kind of chronicles like a dude who loved it when he was a kid. And he like wants to, he goes and talks to Barry Bostwick and he has like a relationship with him. And he has like the, some of the vehicles from the movie.

So it's more from like. That perspective, which I always find interesting, like a more human story and seeing like this dude's like deep love, kind of like what Mike says, like this really like lived affection for it. It was charming. And so when I realized that was this movie, I was like, oh, okay, let's be charmed. Yeah.

You were right. It's called Making Megaforce. Oh, cool. From last year. I don't see yet where I can see it.

There is a makingmegaforce.com website. So I'm hoping there will be more information there. Yeah. I saw in like a pre-screen capacity, but it was very charming and well-made. So I hope it does become like more widely available.

I would definitely be interested to watch that. I knew, I had definitely heard the title. I feel like it's definitely gone around like our circle of friends, but never, never watched it. And did not know much about it and just kind of turned it on, not knowing what I was getting. And I, I have to love how it starts because it starts with, Now, Firebirds had an opening crawl that was actually a crawl, right?

It had text that, like, moved. And this one just has text on the screen giving us, like, the preview of setting up the world of Megaforce, right? And how would you describe, like, what do we got going on here story-wise? It's simple, except I didn't understand what was actually going on for most of this movie. It's so convoluted.

It's like all the political stuff from like the Star Wars prequels. It's all just them talking political stuff wearing like skin tight Lycra jumpsuits. It's so weird. Right? Like Megaforce is sort of this like good guy mercenary group.

Who do stuff that's good. And there's countries at war. And it's an international force because you have representatives. It's like a United Nations of soldiers. So we have different countries, including the United States and the Confederacy.

So now hold on. I know we were going to talk about the Confederate. Michael Beck's character has a Confederate flag. Okay. So does that mean in this alternate 80s, because they do say it's the 80s within the movie, does that mean in this alternate universe 80s that there is the United States and also the Confederate States?

Did we split in two? Oh, no. Oh, wow. This is like a whole turtle dove scenario. Wow.

Okay. Look, I don't know. I mean, none of us are going to say no. No. There are a lot of countries that I don't recognize.

Gamibian and Republic of Sardun. Yes. They kind of just took country names and then like changed a letter or two and said, yeah, that works. If you have, if you are a big fan of South Park or World Police, Team America, World Police, they, Team America, World Police definitely pulled a lot from this movie. And yeah, It's kind of perfect that they do.

I felt really dumb because I didn't see it at all when I was watching it. And then when I was reading the IMDb trivia and that came up, I was like, duh. That's where you've seen this movie. This is Team America World Police. Like, to the same extent of the montage.

So we have the Megaforce who are kind of drafted into doing this job that I didn't understand. And the representatives, the ambassadors of this country... come there to tell them what to do. And one of them happens to be a hot woman who's like, I want to be in mega force. I want to be on this mission. So then we have like a 35 minute montage where she trains and they skydive.

And I, Christine and I just did some of the, um, the beach movie. So I just watched, um, beach blanket bingo, which also has a really long skydiving sequence. And this skydiving sequence though, went on for an incredibly long time and didn't actually show anything or any real development. Which one looked better? I mean, Beach Blanket Bingo kind of had the whole sheen of it being beachy and better colored, so probably that one.

Yeah, I'd say. Yeah, they're very proud of these special effects, that they even give them a big credit at the beginning to say, like, Zoptic special effects! It's directed by a stuntman, right? Oh yeah, Hal Needham, who was a big director. Am I nuts though?

This movie looked really good, right? Am I right? Other than the special effects, other than the special effects. Yeah. Okay.

Cause like there's some landscape shots that I was like, this is beautiful. What are we doing? Filmmaking guys. But then I guess the special effects were underwhelming cartoonish. Part of it is, and this is something I don't, I don't know at what point I would have noticed this.

Cause I, I happened to like see it in the trivia pretty early on, but that you never actually see in, in like, these raids, right? You have very long sequences of tanks going into enemy territory and bombing things and motorcycles coming and jumping over things and guns shooting and stuff. And you realize at a certain point, I haven't seen any people, right? Because you do not see anybody actually get shot or blown up, right? All of the violence is to things, not to people.

And there's something a little bit like admirable about that of like a, Yeah, I mean, especially because this, again, this movie is like what co-produced by Mattel. It's intended to sell toys. It was very much meant as a, like, 10-year-old boy type movie. So I kind of appreciate that there's not, like, you know, Total Recall-esque violence in it. But it also then, I think, makes it feel a little bit cheaper because of that.

It's very A-team. Yes. Accent that Michael Beck is putting on in this so reminded me of Howling Mad Murdoch. Yeah. I don't think it helps that there's so many writers on this one.

They've got, what, one guy? One guy's got a story idea credit. Then you've got a screenplay. It's screenplay by James Whitaker, A.N.D., Albert S. Ruddy, Ampersand, Hal Needham, Ampersand, Andre Morgan.

And like Albert Ruddy, God bless his soul. He he was very generous with his time with me once when I was interviewing him all about Matilda, the boxing kangaroo movie. He doesn't necessarily have the best taste in the world. So. Like, yeah, he produced The Godfather, but then his track record isn't that solid afterwards.

And I have a feeling he probably meddled with this, as well as maybe Needham, as well as maybe Morgan. And I don't know if there was a good screenplay out there for this, but it definitely feels like this went through a lot of passes. Yeah, and I think whenever I watch a movie and realize at a certain point that I don't fully understand... what's going on, often I look, I, like, pull back, I'm like, oh, there were multiple screenwriters. Like, very often that is the reason. Like, it just, it's in too many hands, and the final draft of what they're shooting, especially a film like this, where you gather that, like, every day they probably were improvising, or just throwing something else out there, that then, as a result, you, like, you sit back and say, who's it were?

Wait, is Henry Silva a the bad guy or is he okay. When he's just suddenly a good guy so confused by henry's right yes it's so convoluted and that's it's too many too many cooks in the kitchen too many fingers in the pot and it's there's no like really strong through line because the the love interest kind of dips in and out i so wanted. Her to be bad i thought she was gonna be a secret. Villain I know because she says like, Oh, you can't cross the border into the thing. And I was like, Oh, this is going to be good.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. They, I feel like they set things up that were like, Oh, this is even if she wasn't like a bad, maybe she'd be like a turnco or like decide that she loved them. So, but she wasn't even present.

So it's like, we don't get that and we don't get like a cool total recall team up or anything. So it's like, come on. Well, and at the end I was, I, again, like it was one of those movies that you watch and you, and I worry that like, oh, did I look away for a minute to take a drink of water and miss something? Because I could not understand Henry Silva in the movie, whether like, wait, so he's the, he's on the side of the bad guys, but he's like, kind of like pals with Barry Boswick. I think what is happening is we're really looking forward into America's involvement in the Middle East.

You know, we're supporting people like, uh, bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. We were backing the Mujahideen at this point in Afghanistan. Remember all the brave fighters who were in rainboats two or three three and you know it's it's this whole thing of like one day it's very much like project runway one day you're in and the next day you're out one day you're a friend of the united states the next day you know. You're america is at war with east asia exactly always has. Been yeah exactly so yeah i think that's why we're so confused is that this is portraying politics in such a real way that i don't think our little liberal minds can handle.

It nope It does make sense. 40 chests. Yes. Yeah. You know what else I cannot handle?

You cannot have the cheekbones of Henry Silva and the cheekbones of Michael Beck in one movie. Can you imagine if like a balloon was in a room with the two of them? It's just popping. Sharp. Sharp.

He was not in it enough, Michael Beck. You know what? He's the best thing in this, right? Nobody's in this enough. She's not in it enough.

Who is in this movie? This movie is like 90% vehicle. It is very vehicle. It's a very appropriate that Ed Mulhare is in this, the guy from Knight Rider, you know, because it's just like, he's got quite a relationship with vehicles and it's all over here. Yeah.

Yeah. And you still don't get like, you don't really know what the vehicles do and don't do, but they're still more interesting looking than the Firebird helicopters. I still don't understand the, the holograms, what they're doing and why they would show a hologram of a, of the ocean and a woman on the beach when they're in the middle of the desert. I'm like, is this supposed to be technology at the time? I mean, all of this is cutting edge technology that you can put a hat on the vehicle.

And then when you lift the hat up, they've painted the vehicle black where that hat was. That's crazy. Cause that's really going to come in handy when you, You get a bunch of hats and you put them all over the vehicle and then you take them off and you drive for 10 minutes and then that comes back to its normal color. It's a good point about the holograms because it really does feel like they're trying to make holograms happen. And it's like the skydiving.

It's like somebody was really into this idea and then the other screenwriter was like, Tag, you're it. Oh, the holograms? I'm throwing that part out. And then the other guy comes back for like the third act. He's like, holograms.

We're bringing back holograms. And so it does just feel kind of like a game of tag in screenplay writing. What is that called? An exquisite corpse, right? Yes, yes, very much.

This is the literary round table of writers going through here. Yeah, and it doesn't help either that this is one of, and I don't have the number in front of me, but I would love to know how many O productions Golden Harvest made with American movie companies. And Al Needham was he was in the Nexus because he's doing Cannonball Run, which was a Golden Harvest picture as well. This one, I know that Andre Morgan, he is credited as one of the writers on Game of Death, the Bruce Lee film. And I want to say like that whole Golden Harvest America stuff started around Enter the Dragon.

And it continued on for I don't know how many years, like even things like. I want to say the big brawl, the one with Jackie Chan, like those were, those were all coming out of this whole partnership that was going out. And those movies, they have something very special because they just don't feel like American movies, even though they are as American as apple pie, when it comes to like, you know, the glorification of weaponry and just the fetishization of these guys in Lycra and the, the baby blue, uh, headband that ace hunter wears and i know we haven't even gotten ace hunter yet yeah the. Because the headband is interesting because it's like what is that doing functionally i was trying to figure out if it had any actual use but i mean it does it just kind of brightens those baby blue eyes i guess so barry boswick was cast in this movie based off of his performance in um a theatrical production of the pirates of penzance which makes me very excited and like.

He does the one with uh cursed oh what was that you oh oh not that. One like white you are thinking of the pirate. Movie pirate movie okay. Which we christine do you remember covering the pirate movie i do okay good christy. Mcnichol there we go christy mcnichol couldn't think of.

Yeah pirate movie was like when i was a kid that's is a movie that i watched all the time my sister loved that movie and when then like i was like nine or something and like somebody's middle school did the pirates of penzance on stage i was so confused because i'm like this is the pirate movie but it's not the pirate movie they're ripping off the pirate movie because to me the pirate movie comes before anything else in the world um you know so the pirates penzance was a stage play um that pirate movie kind of takes as inspiration but he was just like in a i don't i don't think it was broadway i think it was either a touring production or like a la jolla production or something And the, I don't think it was a director, but it was producer, whoever was making the decision was like, that's the kind of presence we need.

And it does work because it's like, he's very, he finds a way to be just naturally like light and it doesn't feel forced. It feels like he is a cartoon, but not in a goofy way. I don't know. I think it's hard work and I think he pulls it off. And maybe I'm just enjoying when he would turn around and walk in those tight lycra.

And I'm like, hey. Nice ass, Barry Boswick. Nice ass. I think he is so charming in this role. Even though he is so cheesy and, again, with the sexism and just like, no, no, you can't go on this mission.

Versus whatever your last name is. I always think of her as V'ger in the Star Trek movie. Versus Kambata. There we go. It's like, no, no, you can't come with us.

No, this is boys only. No women allowed in Megaforce. The problem is. You tried. We wasted your time.

We wasted her time. I feel like it wasn't that you're a woman. It was that, like, this is my... These are my men. This is my...

My troop. And we train so well that we can anticipate each other's moves. We know... And you do see that. Like, when they're doing their motorcycle stunts, like, they know each other really well and do work as a unit.

Like, they're... Like, it's like in the... I don't know where this comes up, but like in the movie 300, right? You only, you only need 300 men because if you add anybody else, well, that's not going to help because they don't know how we do things. Right.

So sure. You can add a thousand men, but they're not going to be as good as the 300 of us working together in tandem. But the problem is he wastes her time skydiving for 35 minutes. When the whole time you fall in love. They needed to fall in love.

And yeah, it does feel like we just need to get to the end of the first act because we just don't have nearly enough. We're going to do the long trip of them coming from Sanjikistan, Valverde, wherever they're at, coming all the way over, getting driven out to the desert. The fake snake. The snake out there. Michael Beck coming in with a skull shirt and his accent.

And then the demonstration of the motorcycles where there are just mysterious balloons being shot from somewhere that these guys are using missiles to take out these balloons. That was so pretty, though. It was so pretty to look at. I loved that. Well, and let's talk about that really pretty shot of the motorcycles coming all in a rainbow, right?

Somehow their exhaust all comes out in different color, and it was a very pretty photo. It very much felt like there is a troop that does this. It would be like the motorcycle equivalent of the Blue Angels, but hopefully they just don't crash as much. And just to have. These guys, and yeah, because their movements are all coordinated and stuff, and yeah, I loved when all the smoke started coming out.

I was just like, this is a show. This is a really good stock show or something. And they're doing their jumps. They jump over the truck and all this. I'm like, this is really good.

I like this. It's fun. Apparently, and I guess this must be true, the film has no credited costume designer. All the clothes were designed by the toy company Mattel. Oh.

They are very unforgiving to some of these men. You know, look, if you're in Megaforce, then I feel like you are, you know, it's kind of like when you. Circumcised. Yeah. And like you, like if you're an Olympic diver, right?

You don't like, oh, I'm having a, I'm bloated today. Like, well, it doesn't matter. You're going to wear the tiny little thingies and do your Olympic dive because you have to wear this clothing in order to do the activity you're doing. So I kind of feel like that with Megaforce. Like, hey guys, you know, this is the uniform.

This is what you signed on for. This is, get used to it. It doesn't look like it breathes, though. I think that's what would bother me. Yeah, I can just almost smell it because that's going to trap all the body odor in there.

And these guys are very active, you know? Yeah. I guess, kind of speaking of Golden Harvest, but in a different way, I mostly know this character actor from his role in Fistful of Chopsticks, Evan Kim. It wasn't him playing They Call Me Bruce, but I've seen Evan Kim in a lot of stuff. I want to say he might have been one of Dirty Harry's partners.

He plays Suki in this. He's probably my favorite thing in this entire movie because I just like him as an actor so much, even though he's got terrible lines. Yeah he's he's very charismatic yes i think there's something about this movie that like isn't as fun as it could be and yeah and i think it's it's it's probably the direction it doesn't ever feel like kinetic or like fun or like like actiony and like nobody is fun and no i don't feel like i'm laughing or having fun but the but the the gentleman that mike just called out whose name character name i can't think of and i'm not looking at suki was very yes it was very charismatic and when he was on screen i was like oh yeah this is how the whole thing should be.

Yeah i wanted more of the men together because i do think a lot of chemistry like like michael back has chemistry with everybody like every one of his scenes like again like you lose a little bit of love for him when he kind of puts on the confederate flag but were a little kinder about that in the eighties. But it's like that when he's on, I'm like, I'm leaning forward and I'm into it. And then I get 20 minutes of just tanks and another tank and another tank and another tank. And I understand like, like you're making again, a movie for 10 year old boys who like tanks apparently. But it's, yeah, it's, it's, it is not quite as camp classic as I think I would like it to be also because it sort of lacks a it doesn't like put enough trust in letting the actors do stuff.

So like you don't get like, you almost could get like a Miami connection type feeling from it, but you don't because we don't have enough scenes of just guys being guys together. There's also not enough quotable lines. I mean, the whole thing of the good guys always win, even in the eighties. I mean, it's so good that they have to put that as the button on the entire movie, which is great. But like, it needs more of that stuff.

It needs more of those cheesy jokes, like the less on moron kind of thing. And just like, yeah, more to it. And like you're saying about Evan Kim, like it's usually him and the guy with the Mexican flag next to him. And it's like, they almost seem to be in two shots exclusively where it very much does feel like we are. you know, you're saying I want men together. I agree with that because even the shots are broken down and just like a one, a tour, you know, these two, these two, but never in the same shot.

Like when they're on the plane, it's like, you don't really ever see three people talking at the same time. Yep. Where did this come in? How Needham's directorial career? Like, was this one of his first films as a director?

Well, I know. He for sure had done... Didn't he do Smoking the Bandit? He did, yeah. Smoking the Bandit, Hooper, the villain.

Yeah, this was like his 10th movie. Yeah, no. Yeah, this is after Cannonball Run. If you haven't seen an early TV movie he did, and I'm being 100% serious, it's called Death Car on the Freeway. Okay, I see it here on IMDb.

I love car movies. It is really good. And it is, speaking of sexism, it is basically... This guy is going after women on the freeway. And it ends up that they're all working women.

And it's almost like this serial killer guy wants women to stay home and not go out to work. I don't know if that was the original intention of the film, but that's. How I read it. And it was good. It was.

Yes. So we've got, let's see. Harriet Nelson, Peter Graves, Dinah Shore, Abe Vigoda, George Hamilton. Yes. And a little guy you might know, Sid Haig.

Yeah. I will find this movie. I need to watch it. It's really good. I'm 100% serious about that.

Oh, I believe you. Yeah. Needham had been a stuntman since like 57, I want to say. Like way back when. Took him a while before he got into the director's chair.

But he was also doing a lot of acting. And we get to see him act like crazy in this one. He's the guy running the control board. with the southern accent yeah. Yes not mickey is he making pinky rings. Yes is he making is he part of the jokes around uh i'll say hello to your wife when i when you get home or when i get home kind of thing i don't know that that joke goes on that that that joke goes on for a long time yeah but i i love i honestly love hooper i haven't seen it in a while i would love to see that again um I really still like the Cannonball Run movies, even though they're stupid as shit.

Never seen the Cannonball Run movies. Oh, wow. And I want to say I've been told that Body Slam from 86 is really good as well, but I haven't watched that one. Okay. I've got some...

Oh, wow. It looks like I just found a secret Smokey and the Bandit movie I didn't know about called Bandit. Oh, come on, IMDb. Get back over here. I've never seen, I would love to see Smokey is the Bandit.

I don't know if he directed that one. But what is this? Okay, sorry. Go about your business. Well, there's not much more to say.

I think one thing that is of interest is that this opened, we talked about on Firebirds, like what else was out during the same time. I feel like this is very telling of, you know, a shift in things. This movie opened against The Road Warrior. Wow. Yeah.

Oh, wow. Yep. Wow. Talk about different energy. It's got Road.

Warrior vibes, though. Like, it could be that if it wanted to be that, you know? I mean, it feels very much like the, you know, young adult version of the Road Warrior, right? Like, you could take the kids to this one and then, like, okay, kids, you're going to go here. I'm going to go see Mad Max.

It is so set up. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It is so set up for like, yeah, it could take the kids to see it. And the kids are going to want all the toys and this.

When you're talking about that documentary, I'm sure that the guy is collecting like the actual vehicles because I've seen people that are like that. But I know for sure they had to have been a lot of collectible toys around this. And then the wonderful discovery you made. Yeah, I found a commercial for some of the toys from this movie. And who's starring in the commercial?

A baby face, brian cranston yeah probably just got off the set of a guest spot on murder she wrote for all we know yeah yeah yeah what a time to be alive right. So there's a whole series of secret bandit movies that uh hal needham did i had no idea. That he actually directed or. Yeah directed one called bandit goes country One called Bandit and then colon. Country?

Bandit. No, it's three bandits, but there's a colon in there. So it's Bandit and then the subtitle is Bandit Bandit. No, that's fake. Oh, that's something.

That's like a way of messing people up that try to decide how to alphabetize their movies, right? You do it like when you get to the franchise, if you have like the Purge and then the first Purge, well, does the first Purge now go before the Purge, but it's set before, but it's made after. Like, that just seems like it's designed to mess somebody up like that. And then the third is Bandit, colon, Bandit's Silver Angel. And these all came out in 1994.

So I need to know. They're all TV movies. It must have been a glorious year in 1984. I was really busy. Or sorry, 1994.

94, Jesus. Yeah. No, 1994 was a big year. I was very busy watching the Lillehammer Olympics and everything around that, so. I can't tell you anything else that happened.

I can't believe that this movie really is called Bandit, Bandit, Bandit. And do you know who's in it? Brian Krause and Richard Belzer, among many other people. It's like a movie with people in it. Why is it called Bandit, Bandit, Bandit?

I'm so upset right now. The only way you'll know is to see it, see it, see it. But, like, that shouldn't be allowed. That shouldn't be allowed. No.

No. i'm like now i'm upset about something else. How dare they i don't know i think you could be upset that this movie cost 20 million to make and open i thought that. Was wild that was wild why did this cost 20 million dollars to. Make they probably like made those cars. Yeah i mean those those stunt scenes like and the special effects yeah the special effects like Again, obviously some of them are very silly.

Some of them maybe deliberately so. But there is all like the actual like lasers and explosions and tanks like that stuff is done really well. Again, I don't think it narratively moves you, but it looks good. You know how now we just talk to the military and they fund our movies and we just have to have a pro military bend. Do you think they had to go get their own tanks for this?

Like they couldn't just borrow the military's tanks? Good question. I feel like there was something about that in the trivia. Military was definitely involved in that Firebirds movie because I think that was the first credit that came up. Yeah.

Yeah. But here, yeah, I'm not sure. I think it was probably them trying to buy the rights to Porky Pig and just not being able to because... Beck says you know that's all folks at one point and then in the middle of a very serious meeting he decides to pull up a pig that is not Porky Pig as a kind of like a Ralph Bakshi animation in the middle of this meeting and then in the subtitles in the captions it said that's all folks and I'm like I didn't hear that I didn't hear him say that and I'm like I think Warner would have handed them their ass Wow, that's wild. The trivia has that the cars and motorcycles were designed by William Frederick, who worked on Hooper, and delivered them after eight months, and they cost $ 1 million.

And that they were all working. Where's the other 19? On the screen, Mike. On Barry Boswick's workout routine. Barry Boswick's pants, yeah.

There was the skydiving insurance for the skydiving. It's because Egg kept breaking his glasses. He'd get excited and he'd throw them on the ground and shatter them. Or that incredible set that they're in for Megaforce Headquarters, which definitely was not using matte paintings. Well, apparently that was like a new thing for them was the way those matte paintings were used.

And the director talked about that, of how like, oh, it was so great. Like we could film the whole scene without having to go anywhere. It was all filmed in Nevada. So maybe everybody was gambling somewhere. During some of the time, you know?

Oh, okay. Maybe absconding with the funds. The missiles were model rockets manufactured by a company in Missouri. Yeah, so. I mean, they had those big freaking planes.

And those, some of those shots looked really good. But yeah, I mean, I think it was, you say that the special effects didn't cost that much, but to have that flying helicopter. Yeah. That flying helicopter and the on-screen countdown. I mean, how much money is that?

Yeah. So here's one other bit of trivia. This is the one I was thinking of because I knew there was something about the military in here. The producers approached military officials for cooperation in the design of the vehicles used in the battle scenes. The officials refused.

When the film was released, those same officials were so impressed with the vehicles that they asked for the plans. The producers cooperated. Ooh. Capitulated. So see, Megaforce in the end was like, no, the good guys do right.

We're not proud. The good guys really do win, even in the 80s. Even in the early 80s. The kissing the thumb and then giving the thumbs up. Oh, man.

What a move. We need to bring that back. Yeah. All right. Well, The next time I see Persis Kambada, I'll definitely do that.

Well, I think she died. She died, yeah. Yeah, and apparently in a very, like, yes, with a lot of controversy around it over exactly what went down. But your boss is still kicking around, right? He sure is, yeah.

The sequel could happen. I could see it. Old Ace Hunter. I mean, they keep trying to make those stupid G.I. Joe movies.

Exactly. Just do this one instead. Come on, Mattel. You know, you had Barbie. Let's do this.

We could say, not only is Michael Beck still going, Michael Beck still looks great. Yes. Look at his picture today on IMDb. He's aged beautifully. Yeah, on the note of Mattel, I guess it's funny because this, I guess, was a flop, which was not new for a lot of Mattel movies.

And we are in the age right now where Masters of the Universe has just landed on streaming platforms. And it's an interesting case of a movie that did not do well at all in the theaters and apparently is doing really well on Amazon. So it seems like, who knows, we could get another Master of the Universe while we're there. Maybe work in a tank. Well, it's set up for the She-Ra movie.

Exactly. Why not have She-Ra also skydive? On a tank. Yeah. On a tank.

In a tank. From a tank. Yeah. Yeah. Ah.

There's probably all those filters that colored the sky one color and the ground the other color. I don't know what they were doing with that, but that happens twice in the movie. I was like, why? That was two of the observations my husband had in walking into the movie while I was watching it. One was that.

It was like, what color is this movie? And I explained it like, many, many. It's many colors. And then he sat down for the last half hour of a film and is like, he's looking at me like can you pause it and pause it he's like what's going on I'm like yeah I have no idea like I don't know who's good I don't know who's bad I don't know what this conflict is actually about and I don't know if I should or not so it's a strange watch that will not make you feel very smart but is enjoyably dumb I. Guess also probably a good thing to watch on substances.

Yes yes even more so than Firebirds yes oh yeah Actually, no, I don't think you need it for this movie, whereas I think you do need it for Firebirds. I agree. It'll just put you to sleep. Yeah. Take a little nap.

Yeah. Well, that is Megaforce. Sounds like a recommend, certainly for me, Mike. Christine, recommend for you? Sure.

I have a note that it would be a good movie to watch with people and kind of just talk through. because like the stuff, the stuff you won't miss anything. Cause it doesn't make any sense. So like, you're just talking over like a lot of military planning, which you don't need a lot of military planning in these movies. It doesn't actually seem to logically tie together in any way. It doesn't really land in any way, but you could just talk over it and then watch the cool stuff happening and then occasionally laugh at it.

And I think it would be fun. I think it's fair. Yeah. Cause it does drag in parts where it just, again, lots of talking that doesn't go anywhere. Or lots of tanking that just goes the same place, but looks cool.

Wonderful. All right. Well, with all that being said, Mike, what are you working on? What's coming out next? Well, I am finally editing all of the films that I have set for Valhalla, which is our Val Kilmer tribute month.

So we're going to have, let's see, Kill Me Again, Tombstone, Insultancy, and Spartan. So tombstone, definitely the most popular one in that batch. But the other ones are really solid. So I had a great time talking about Val Kilmer. And then, yeah, just still working on all the other podcasts I do.

We're on a break in between seasons of Columbo from the NBC years to the ABC years. So we've got a movie... Ironically enough, with Barry Bostwick that we are talking about called Murder by Natural Causes. Yeah, Murder by Natural Causes. And that's Hal Holbrook, Barry Bostwick.

And yeah, it's quite a good one. It was written by the same guys that wrote Columbo or came up with Columbo, Lincoln Levinson. So yeah, it's all coming up Bostwick. Well, now I have to ask a question about Val Kilmer because I'm suddenly realizing that I think of like Val Kilmer and Nick Cage as sort of like different sides of the same coin. And now I'm wondering, were they ever in a movie together?

Oh, that's a good question. Because it feels like they should have been or the world would have exploded if they were. Yeah. Because they're similar actors in a lot of ways. Oh, I know.

Age-wise. Bad Lieutenant, sort of called New Orleans. Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah. And Kilmer is fantastic in that.

And of course, Cage, that's one of those great Cage performances. When the unhinged is pointed in the right direction. Exactly. Well, you've got Werner Herzog giving those guys direction. Yeah, that was the thing with Kilmer is that he does give off a lot of Cage.

And he's also very difficult to work with. And that was the thing we just kept coming back to through the entire thing of just how people... How he... It's like he wants to work, but he just wants to be a prick at the same time. Yeah.

Which is why you ended up with a whole lot of straight-to-DVD horror films in the early 2000s from him. Absolutely. Christine, what do you have going on? Anything to share? No, not really.

Thanks for asking, though. Well, I mean, again, always read Christine's books and stuff. ChristineMakePeace.com? Yeah, that's me. I'm on the internet.

You can find me there. What are you up to, Emily? No, same old, really. I'm out there somewhere, DeadlyDollsHouse.com. But yeah, that's our world.

And I guess with that being said, for the viewers at home to know what we are doing, we are now, everybody, everybody, kiss your thumb, right? And now point at the camera. Yeah. That's right. Oh, I was closing my eye, my non-dominant eye.

Oh, no! Well played, sir. Well played. Well, go America or Sursikstan or whatever countries we're representing today. Goodbye.

No more sad times, bad or bad times. No more minor keys. Life's for living, sharing, giving. Life's for you and me. When the dough is rough and you've had enough, leave your troubles and your woe.

Turn the other cheek and forget your grief. Make a friend out of yourself. Give me a happy ending Every time We'll kiss and make up That's a very peaceful sign Give me a happy ending Every time Don't be unhappy, everything will work out fine. No more fighting, scratching, biting.