206 – Garfield: His 9 Lives

The Garfield-verse is FAT with alternate realities and unknown horrors

Tim and Jen invite the world’s greatest Garfield scholar, Bitter Karella, to chat about a TV special inspired by a comic that traumatized a generation, Garfield: His 9 Lives.

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Read Misunderstanding Comics, the funniest comic Scott McCloud never wrote, written by Tim and illustrated by Bitter Karella! Make Tim get those copies out of storage!

Have You Seen This…Dirty Cartoon? In case you missed our hilarious riff of Eveready Harton and you’re a patron, you can watch it here!

See some pages from the story Tim enthused about, the 1984 G.I. Joe comic issue #21 “Silent Interlude.”

205 – The Story of D.E. 733: Ship of Shame

All asore!

Jen and Tim swab the deck with a hygiene film straight from the U.S. Navy, The Story of D.E. 733: Ship of Shame. Actually, turns out it’s pretty good, even with all the sores!

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See the film in two parts (first reel and second reel) over at the Periscope Film YouTube channel, but be warned that it contains insert shots of male genitalia with symptoms of sexually transmitted infections. Wrap it before you tap it!

Jen says Mike Pence was governor of Iowa when she should have said Indiana. As she is a lifelong coastal elite, the states in the middle of the country just merge into a big blur when she looks at them. Anyway, the HIV outbreak started when Pence balked at funding needle exchanges for injection drug users.

See photos from the wartime U.S. Naval Photographic Services Depot, which produced The Story of D.E. 733.

The song the sailors are singing at the beginning of the film is “Bell Bottom Trousers,” which was adapted from an extremely saucy folk ballad called “Rosemary Lane.” Wikipedia has the original spicy lyrics.

204 – Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven

Heels, sheer top, full face of makeup. That’s how I sleep!

Tim and Jen brave the crowdfunded sequel to Showgirls, a mindbogglingly lengthy auteur statement called Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven.

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The entire thing is the work of bit-part Showgirls (the original) actress Rena Riffel, who wrote, directed, edited, and starred in…this.  Please don’t be mad at us Rena we love you.

See Rena’s pivotal appearance in Tim’s beloved Fishmasters, the low-budget but charming San Luis Obispo-area TV show mentioned in the episode.

Geeks of Doom had some hilariously wrong information about the film when the first trailer and crowdfunding appeal droppped:

[T]he film is “about stripper who died from a dose of contaminated cocaine. Her brother comes to Frankfurt to find the responsible and revenge.”

We’ve seen it, and it’s not that. Luna Guthrie at Collider treats the movie much more kindly than we do, if you want a different take.

Finally, please watch Jen’s video mashing up R.O.T.O.R. with Midi, Maxi, and Efti, and follow us on YouTube if you’re not sick of us already!

203 – Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

Karen Carpenter (actual weight)

Jen and Tim contextualize the band that ruled Nixon’s America, The Carpenters, for Todd Haynes’s early dollhouse biopic, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.

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Watch the film on the Internet Archive, but don’t tell Richard Carpenter you did!

Entertainment Weekly took a look back at the film in the aftermath of the unstoppable cultural juggernaut that was the Barbie movie.

Friend of Todd Haynes and producer Christine Vachon spilled some info on the restoration of Superstar in 2023.

202 – Aladdin

I spent three wishes to make sure I wouldn’t have to watch this.

Tim wisely stays far away while Jen hosts the lovable Worst of All Possible Worlds boys to chat about the worst of all possible musicals, Aladdin from 1990. Yes, it’s not the animated version, but it does involve Disney. Listen if you don’t believe us!

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The moribund website of the Prince Street Players remains online, in case you want to do a deeper dive on the organization responsible for this mess.

Behold the “I Want to be Ninja” lady, but be prepared to apologize to your Asian friends. And yes, she does appear to be milking her dubious viral fame.

Regarding the Barry Bostwick-featuring commercial Jen mentioned, Brian made up a Pepsi product, and Jen believed him! The commercial actually presented Pepsi Twist, with lemon.

Check out Tim’s Myst linking book set, and follow him on Instagram to see more of his amazing Lego creations!

201 – Earth Girls Are Easy

Rule 1: be Jeff Goldblum. Rule 2: don’t not be Jeff Goldblum.

Jen and Tim debate just how much he actually likes movie musicals during their discussion of a mutual fave, the musical comedy Earth Girls Are Easy.

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According to her own website, writer and actress Julie Brown is currently working on Earth Girls Are Easy…the musical version! Maybe even Tim will deign to see it!

Vanity Fair covered Angelyne in 2022, post-Hollywood Reporter exposé. According to the article, the producers of the Angelyne miniseries paid their subject for her life rights, although she declined a producer credit.

For more Julian Temple, enjoy the longform music video he directed for David Bowie, Jazzin’ For Blue Jean. 

200 – Disclosure

Disclosure
What did you eat, woman?!

Tim and Jen welcome Alex Rancourt of the Saucer Cinema podcast to discuss a concentrated version of the political correctness panic of the 90s, Disclosure.

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If for some reason you need to subject yourself to the gross-out video Alex dropped in the chat while we were recording, here you go: Michael Douglas eats an oyster. 

From 1995, this Vanity Fair article about Michael Douglas covers some of the production of Disclosure. Also highlighted are Douglas’s personal struggles at the time, including a reconciliation with wife Diandra (who’d file for divorce later that year).

If you just can’t get enough 90s tech references, check out this history of SiliconGraphics, the company that created a lot of the computer imagery in Disclosure. It’s a UNIX system! You know this!

For more Michael Douglas (dunno why you want more, but you do you), listen to our episode about The Ghost and the Darkness! 

199 – Singapore Sling

You’ll need a stiff drink after this one

Jen and Tim discover the work of Nikos Nikolaidis through his magnum opus, the twisted noir grotesque Singapore Sling. Bring a bucket!

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The director’s official site provides a great deal of valuable context for his work, which has been little seen in the United States. Among others, you can purchase an HD digital download of Singapore Sling. 

Related: Jen asserted that the film was “coming soon” to blu-ray, but it turns out it already made it to a special edition German blu-ray back in 2013. That edition appears to be out of print, but the film can be found if you know where to look.

For more visionary sicko shit, listen to our episode about David Cronenberg’s Crash! 

198 – Our Worst Favorites, Episodes 1-100

Tim and Jen wrap up their look back at the first one hundred episodes of the show by listing their worst favorites! Yes, you read that right!

Hear about the movies we actually liked in our last episode, in case you missed it.

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The lamentable fan film The Return of the Ghostbusters (aka “The Denver Ghostbusters,” in the same vein as “Terrifier the Clown”) shows no signs of disappearing from YouTube. Your time might be better(?) spent on primo schlock like Godfrey Ho’s Crocodile Fury, or the wildest Florida Man story ever shot on video, Truth or Dare: A Critical Madness. And of course there’s Romeo and Romeo!

The Doomsday Machine is way more enjoyable when it’s riffed by Cinematic Titanic— highly recommended! Watch it free on Tubi. 

197 – Our Most Favorites, Episodes 1-100

Jen and Tim pick their top five favorite subjects from the first one hundred episodes of the show. It was supposed to be their most and worst faves, but they just talk too damn much! Looks like they gotta record a whole other episode to air their least faves of the first hundred.

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If you watch just one episode of the (sadly few) remaining of the British series Dead of Night, “A Woman Sobbing” should be your pick.

Outsider art enthusiasts: walk, don’t run to catch Romeo and Romeo. It truly is something special.

Horror Express is pretty easy to find, but a lot of poor quality versions are out there. This one is quite nice, however. 

Threads has grown in reputation such that it often appears on streaming services like Shudder and Criterion Channel, but you can always find it at the Internet Archive. 

Ghostwatch, the show that scared an entire country so badly they put it in a lockbox for 25 years, may also be viewed on the Archive! 

Part 2, where we name our least favorites of the first hundred episodes of HYST, will be coming shortly, so stay tuned!