Author: Have You Seen This?

159 – Blonde

Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik's Blonde (2022)

Jen and Tim welcome returning guest Darren Herczeg to go to bat for an almost universally loathed Netflix feature, Blonde. Naturally, the trio revel in the film’s grotesque and overt misogyny while twirling their mustaches.

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon!

Jessica Kiang’s review of Blonde over at Film Comment sums up the critical reaction well:

Dominik’s film is a technical marvel, but it’s cold and not a little sinister. It’s also an utterly heartless hoodwink.

There’s no word on whether or not the French documentary that revealed the identity of Marilyn’s biological father will screen in the US. However, according to Variety, an English-language version exists and has been sold to international distributors.

Darren previously appeared on the show to talk about the film Michael Mann refuses to talk about, The Keep!

158 – Gymkata

That guy isn’t even American!

Tim and Jen try and fail to recall the name of Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps as they discuss Olympian gymnast Kurt Thomas’s sole feature film, Gymkata.

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon for a pledge as low as $5/month and get access to more than 70 bonus episodes!

Jen’s half-assed inaccurate anecdote about Phelps being considered to play Tarzan is actually true, albeit not the way she told it. Producer Jerry Weintraub (no relation to Gymkata producer Fred Weintraub) believed that he’d found the new Johnny Weissmuller in Phelps. However, the swimmer’s appearance on SNL in 2008 immediately disabused him of that notion, as Phelps appeared to Weintraub as little more than a “goon.” 

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz has only five minor credits on IMDb, incidentally, none of which involve starring in a feature film. In case you were wondering.

You can hear our interview with martial arts superstar Cynthia Rothrock here!

157 – Speed Racer

Emile Hirsch as Speed Racer emerges from the Mach 5 in a candy-colored still from the 2008 film

Jen and Tim welcome Speed Racer evangelist Paul Jay to talk about, uh, the 2008 flop Speed Racer.

Over at culture blog The Sundae, Dean Buckley makes a case against Speed Racer as “art film” and for the Wachowskis as purveryors of schlock (in a positive way). Agree or disagree, it’s a thoughtful piece.

The Daily Beast has details of Emile Hirsch’s attack on a Paramount executive at a Sundance party, although the headline’s assertion that he “starred” in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a slight exaggeration (he had a small part as man-about-town hairdresser and murder victim Jay Sebring).

The documentary Riding Balls of Fire: Group B, The Wildest Years of Rallying presents a nice overview of that brief era of rally car racing, plus it’s free on Tubi!

Paul guested on the show many moons ago to talk about The Paul Lynde Halloween Special. Listen to that episode here!

156 – Halloween III: Season of the Witch

A child claws at the pumpkin mask he's wearing in a scene from Halloween III: Season of the Witch

They just can’t stop witchin’! Tim and Jen continue the unending spooky season with a franchise entry that pleased no one, Halloween III: Season of the Witch!

Hear the whole thing at our Patreon and get access to 75 other bonus episodes!

Chris Evangelista defended the movie over at SlashFilm, as part of that site’s The Unpopular Opinion series.

Let’s all thank Sean for his partial preservation of hotep public access show Spearman’s Addiction.

Watch Barbariana on Youtube! 

155 – Season of the Witch

In a frame from George Romero's 1973 film SEASON OF THE WITCH, actress Jan White sips from a cocktail while rocking frosty eyeshadow and an astonishing beehive hairdo
Female self-actualization = giant hair

Jen and Tim attempt to purge the lingering memory of a certain occult-y art film with a viewing of an early George Romero work, Season of the Witch.

Hear the whole episode and dozens of others for only $5/month!

In case you had no idea what he was getting at, Tim’s latest thing is calling Chantal Akerman’s feminist classic Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles “the Jean Teasdale movie.” 

Marxist art critic John Berger’s analysis of western media, Ways of Seeing, is available on YouTube. He casts a critical eye on the depiction of the female nude in European oil painting in the second episode. 

Men dream of women, women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at. Women constantly meet glances which act like mirrors, reminding them of how they look, or how they should look. Behind every glance is a judgement. Sometimes the glance they meet is their own, reflected back from a real mirror.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

154 – Found Footage Horror Party

A video shot of an empty yellow room with multiple exits, also known as the creepypasta staple the Backrooms

Your hosts range widely and freely on the topic of horror: specifically, found footage horror. The films discussed are The McPherson Tape, The Blair Witch Project, Backrooms, and Horror in the High Desert.

Watch The Backrooms short we talked about here on YouTube.

Director Dean Alioto talked with the Found Footage Critic about UFO Abduction and Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, aka The McPherson Tape:

In 1989 Dean Alioto shot his first film, UFO Abduction, for a meager budget of $6,500—the master copy of the film was subsequently destroyed and thus the movie was never widely released. Ten years later Dean Alioto pitched UFO Abduction to Dick Clark Productions, who picked up the idea and gave Dean Alioto a $1.2 million budget to shoot a remake for television. In 1998, the remake was released entitled Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (a.k.a. The McPherson Tape).

Over the years the names of these films has resulted in a great deal of confusion. Even to this day, both UFO Abduction and Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County are referred to as “The McPherson Tape.”

Found Footage Critic

An explorer named Tom covered the tragic story of the Death Valley Germans at his blog, OtherHand.

153 – The Love Witch

Samantha Robinson as the titular character in The Love Witch (2016)
she’s got piss jars / she knows how to use them

Tim and Jen are dumbfounded by a universally praised and vacantly pretty auteur statement, The Love Witch!

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon!

Rotten Tomatoes shows The Love Witch to be a darling of critics with a rating of 95% (audiences were more lukewarm, with their rating sitting at 61%). One of the few negative reviews calls it “dawdling, hollow and kind of awful, really:”

Some of the movie comes close to camp or just falls in, as when Elaine is assaulted by former friend Trish (Laura Waddell in the film’s only genuine performance), whose husband Elaine has stolen. “Skank! Whore!” Trish yells, slapping Elaine while wearing a wig cap — the movie helpfully provides its own drag-show re-enactment. A sequence in which Elaine is confronted in a bar by a mob of superstitious goofballs (“Burn the witch!”) is frankly terrible and staged with incredible clumsiness. The Love Witch will be worshipped as a fetish object by a certain breed of film nerd who luxuriates in its DIY retro aesthetic, but it isn’t really a movie — it would have to move first, and the pacing is leadfooted. The plot’s pairing Elaine with a stolid detective (Gian Keys) just leads to a handfasting scene at a local ren faire that seems to go on for six, maybe seven years.

-Rob Gonsalves

Vomit TAG!

152 – Spaced Invaders

Spaced Invaders key art

Jen and Tim enjoy a silly 1990 comedy with startlingly good practical effects, Spaced Invaders!

Hear the whole thing at our Patreon!

Director/writer Patrick Read Johnson’s long-gestating nostalgia trip, 5-25-77, will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 22, 2022. In the meantime, you can read Karina Longworth’s review of a cut of the film in 2008 from the now-defunct Sprout Blog. The director left a comment rebutting some of her criticism there (thank you, Internet Archive).

This Slate article sums up the probable facts behind the “War of the Worlds mass panic” myth quite well.

The song from Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds that Jen was talking about is “The Artilleryman and the Fighting Machine.” Ulla!

151 – Return to Oz

Tim and Jen start spooky season early with a shockingly dark release from Disney, Return to Oz.

Jen forgot to mention that the main reason the film does not resembles the MGM film from 1939 apart from the Ruby Slippers™ is because all of the trappings of the MGM version were and are copyrighted. In fact, Disney had to shell out to use that plot device in the film. Hence, while Walter Murch’s desire to make a movie closer in spirit to the L. Frank Baum material is admirable, it most likely played second fiddle to the demands of copyright law.

Additionally, the movie finally made a profit from a 1949 re-release, not “like twenty years later” or whatever Jen glibly claimed.

Animator Doug Aberle made a video where he talks about his process for animating the demise of the Nome King. Plus, he includes interviews with the late Will Vinton.

If you want more details about the drama between Sarah Polley and Terry Gilliam, you can read an excerpt from her memoir here.