Jen and Tim catch up on a definitive Nicolas Cage performance in the cult film and meme template Vampire’s Kiss!
Read the evidence that Vampire’s Kiss writer Joseph Minion plagiarized much of After Hours at Andrew Hearst’s blog.
115 – Vampire’s Kiss
Category: Episodes
114 – Loose Change
Tim and Jen struggle to make sense of one of the most persistent cultural artifacts of 9/11, Loose Change, as well as the lasting damage done by the Bush administration.
Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!
View every edit of Loose Change (except the 2015 edition) at archive.org.
Watch Screw Loose Change, an exhaustive response to the second edition of Loose Change, at YouTube.
For more cogent commentary on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East, listen to our episode with special guest Felix Biederman on Valley of the Wolves: Iraq.
113 – The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
Jen and Tim revisit the greatest unfairly-cancelled single-season sci-fi western TV series of all time: The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.! If you thought we were going to say “Firefly” you have obviously never listened to our show before. Also Jen is finally able to air her feelings about Dixie for a mass audience. Spicy!
Check DVDTalk for information on the complete series on home media.
Whether you lived through it or not, you can peruse the 1993-94 prime-time television lineup for yourself.
For more cult TV, try our episode on Hammer House of Horror!
112 – The Wicker Man: The Summerisle Cut
Tim and Jen welcome a special guest to discuss a fan edit of a beloved horror classic, The Wicker Man: The Summerisle Cut! Listen for yourself and decide if you want to leave angry comments on archive.org!
Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!
View the Summerisle Cut at the Internet Archive.
Visit the Wicker Man site mentioned by our guest, which describes all of the different cuts of the film in detail.
For more great British horror, try our episode on the BBC’s controversial Ghostwatch!
111 – Eureka
Jen and Tim agree and disagree on an also-ran Nicolas Roeg movie, Eureka! Jen really gets the bit between her teeth in this one and Tim demonstrates almost saintly patience while she babbles.
Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!
Watch a short documentary on the inspiration for Jack McCann, the gold millionaire Sir Harry Oakes.
Buy Charlotte Gray’s very engaging bio of Harry Oakes, Murdered Midas, on Alibris.
For more British filmmaking, listen to our episode on The Firm and its 2009 reboot!
110 – Cool World
Cool World is not cool. Emma Bowers (@hyenasandgin) returns to commiserate with Tim and Jen about a very bad animated feature. Turns out this movie did significant psychological damage to young Tim.
Watch Emma’s Full Metal Alchemist video!
Compare and contrast: this interview with Ralph Bakshi, and this one with writer Michael Grais. Bakshi claims malfeasance from producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. (to the point of violence). Grais calls Bakshi a liar, essentially. What’s the real story? Who knows?
The Tex Avery doc Tim alluded to is called Tex Avery, the King of Cartoons.
Bakshi puts in this pissing stuff, and toilet stuff. I didn’t like that sex attitude in it very much. It’s like real repressed horniness; he’s kind of letting it out compulsively.
R. Crumb on Ralph Bakshi and the Fritz the Cat feature film
If we haven’t dissuaded you, you can watch Ralph Bakshi’s most recent animated work, The Last Days of Coney Island, on YouTube.
For more animated shite, listen to our episode on Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure!
109 – M.A.N.T.I.S.
What if Black Panther had been the pilot for a TV show, but when they went to series they took out Wakanda and most of the black people? You’d have M.A.N.T.I.S.! HYST superfan mugrimm joins Tim and Jen to talk about what was lost when the Sam Raimi/Sam Hamm/Rob Tapert pilot became a politically toothless show with white sidekicks.
Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!
The documentary Jen couldn’t remember the name of is Call Me Lucky, and it was directed by Bobcat Goldthwait. It’s an account of the life of satirist and activist Barry Crimmins.
Want to hear about a more inept superhero telefilm? Why not listen to our episode about Captain America with MST3k and Rifftrax alum Bill Corbett?
108 – The Firm(s)
Jen and Tim look at two takes on football hooliganism called The Firm. The 1989 version is a masterpiece, the other, not so much! Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!
The 20-minute documentary Alan Clarke: His Own Man is a nice intro to the director. Also, many of his works can be found on YouTube, so happy hunting!
Jen referred to a film called “WarGames” when she actually meant The War Game, a 1965 dramatization of nuclear warfare against England that the BBC withdrew from broadcast until 1985. It did not star Matthew Broderick or Ally Sheedy.
She also sorta muffed the description of Ken Loach’s teleplay Cathy Come Home, which horrified the British public with its account of a homeless couple (to little material effect, according to Loach). This short article describes the production and draws from some of the news coverage of the time.
Also, “If you know what’s good for you…Weetabix!”
For more of bleak Britain, try our episode on nuclear horror film Threads!
107 – Krull
Mike Rosen returns to fight Tim on the merits (or lack thereof) of cult 80s sci-fantasy film Krull! Jen moderates to the best of her ability!
Krull hit screens in 1983 and failed to make its money back, although it is beloved by the kind of people who liked Ready Player One.
For exhaustive contemporary coverage of Krull, visit the Internet Archive’s scanned copy of Starlog issue 76, from November 1983.
Special effects makeup artist Nick Maley seemed to enjoy making the film, judging by his reminisces.
One valiant effort to market the movie: Krull-themed weddings! To our knowledge, none of the brides or grooms have come forward to admit to their participation. But it’s hard to see how the movie missed with marketing concepts this good:
One [marketing gimmick] suggests approaching the local bakery about creating special pastries in the shape of the Glaive and dubbing them the punny ‘Krullers’. “Everyone knows what a cruller is…a tasty glazed donut. Now comes the Kruller…a tasty Glaived donut.
Tim Kirk via The Moving Arts Film Journal
For another fantasy misfire and more of guest Mike Rosen, try our episode on Ron Howard and George Lucas’s Willow!
106 – Planet of Storms
Tim and Jen return to Soviet filmmaker Pavel Klushantsev’s optimistic world of space exploration for 1962’s Planet of Storms! Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!
The original film is available on YouTube with English subtitles. If you’re curious about the 1955 Disney short Man in Space, you can watch it here, but you won’t actually learn much about the historical origins of rocketry.
If you missed our Road to the Stars episode, listen to it here!
ERRATA: Jen speculates in the episode about the reason for the lack of cultural impact the film made in the United States. It turns out there’s a good reason. Planet of Storms didn’t arrive in the US in official, unadulterated home video form until some time in the 90s. As we mentioned, the film was cannibalized for two different American productions. One was Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, with new footage directed by eventual New Queer Cinema trailblazer Curtis Harrington. The other, as we mentioned in the episode, was Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. They both suck.