Category: Episodes

168 – Body Slam

Sam Fatu and Roddy Piper in Body Slam (1986)

With Tim AWOL (Absent With Overabundant Lego), Jen invites wrestling expert Darren Herczeg to discuss a half-assed wrestling comedy, Body Slam!

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 80 other bonus episodes!

You can read Dirk Benedict’s idiotic whining about the female Starbuck over at the Internet Archive. 

For a peek into the primordial soup of reactionary mass media, read this piece about Wally George and his UHF televison show, Hot Seat. More proof that the worst place God created is not the Nefud desert, but Orange County, California.

Speaking of shock TV, watch a representative clip of The Richard Bey Show! Bey later claimed that his show was cancelled because he aired an interview with Gennifer Flowers, one of several women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault. #ClintonBodyCount

Finally, don’t forget to follow the world’s greatest Instagram account, a veritable museum of weird gimmicks and jobbers, @hamandeggers. Our special guest Darren does, so shouldn’t you?

167 – The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

Tommy Rettig in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953)

Jen and Tim talk about a truly weird musical fantasia from the mind of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss— The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 80 other bonus episodes!

So much of this episode wouldn’t exist without the superlative work of Seuss biographer Brian Jay Jones. His book Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisl and the Making of an American Imagination highlights Geisl’s creativity and enduring legacy in popular literature. Jones talked in depth about the life of Dr. Seuss on the Our American Stories podcast (listen to our show first though lol).

The charming animated short Gerald McBoing-Boing may be viewed on YouTube.

Jen mentioned the Australian child murderer (and worse) Mr. Cruel— see the legitimately terrifying police sketch of the suspect at Wikipedia, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.

And yes, we highly recommend that calendar Rifftrax short we mentioned, whether you like to laugh, or if you’re just genuinely confused about how to use a calendar!

166 – Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Russell Crowe aboard the Surprise in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Tim and Jen discuss a beloved epic whose time has come, the Peter Weir masterpiece Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World!

The GQ article mentioned appears to be yet more proof of the widespread affection for this film.

The doctor who pioneered sanitary practices in medicine was Ignatz Semmelweiss, although these ideas didn’t take hold until the time of Joseph Lister. Additionally, other medical men (like Oliver Wendell Holmes, for one) arrived at similar notions independent of Semmelweiss. The latter, in fact, refused to publish anything about hand washing because he believed these practices to be “self-evident.”

If you want to read about Grover Cleveland getting surgery at sea and see some icky-yet-illumunating photos, the New York Academy of Medicine has a good blog post about it. If you want more, the book Jen mentioned is called The President is a Sick Man, and author Matthew Algeo answered questions about it in this C-SPAN presentation.

And finally, if you love Russell Crowe as much as we do, listen to our chat about an early starring role for him, Virtuosity!

165 – I Know Who Killed Me

A Sphynx cat wearing a blue collar at the top of a staircase. It has very prominent testicles.
this is the most important shot in the movie

Jen is defeated by the ostensible low point of Lindsay Lohan’s onscreen career, I Know Who Killed Me, while Tim cuts right through the Gordian knot that is the movie’s storyline. Also Jen vents her disappointment over a director she actually likes(?), sorta.

Hear the whole thing at our Patreon for a pledge as low as $5/month and get access to 80+ bonus episodes!

Someone actually tracked down the screenwriter, Jeff Hammond, and got him to open up a little about the production: 

I avoided reading most of the reviews; however, it was impossible not to be aware of the negative consensus. I forced myself to read the ones that mentioned me by name (linked from Google notifications). That made for a handful of ugly reads. It’s a difficult thing for a writer to be accused in print of being tone-deaf. 

His account is interesting, but there’s no revelatory info about the “themes” or “story,” because these things are about as one-dimensional as you might have guessed.

Charles Bramesco also made a case in the Guardian for the movie. You can probably chalk that up to personal preference more than a love of great cinema.

164 – The Night Stalker

Darren McGavin in character as Carl Kolchak
king

Tim and Jen host steadfast friend of the show mugrimm to talk about a pervasively influential TV movie that spawned the cult series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Also, in this episode you can learn more about Pervy the Clown…if you dare.

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

If you love Kolchak’s sad little hat, you can get one!

The Slate article quibbling about Fletch (the 1985 film starring Chevy Chase) may be read here, if you enjoy the Slate brand of whiny crap.

For mugrimm’s previous appearance on the show, check out our episode on the M.A.N.T.I.S. TV movie! 

163 – Freejack

German poster for Freejack (1992)

Jen and Tim jack freely over a rote 1992 sci-fi action thriller, Freejack, starring Emilio Estevez and Mick Jagger. Your hosts kind of forget to talk about Jagger, but Tim does reminisce fondly about Four Loko.

Jen says “Psycho Ninja” when she was actually thinking of Psycho Kickboxer. The latter film is absolutely delightful, by the way.

If you’re curious about the gory details of Denise Richards’ divorce from Charlie Sheen, you can read them here, directly from the court document.

162 – Body of Evidence

Tim and Jen remain in the 90s for a look at a dire courtroom drama leavened with gauzy sex scenes, the 1992 Madonna vehicle Body of Evidence.

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

There are no page numbers in Madonna’s book Sex, but it doesn’t take long to flip through on the Internet Archive if you want to see her eating pizza in the nude!

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 writers beat Jen to it with a panoply of fake erotic thriller names during the credits for Outlaw [of Gor], episode 519. A personal favorite: “Murder Most Moist.”

the Julianne Moore face Tim was talking about

161 – Virtuosity

Russell Crowe menaces a hapless TV technician with a gun against a blue background in Virtuosity (1995)

Jen and Tim nineties nineties nineties nineties Denzel Washington nineties nineties virtual reality, nineties Russell Crowe nineties, nineties nineties nineties Virtuosity nineties!

Hear the whole episode over at our Patreon!

Read the AV Club interview with Kelly Lynch where she describes Denzel’s motive for doctoring the script for Virtuosity, as mentioned in the episode.

Per Tim’s recommendation, you could do a search on the World Wide Web, or you can check out an article about Kai’s Power Tools if you’d like to see some screenshots of that bonkers interface! 

Also, if you missed it the first time around, listen to our episode about The Lawnmower Man, another cheesy 90s film from the director of Virtuosity.

160 – The Ghost and the Darkness

Val Kilmer, John Kani, and Michael Douglas in The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)

Tim and Jen enlist animal expert Emma Bowers (Hyenas and Gin on YouTube) to explain why the fascinating story of two man-eating lions resulted in a boring movie called The Ghost and the Darkness.

Watch a 1996 documentary about the man-eaters of Tsavo, which includes brief interviews with stars Kilmer and Douglas and director Stephen Hopkins. One interviewee theorizes that the local lions’ taste for human flesh stems from generations of slave traders who left injured or dying captives to their fate in the bush.

This 1996 Entertainment Weekly article sums up how bad Val Kilmer’s reputation got to be in Hollywood.

As Richard Stanley, who directed Kilmer for three days in The Island of Dr. Moreau before being fired, recalls, “Val would arrive, and an argument would happen.” Says John Frankenheimer, who replaced Stanley: “I don’t like Val Kilmer, I don’t like his work ethic, and I don’t want to be associated with him ever again.” And Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher calls his onetime star “childish and impossible.”

Entertainment Weekly, May 31st, 1996

You can watch the tiger attack video Tim mentioned, with added context. Rawr!

There’s even a mineral named Tsavorite which was discovered in Tanzania and named in honor of the area.

Finally, listen to our episode on the shockingly ill-conceived movie Roar, with special guest Emma!

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!