View the alternate ending that should have been the theatrical ending to Phase IV on YouTube.
A couple of interesting side notes about the Oscar-winning faux documentary Alex mentioned, The Hellstrom Chronicle: it was conceived and executive produced by David L. Wolper, the TV stalwart who shepherded massively successful television miniseries like Roots and The Thorn Birds, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Additionally, Walon Green, the screenwriter perhaps best known for William Friedkin‘s sleeper masterpiece Sorcerer, co-directed and produced the film.
A quick web search proved that the busty wasp mentioned by Alex isn’t real, except perhaps in our hearts.
Missed part one of our deep dive? Find it here! Wanna see the movie? “Log in” to the “Information Superhighway” and “point” your “browser” to the Internet Archive!
Too young to have purchased the Trainspotting soundtrack on CD? Even if you weren’t, we suggest decompressing from the episode with all 11 minutes of the remastered Born Slippy.
Tim gets the bit (or byte?) between his teeth and rants about the ’90s and the lost promise of the internet, and a little bit about cheapie TV movie Max Knight: Ultra Spy! Jen just tries to hold on as best she can! Oh yeah, and this is part one because we don’t know how to shut up!
You can easily tell how white your hosts are by their lack of knowledge of UPN (not the only tell, if we’re being honest), which provided a home for black shows and showrunners alike. Or at least it did for a while, before a gradual whitewashing leading up to the network’s merger with the WB. The Hollywood Reporter provides a post-mortem.
[Former senior VP of comedy development at Paramount Pictures Television] Rose Catherine Pinkney believes the decision to merge UPN out of existence came down to ad revenue. “Ultimately, you want the most dollars that you can get for your ads,” she says. Though UPN’s Black-led scripted shows (which by the end of UPN’s run included Eve, All of Us, Everybody Hates Chris) were largely popular with audiences, advertisers were evidently less inclined to pay top dollar to support shows targeting Black viewers. Farquhar, co-creator of Moesha and The Parkers, recalls an advertising person saying, “We’re not interested in ‘downscaled demographics.’ ”
Several Species of English Actors Gathered Together in a Cave and Hiding From a Pict
Tim and Jen enlist Gaius of the wonderful Tribunate channel on YouTube to help unearth a Romans-vs.-Picts historical epic that vanished like the Ninth Legion, Centurion.
If you perked up your ears when Jen mentioned Carry On Cleo, go check out our survey of the Carry On franchise, featuring the inimitable Bitter Karella!
Sean Gallimore had a successful animation career for many years, including many top-of-the-line films for Disney. See a gallery of his artwork, which includes expert 3D modeling work as well as his signature pinups.
If you love outsider indie films as much as we do, don’t miss our episode on a towering work of queer drama straight from the trailer park: Romeo and Romeo.
Tim and Jen invite their favorite internet crank Bitter Karella to help them analyze a bewildering major release that no one liked, Argylle. It’s so confounding a project, it leads Karella to use the phrase “Brechtian distancing mechanism.”
Listen to our Apple TV+ episode, in which we rend the entire platform to filth. Fuck you, Tim Apple!
Read this Deadline article about the production and marvel at how out of touch these people sound. At the end, director Matthew Vaughn throws in an enthusiastic endorsement of the Apple Vision Pro.
Tim and Jen welcome Rifftrax stalwarts Bill Corbett and Sean Thomason to discuss a cheapie high fantasy film that thinks it’s a spaghetti western, Hawk the Slayer!
Bill and Sean have brought their Ringheads podcast to a close, but if you crave some Silmarillon chat, find it on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast platform.
The Rifftrax version of Hawk the Slayer is free with ads on Tubi, or you can secure your very own copy at the Rifftrax website!
In the Realms of the Unreal does not appear to be streaming as of this writing, but you can find out more about outsider artist Henry Darger at the documentary’s official website.
Also, don’t miss Bill’s previous appearance on our show to chat about the 1979 TV movie version of Captain America, starring Big McLargehuge aka Reb Brown.
The story of Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line that bears her name is a remarkable one, encompassing topics of institutionalized racism, scientific ethics, and medical marvels. Adam Curtis made a fine documentary about Lacks and the HeLa line of cells in 1997 for the BBC.
The video for “All The Things She Said” by Simple Minds presents a fine example of the then-cutting-edge video work of filmmaker Zbigniew Rybczyński.
And after you’ve seen that, really blow your mind with Charles and Ray Eames’s head-spinning 1977 short, Powers of Ten!
