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Jen and Tim are doing misogyny again! They DO NOT support women…filmmakers who make bloodless, smarmy takes on rape-revenge flicks. Kind of like Promising Young Woman!
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Abel Ferrara talked with Rotten Tomatoes a while back about the superior Ms. 45 when it made the rounds of revival houses.
And of course, don’t miss our gleeful takedown of another helping of plastic feminism: listen to our episode on The Love Witch.
Tim and Jen finally give the departed William Friedkin a proper sendoff with a discussion of his once-maligned masterpiece, Sorcerer. Guest Darren Herczeg provides his usual able assistance.
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To clear up an anecdote Jen related during the episode: she says that Paramount president Charles Bluhdorn freaked out when he spotted himself in the group photo of oil company executives in a scene from Sorcerer. The source of this story is screenwriter Walon Green, who describes Bluhdorn as having had a “shit hemorrhage” during the screening. However, a review of the offending scene reveals only other Gulf+Western execs, not Bluhdorn.
“To me, they looked like a bunch of thugs,” Friedkin said (as quoted in Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls).
Catch the documentary Friedkin Uncut on Tubi, where the man himself evokes Hitler in the first five minutes. We’ll miss you, Billy.
Want to hear about another Friedkin flop? The Guardian very much fails on its own merits.
Jen and Tim suffer through the half-baked hippie whimsy of the Beatles’ first major creative cock-up, Magical Mystery Tour.
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If you’re curious, you can watch the Pet Shop Boys’ head-scratcher of a longform music video, It Couldn’t Happen Here, at the Internet Archive. It looks like it was ripped from someone’s VCD copy of a Hong Kong laserdisc, but it still has plenty of bops!
The Anton Corbijn-directed Strange (A Black and White Mode) incorporates all those songs that Tim says you know from Depeche Mode’s Music for the Masses. You can watch it right now on YouTube, but a restored DVD and Blu-ray release will arrive in December.
Still mad at Paul McCartney? Listen to our Give My Regards to Broad Street episode with special guest Jane Altoids.
Tim and Jen seek aid from wacky funster Bitter Karella to explain a film series as British as lousy weather and inedible food: the Carry On series! Also, Tim positively bursts with Carry On-related research.
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The Carry On series is so popular that you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to documentaries about them. A Perfect Carry On Documentary is relatively lighthearted, but for more dirt, start with What’s a Carry On? – The Story of the Carry On Films and 40th Anniversary Reunion and finish (ooh-err!) with the incredibly bleak Carry On Darkly. The latter two delve into the financial straits and personal problems of many of the most beloved cast members from the series.
The fittingly-titled Cor, Blimey! telefilm dramatizes the affair between Sid James and Barbara Windsor, set against notable Carry On moments of the ’60s and ’70s.
If you’re not familiar with the canon and want to sample the world of Carry On for yourself, stop by the Internet Archive. Be warned, though: if you’re as susceptible to broad comedy as Tim seems to be, you might end up Carry On-pilled too! Cor blimey!
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Jen and Tim do a deep dive into the canned pumpkin pie filling that is Shudder’s Ghoul Log! Are we serious with this shit? You tell us! However, all of the usual outlets appear to trick-or-treat it with the same gravitas afforded to, say, the latest Terrifier installment. To wit:
Comicbook.com anticipates the Night of the Ghoul Log:
“While some fans might be disappointed that this year hasn’t embraced a specific horror property, it still marks a great way to capture the atmosphere of Halloween night.” – Patrick Cavanaugh
All Hallows Geek covers Tippett Studios’s Mad God edition of the Ghoul Log
SlashFilm on the Trick ‘r Treat-themed edition:
“It’s charming, but it’s also a bit distracting. If you want the Ghoul Log to serve as background filler – as I do – this isn’t the way to go, as the constant interruptions will pull you away from whatever it is you’re doing.” – Chris Evangelista
If you want more of spooky, narratively inert movies about menacing plant life, check out our free episode on Friedkin’s The Guardian!
Tim and Jen bring back one of horror’s heaviest (lol) hitters to talk about a movie William Friedkin couldn’t be bothered to mention after he made it, The Guardian!
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Tim’s quip about Q’s on Wilshire refers to a 2000 incident in which screenwriter and director Eric Red plowed his Jeep into a crowded bar following a fender bender, killing two people, then attempted to slit his own throat with a piece of glass. The linked LA Weekly article draws some tenuous conclusions between Red’s work and the bloody mess at Q’s, but as of 2023 he appears to have stayed out of trouble and written several novels.
KCRW memorializes Deirdre O’ Donaghue’s incredibly influential playlists with its Bent By Nature podcast.
The ballerina clown of Venice remains in situ, where it has been since 1989. Presumably, it makes the CVS underneath it easy to find for out-of-towners.
Do you love Tim and Bitter Karella, but have had enough of Jen? Hear the former two discuss a beloved childhood favorite in our Ernest Goes to Camp episode!
Jen is pleasantly surprised when Tim suggests a horror movie that’s actually pretty good: the eerie anthology with a twist, Ghost Stories (2017). Also, Tim gives an impromptu lecture on the deeper meaning of American zombie movies. (He also seizes an opportunity to wedge in his love for League of Gentlemen. C’mon, that was 20 years ago!)
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Read an interview with Ghost Stories co-writer Derren Brown about his new stage show. He also confesses that he used to be a cape guy (“a bit intense, and a bit socially maladroit,” according to the article). No surprise there! He also has a YouTube channel if you would like to see him hypnotize people into giving him their wallets.
Need another spooky fix? Try our free episode on another slept-on horror anthology 50 States of Fright!
Tim and Jen look at Peter Jackson’s transition from splatter king to mainstream whizbang effects filmmaker, The Frighteners.
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Check out part one of The Frighteners blooper reel! Part two may be viewed here. Damn, that’s a lot of blooperin’, Doc!
In 2018, Germain Lussier wrote a positive reappraisal of the film for Gizmodo.
Lussier does not appear to be alone in liking the film, since a recent post from MSN claims that Universal intends to remake The Frighteners. Maybe we’ll get that franchise after all!
If you can’t get enough of movies that are ‘spiritually’ about Ghostbusters, check out our review of Return of the Ghostbusters.
Jen and Tim come to a tenuous agreement about a once universally loathed Martin Short comedy, Clifford. Also, Tim punches down ruthlessly on a twenty pound miniature pinscher [who could lose a little weight].
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The Slate article about Martin Short that riled everyone up may be found here, but if you want to skip right to the synchronized swimming sketch from SNL, you can watch it on Vimeo.
The Vulture oral history of the making, the release, and the eventual cult fandom around Clifford is as exhaustive a history of the film as one may be expected to tolerate.
DNA specialists identified the Boy in the Box as Joseph Augustus Zarelli, 65 years after his death (be careful if you search for info on the case; the police distributed postmortem photos shortly after he was found in an attempt to generate leads).
Tim is beside himself that Clifford is not this movie.
While Clifford is the exception, why not check out one of our several other episodes about traumatizing children? Or look at this awful little kid from Woodchipper Massacre?
Tim and Jen head back to the pre-prestige-TV cable well with a failed spinoff of Tales From the Crypt called Perversions of Science. Throughout, you can really tell that your hosts would rather be watching a certain Canadian/German co-production.
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Jen was slightly off when she said that HBO has existed since “the mid-to-late 70s”—it launched in 1972.
Mic mentions the Dan Quayle/Murphy Brown kerfuffle in this article about depictions of abortion on American television. And then there’s Maude!
In 1992, Vanity Fair covered the speculation around the circumstances of the death of Hitler’s niece. (Jen thinks he did it.)
If you love Skinemax Farscape as much as we do, listen to our Lexx episode!