239 – Blood Diner

You’ll horrifically bust a gut laughing!

Jen welcomes musician and poster par excellence Patrick Cosmos to chat about a fun little movie with tongue firmly in cheek, Blood Diner!

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Find Patrick at veryimportant.lawyer on Bandcamp and Bluesky, and get his Tonal Rotors album at Big Sleep Records.

Sadly, Carl Crew’s California Institute of Abnormalarts is no more. Read an archived article from LA Bizarro about the venue.

Keyboardist Don Preston just wrapped up a tour at age 91! Read an interview with him at It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine.

236 – FM

FM: no static, conflict, characters, or drama!

Tim and Jen welcome living legend Hollywood Steve Huey to discuss a Quaalude overdose of a film, FM from 1978!

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The core creators of Yacht Rock (both series and genre classification) host the delightful Yacht or Nyacht podcast, in which they rate the yachtiness of user-submitted songs. Highly recommended!

See Bob Odenkirk narrate the story of Disco Demolition Night on Drunk History.

The venerable British news magazine show World in Action took a look at American radio all the way back in 1971, and even included an interview with celebrated chronicler of the working class Studs Turkel! The theme song to this show goes hard as FUCK, incidentally.

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233 – A Cure For Wellness

Good for what ails you… or is it??

Jen welcomes show regular Bitter Karella and wild card Moodyferret to evangelize a Gore Verbinski flop that didn’t deserve the massive shrug it got from the public: the 2016 psychological thriller A Cure For Wellness.

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Errata: we all say in the episode that this movie came out in 2016, but it actually arrived in theaters on February 17, 2017 before almost immediately disappearing. Oops! That said, the movie was originally slated for an October 2016 release, which seems to indicate that 20th Century Fox lost their nerve and dumped the film in Fuck-You February.

Fox made a last-ditch effort to hype the film with this Super Bowl teaser, mimicking a pharma company ad. This is the one that Jen vaguely described in the episode.

Every previous Bitter Karella appearance on the show may be found in our collection!

230 – The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t

The musical that probably shouldn’t

Jen and Tim hold Josh Boerman of The Worst of All Possible Worlds podcast hostage in order to talk about a holiday musical that really wasn’t: The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t!

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For more of the Worst Possible boys, check out our collection of their guest appearances on the show! And of course you simply must hear The Worst of All Possible Worlds for yourself over at their Patreon!

If you haven’t yet laid eyes upon Tim’s monumental Myst Island Lego build, go see it at his website and marvel at it, it’s really something.

227 – Sleepwalkers

I fed you ten minutes ago!!

Tim and Jen rope old friend Paul Jay into talking about a very stupid Stephen King shapeshifting energy vampires vs. kitties flick, Sleepwalkers.

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Errata: Newsies actually came out April 8th, 1992, but it’s probably safe to assume that no one wanted to see it on that date, either.

IGN has a very good interview with director Mick Garris, in which he talks about his work on much better horror properties like The Stand.

Can’t get enough of Paul? Listen to the episode where he joined us to discuss Warren Beatty’s singular mania, Dick Tracy! Or just mainline all of his guest appearances via this collection!

226 – Tough Guys Don’t Dance

Oh man! Oh god! Oh man!

Oh God! Oh man! Jen and Tim and Mets devotee David J. Roth square up with Norman Mailer’s demented neo-noir, Tough Guys Don’t Dance.

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Read David’s piece on a true American original, B-movie stalwart Wings Hauser. Did you know that he was in Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time? Well now you do!

Collider profiled the one and only ersatz Charles Bronson (or the most prominent and successful, we assume), Hungarian actor Robert Bronzi.

Hear Wings Hauser sing the concluding track for Vice Squad, “Neon Slime.” His vocals have the same gusto as his average film performance, as you might imagine.

How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer (the documentary Jen wanted to call “How to Be a Cool Fuckin’ Guy”) provides a breezy overview of the colorful life of the author.

On YouTube: Mailer comes out swinging at Gore Vidal on the Dick Cavett Show, and gets bitch-slapped back by Vidal, Cavett and author Janet Flanner.

Want more conversation about inexplicable auteur statements? Try our episode on a certain Amazing Movie!

224 – Valentino

The Lothario Valentino was a Casanova

Jen welcomes Darren Herczeg to help her rhapsodize about a movie even director Ken Russell didn’t like, Valentino!

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The wonderfully-named Phallic Frenzy gives Russell his due as an audacious filmmaker, and describes Valentino in complimentary terms.

See Nureyev fully commit to the bit by dancing “Swine Lake” on the Muppet Show in 1978.

The book on Fatty Arbuckle that Jen mentioned is called Room 1219: The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood, and it’s well worth a read for anyone interested in early Hollywood.

Can’t get enough Darren? Check out our collection of his appearances on the show!

217 – Phase IV

…it’s no picnic!

Tim and Jen invite Alex Rancourt of the Saucer Cinema podcast to marvel at Saul Bass‘s disquieting sci-fi dreamscape, Phase IV!

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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.

We alluded briefly to this article at Dennis Cooper’s blog discussing film treatments of LSD, with a fabulous collection of acid-related GIFs accompanying.

214 – Centurion

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.

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Jen’s personal favorite video from Tribunate is this savage takedown of Cato, but this examination of Roman concepts of race and how radically they differ from ours is another great example of the high caliber of material from Gaius’s channel. Also the triggered reactionary crybabies in the comments are extremely funny. Finally, don’t miss this compilation of filthy Roman words!

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!

210 – Hawk the Slayer

Jack… you are my number-one… eye.

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!

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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.