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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Screenwriter Josh Olson returns to share the Russ Meyer phantasmagoria Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and to make it clear that he did NOT write Gigli. The film was a hit when it arrived in 1970, but it was too strong for the studio and effectively ended Meyer’s career as a mainstream filmmaker. Meyer followed BTVOTD with the leaden legal drama Seven Minutes before going back to making titty flicks, thank god. In the episode Josh holds forth on Roger Ebert’s wonderful script, and we all weigh in on “fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke” filmmaking (we all think it’s good).
Josh previously joined us to bring to our attention the little-loved Martin Mull-starring satire, Serial.
BTVOTD star Edy Williams was married to Meyer and also had a career sideline in appearing partially dressed at the Oscars. She did this until at least 1999. What a queen.
A journalist from Finland spoke up and attacked us in a novel way. Rather than excoriating us for making a film “beyond the bounds of depravity” (per Alexander Walker of the Evening Standard, who actually shook a schoolmaster’s disapproving finger at Jeremy from the back of the packed hall), he said that the movie completely betrayed the book, was a pathetic and weak skimming of a powerful work. Jim answered him: “The movie is actually better than the book. It goes further than the book, and is much more powerful and dynamic. It’s terrific.” An astonishing thing for an author to say. Abashed, the Finnish journalist sat down.
Emma is one of our favorite guests, and stopped by a while back to talk about Tippi Hedren and Noel Marshall’s incredibly misguided film, Roar! Listen to that episode here.
More About Christian the Lion
Ace and John’s memoir, A Lion Called Christian, is available cheap at Alibris.
Screenwriter Josh Olson brings us a movie that he swears is actually funny and good! It’s the little-seen Serial from 1980! Featuring Martin Mull, Tuesday Weld, violent gay bikers, Sally Kellerman’s boobs, casual homophobia, Tommy Smothers in a headband, hot tubs, est probably, psychologically disturbed children whose acting out is played for laughs, etc.