What's on your mind? This whole stinking mess and where you
fit in. I don't get you. Then I'll spell it out for you.
Two days ago, command drops you in my lab, no reason given.
Next thing I know, I got a half a spaceship, a six foot tall grasshopper
and the crowd of lead on my butt. I know. It's crazy, ain't it?
Cough it up, newshound. Who sent you? Army Intelligence.
OSS Mike knows about this.
Roosevelt too, right? Boy, are you off the beam?
Sure. I had command keep you in the dark, but I came here to write
about you. The Iron Sarge. What?
It's true, Stone. Whether you like it or not, you're becoming a legend
with all these GIs. I've heard you've been killed a dozen.
Times, but you always come back. Unless you want
your name printed on a pack of lies. You got nothing to print, Dolan.
I'm just another dog face fighting this lousy war.
The boss has come home.
Come on, Dolan, let's head back. What's all this crud
about Mittens decking Hitler? You really did. You should have seen it. Praise the
Lord for bringing us this generous bounty.
Just give me all the bacon and eggs you have. Wait,
wait. I worry what you just heard. Give me a lot
of bacon and eggs. What I said was give me all
the bacon and eggs you have.
Living flesh. I guess that's how citizen meal,
huh? Bite me back on the
menu. That's why I'm hungry.
Each word I say, farther,
farther into a radical.
See your father, I'd buy that for a dollar.
Not bad for me. Please, I'm trying to combat. Oh, look at me,
look at me. I feel like a baby. Seem easily upset.
I'm so hungry, Bill. I'm so
hungry. I sweet. I never knew anyone want to be so hungry.
What about that time I found you naked with that bowl of junk?
Hello folks, this is me podcast. I am one of your hosts, Gary Hill.
And this is another one of those special shows with a very
good friend of mine. And he's here too. You may know him from the After
Movie Diner podcast and the brand new. If you're not listening, I've mentioned it
like multiple times on my show that you should be listening to this, the PM
Entertainment podcast. Just killing it on there.
Mr. John Cross. How you doing, sir? Well, hello there,
sir. Good sir. How are you? I am fantastic. I'm raring to
go, I'm excited and I am a podcasting fiend.
Although the latest episode of the PM Entertainment podcast took a
few days. It will be coming out this weekend and then we will have another
one not on Monday, but the following Monday. It's just taken a lot out
of me but I'm putting a lot into it so that it's meant to take
a lot out of me. And it's, you know, it's busy all over, my friend.
It's busy. Things are happening, people are scrambling. So you
know, we just do what we can. But it's all good times and I'm excited
to be here on the Cinema Beef podcast today.
Always glad to have you, my friend. Always glad to have you.
Yeah, we're here today do another one of our in the series of
shows of the in the parade way thang
if you will. We got a real banger tonight for you but plus a
real banger of VHS pick too. Looking forward to getting to all that,
but I'll ask my
friend John Cross. I don't have much to say about this.
Anything good you've been watching lately at all?
Oh yeah, I just did an episode
on Bedroom Eyes one and two for
the Direct to Video Connoisseur podcast. Should be out
on Tuesday. So look for that. Bedroom Eyes one and two, a fascinating,
a fascinating double bill. And I can't wait
for people to hear that podcast because we go deep, brother. We go deep,
deep, deep into the Bedroomize saga and
we imagine what might have happened if bedroom eyes 3, 4,
5 and 6 had gone forward.
Because there is enough content in bedroomize 1 and 2 to
spin it off into several franchise strands.
I. I have to ask who is in Bedroom Eyes one
and two that of note. So Bedroom
Eyes one no one of note. Zero people of note.
Okay, well usually you have like that one that's.
Usually you have that one that's always in like those Skin and Max books.
Like you may like a Shannon tweet or something like that is in these films
to push them, you know. Well, this, well, this is what's interesting about Bedroomize.
Bedroomize is from 1984. So it's about 10 years early
to the. To the skin, early 90s
soft core offerings. About 10 years early in terms of the,
you know, the erotic thrillers.
And so it's, it's finding its way. That's why
it's such a fascinating movie is it's finding its way and it
sort of partly wants to be dressed to kill and
partly it wants to be like a bawdy Canadian
sex farce kind of thing. It doesn't like
tonally. It's all over the place that we
talk a lot about the actor Kip Gilman, who is it?
Who is in bedroom eyes one and who has one of the best IMDb
bios. Because in his IMDb bio, it's. It starts with.
In addition to his extensive film and television work, Kip has been
called by critics one of the theater's most important actors.
Oh, yeah, Kip Gilman. The famous
Kip Gilman. So he's in Bedroomize one. No one
of any note. But in Bedroomize two, this is what. This is what
I mean about how there should be Bedroomize three, Bedroom Eyes four. Like it.
They take it to the next level in Bedroom Eyes 2. So in Bedroom Eyes
2, they recast the cast of Bedroom Eyes 1 completely.
It's same character, same. They extend the world, they extend the
storylines, they extend the. But they recast them with
wings. Hauser and Linda Blair.
So they open the door because they already recast
it. Come Part two, they open the door for Part three to be recast to
someone else. Part four to be recast to someone else. So, yeah,
we had a field day with these two men. And. And to be honest,
you know, if you're interested in seeing sort of
the proto 90s erotic thriller,
like, if you want to draw a line between Dress to Kill and then the
kind of, you know, detective soft core shot in Hollywood,
saxophone, heavy. They made that documentary recently, I think,
We Kill for Love or whatever. And it was all about the rise of the
erotic thriller in the 90s. But. But if you want to draw a direct.
Yeah, no, it's on. Where did I find it? I think I found it on
Amazon Prime, Dressed to Kill. It's called We.
Sorry, We Kill for Love. And it's a documentary about
the early 90s erotic thriller. And it's a bit like In Search of Darkness.
It's like four hours long or something. Wow.
But. And it's out there. Just take a look. You'll probably find it on Plex
or one of those, like, it's kicking about. Um, but if you
want to draw a direct line from some of like De Palma's stuff, like Body
Double and Dress to Kill, all the way to sort of the, you know,
the Harry Hamlin, Shannon Tweed Deceptions,
Scorned, those kind of movies that kind of came out in the late 80s,
early 90s, you have to draw a line through bedroom
eyes one and two because they. They set it up, man. One came
out in 84, one came out in 89. And some of
the themes tropes and even bizarre random characters that they're playing with
would become, you know, staples and cornerstones
of the. The straight to video erotic thriller before
Hollywood got their grubby mitts on it with stuff like Basic Instinct and things.
But so we, we do a whole episode on that and that
was a lot of fun to watch. Other stuff that I've watched recently, I checked
out the early, very early Willem
Dafoe and Judge Reinhardt Reinhold movie. So Willem
Dafoe and Judge Reinhold movie Roadhouse 66,
which I had on VHS, which I
couldn't decide whether it was meant to be set in the 50s
or whether they just rocked up to a town in Arizona in the 80s that
happened to only drive 50s cars. Because it was one of those movies where you
know how like close in the 80s, early 80s. Like if you saw a guy
in denim jeans and a leather jacket like Willem Defoe
wears in this movie, he could be from the 50s, but he could be from
the 80s. Do. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's some parallels there.
And Judge Reinhold just dresses very. Like just a shirt and pants kind
of thing. Like, I don't know whether it was meant to be set in the
50s or whether it's meant to be set now, but everyone drives around in 50s
cars. It's set in a little Arizona dust bowl. These two guys
rock up. Typical kind of a team scenario. There's a, a bunch
of hoodlums and thugs who have got this town scared and just
keep trashing things and pushing people off the highway and all this kind of
thing. And Reinhold is like this wealthy guy
from back east who has to put his privilege and wealth aside in
order to tough it out with musical drifter Willem Dafoe.
And between the two of them, they're going to set the town right.
And of course there's like a car chase and. Sorry,
not a car chase, like a, like a, A race, you know, like a car
race kind of thing. And they have to win the race and stuff. So it's,
it's, it's, it's a, it's. It's a pretty fun movie. I'm not gonna say that
it's four or five out of five. I'm gonna give it a strong three
out of five. How about that? It's, it's worth, it's worth popping the VH in
if you've got it handy. It's got our, our Deputy
Bubba from World Gone Wild in it. You. You know,
Ellen Ary, I just seen it just now. Yeah, no,
it does. Yeah. It has a ton of recognizable character
actors and what I would call like goon actors.
People who are sort of half stunt men, half character actors,
you know, or half day players kind of thing. It's got a lot of people
who would. You would notice as hench, you know,
80s hench workers from the A team or from action movies.
You know what I mean? Totally, totally, totally. Yeah. I just
looked it up. I, I kind of got to check this out now because just
for the, the, the, the 80s, because he was doing a lot of that stuff,
like the Nameless, I think was a big one back in those days for him.
The love. The Loveless. I'm sorry, the, the biker
movie he's in. Yeah. And then of course, Streets of Fire is like that.
You don't know what time and place is in, but they got like Studebakers
and like old, old motorcycles and stuff, you know? Yeah.
I mean, if the, the weird thing is, is the music is sort of
rockabilly as well. But then I. I don't know, like,
there was definitely people in the movie dressed as if they were in the 80s,
so I couldn't. Like, there was definitely things in the movie where I'm like,
this is not the 50s. So I could just. I couldn't figure it out.
But it was a ton of fun.
Apart from that, what else can I say that I watched. I finally got round
to watching Heretic, slightly bit of a newer one that I hadn't
seen. So I got round to watching that again. That was
good. Yes, it lived up to its height, but I can't say it went much
further than that. It sort of lived up to its hype. And I'm like,
okay, I get why everyone's, you know, going wackadoo over this
movie. It was a. It was a three and a half, four star.
Maybe for me, I'm not gonna say it hit. Hit it out of
the park. Exactly. But then I'm a. I'm a grumpy old dude. I've seen a
lot of horror movies, so you have to, you have to do something pretty different
to, to, you know, get me all surprised and excited.
But Hugh Grant was pleasing enough and the setup
was very typical. And, you know, you've, you've seen it
before, but maybe you haven't seen it in the last, you know, 20 years.
So, you know, it was a little refreshing because it had Hugh Grant and came
at it with a slightly modern eye. But in general it was, you know,
we've seen it before, but they did it nicely kind of thing. You know what
I mean? Did we talk about the Hugo Renaissance that I love so
much? I, I forget now, but it's, I'm loving the Hugh Grant
Renaissance of him just being in things and being like devious and like
these small side roles to where he's just like, he shows up
and you're like, yeah, this movie immediately got better because Hugh Grant's,
you know, livid it up. But like, in a small way, you know.
Oh, no, I think, I think we have Paddington
2 to thank 110% for the
Hugh Grant Renaissance. While, yes, I know he did movies before
Paddington 2 that would fall into the Hugh Grant renaissance,
I honestly say, just because Paddington 2,
as we learned from the Nick Cage film, the Unbearable Weight of Enormous
Talent, as we learned from that movie, Paddington 2 is one of the best three
movies that have ever been made and that it is perfect and that it will
reduce Pedro Pascal and Nick Cage to tears.
And I think because of Hugh Grant's turn in that, I really
do think that carried a lot of good favor for him. And as he then
went out into his Renaissance years, I'm in agreement with you, sir. Put Hugh Grant
in more things. I'd missed him on the big screen. And, you know,
if you ever see Paddington 2, I'm going to talk about something else related to
Paddington 2. It is a film in which our raincoated
bear gets falsely accused of a crime perpetrated
by Hugh Grant, of all people, and goes to prison and
teaches the prisoners how to make marmalade. It gets very singy. And if
you can't enjoy this, I don't want to be. Okay. You know.
Right, yeah, I'm with you.
No, I mean, seriously. And it's, it's, it's funny because
that clip from Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent with Pedro Pascal
and Nick cage crying over Paddington 2 has been doing the rounds
again recently. Listen, I mean, I honestly have to say
to people, if you watch Paddington 2 and you don't like Paddington 2,
I'm not sure you're human. Like, I'm not sure that
the things that function, that make us anything more than,
you know, scurrying backwards,
hunchback animals are even in place for
you because Paddington 2 is one of the most creatively
brilliant, artistically satisfying,
emotionally roller coastery.
It's, it's. Paddington 2 is an
absolute phenomenon. And it, it reminds me,
I tell you, how good Paddington 2 is.
So good that it reminds me of the first three muppet. Movies.
You know how, like, the first three Muppet movies, they're untouchable. They're,
like, just so phenomenally good. You just, like Jim Henson and
Frank Oz, immediately become like gods in
your house when you see the Muppet Movie for the first time. And then when
you see Muppets, Tank Manhattan and Great Muppet Cape, you're just like, oh,
they can do no wrong. Oh, clearly, clearly. Like, whatever the Muppets do going forward
is gonna be fantastic. That was until, of course, Disney took them over and diluted
the brand. But Anyway, the first three Muppet movies are perfection.
Same with Paddington 2. It's on that level.
That's how much I like Paddington 2. It's. It's up there with a Muppet
movie. And that. That is high praise for me. Indeed. You would say
they're getting standing ovations, perhaps. You know, come on now.
Right, Exactly. I think it's fantastic.
And yeah, so, yeah, big fan of the Pat franchise.
Bedroom wise one and two, Roadhouse 66,
Heretic. I just saw,
again, I'd seen these movies before, but I just saw Cujo and Grizzly on
the big screen at my buddy Scary Larry's CT cult classic screening
in Seymour, Connecticut every other month. If you are within the New
England area, I would strongly recommend traveling every other month.
We do an awesome double bill run by my friend Scary
Larry. I'm going to be on his podcast on Monday night talking about Dr.
Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde or whatever the name of the movie. The Hammer Horror Jekyll
and Hyde story. I'm gonna be talking about that.
I was on talking about the
Devil. Devil worshiping one. And I'm gonna forget the name. Not to the devil or
Daughter. The other Hammer horror movie, the really good one with Nick.
With Christopher Lee. The Devil Rides Out.
The Devil Rides Out. I was on. Yeah, I was on Scary Larry
and it's the Pint Popcorn. It's the Pinterest pop
culture podcast that occasionally
does Scary Larry episodes. And the Scary Larry episodes
are all covering Hammer horror films at the moment. And I'm gonna be the guest
on those. So we did the Devil Rides Out.
Fantastic episode. Check out the Pint pop culture podcast. And then
we are going to be covering Dr. Jacqueline. It's either Ms.
Hyde, Mrs. Hide or Ms. Hide. I forget.
Okay, cool. I. I was thinking Dr.
Jekyll and Sister Hyde. That. That's the one I was thinking about. But that's not
a Hammer Horror Sister. No, no, it is Dr. Jekyll and SisterHeight. You're Right.
That's the Hamahara one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's.
That's Hammer. I thought that was like Roger Corman stuff, like AIP
stuff. No, you're right. It's Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. The one that is
Dr. Jekyll and Miz Hyde is the one with Sean Young
in it from the 80s. I enjoy that movie I watched in
so long, but they play it in cable so much back in the day.
And it's from 1995, not the 80s. I'm getting everything wrong
today. I'm sorry, I'm getting everything wrong. I'm doing Dr. Jekyll and Sister
Height on Monday night. And Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde is a
movie with Sean Young from the 90s, also starring Lizette Anthony
from soft core erotic Harry Hamlin thriller Save
Me, which I covered on the Director Video Connoisseur podcast.
Last time we did some erotic thrillers.
And she's in Crawl as well, you know, if you want to go non
stop core stuff. You know, she's also in Without. Without.
Without a Clue, dude. With Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley.
Yes. That's film I still got to watch that you recommended a
while ago. I haven't checked it out yet. It's there. Yeah.
Oh, my gosh. And back to my watches.
Speaking of Paddington too, I watched Paddington in Peru
and guess what? Big spoilers. It was delightful.
Okay, if you don't know
the plot to Paddy in Peru, Pack, this aunt gets
lost. You know, Paddy has to go to Peru to go find her
with the. With the family in tow and. And crazy,
jaunty, charismatic as flock shipboat
captain Antonio Banderas. And if that
don't turn you on, I don't know what does. It just. It's just. It's great.
Yeah, I saw it in the theater. It's.
It's certainly the weakest of the three and could do with some pacing type,
you know, tune ups, but it's at it at its core.
You are 100, right, Garrett? It is a delight.
And I loved everything about it when they
did the little musical number with Olivia Colman,
which I won't spoil for people because I'm just gonna say there's a musical number.
You and me, Gary, know what it's referencing and know what it's parodying,
but I'm not going to spoil it for anybody. When they did that, I was
like, oh, are they gonna do little musical numbers throughout the movie?
Because I really wanted, like, the Antonio Banderas musical number
and stuff. And I know, they did other stuff with Antonio Banderas with like,
his relatives and stuff. Again, I'm not going to give anything away. I'm just going
to say relatives and, and move on, which was also a lot of fun.
But I could have totally gone for two or
three musical numbers throughout the movie that, that would have, like, if they decided to
just go full blown musical with it, I would have been very happy.
It was truly. He was truly a highlight of the movie, though. And that's,
that's what they give Paddington is that the first,
the first three that we got so far has. Has a
trio of solid, you know, villains, you know, because he becomes
kind of villain the movie. That's the only spoiler I'll give you. But he,
he has a redemption arc. You get Nicole Kidman in the first one
who just wants to murder Paddington and stuff. Him. Yeah. You get
Hugh Grant in the second one and he gets a cameo
in this one. It's hilarious. Yeah. And you get, you get Antonio
Banderas in this one. So again, these are all good reasons
to watch the Paddington series if you haven't done it yet, you know.
Oh, I hope they make 20 of them.
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that first one gets kind of dark. I'm like, man,
this, this is just a kids movie. She wants to kill Paddington. What's up with
this? Yeah, yeah. But I also.
Like. What I absolutely adore
about the Paddington films is that they give,
especially the second one and then the first and third one.
The first and third one give Julie Waters as like the mad
Scottish grandmother a chance to kick ass. And her kicking
ass is like my favorite thing. It's like everyone loves
Daniel Craig as Bond. The only thing I love truly
in the Daniel Craig Bond movies is Judi Dench
and Albert Finney kicking ass at the end of Skyfall.
I just want Finney and Dench, like, that's all I care about is like,
Finney and Dench making, like, fake bombs out of light bulbs and kicking ass and
shit. While the same with Paddington. Julie Waters, like,
in the first one and in the third one especially, she, she's like a
badass Scottish grandmother. But then also Hugh Bonneville,
especially in the second one, gets to like, pop out his,
like, daddy cool Persona. Oh, man, that is such a fucking joy.
Him with the, the motorbike and the hair and
the sideburns and the throwing the coconut husk. Ah, that's.
That's a joy, my friend. So, yeah, whenever they give, like,
you know, dumpy old English actors a chance to, like, Be badass,
but still retain their like, dumpy English.
And I, I mean that in a lovely way. And a lovely kind of cuddly,
weird, old, you know, tea in the afternoon type character
actors, when they give them the chance to like, kick ass,
I'm very happy. You know what I mean? It always cheers me up.
I mean, Helen Mirren, she's having this, like,
this kick ass renaissance. She's always been kind of great, but you know, the Red
series, she'll have more active role in the next Best of the Furious
movie. If you're not watching Mobland, you should. I said this in the last episode.
She's just devious as on Mobland.
She's having that like, old lady kick ass renaissance too.
And I'm kind of, I love her anyway, but I love even more now,
you know? Yeah, look at the, look at the insane wave
of support that there is for Pierce Brosnan to come back as like,
old man Bond. Hey, I'll even throw Timothy Dalton in there
after Hot Fuzz. That man can still fucking kick ass, dude. Can you
imagine T Dolt coming back? That would be awesome.
Yeah. You talked about Craig in the Bond films.
He does get these odd roles. And I, I love Knives
out and I Love, I love Ms. Bond. He's not my favorite Bond. I think
the honor still goes to Roger Moore for that. For me, be my favorite Bond
just because it got so campy. Maybe that's why I love
it so much. But not only that, but like Mole would just
walk around in like a blazer and, you know,
beige pants, dress pants, and just like knock motherfuckers
off the top of buildings or kick cars off Greek rocks or whatever.
He was like campy and badass at the same
time, you know, like, he'd be, he'd be in dress shoes, like running
over the roofs of Tunisia. Just like, there's something amazing about this.
He was such a 70s, early 80s. He was so the
perfect bond for those two decades. You know what I mean? I,
I love Roger Mo. He's the best. But if you told me that, you know,
because I, I, I saw Logan looking for the, you know, when I saw it,
you know that I needed a, a, a hillbilly Daniel
Craig in my life. I, I, I would have lied to you and said,
what, what's that gonna sound like? But, you know, it has become my favorite Daniel
Craig. Is his role as Joe Bang and Logan lucky.
It's just, it's just spectacular. And the film itself
has become like comfort food to me. I watch it many times.
I love that. No, I'm not anti Craig. I just felt
that, you know, his Bond, his run of Bond
films bothered me intensely because on
one hand they tried to claim they were telling like the whole,
all his whole series was like all one big story, which it
just wasn't. Like his character keeps changing and
the realities of his character keep changing. And you know, and then on
the other hand, they tried to throw in all this arbitrary fan
service, which I'm like, look, the Bond, the Bond franchise
has been running long enough that you don't need to do fan service. Making a
Bond film, period, is fan service. You don't need to start whipping
in. We don't need to see Blofeld again. And Blofeld certainly doesn't have to be
Bond's brother. Like, it's just stop, like, stop it now.
Put the pen down. Step away from the typewriter. Whatever it is,
just, just, just stop it. Enough is enough. However, if you're
going to cast T. Dalt as like old grumpy Bond and give him his Logan
moment, or Pierce Brosnan as old grumpy Bond and give him his
Wolverine logo Logan moment, I'm, I'm all over that shit.
I would love some, like, I would love some one off Bond stories
that don't have to be about anything other than, you know,
whatever mission and, or, you know,
they've already done License to Kill where he goes rogue and goes like, beats up
on Mexican drug lords. Why can't they do a movie where he's old,
retired at home and he has to go like one last thing,
like, you know what I mean? Like they do that shit, they did that shit
with Rambo. Like you can do that shit with Bond. Come on now, let's have
some imagination. The only thing that frightens me is that Blofeld,
a real life Blofeld, the actual Blofeld,
now owns Bond. That's the problem. And I don't know if people have realized
this, but like Drax from Moonraker is Musk
from SpaceX and Bezos is
Blofeld. Like there's too many similarities there. And to be
honest, quite honestly, I don't see a Bond in, I certainly don't
see a Bond in beige pants and a blue blazer stepping
out of a fancy Aston Martin to beat the, out of anybody yet.
So. But yeah, it's terrifying that the real life Blofeld
now owns Bond, but let's see, give, give Pierce Brosnan
another chance. Why the not it's popular thing, you know,
Letting you know the, the old guys do their thing and, you know,
come back and. Yeah, you know, just, just,
just, you know, when I thought I was out, they, they sucked me back in
kind of stuff. Yeah, dude, I would watch a sequel to the Dangerous that
we're going to be talking about later. I would watch a sequel of that now.
Both Parade and Davi are still with us. Let's make it happen. Anyway,
what else have you been watching, sir? Sorry to keep interrupting. No, you're okay.
This is the, this is Tangent. Me and me. You in a nutshell.
Besides the new thing that I watch, there's lots of stuff I
could be watching, but I. I've been prepping for this 1993
show with, with the Land of the Creeps podcast. Horror podcast.
Could go go check them out and I've been watching a lot of 93 stuff.
Other stuff that I watched. Speaking of Dahvie, Mania Cop 3
Badge of Silence, not the best of
the series. My man Charlie Bad adjacent,
the guy that plays Mr. Sumatra in the.
And the Shrunken Heads movie,
reactivates Matt Cordell with voodoo and
he comes back to help a young female cop who's kind of getting a
bad rap like he used to get. And so I, I forget
how, how this film goes, that there's. I remember there's a heart paddle kill.
He. He makes somebody explode with a heart paddle thing.
And. Well, it's predominantly set in a hospital, isn't it? A hospital?
Yeah. But the main thing I remember is the end is the
most gangster thing I ever seen in my life is where Dabi lights
a cigarette off of a burning Matt Cordell in this movie.
Yes, it's pretty, it's pretty gangster, this movie,
you know? Yeah, no, it has two great sequences. It has the,
the Robert Forster cameo scene, which is hands down the
best scene in the middle of the movie. Robert Forster just killing it. You just
wish, like all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it becomes like
a Larry Cohen masterclass in how to write a completely
ludicrous scene in the middle of your movie with Robert Forster,
one of your favorite actors, just showing up for a day's work. And then the
car, the car stunts at the end with the guy
literally driving the car while on fire. That's those, those which,
by the way, that. Speaking of Sparrow Rosados the other week for the PM
Entertainment podcast, I have a story on there about that stunt.
That stunt almost went horribly, horribly wrong.
That car basically.
Go ahead, dude, I said I can imagine.
Yeah, no, it. That car basically almost Got loose
and rolled into a whole pile of gas canister.
It didn't, thankfully, but yeah, it was.
It was touch and go there for a minute. That stunt did not go particularly
well, but fair play to Sparrow trying to. Trying to make it
happen. And they got enough of it on film to use it for the.
For the movie. So I'm sure that's all Luster cared about.
I rewatched a lot of stuff. Body Melt, I have watched a
long time, so we watched Body Melt. Great Australian film
about health food that freaking melts people.
Yes, all good.
Great sequels in 93. I watched. I watched. I like a need
excuse to rewatch Shows of the Corn, too. If you don't know there.
There's an actual Wicked Witch of the west kill in this film,
and it's delightful.
What else? There's. I'll just name things off here.
Return Liberty, Dead three. The. The Romeo and Juliet one. That. That's always
enjoyable with excellent makeup on. Mindy Clark.
All practical. Just scarred this. I'd imagine how
long it took to apply. I would love. I would love to listen to.
I think the commentary exists on the Blu Ray that I do not own.
So I'm gonna fix that problem. Also,
they went bold with it. They were like, what if we have an actually hot
zombie? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she is.
She's up, but she's. She's hot. She's got that going for her, you know?
Yeah, she's. She's definitely got some hot stuff going on.
And a favorite of both of ours, Man's Best Friend. I watched
that for this show because, like I said, not gonna look at any excuse to
watch. John Lafayette directed, the guy that made those
latter Child's Play sequels. Yeah.
About a genetically enhanced dog that eats cats and
stuff. And, you know, you can't help but laugh at that a little bit,
you know? Is that the one with Lance Hendrickson and Ali Sheedy?
Yes, that is the. Yes. I have that on vhs. Not in the
store, but I have that at home on vhs. It's one of my favorites.
Dude, Henriksen Sheedy, killer dog. Who doesn't fucking
love that shit? That's. That's. That's top three shit right there.
There's stuff I got to get to do. I mean, we talked
about. I talked on the last show with Mike White about Andrew Hickox, and he
did a. A werewolf film for HBO that I've
seen many times that might make my list called Full Eclipse with
Patsy Kensett and Mario Van Peebles and
that Was. The rough, though,
man. Patsy Kensit's rough. Like, it's. It's difficult to sit through a Kenset movie.
You wish she would get better, but she kind of never gets better.
It's more of a Marvin People's film though. But it's.
It's back when HBO being. Being cool, I had this whole discussion with somebody
about, you know, where you got stuff like Cast Deadly Spell and Witch
Hunt and Lightning Jack with.
With Paul Hogan and Cuba Gooding Jr. Is delightful
to watch. What's another. Oh, the Cherokee Kid with Sinbad.
That film needs a resurgence too. I. I had a good time with the early
HBO movies. Oh, my gosh.
So, yeah, I mean, Hickox, of course, started off with our
boy Bruce Campbell doing Wax work. Wax Work 2 and Sundown, Vampire and Retreat.
That. I mean, that's. Then he did Hellraiser 3. I mean, talk about,
you know, coming out the gate hot, man, with those
four movies. I mean, Hickox is working. I mean,
in this year alone, he did Full Eclipse, he did Warlock to
the Armageddon and he did one more that I forget
what else that he made, but I think there was one more. But there was
a time where Hickoks is working a lot and. Yeah,
but what I'm about for. For 93 is which
board 2. The Devil's Doorway I haven't watched in a long time, but I remember
liking it just as much as the first one, if not
better. But. Yeah, but Kevin kept two
Wishboard two with Amy Dolan's. And Lorraine
Newman plays the psychic lady in the movie. Yeah. Aren't they like
a hundred witchboard movies? Or is that the. Is that Witchcraft?
That's witchcraft. That's Witchcraft. Yeah.
They have like 17 of them or something. Or. And probably
counting. Oh, but yeah,
93 is going to be. It's gonna be rough. I gotta pick five. And 93
has some. Has some bangers in there, which made it bangers of some
people. But, you know. Well, let's have a look. What did.
What did PM Entertainment do in 93? Let's check it out. What have you
got to pick? Oh, it has to be horror, right? Has to be horror.
But still, PM had to be busy in 93. They had to be.
Oh, they did. I mean, if you want to pick. I don't know if they
allow sci fi to be like, horror adjacent, but PM Entertainment
did do Alien Intruder with Billy Dee Williams, Jeff Conaway
and Maxwell Caulfield in 1993. That's beautiful.
Oh, my gosh. But yeah, Today we're
gonna talk about two films. Of course, our parade pick is the dangerous
from 1995. And we're both, we're both psyched.
Talk about this. Directed by Rod Hewitt and written by it,
Zone Troopers is our VHS pick from 1985
to 10 years before that and directed by Danny
Bilson, who did a whole bunch of stuff and starring most of
the cast of Transfers. So me and John are all over this,
guys. Okay. It's all I'll say about that.
Yeah. I mean, again, I don't think. I don't. I don't think we've
had a rough parade pick yet. But the
fact that every parade pick and in fact every VHS
pick so far has been so top
level and so good and so enjoyable.
Like, I'm wondering when the fall's coming because so far I'm just climbing up
that hill and I'm happy. Every time I put a parade movie in.
I got a question. Were you aware, and I was thinking about possibly adding
this to a repertoire, that there's a television show.
Oh, what is it? I forget what it's called now. But of course Parade
has. I mean, of course Michael Beck has a cowboy hat on in
which Michael Pere and Michael Beck are. Are cops
in a TV show in Texas.
I was not aware, but I will happily watch some of the episodes if it
gets to the point where we need to do that for the parade way.
No, it's, it's fine. I just. I just was thinking like.
Yeah, might discuss that one day, you know, in episode two
here and there. Definitely. Why not?
Yeah, yeah. Zone Troopers is, is the,
the great. Made by the great Empire Studios, of course. Charlie Band
driven. Very, very, very Italian in nature.
Zone Troopers very look forward to talking about that. That World
War II gem that doesn't get enough love.
But we'll start with, with how do
we do this? Like it's been a while since John. Do we do the VHS
pick first or the prairie first? I forgot that works.
I don't know, but I think we do the parade one first. All right.
It's the special time of the show again, you know, where me and John get
all misty eyed for multiple co ops in this
movie. In my opinion. But one dreamy eyed fella to
where we get so excited we feel a little tingling in our tum tums
and we get in the parade way. We're in the
paradeway every
night and every day. I don't care what
you say, we're not listening anyway.
Gary and Sean, we won't get along are
in the parade way. Okay, okay.
It's a game that we have to play. We both of my
friends. This is how we stay.
I don't know how better to be made so
I wouldn't show that Gary is gone.
But when it's
a paradeway,
the parade pick of the show is the dangerous from 1995.
Your cheap plot synopsis is this. Brother and sister ninja
warriors get revenge for their sister's death by killing the drug dealers
in New Orleans. The police enlist the help of biker warrior of
a biker warrior to solve the crime. The head drug
dealer stirs the pot even further by hiring Cajun warriors to
kill those who he believes are responsible for the death of their dealers.
The Cajun warriors. We'll talk about them. But yeah,
it's, it's. Yeah, it's, it's. It's so it's multi level.
Everybody. It's multi leveled.
We get Robert Dahby in this film as, as Davalos.
I guess they realize his name so they're calling Davalos in this movie. That's fine.
Michael Perret as random. That's not, that's not
who he is. That's the name. That is his name in this movie. John Savage.
Who is Emil Lautrek in
this movie? The legendary, the legendary Joel Gray plays
a hobo who lives in a trunk apparently named Flea. We'll get
into that. Elliot Gould as Levine. He was acting these
things back in these days. The legendary Asian henchman Shang
Tsung himself carry Hiroyuki Tagawa.
You know him from many things that require
an Asian heavy Showdown of Tokyo. So many things
he. He's in. Although I think a film like Showdown of Tokyo
has them all. Perhaps he has all the Asian henchmen.
There were 90s of 90s in that film. Perhaps I don't
even know. There's so many of them recognizable.
Paula Barbary as Paula, I guess you know,
same name. Juan Fernandez is an actor
I've seen in many, many things too. I just. Again, one of those actors.
I. I can't tell where I've seen him but I could say I've seen him
in like 12 things. As Tito,
Sammy Nakamura as. As Carrie's
sister Akiko. And that's about where we're stopped right
there. This is directed by Rod
Hewitt and written is by him as well. Didn't do
a whole lot as far as like directing stuff. He wrote
some stuff including this movie too. But directed
stuff of note. Let's find out now. What is Blue Devil?
Blue Devil Is it any good or not? We're gonna find out right now.
No, nothing, nothing, Nothing really is of note. I mean,
he's worked with Davy before and he works with Michael
Perret again on a film called Strip
Search, which also has Pam Greer in it. So we
might be doing a Rod Hewitt movie again on the Parade podcast. Because Michael
Perret and Pam Grier in a Rod Hewitt film called Strip Search.
Dude, that's. If that isn't up street, I don't. Know what is
definitely up our street. And I'm, I'm sure we're going to get to it for
sure because that, that's, that's right up our alley, much like this film right
here. So I'll start
with you, John, because I'm not saying you're more excited about this film than I
was, but you know, when we first read the synopsis on the last episode,
we were like, this is a movie and it just sounds
amazing. And for, from our private talks, it doesn't sound like
you were disappointed. All in this film that gets a 4.0
on IMDb and that's unfair. But oh yeah. So first
of all, IMDb and people reviewing this movie,
go fuck yourselves. Seriously, go like,
fuck off with this 4.4.0 out
of 10 bullshit. This is at
least an 8 out of 10. At least, at least.
I could push it higher, but. But it's at least an 8 out of 10
and I'll tell you why. Because this shit surprises you every step
of the way. And I'm going to lay it down. So first of all,
it's 4 out of 10 on IMDb. It surprises you by not
being shit. It surprises you by being excellent. But beyond that,
it surprises you some other ways. It looks the business for,
for a straight to video action movie with,
you know, B movie legends like Michael Perret and Robert Davy.
It looks the business, it's completely bizarre because the only person
attached to this movie that could have maybe done anything towards
like supplying the budget that it clearly
has because it's filmed in New Orleans or certainly there's a lot of it filmed
in New Orleans. I'm sure they filmed other bits of the interior somewhere else,
but there's a lot of it filmed in New Orleans. The effects are genuinely great.
There are some, you know, car chases and shootouts and
ninja swords and it has a bit of everything when it comes to the
action. And it, it is, it's truly
impressive. The only guy, as I said, attached to this who has any history who
might have been able to bring the thunder is actually the co director,
David Winters. And David Winters had been in Hollywood
films for years and years and years. There isn't anything this guy
hasn't done. He's acted, he's directed, he's produced, he's done
a bit of everything. But he goes back to the
Monkees TV series and the Ann Margaret show. Like that's where
that guy cut his teeth and even did Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde musical movie.
So we were talking earlier about, like different Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde things.
He does a musical with Kirk Douglas and Susan George,
of all people. Like, I don't know how that shit gets
made. Of course, Donald Pleasance is also in it because Pleasance
has to show up in the part of Fred Smudge.
But how the hell did they mount them? A movie, a musical,
no less, of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Kirk Douglas, Susan George and Donald
Pleasence. Clearly this guy David Winters gets it done.
Now he is the co director on this movie. So again, I don't know if
him and Rod Hewitt started off working together. I don't know
if Rod dropped down and David came in or whether David dropped out.
Whether David mounted it, dropped out and Rod came in, I have no idea
at all. There's so little online about this movie. But the only thing that
to me explains the cast that they've got in this movie, because the cast
is off the chain, it's fantastic. But also the clear budget that
they have for some of the shots that they're doing and some of the stuff
that they do within New Orleans. And then thirdly, the other
surprising thing about the movie is some of the kills,
like genuinely kills I haven't seen before and genuinely
pretty disgusting. There's. There's a very effective kill
right at the beginning where they tape a girl up and
put her in a. A barrel and pour cement over her, which is just.
I can only imagine how horrifying that is. And the way they
do it was very matter of fact and even comical. I'm sure we'll get on
to that in a bit. And then there's a. A sequence later where John
Savage as the fantastic character Emile Lautrec
and his cousin, also his friend, he's like, this is my friend also
he's my cousin who he's carrying around with this
little double act. They kill a guy in a way. We'll get into it later,
but they kill a guy in a way where I was like, oh, oh,
wow. And not only is. Is it a A guy. But it's your
man from Mall Rats and from Conan.
What's his name? The Swiss guy. Oh my God.
Sven. Yeah, Sven. That's it.
Who plays Finn of all things, you know?
Yes. But they kill him in a way where I was just like, wow,
that's surprising. So anyway, it is a.
It is a ninja cop mafia drug
dealing movie. Like it has they. This is what I call kitchen
sink movie at its finest. And what I mean by kitchen sink movie is
you throw everything at the wall, including the kitchen sink. And,
and what is wonderful about the Dangerous is so much of it sticks.
There is so many. I cannot wait to unpack this with you,
Gary. But I. This was a joy to me. This was.
It was action packed. It had a little erotica.
It had fucking people looking badass. Like, Robert Davy
took the opportunity to be like, I have to have at least eight badass
outfits throughout this entire movie. Like, Davy clearly
owned the set whenever he was around because the movie
seems obsessed with Davy. There's film noir
in there. There's like New New Orleans swamp noir in
there. There's like crooked cops and I mean, it's all the
one liners that are bouncing around. Dude, I couldn't have loved this movie more.
It's. It's utterly confusing. It has no handle on
the plot at any point whatsoever. But that doesn't matter. There are ninjas and
drug dealers and cops and biker warriors and
mentions of, of true honor and
all this sort of stuff. And yeah. Bending laws in New Orleans and
throwing people off buildings. I mean, this movie has just about a little bit of
everything that I love and I loved it for it.
Oh, it's, it's. I agree with everything you said, John. It's.
It's. It's a phenomenal experience. And again,
I looked, we. We look on list for this. Like what Parade Jam sounds,
sounds great. And we read the synopsis for this and who was in it just
like, yeah, this, this is, this is more than likely going to be another Parade
winner. And it is in so many ways. John.
John mentioned that was a chicken soup action film. It is. It has a lot
of stuff thrown into it. I mean. Yeah. And then you even have.
Yeah. You even have Joel Gray. Right? I didn't even mention him. But yeah,
Joel Gray bouncing about. You know, he was doing these
kind of roles. He had this and his, his role in Remo Williams, of course,
you know, just, just doing these quirky ass roles.
And this, what he plays like a street rat who,
who happens to have a Cell phone and, and infinite connections. And you
know what? You buy that. I can't tell you why you buy
that. He's been living inside
a Mardi Gras float for like eight months.
But yeah, this, this is wild. And you
got these two charismatic guys just, you know, chewing the
scenery. The, the, the best, the, the best they can at the same time.
Robert Dahvie in this film. I, I, I can't tell if
he's supposed to be Italian or possibly Asian because the,
the way, the cut of his jib, if you will, that, the way
they cut his hair in this film, it's like missing,
it's missing an Asian inspired headband. You know, when Dabi
goes to work, you almost wish that was there because he,
he shows up because he's like the, the,
the, the Asian expert, you know, to, to, to, to help Random.
He's a ninja whisperer. He's, he's a
ninja whisperer. Yes, indeed. That's a good word for it. And he
knows the story, he knows what's going on. It's hard
to tell if he's a cop or like a mercenary. Because we
were introduced is one of the greatest introductions ever. A Robert in,
Robert Dobby in a movie is that he's in, he's in this
New Orleans cemetery and, and there's a gunfight
there because all of a sudden there's this copper that comes out. This might be
the same cemetery from Easy Rider. I have no idea. It looks very similar to
the trip out. It is, it's, it's, that's what, that's what made me think,
like, how the hell are they affording this? Because that is the, that is
the above ground cemetery. Famous New Orleans above ground
cemetery. It's right there, slap bang in the heart of the city. It's where Nick
Cage owned his pyramid or whatever it was that Nick Cage wanted to.
Yeah, Nick Cage, like blew a ton of money on owning like a few
mad graves in New Orleans. But it's right there. I've toured that graveyard.
Yeah, it's, it's insane. They got to film everything.
They got to film there. I, you know, I can only assume that New
Orleans was hard up for cash in 95. I don't know.
Oh, yeah, but Dabby shows up, you know, waiting for a gunfight
because there's this, there's a funeral going on where these guys
are carrying this insanely light coffin that happens that looks
light, but it's filled with guns, like an array of guns.
It's like a real, you Would say it's a nice spread if you're
having Thanksgiving dinner of weaponry that's going to
be fired in about two minutes. And for some
reason, I guess it's raining outside. So these guys have
umbrellas that the gunman. And for some reason,
they don't lose the umbrellas. They just hold on to them while they're shooting
people. No. So the umbrellas,
they have them in the summer as well. They're a traditional in
New Orleans funerals where they have a processional.
Very often the mourners have umbrellas. It doesn't
necessarily denote rain, although it may do in this case because it was gray and
overcast. But in, in general, they do know they dance with the
umbrellas. They hold them up. It's. I don't know the, the full tradition.
Sometimes they're umbrellas, sometimes they're parasols. But they
are a. A feature at both New Orleans funerals and also
second line marches that go on throughout New Orleans with
the music and the parading and everything.
And, and that's fine. But the most hilarious part of the scene to
be is not, not, not the gunplay, but the fact that they hold on to
these like they're in like a Broadway musical or something, and it's part of the
act. They're just. Yes. It's like, unless you're the
Penguin from Batman, you shouldn't
hold on to this parasol if
you're in a gunfight because the gun is inside the parasol for the Penguin.
So there's that. Yeah. I mean, unless you're spinning it
around and ninja stars are flying out of the folds of your parasol,
like, you know what I mean? Put it down. Put it down. It's just taking
up a hand. It's unnecessary.
But one way to, to do this is like, hey, they got the
guns now. But to conceal the guns, they hold their parasols
in a forward motion and then they throw it away like,
like Arnold throws the roses away when he reveals his shotgun. Terminator 2.
And they just start blasting away Dabi. But he,
He. He knows. He knows the gunmen are there because there's not.
There's not a point in time in this film where Robert Dobby
doesn't know the score. And that's one of my favorite things about it. Like,
yeah, but parade is kind of a rube is random here, not,
not really having a lot of information. But Davalos.
Davalos has all the cards. And I love it so much.
I love that. Like, I love that Rod Hewitt and Robert Davy
sat down and was just like, Davi was like, how about I'm Davalos?
Like it's Davi, but it's got like a mysterious feel
to it. You know what I mean? He is Davalos from the desert.
That's the other thing.
No, no, no, finish up. No, no, finish up, dude.
It makes you wonder if they made him call. He made them call him Davalos
rather than Robert while he was doing the film. He went full method and
I would. Hope Gary,
he 1000%. I think he still has
people call him Davalos. Like I think that's it's Robert
Davy's secret alter ego. I believe so.
The one thing we didn't mention is the movie starts when we actually meet Robert
Davy. He's in the desert on a horse
dressed like a cowboy with a beard. And you're like,
wait, what? And Davalos has just gone
out to the desert like, like the old man and Unforgiven kind of
thing. He's just trotting around the dusty plains,
finding his way in the world. You know, there's a lot of
like Kane from Kung Fu stuff in this movie. Like he's out in the desert,
he's just traveling the earth. He gets the call on
his answer machine to come to New Orleans to help his buddy out.
And then out of nowhere, within seconds, Davalos has
transferred from old man cowboy into mean
badass motorbike warrior riding,
riding from Arizona to New Orleans on his hog. Man,
Davy gets to try on so many fucking looks and hats
in this movie, it's hilarious. And then when he shows up
to the graveyard in New Orleans, his buddy has been like crucified,
but he's sitting down totally with.
He's been nailed to a crucifix, which is horrible,
but he's sitting down which obviously defeats the point of being crucified.
Yeah, yeah, I beat the shit too, by the way.
So I guess he is bleeding out in the way. But yeah,
us doing this on, on Easter Eve is kind of Afropo
to, to our, our friends. Half crucifixion in this movie.
Yeah, but this movie, like a PM film. And that's the
thing is I want people to like when I started this and I thought,
well, you know, 95, it's 4 out of 10. It's Rod Hewitt's not
really done very much. I'm like, oh, it's probably going to be some low budget
thing. And, and look, I'm not saying it's fucking Die Hard too or
whatever. It's not like Hollywood budget. But if you watch
this and someone said to you like a PM Entertainment made this
or whatever, I would believe it simply because follows
the rules of a lot of PM films, which is action needs to break out
no matter what. At a certain point, every few minutes,
you need to have as many people who can be a
part of that action, but in a variety of different ways as much as
possible. Hence the drug dealers, the cops, the motorbike warrior, the ninjas.
Like everyone's got a stake in this, you know. You know,
you've got to film all over the city and get different backdrops and different parts
of day or night, whatever, throw a bit of sex in there. Like it follows
the, the Corman PM Entertainment,
you know, the structure, the, the,
the rules almost to the letter. And is the better for it
is much, much better for it. It doesn't let it slow
down or get boring for a minute. I mean,
it's just every. Even when he goes to see Davalos,
shows up in New Orleans and we find out that he's got a bit of
a past. And we don't ever find out exactly what that past is, except it
has something to do with the brother of the hooker played by.
You said her name earlier. Played by Paula Barbara.
Right. And something to do with her brother. We don't quite know
what it is, but like if he hadn't left New Orleans last time in the
middle of the night by himself, her brother would have got killed or something like
that. So he left for noble reasons and now he's back.
And any scene with
the two of them in it is shot like a sort
of a neo noir, like thick red light coming through a slatted blind
and you know, blues and pinks on the wall. And all the dialogue
suddenly gets dramatic. Like it's, you know,
the scene in Casablanca with where Bogey
is saying to oh my God, why can't I think of names today?
Gary. This is becoming a real problem for my podcasting habits.
Ingrid Bergman. Who's saying where he's
saying to Ingrid Bergman about, no, you have to, you know that you can't stay
here. And they're talking about Paris and the letters of transit,
everything. That scene in Casablanca, which is kind of the scene before it all,
all the. Goes down in the last act of that film,
that scene. It's, it's, it's, it's like that
every time Davi and Bobby Harry get in a room together.
Either that or it's hot and heavy and we're getting a little. We're getting
a little lovemaking action. So it's the way it's filmed, the different genres
it's picking from it. Yeah, it never lets you get bored or tired
for a minute. No, I agree.
I mean, it gets crazy and it gets crazier because they keep adding.
What this film does very well is like, wow, they just
added henchmen to this movie. Now you have the
henchmen who are the ones looking for revenge.
They do a brilliant job. You mentioned spanily, Thorsten shows up in
this movie. He can only have what I can describe as
a ring around the rosy death because it's so painful.
Our Asian assassins show up and they just circle around
him while slicing him around the belly. Well, no, yeah, it's our Cajun
assassins. It's John Savage, right?
Yeah. And it's. It's phenomenal
the way. The way he is murdered in this film. And you look for a
disembodiment, but you do. You have to have an R rating, of course. But I'd
imagine his guts are all over the floor at this point.
But, yeah, they stick a knife in it and just.
They basically. I've never seen anything like that in a movie.
He like, sticks. He's got one of these. I don't know what kind of blades
there are. It's, it's. It's, you know, it's like a short. It's definitely a
fighting blade, but it's, It's. It's shorter, but it's curved and it looks
evil as. And, you know,
I don't know what the. Like, when you've seen movie. In movies where,
you know, someone commits like Harry Carry or something and, and.
And, you know, disembowels themselves. It's kind of like that knife.
I don't know if there's like a ceremonial Japanese word for it or whatever.
But yeah, he just.
It's like a short katana kind of, in a way. You know, I.
I've seen it in a movie or two before, though.
And he just sticks it right in Sven
Olaf. Sven Ole Thorson's stomach and
then just cuts all the way around. And again,
it's not like. You see, it's not
like they've done like prosthetic effects or. Or anything like that.
It's just the thought of it and the
sound effects they use and the way they do it. It's.
Yeah, it's very effective.
Yeah. Yeah, that's the cage. The Cajun guys.
Yeah, I love those guys because not.
Not only did they do what our Asian assassins do,
but they do it while talking because the Asians don't say much in this
movie unless they're talking to Davalos. But, but because he,
he knows why they want revenge. But these guys have
a level of arrogance to them that just makes them charismatic as.
So that, that's what this film is all about, you know,
being killers and being charismatic as. So you
almost wanted more of them, you know, so if that's a complaint about the dangerous.
Yeah, I want a more assassin guys,
you know. Yeah. If anything, you know, the,
the thing is this. So the,
the. There are two Japanese assassins who are the
brother and sister of the woman who at the beginning of the movie
gets put in an oil drum,
taped up and covered in cement and
then kicked in the bay. It's a real like, by the way, also, they're having
the most obvious drug deal you've ever seen in any movie ever.
Like, there are, there are like 20 hench people,
two limousines. They're putting huge suitcases in
between each other, like in Broad, not in like a lit dark
area right by a warehouse. Like anyone could see if like,
like if you were the other side of the New Orleans bay,
like just casually at a restaurant or something, you would
look out across the water and go, oh, look at that drug deal. Like,
that's how fucking obvious it was. And of course she has to make a noise
in the. When she's scoping them out. She, she's a,
she's not even a journalist or whatever. She's doing it for like a college degree
or something. Right. Isn't she writing something for her? She's not like a
journalist or anything. Or am I wrong about that? Well, you don't
get a whole lot of context of what you know she's doing.
All you know is that she's following these, these drug dealers.
And of course she, she makes, takes pictures and makes a inexplicable
noise because she, she moves from the garbage case she's hiding behind.
Yeah. And she gets, she gets to, she gets to see
men's shoes. And then she,
her relatives show up accordingly. I mean,
yeah, her brother and sister show up and they basically have told their
mother, oh, we're going to avenge her death and we probably won't come back.
Like, if we've been successful, you'll see us in heaven, basically. And to them
it's all about, you know, honor and all this sort of stuff.
And then what happens is that
the cops are. The cops have also been like
scoping out these drug dealers. And the cops are about to do. Their.
Their, their big arrest. You know, they're about to run
into the building and take on all these people, including one
of the cops who is. And I'm not kidding, when I saw this, I was
like, oh, this is going to be a good movie. I'm going to love.
Every minute of this movie was when they were doing the stakeout before
they were about to go attack the building with all the drug dealers in it.
And one of the cops is lying down in
the street pretending to be a cardboard box.
And he's literally lying in front of a car inside a cardboard box with
a walkie talkie and a little circular hole poked out with a
little flap. And I'm like,
that's. He's not even dressed as a hobo or anything. He's just pretending to be
a box. It's fucking genius.
Now the driving through the city of Chicago is telling me anything.
If you hit the wrong spot on that massive crater, that guy's a dead man.
It's just going to happen, you know? Yes.
So, so once I realized, oh, this is the kind of movie where your.
Your cop buddies can pretend to be a cardboard box on the street of New
Orleans, only to then clumsily run out of the cardboard box when shit goes down,
I'm like, oh, I'm gonna enjoy this sucker.
But, but during that, the, the ninja
assassins show up. The brother and sister team show up and wipe out all the
drug dealers before the cops can get there. But that means that
when the cops show up, the drug dealing, the guy at the top of the
drug dealers, the, the, the lead guy who
was, who played that guy was that. That was Tito, right?
Tito thinks that Tito thinks that the
cops killed everybody and are lying about the, the fact that they arrived when they
were dead. So then Tito sends not only his henchmen,
goons, but also these two Cajun assassins against the cops. So that's the setup.
And you really have to. Like I had. I don't know about you, Gary,
but I had to keep reminding myself, oh, right.
The drug dealers want the cops because they think the cops killed the
drug dealers. But the cops didn't kill the drug dealers. The ninjas killed the drug
dealers. But they don't know that there are ninjas until later. And then the cops
want to get the ninjas, but at the same time, the cops don't want to
get the ninjas because they have honor it. Like I had to at a certain
point, keep unraveling The. The plot in my head and making sure
that I. I had it correctly. Especially once they're like, well, we're also
going to hide the cops. Also go, well, we're going to hire Davalos. Why?
It doesn't matter. It's. It's Robert Davies just writing it down. He's the Ninja whisperer.
He's on a motorbike. He's wearing his little bandana
and looking like he's auditioning for Sons of Anarchy New
Orleans. Sons of Anarchy Colon. New Orleans. You know, so it's.
It's. It's. It's fantastic. It's confusing, but it's fantastic.
And then in order to track all these people down, par is like, come with
me. They go to the. The. Where all the floats,
all the Mardi Gras floats are kept, which people will know if they've seen Hard
Target. Although Hard Target did this two years after this movie, because this movie
was actually shot in the early 90s. I think Davi said on Twitter that it
was shot around 9192 before hard target. So they actually
did it first. But,
yeah, they. They go to the. Where the parade floats are kept.
And Flea, played by Joel Gray, just sleeping inside a parade float,
just hanging out there waiting for parade and Davalos to show up.
So, so good.
Continue. I'm sorry, dude. Imagine. No, no, no,
no, no. I want your input, dude. I was just trying to get everyone set
up. So they're bouncing around. No, I'm just saying that the Fleas
and Joel Gray is Flea. Another one of those.
Like, hey, we got Joe Gray for three
days. Let's make him spectacular. And I'm sure that was done a
lot on his own, you know, Go ahead. I'm sorry.
No, it's. It's. No, it's fantastic. And what's fantastic about it
was that, you know, Davila shows up, right? He gets
paired up with Perret. Right? They don't know each other. And thankfully,
I think I read a review where someone said, thankfully, there wasn't a lot of
unnecessary bickering. Because you're right, that would have spoiled the movie somewhat
if there was, like, a lot of unnecessary bickering between Perret and Davalos.
It's almost nice that Davalos shows up and is just like, fine, okay, this is
Parade. Off we go. In fact, when Davalos shows up, Perret is getting a beat
blowy from his girlfriend. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah. Davalos. Davalos is, like,
peeping at parade, getting nailed by his lady.
That's pretty good. It's pretty good introduction
to those two characters, you know?
Yeah, but no, but what I mean is the first
thing Parade does is take him to meet Flea. And I'm like, if you're Davalos,
right, you've driven all the way from the desert to events or
to sort out this ninja problem that they're having in New Orleans.
And your partner is not only just spending his afternoon having
sex with his, his girl and getting blowies midday
when he's meant to be on, on the case, but also the next thing Parade
does is take him to a weird little man who lives in a parade float
and go, this guy will be able to find them. He can find anybody.
Davalos. And Davos just buys it. Davalos is just like,
sure, he says to flee. Like, we want you to work for us. Like,
Davos is on board. Like, this is just normal. Oh, I'm in New Orleans and
a guy lives in a parade float and he's going to help us find some
ninjas. Sure. Off we go. This is fine. I've got this.
Like, Davalos never questions anything. Like for the moment
he shows up. Oh, for sure.
That's the cool thing about his, his, his character is
he, he's so calm and collected the whole time,
no matter what bonkers shit is happening. It's like, yep, it's fucking
Tuesday, isn't it? You know, and that's, that's the Davos attitude because
the coif demands it of Davalos.
Just the fact that he's a motorbike warrior called Davalos,
it's just enough for me to love this movie. Not to mention that
when they then go to the cinema and I don't even remember why they end
up in the cinema. In fact, I don't even remember why they end up anywhere
where they end up. But when they end up in the cinema, Elliot Gould is
there for no reason. Elliot Gould
is Lips Levine. They had him for a day and
you know. Yeah, I can't confirm or deny that, but I'd
imagine. But by the way, Tito Juan Fernandez,
he was all over the spectrum as far as, like, genre stuff goes. Well,
most, most, most mainstream folks may know him as he was the main
Hispanic bad guy in Crocodile Dundee Part
two. So. Right. Yes, that's correct. Yes.
Lips Levine.
Isn't it like the, like the most Italian name you can think of, like for
like a cartoon gangster, you know, because what was the guy in
Dick Tracy, Lips Manless, played by the great
Paul Sorbino. Was Lips Manless and Dick Tracy.
Yes, yes. And Elliot Gould is Lips
Levine, who is low level, very low level drug
dealer who is also the projectionist at a theater where they're
showing the Russian war film Alexander Nevsky,
which weirdly enough is also the stage
name or potentially the real name, I don't know of a current very
C tier action star that, that is doing the rounds
and straight to video stuff right now called Alexander Nevsky,
who has been able to put together a bunch of movies with your favorite B
and C tier action stars from the 80s. Don Wilson's
done a bunch, Cynthia Rothrock's done a bunch. Mark Dacasco spinning a couple of Nevsky
movies. And yet Nevsky movies, for whatever reason, even though he's clearly a
fan of films like this and clearly a fan of PM Entertainment films
and other stuff like that, seemingly incapable of making his own entertaining
movie. I've tried to watch three Nevsky movies. Like, I'm out. I'm out. I can't
do it to myself anymore. It's too embarrassing to watch Don
the Dragon Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock, Mark the Cascos, Casper Van Diet or whatever ruin
themselves in Nevsky movies. I can't, I'm out.
I'll, you know, I just can't do it anymore. But very funny that, that when
they show up to this retro house theater that they're showing a
whole bunch of weird stuff. And again with this whole Jekyll and Hyde thing.
A Jekyll and Hyde poster on the wall for one that stars
Tracy Spencer Tracy and Lana Turner.
So Jekyll and Hyde following us all around
this, this, this place, right? Oh, yeah. So, yes, for sure.
Yeah. It's a, it's a theme of the show, if you will.
I don't know how far we should go into this because I, I would,
I would love to say that since they're doing stuff like this,
this might get like a vinegar syndrome treatment like, like real soon.
And I would love to see this. It's just,
it's, it gets nuts, man.
Like, like John said, it's, it's like, it's, it's,
it's a, it's a hodgepodge movie and it
gets, it gets to be kind of a mess. But you know,
you're, you're there for the mess because of the charisma of
the people that are acting at this movie.
Oh yeah. I mean, this, this movie is held. Well, no, but, but this
is the other thing Gary's saying is not only, yes, the movie's held Definitely on
the backs and the shoulders of the charisma of the actors, who all of whom
are incredibly entertaining in this movie and understood the assignment when they
showed up. But the other thing that I think genuinely needs
to be pointed out about this movie is that when they are doing the.
And I'm not going to say parodies, but when they are
doing the different genres that they're attempting to like,
recreate, they do actually, like, get pretty
close. Like, the film noir scenes are shot really beautifully.
The ninja action that takes place on the roof in the skyscraper
looks like those Hong Kong and Japanese movies that
are kind of grainy but beautiful and like the.
The way it's framed and stuff actually looks really good. And sure, yeah,
there's a few, like, shootouts in some cheap locations and a few fights that
take place clearly in like, you know, cheap high
rises that they've rented out or whatever. But in general, the action
looks good. New Orleans looks good. The film noir
stuff looks good. Like it? Yes, it's charismatic
in terms of. In front of the screen, but I also think
there's some charisma working behind the screen. And again,
I don't know because I haven't seen any other Rod Hewitt films, but I.
And I'm interested to see them. But I do wonder if that isn't partly
David Winters. And I only say that because of David Winters legacy in the industry.
He had just been around longer and possibly had a little bit more knowledge.
You know what I mean? Well, if you look at David Winter's output and
it's. It's pretty impressive for genre stuff because,
like, you mentioned the. The Monkeys and Gary Loves
the Monkeys with. With the. The Beating of his Heart, the TV show and,
and. And the band, of course. But if you look at the stuff he made,
you know, he made. And I own this on Lasers
Fire. Oh, this. He was a producer on this. On Firehead,
which is when a Russian cyborg with telekinetic powers terrorizes
a city and a lead government agency intervenes. A chemist teams
up with a special agent to capture the menace, but they find out that
the true villain isn't what they expected. Now, I have to mention this, Bill,
because we may do this one day. It stars Christopher Plummer and
Martin Landau, and this is a VIP joint and.
Which made nothing but good trash. So there's
that. He was a producer on that, though. As far as directing goes,
one of the things that stuck to me that I've seen is Thrashing,
which is a teenage skateboarding movie with Josh
Brolin and of course, The Great Nightmare
2. Robert Rustler is the
protagonist, the opposite skate team guy.
And this is a skateboarding film. A guy who had no
experience making this kind of stuff. But the skateboarding scenes
look professional. They look phenomenal.
But more action stuff. He made Mission
Kill with Robert Ginty. He worked with Cameron Mitchell a
lot, apparently. So this is the one that stars Robert Ginty,
Karen Mitchell, Olivia Dabo,
and yeah, some of this was
Karen Mitchell too. You can look it up real fast.
One has Ali Reid in it. I think this is the one. Rage to Kill.
Rage to Kill has Dum Dum Dum Dum, James Ryan,
Oliver Reed and Cameron Mitchell. So he works Cameron Mitchell a bunch,
but he has the ability to make these, these action movies. And I,
I gotta see these. But I, I'll go back to thrashing again though, because thrashing,
you're for a guy who had no experience filming
skate stunts or what a skate stunt should look
like. He adapted himself to that. And this,
this film is, is a testament to, I, I think more
him than Rod Hewitt as far as, like, experience goes, making an
action movie. Yeah. And I'm also thinking, you know, obviously I won't
be able to confirm it 100 until obviously I watch more Rod
Hewitt movies and also watch more David Winters movies. But for
example, something else I just looked up, there were two cinematographers
on this, which makes me think again that like, David Winter started
it and then Rod Hewitt came in to like, finish it or something.
And one, you know, both, both director photographers, Irv Good
Goodnoff and Christopher Whaling or Walling.
Chris. Christopher Walling have both done a lot of
genre stuff and have both done a
lot of like, B movie stuff and things.
But I do think, I think the original team behind this movie
was David Winters and Irv good enough because Irv Goodnov
has a slightly better and slightly more respect respectable
past as a cinematographer than Christopher
Walling. But Christopher Walling looks to still be working today and
has done a lot more stuff in the last like 10, 15 years
than he had done prior to working
on the Dangerous. So I think that either
Crystal Walling was like Irv Goodnoff's like,
Apprentice and they both got credit on the movie,
or, you know, Irv and Dave left the movie
and Rod and Chris finished it up. But Irv
was known for shooting stuff like Evil Speak, the Van,
Super Van. He shot both Super Van and the Van.
He, he shot Evil Speak. He shot some music videos for Jefferson
Starship. He shot the Iron Triangle, Object of Desire The
Resurrected in Between with Robert Forster and Wings Hauser.
So I, I think, you know, after this he would go on and do Extra
three, Watch the Skies and a bunch of other movies. But I think that
maybe he is the one we've got to thank a little bit for the,
the cinematography in the, in the Dangerous, I think. So there's clearly
a store story behind this that, that, I don't know. We can only really
scratch the surface of, I think, just by assuming stuff. Oh,
and as our friend Kyle would say, breaking news.
Don't tell me the IMDb doesn't put up more nuggets for us
to watch. Not a parade jam, but a possible VHS jam also
set in New Orleans, Also done in 1995,
starring Robert Davi, Body Count aka Codename,
the Codename Silencer. New Orleans cops
try to capture two ruthless assassins who are trying to avenge themselves against
cops who had previously set them up. This stars Dobby,
Stephen Bauer, Brigitte Nielsen,
Sonny Chiba and Jan Michael Vincent.
David A. Pryor written movie.
Oh my gosh, it has, it has to be good. It has to be.
How do you know? But.
It'S got Sonny Cheever in it and it's got Jan Michael
Vincent as well. That's crazy because that is streaming on prime as well,
so I may watch it at work in the morning. We'll see.
Oh, and this is what I love is the, the more scabs you pick of
B movie action in the 90s, the more wounds are revealed.
And I mean that, that's probably a, an ugly metaphor,
but I don't know, you know what I mean? Like when you find one that
you love, you're like, all right, what's David. What else was Davion
around this time? What else was Parade in around this time? What else did Rod
Hewitt do? What else did David Winters do? What else does the cinematographers do?
Like you start to go down a, a road and, and, and only beauty
lies at the end of it, apparently. Oh yeah, for sure,
for sure. We want to go much deeper on this,
on this, this action jam, which I, I, I, I gotta
say, you know, for a film that has, has not seen the dvd, the film
Rise print they have on prime and on on to be.
It looks, it looks phenomenal. I don't know where you get these prints from,
but yeah, you kind of hope that somebody internationally or
otherwise will, will put this on a Blu Ray one day. Like I could.
They put less on a Vinegar syndrome Blu ray, so I
would hope they get some, it puts some materials together
and this gets like a pretty sweet release from
like a Vinegar syndrome. I would hope so.
Well, yeah, I mean at the moment Film Rides is doing deals with my
buddy over in Switzerland, Claudia Ulrich, who is, who works
for the company that's putting out all the PM Entertainment movies,
Focus Media Focus with a K who's putting out all the PM
Entertainment movies on Blu Ray at the moment. And so if Film Rise,
and I think Film Rise, like buying up Echo Bridge because a lot of
this stuff used to be owned by Echo Bridge. All the PM stuff was Echo
Bridge. So I feel like Filmrise has purchased Echo Bridge in
the last few years, whatever. Obviously Filmrise has flooded
it out onto streaming. But I think, you know,
Filmrise has got to look around the world, see what's happening with boutique
Blu Ray. See the fact that those Focus Media PM Entertainment Blu Rays are
selling out both in Europe and in America. And I think they're
going to want to sell like they're going to want to do a deal with
a Vinegar Syndrome or a Arrow or a Blue Underground or someone
or a Synapse or a, you know,
Code Red or someone like that and just be like here,
here's our library. You know, put three out a month or whatever.
Because when the Film rise. I'm sorry,
it does happen because the next one we're going to talk about had a keynote
release that's out of print now, but now it's been released by ADA Films,
I'd imagine like almost the same print and the same commentary and everything.
Oh yeah. I mean Charles Band or shop his stuff around until someone's
willing to pay for it. And I know that Empire is slightly different to
Full Moon in terms of what he owns versus what they own because I know
that he's been putting out a ton of Full Moon stuff on
Blu Ray himself. But I also know that there are a few key titles from
the Empire days. Like Arrow for example, did that video store box set that
was really just five Empire movies, dolls,
robojox and
a couple of others. Arena I think not the Pam Grier arena, the other
one and a couple of others.
Eliminators. Yes, Arrows definitely owned some
of the Empire stuff. Kino obviously had it for a hot minute.
So yeah, I mean that stuff because it's a. There's enough well known titles,
Reanimator, Castle, Freak, things like that that'll always
be being shipped around I guess.
Trances of course has had a Blu ray and a 4K and now trances
Noir is coming out or some. So yeah,
I Mean, so there's, there's. Still money in them Hills unrelated
this film, but really the next film. Have you seen the, the release that's
coming for, for the brand new Transfers Blu ray?
What? Trances Noir, the one that I just spoke about. No,
no, no, there's a new, a new transfer that's being released by not, Not Charlie
Band. That, that. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, I'll find the link
for you to send it to you. Oh yeah, no, I mean I know
that they're doing. I know they're doing a 4K that, that is like
kind of chrome and black rather than color and they're
calling it Trances Noir. And that's, that's meant
to be coming and looks absolutely fantastic. Kind of leaning heavier
into the noir tones of trances
rather than the Blade Runner ripoff start
stuff of trances. But yeah, I mean those, those blu rays
and 4Ks have kicked around a little bit. So you know,
we'll, we'll wait and see. Zone Troopers definitely deserves its
own special edition as well because boy, is this a fun movie.
Zone Troopers, it takes war to
another dimension.
Yeah. And let's go there right now.
Yeah. Zone Troopers 1985
is a magical film produced in the Empire system when
they had their beautiful Italian studio at their disposal.
And this film, your chief applause
synopsis is this. In Italy during World War II. So American soldiers
find an alien UFO and that's weak sauce. IMDb again.
Oh my gosh. There's so much more to it than this. Directed by Danny
Bilson who gave us some, some great, great stuff.
Just talked about him recently, I believe. But writing credits
and directing credits are phenomenal from this guy. Directed the
Five Bloods recently for, for Spike Lee transfers
five Sudden death. Okay. But not as good as the other stuff
that he. Yeah. Carrick, where we at here?
Worked on The Story of Ghoulies 2 with Charlie Band. Worked a lot of Charlie
Band. Wrote the first transfers, wrote Zone Troopers Eliminators.
Some pretty banging Empire freaking content,
you know. Wrote a road arena
for Charlie Band, helped help develop the
John Wesley ship Flash TV show for this, for tv wrote
the Rocketeer. One of my favorite. Again, the guy knows how
to do World War II perfect films of the 90s. Is the
Rocketeer to me, I love it to death and didn't get a
big reception. But you know what? It's love now and that's all that matters
to me. But yeah, Billson's got some cred, man.
And it shows in this movie. You know,
working in that system and also written by Bilson
and Paul Demeo and another Empire guy. But this,
this stars, you know, again, half the
casting transfers in this movie. Tim Tom is the Sarge,
who you may know as Trooper Death and tons
of other things from the Transfer series.
Rhinestone, Near Dark. Yes, I mentioned
Rhinestone because it's a pure good. I'll throw it out there all day long.
Art Lafleur as Mittens McNulty for
Far From Transfers, of course,
tons of things. The Sandlot. If you guys
know Art La Flora Space, he's been in an infinite amount
of things. Biff Maynard as Dolan,
you may know him as Hap Ashby from the Transfer series.
And Timothy Van Patten, the young buck of the group class
of 1999. The wrong guys.
Underrated comedy. He's in that movie works,
works for so long and is, is still, is still working to
this day. But you know, his earlier work is, is what I,
I admire the most. And, but it's nice to see a guy
like, like freaking Timothy Van Patten still
working, directing, producing as well. But yeah,
I, I, I, I gotta show him some love. And it
shows films. I mean talk, talk about costs. The Wrong guys,
man. The cost of the wrong guys. Louie,
sorry. Go, you go. Go for it, man. No,
Louis Anderson, Richard Lewis, Richard Belzer, Tim Thomason,
Brian James, Biff Maynard, John Goodman and Ernie Hudson
and Timothy Van Patten and that's just like the top 10
or whatever. Like there's even more down in the, you get Jonathan Brandis in there,
Josh Horowitz, Rita Rudner shows up,
all sorts of art, the flows in there, as you said. Kathleen Freeman,
of course, who we all know from the, from the Blues Brothers and
Dragnet and others. Yeah, wonderful.
I, I know it's about grown men camping and shit,
like little kids. But you know what? I kind of got to rewatch the Wrong
Guys now. Yeah, definitely. I can't believe I've never seen
it. I need to see this movie yesterday. It's,
it's, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty handy. But it's pretty good though.
But this is a film where,
if you see the poster, it looks like, you know, your typical alien invasion
movie. There's a furry headed alien who you see in this film at
the front. You're doing the I want you thing, you know, so if you see
this, it looks a little silly as a rental to say, hey,
I'm gonna grab this first. But there's a whole, there's so
much meat in this movie, basically the remainder of this
platoon is trapped behind enemy lines and Nazi
occupied Italy. And they find, they find a
crashed alien ship and they find an egg.
The egg hatches and makes and comes out
this furry head alien that you see on the front cover.
And the Nazis are aware of this. And then they,
along with Adolf Hitler, of course, are after the
alien and the alien technology with, with these guys,
you know, on the run and getting captured.
And this, this is,
I, I mentioned this in a post. This is about as fun as
you can have with a World War II film. It takes all the
depression out of it and, and you should be depressed when you think about World
War II, but this, this makes it fun. So,
John, initial thoughts for you, Sir?
Oh, Zone Troopers. So this is one that I watched earlier
in the year or end of last year, I forget when, certainly within the last
six to eight months on vhs, because it was one of those, you know,
I, I, I buy a lot in bulk for my store. I was last year,
not so much this year. And very often you would get, you know,
the 15 movies that I would recognize. I'd be like, sure, I'll put those out
on the shelves. And then the five movies in the, in the big box where
you're like, I've heard of it. I know that it's, you know,
Charles Band and blah, blah, blah, blah, but I've never seen it. Oh, look,
Tim Thomas and Art lafleur. Let's put it in. And you know,
I was expecting something, you know, cheap and cheerful and
watchable, but not necessarily great. The thing that
this movie does so very well, and it's
almost like what I was saying about the Dangerous. Although the Dangerous does it for
individual scenes because every scene, they're kind of changing
genres, so every scene needs to be kind of filmed and shot in a different
way. What this does so well, what Zone Troopers does so well,
is establishing everything
I love about World War II men on a Mission
movie. Like, you know, they have a low budget. You know, they're shooting out in,
in, in Italy at the studios there and also at the castle
that Charles Band owned in Italy for a while. And you know that they're just
using the woodland and the fields around that property. But it doesn't
matter the, the first of all who they've cast,
every single one of them to a man, absolutely fantastic.
Secondly, they each establish their characters and stick to their characters.
And their characters are both tropes.
They're tropes from other Men on a mission. World War II movies. That you've seen,
but they also just have their own unique, like either Empire
twist on them or twist based on the actors who are playing
them. And then also the way they shoot stuff, the way they film
stuff, the way they set stuff up, it's done really,
really well. And then once you through all the war stuff is
done really well, all the men on the mission stuff, you know, all the.
Do you have a lady back home, Sarge? And, and you know, I'll trade you
some candy for a cigarettes and all that kind of stuff that,
that sort of on the sidelines or the periphery of, of like
a regular cheesy World War II men on a mission movie. They, they do
it all so well. I've got general respect for someone who, who goes,
okay, we're gonna make a genre pick. The genre pick is gonna begin World War
II. We're gonna get to the alien invasion stuff a bit later. But basically this
is gonna start out as a authentic World War II,
you know, daring do, Men on a mission, you know,
gee, Sarge, do you think, you know, we'll ever end this stupid war kind
of movie? Right? Those kind of films, if you can get that right,
if you are nailing the genre, everything else you add to it,
like, you know, aliens and Nazis and crash spaceships and
weird laser guns and whatever, all of that will work
because you've nailed the initial, I'm already in the movie.
You've set your table so well that I'm already suspending
disbelief and going, oh, no, that's Tim Thomasin behind enemy
lines in World War II. Like, I've already, you've already allowed me to make the
leap and be in the movie. So then if you have heroes discovering
a crashed spaceship and there are aliens wandering around a laser guns,
I'm fine with that because I like the characters
discovering that within the time that I'm expecting to be discovering
it. So, you know, and then once they go inside the alien spaceship and again,
I'm sure this is just a set that was knocking around Italy that like
Charles Band used probably for 20 movies. I have no idea. But like
that long corridor in the spaceship with the pink and the chrome and the
wires hanging down and the pipes piping and everything like that. The way it's
shot, the way they are inside it, the way it's done, it's done really well.
And yeah, okay, it's a B movie alien spaceship and there's rubber mask aliens
running around and stuff. But it's, it's. That is almost
time and era Appropriate because what I love about this movie
as well is that, you know, there were the, whether it was the
EC comics or whether it was like some of the more sci
fi stuff or whatever it was from the 40s and 50s, you know,
they were already telling those like, you know, saucer men from Mars stories
when World War II was going on. So the idea that you would
like blend these two things together and, and put them in the same place kind
of fits. Like it all sort of makes sense. So even when they start to
blend the genres or push the genres together, it doesn't
matter that the aliens are sort of slightly B movie. First of all,
I love that I'm all about practical sets and practical rubber suits
and you know, weird little ray guns and I love all that stuff. I'd much
rather that than a, than CGI or you know,
incredible makeup or whatever. But beyond that,
it fits in a meta way within the science fiction
stories they would have been telling in the forties at that
time. So it just works and it works on all levels
and it's super fun and everyone is having a ton of fun and
art lafleur gets to knock out Hitler and it's just, it's.
I unabashedly love this movie.
Oh man, I feel you in every aspect. And this isn't a film I liked
initially on when I first saw it because back in the day I would
like eat up everything Charles Band. So I watched this and
probably not knowing it was a Charles Band film, but just by the COVID looked
really silly. So I, I wasn't feeling it as probably like
11 year old me, but not now that I'm, I'm older.
I, And I know you know this, this noir stuff
and these old comic book sci fi stuff a lot more than then.
I, I have to love a film like Zone Troopers.
I mean the simplicity of it. You know, these four guys,
four guys are left from their platoon, you know, left. They, they, they find,
they find this thing. And of course the Nazis know about this
thing. Kind of, you don't really ask questions how about how, how the
Nazis or why they're after this, this, this, this ship. But maybe one of their
guys saw it. This is not known. But you don't
care because you're in it with these pretty four
charismatic guys. You got Thomason, LaFleur, Dolan and Van
Patten, you know, who proved themselves, I mean Van Patten
at a young age. You Watch Class of 1982, you knew that kid was
going to be a star. I mean just a Charismatic. You know,
I forget his name in the movie. He's like the gang leader in class of
1984. I'm sorry. And it
just, you knew from that, from then that he was going to be a star.
And he, he plays like this dopey
foil to these, these hardened veterans who've seen a lot of
combat. He's brand new to it. But the team,
the team, their journey. We did reading Monuments
Men recently, okay. Which is a film that should have worked
like this. But they, they broke up the team in that movie.
They kept team together, the other small team. And I love,
I love people again, going back to stupid goofy stuff.
Like I love this, that the Hack Snyder dawn of the Dead movie.
But it doesn't have the same gravitas as the original one
because in the original one you have four people.
And in that two and a half hours, you give a shit about those
four people and those four people alone. This, this,
this builds these characters from characters that you don't know at all.
And they, they, they make them fun. You know,
I'm gonna call them hap Ashby and McNulty. When they get captured,
they're together. This is the only time they really separate. And the
charisma is, is all over this thing. And I, I, I love
the quick jabs of the Nazis. I love the,
the, you know, not, not naming anything but, but, but their name,
rank, their name, rank and serial number. You know, that, that whole deal and
just, just them getting the better of the Nazis like the whole time.
And you throw in this, this alien plot to,
to where you love Don Doler. You know, the effects of this film reminded
me of the Night Beast effects when he would hit him with the ray gun.
The simplicity of like, hey, we got these ray
guns that will disintegrate anything, including a tank. You know,
it's cheesy ray gun sci fi.
And you're there for every step of the way with
it and. Right, because it's leaning into,
it's leaning into the filmmaking that
feels, you know, like I say, it's almost meta.
You know what I'm trying to say that where, like if you were World War
II guys and all you've been used to watching on the big screen was
sort of those very early like, you know, sorcerer men from Mars type
movies or mantle, one of those, like, you know,
those sort of big scary move or the thing,
you know, and, and if you're, and maybe
that come, maybe that's more the 50s, but still, if you're used to watching
that Kind of stuff. And the alien you meet in the forest looks like
one of those guys. Because I think Charles Band, both for budgetary
reasons but also just for fun reasons, is like leaning into
those like rubber suited alien monster dudes from those
very early movies. It works on a meta level to
me, you know what I mean? Like, I get why the soldiers don't think it
looks like a cheap guy in a suit. They think it looks like a saucer
man from us, you know, And I love that. That's my
favorite thing about, you know, the Vince McPent character is like
the childlike wonder that he has that these other guys don't have because
he, he's the type of soldier that would go to I
guess like the commissary or wherever they buy things from soldiers. It would
buy those nickel novels and embrace the
camp of like the sci fi or like Billy the Kid
having unreasonably, you know,
high powered gun skills. This is the kid
and I think that's why he's so important to the plot is to really
sell the fantasy, you know, to the other guys.
And so I think Charles Banner's film really
leans into like. And I love, I love the end of this movie because you
know, are you going to write about, about, about him? He goes
like, we have no proof. How would they believe him? Because we'll put it in
one of those, those fantasy things that you see that amazing cover art of the
Zone Troopers comic book and you, you get and I will say in the
mood, I'm sure, which was by this time public
domain by now the big band song that plays throughout the film and reiterations
of accents the film so well.
And oh, I was going to say that the other thing that
works so well and you know it's library music and you know, it's probably,
you know, music you could use for free or the copyright
is up on it or whatever. But that 40s swing jazz
or even the sort of 40s men off to war
like dun dun dun dun da da da. That kind of stuff is used so
well in this movie. And it reminds me of, you know,
Holy Grail. Originally with Holy Grail they had written,
they had had Neil Ennis, the guy from the Ruddles, but also just a renowned
music guy from Bonzo Dog Dooda Band and various other places. And he wrote
a soundtrack on all authentic medieval instruments like
lutes and sackbutts and stuff. And they went, it just doesn't work.
You need. They went to library music because they realized that what people were
used to was not authentic period stuff
from that. They were used to Arthurian movies
in which, you know, sword swashbucklers did all their
swashbuckling to, like, rousing, thumping,
orchestral, you know, kind of songs, right? So they rescored
Holy Grail. And once they put more of that.
That theme in Holy Grail, the more they went, oh,
this, this looks authentic now. Because what we were used to was the authenticity
of the movies we watch, not necessarily authentic music at
the time. Similarly, with a World War II movie,
you need that stuff. You need that Glenn Miller sounding
stuff you need, but you also need that Great Escape type
stuff. You've got to have that big band, that swing jazz,
those, like, military marches. Because if you don't have that,
for whatever reason, we are conditioned as watchers to want
that soundtrack on our movies. So Charles Band getting either
library music, free uncopyrighted music,
or having his own music done in that style again,
they nail the genre. And once you nail the genre,
you can put anything in it. And I'll go with you on the journey.
And. And that's what this movie does better. Than anything I gotta create
our credits do, because I watched the credits all the way down because I was
curious about the music. And Richard Band recreated all this
and made all this with an orchestra. So, so,
so credit where credit's due. Richard Band, I mean,
I mean, he's famous for, you know, ripping off Hitchcock with the reanimated theme.
But this, this is probably, you know, with the military,
you know, jive that he. He creates and the
recreation of the swing music. Probably my favorite Richard Band
score now is Zone Troopers, I have to say.
Did you notice? And I noticed it only in a little bit of a
scene, but when McNulty looks
over the ridge with the journalist guy and
they see the Nazi camp, right, they. They. They're off hunting a deer or something
and they find the Nazi camp. The music. So you've got the rousing World
War II music, but within the orchestra someone
is playing. And it's not exactly the. The Darth
Vader march from Star wars, but it's very close.
Very close. There's a little. Just woven into the theme.
A little bit of that,
you know, that little, like, piece of music. And it's in there.
It's not exactly the same. It's a lot more like.
Like bumbling. I'm trying to look for the word here. Like,
like more playful than that. Like a
playful version of that, though. You know, nobody, he just weaves
it in and I think he weaves it in to be like, you know,
this is the real, you know,
authoritarian, authoritarian enemy. You know what
I mean? This is the real empire or whatever you want to call it.
And I don't know all the Star wars terminology because I don't care, but you
know, yes, this is, this is the evil empire, whatever. And, and he weaves it
in just a little bit like that. And also because you know, there's a sci
fi bent to this movie. Why not have just a little bit
of snow, Star wars music sneak in there? I don't know. The whole thing was
charming as fuck. Charming af, as the kids say these days.
Yes. And because the moment, the moment the thing comes out
of the egg, you're like, wow, this, this isn't a xenomorph.
This thing's kind of adorable. You know, the whole, then Ben
Patton's you know, love for the thing and you know, it shines
because eventually later on, you know, when the other aliens come and
that they make it, they make a good point, you know, why they don't want
to help them. We don't, we want to help you kill your own kind.
Because this is probably something they've been going through,
you know, for a long time with their, with their cultures.
But you know, the whole fact that freaking
Joey, Tiffany,
Pat's character, you know, has made friends
with this guy and you know, helped him when he was hurt and yeah,
this all comes into play later, but it
just plays so well. There's nothing
mean spirited about this except for the Nazis. But even
then they got the upper hand the whole time pretty
much whether, even when they're captured,
making sarcasm, freaking Dolan
is shining on about the Geneva Convention
while he's sitting in a cage next to a German shepherd. Perfect for, for Hitler
because Hitler was obsessed with German shepherds.
It's just the, the little in this movie
is littered throughout and I, I love everything about it.
It's, it's, it's so, it's, it's so good. It's so good.
Yeah, I mean, and again, there's no explanation at the end as to why half
the aliens are these weird little bug looking furry
anthropomorphic creatures and why some of them look like
a David Bowie music video. It doesn't matter like
that. You just assume that they come from a planet that has,
you know, multiple creatures and multiple races,
some of whom look different and some of whom are different or whatever.
And like you say the American soldiers ingratiate themselves enough and,
and help out the Aliens enough that in their absolute time
of need, when Thomason has done everything he possibly can to
keep the Nazi hordes at bay, that they ride in like
the, like the weird furry mantis having.
They have those like mandible mouth things like
the, like the bugs like ants or you know,
praying mantis or whatever. But those guys, and the David Bowie guys, all with
new wobbly helmets as well, the David Bowie guys suddenly have these
like big metal helmets with big wobbly wires
and stuff on them and they show up with their cobbled together ray guns.
I listen everything about it is an absolute delight and a joy.
And I think we've, you know, when someone
wants to go ahead and make a war movie these days, or when someone goes
ahead and makes a sci fi movie these days, there's so much expectation now
that it's going to be, you know, serious to some extent
and that the effects are going to be top notch to some extent and blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. And it means that we lose a little bit of the
playfulness, we lose some of the fun, we lose some of the silliness, we lose
some of the joy, we lose some of the have a go get it done
yourself, shoot it in your backyard kind of aspect
to these movies. And I don't know man, I miss that
in filmmaking. And it's why going back to the, the VHS era so
often just produces jam after jam. I mean these two movies we've
talked about today, I don't know, man, like they,
you know, I don't, I'm through making lists or saying where things appear
or whatever, but, but they are, they're now two of my favorite films,
you know, I mean they slot right in to. Okay,
those two are two of my favorite films. It's like when I, and I love
discovering weird gems and the Dangerous
and Zone Troopers, you know, if Trances and Reanimator
and Castle Freak and even films like arena
and Ghoulies and others that Charlie Band had a hand in
are more well known than Zone Troopers. Other Zone
Troopers isn't well known. It's just that most of Charlie Band's other output is
well known. More or more well known than Zone
Troopers. Like when you go that one tier down and go,
I'm gonna take a look at Zone Troopers because it
works perfectly. And you know, it was like they had Thomason and the
Caster Trances out in Italy and they were like, ah, fuck it lads,
let's make one more movie. You got a long weekend,
let's just do some Alien shit in my backyard. You know, it's, it's,
oh, it's a joy. It's fantastic.
Yeah, I agree with everything you say. And yeah, if you guys haven't seen
it, I, I, you were not taking that plunge. I, I'd say
go, go find a version of this to watch because
it might be a YouTube somewhere, but right now it's an MGM plus and
fave some, which I hear, I hear good things about that. Streaming service is free,
I believe so. So go check it out.
Foursome's the new Chubby. Once Chubby started making its
own Once Chubby started making its own films and its own shows,
it's not long before Chibi goes to dogs. Because every single streaming
service that started making their own programming basically up
and, and ignored the fact that when they started out as a streaming service,
their plan was to bring B movies to the masses. So Folsom
has shown up and gone, all right, I'll bring B movies to the masses then.
Nice. Yeah, this, this is,
I, I use the phrase appear good a lot,
but this, this is if you're looking for a World War II movie,
you know, you're not looking for like limbs being blown off or
nothing like that, or nothing like hopefully depressing.
You just want like a, a feel good film with
some, some chums that have to be soldiers, you know,
hanging with aliens and you know, outwitting Nazis.
Zone troopers is, is 100% for you.
And I would show this to my
novice, novice sci fi friends just, just to, to enjoy it.
Yeah, I mean the only, the only genre
trope it's missing is one of the Nazis should have been
played by an old British character actor. Do you know me? There should have
been like a, I don't know like a Trevor Howard or someone or Donald Pleasance
or someone like that. Just in a cameo as like a ridiculous
Nazi common commandant. It's the only thing the movie is missing is
some like, because British character actors have always played Nazis. You know,
like that's a, that's a genre trope. Like right up until
Indiana Jones. You know, the, the funny, the funny thing for people in
England who watch Indiana Jones the Last Crusade is that Hitler is played by
the teacher that was in a long running kids soap
opera about a Jew about a school called Grange Hill.
And he was like the evil teacher nobody liked and he
ended up going ahead and playing Hitler in Last
Crusade. So you're going to have a British character actor in that. The only thing
this movie's missing. See,
I, I think like I would
call it a showcase Nazi in, in this mix of a film.
I, I think it might
have hurt the plot a little bit. I mean, not the plot, but like the,
the camaraderie of the characters. Like I did there was.
Because there was never a time in the film where,
you know, the Nazis got the better of the Nazis broke their spirit.
If I had that, that character, that, that, that Nazi character,
the prominent Nazi character who, who broke Art Lafleur's spirits
to where he like, maybe he wouldn't have punched Hitler.
I, I, I, I think that it would, it would have took
something away from it for me. I don't know what it is. Yeah.
Oh yeah. No, I'm not saying let's change the plot. I'm.
I mean, right now you got kind of like a, like a, like a,
a bunny film that happens to be a war film that
happens to have aliens in it, but it works so well. Yes,
but I think like, if you have like that drama
in there to like break, break the spirit at all of
these gentlemen, I think it would hurt the film. I think it would.
Okay. I just meant, you know, the prominent Nazi they have right
now, he doesn't have a lot of lines, but you know, just the big smiley
faced guy who's like posing by the alien ship or whatever.
Just like the, whatever. I'm just saying recast him with
like some British TV actor. That's all I'm saying. I don't mean like change the
script or make him more compelling or whatever. I just mean the
only thing that's missing is like some weird, you know,
British character actor who just came over to Italy and slummed it for
a day or two. That's all. I mean, I don't mean change anything about the
movie. The movie's perfect.
I get you, man. I get you. I get you. Totally.
Yeah. We both recommend this film, obviously, but I would
kick it to John and say any, any final things you want to say about
Zone Troopers, my friend, go for it. No,
I think I've said all that I want to say, but just basically, I mean,
Tim Thomason, absolutely fantastic in the film. Tremendous.
I mean, everyone loves him as Jack Death. You better love him as like
the weird pervert Mike in Volunteers.
But yeah, this is in the pantheon now. Great Tim
Thomason performances. He's just like Tim Thomason,
like average stand up. Like he was a stand up, right? That's, he kind of
came up with Seinfeld and a couple of the others, that kind of era.
And he was an average stand up but just low
key, a phenomenal actor like just doing
performances way above any of these movies deserve.
And that's as, as you should do you like along
with others, Donald Pleasant, Wings Houser, Michael Moriarty. A lot of the guys
that I love, the reason why I love them, they show up in movies
like this and act like they're in Lawrence of Arabia and David Leans is
making the movie, you know what I mean? And so he
is just, I mean just tremendous. They all are. The whole cast is.
But like Tim Thomason, there's no need for him or no
expectation for him to be this good. And he is this good. And the last
thing I'll say about it is I think the other thing
a movie like this can do and this again for, for guys out there.
I always love when I'm talking about these movies to kind of give a little
recommendation to guys out there who are making low budget stuff now.
Because good writing, even if it's
one or two lines, good writing can go a long, long way and it doesn't
have to cost the earth. It's a really good way to elevate low budget
films. And when talking about Thomason's
character in the movie, and I'm going to forget which character says it to
who, but someone talks about like, oh, the Sarge seems to be a
bit gruff or a bit whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Doesn't he have any
friends? Oh no, the Sarge doesn't seem to want to make friends. I think he
says, and the other guy says, sarge doesn't have a lot
of friends because he doesn't like losing them. And it is one of
the best. Fuck, it's one of the best lines in a movie, period.
Because it says almost everything you need to know about
why Tim Thomason is the way Tim Thomason is in the movie
and why his character is and why, you know, and the whole aspect of war
and the whole aspect of camaraderie and the whole like it says so much
in one line. If you can whip two or three of those
lines into your low budget movie, they cost nothing. But whatever
you're paying the actor to stand there and say them. And yet they elevate the
films way, way above their budget. So watch
some of these B movies and see how they use the one liners or you
see how they use the economy of dialog or economy of
language if you know you're going to be using either untrained actors
or actors who, you know, came out of stand up are actors who have only
worked in boom movies or whatever have already worked in B movies.
And you want to, you know, keep the script sparse,
but when they do speak, have them say some damn cool things like,
the Sarge doesn't like to make friends because he doesn't like losing them.
It's just such a great line. So that's my
little tip to low budget filmmakers out there. Watch a bunch of these
movies and then go, what? What? What? Elevates them above their station.
And it's the writing and it's the music and it's stuff that
doesn't have to cost the earth. And so,
yeah, I would just take pointers from these movies, go back and then put
them in your own films. Because sometimes I watch low budget stuff now and I'm
like, what? You've tried to recreate. You've tried to recreate gore so
that it looks like Evil Dead, or you've tried to recreate nudity so that it
looks like, you know, some mid-80s, you know,
sex gore slasher flick or whatever,
and you go, all right, okay, you've got some gore, you got some nudity.
But, like, why should I care about this movie? And sometimes
you can make a movie like Zone Troopers that has none of that. And it's
10 times more entertaining than any movie that does have that. So I
don't know, Just, just. That's my little nod to low
budget people out there. Write a couple of cool lines because it just makes your
movie so much better. That. And go ahead and watch both
these movies, please. Go watch them, watch them, watch them. Tell your friends, tell your
enemies, spread the word. And let's get blu rays of all of them out here.
And the ending is so perfect because, you know, Thomas as
the Serge, you know, he sacrifices himself for the platoon and he
just shows up as this dark figure. You know who it is, because, you know,
Thomas can't die in the movie. He just simply says,
anybody got a butt? And they give, they give him the last
cigarette they have because, you know, he's the sergeant. He just saved the day.
And I just love, I love this ending, right.
Right down to, you know, the, the big band music. In the end,
when they show the Zone Troopers comic book, it just. It's so
perfect and quick. Short notice. He has like the
little. He has like the little Bugs Bunny, like,
black soot face. Like the thing explode, the grenade exploded,
but all it did was like put soot all over him.
Like a kind of Wiley Coyote or something, you know?
Oh, yeah, it's Wonderful.
A couple quick trivia bits to have on here in first
film shot and produced by, by Charles Band in
Italy. So that, that's, it's a pretty great first attempt at
that because it looked, it looks terrific and everything looks great.
And this, this could be playing into the next show.
All these guys again we, we mentioned what appear in the Wrong
Guys with Louis Anderson, all those great character actors and
Brian James actually served in the National Guard with Tim Tom,
so there's that.
So I, I, I, I have to ask now, you know,
do you think the Wrong Guys would be our next VHS choice for,
for when we hop over to the diner and do, do,
do in the parade way on that, on that show? Yeah,
I will happily do the Wrong Guys. It could be a fun comedy
kind of fun comedy for sure. Oh my gosh, I can't
believe that Brian James and Tim Thomason served in
the Army Reserve. How, how bad. They were both cooks in
a tank company. Both of them were. How fucking cool is that?
It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool, you know, to, I mean,
giants of men, Giants of the genre, you know.
Yeah, yeah. I don't know, man. Like Tim Thomas,
a dude, it's just, you know, he's up there with, with the, Brian James
is with the Lance Henriksen. It's like if you see Thomas's name on something,
put it in, man. Watch it because like at worst
it's going to be, you know, a B movie that doesn't go anywhere. But he's
amazing in it. And at best it could be fucking trances.
Zone Troopers volunteers, you know,
any of the good Thomas and shit, man. Can I tell you the plot?
The nemesis? I really can't, but I can tell you I enjoy the hell out
of it. And it's better because Thomas is in it, you know,
it's better because of that, right? Oh, Thomason's like the only good
It's insane. It's insane. Action surrounded by Tim Thomas
and that's fine, you know. But yeah,
Zone Troopers, it's a high recommend. Like I said, it's, it's, I hate to hate
to use the term feel good World War II movie, but this film
pulls it off at the, in 85 minutes and you're rooting for the good
guys the whole time, which some, sometimes you need
that you need, you know, mindless,
you know, war movie where, you know, the good guys aren't
really in that much danger. Throughout C2 you're rooting for them to
win. Although they do, they do lose one in the movie, and it's
very sad. But you know what? It's. It's. It's great.
It's just. It's just amazing. If you haven't seen Zone Troopers, if you have
to let the VHS cover our foia, this is.
This is a gem. And I know it gets a lot of love from my
peers as well, so there's that. Yeah. And losing one of your
soldiers in the course of the mission is also a genre trope.
You have to have, like, the.
That's one out of four, though. So it's kind of like got that dawn of
the Dead aspect, you know? Right. But you have
to have that, you know, tell the kids back on the farm, Johnny. You know,
you have to have that moment, like, when the guy's dying and he's got to
say something and, you know, I. I don't know like that, to me, just.
Yes, it's sad. No, of course you don't want them to go, but it's.
It's. It's what you signed up for. You know what I mean? When you go
into a movie like this, you. You expect a. A scene like that,
you know, and. And you'll see the same kind of trope in, like, a Vietnam
movie. You know, Vietnam movies steal a lot of the,
like, World War II stuff. There's always a soldier that dies. Someone's always cradling
someone's bloody head while they're spewing their last words. Like, it's. It's.
It's a. It's a familiar trope. I want it in there. You know what I
mean? As sad as it is, I want it in there. No, I'm not saying
it's not necessary, but it has. It has that dawn of the Dead vibe because,
you know, when Roger gets bit and Peter has to
shoot him, you know, when you lose a character in dawn of the Dead,
it has an impact because you. You've lived with these characters
for, what, 20 minutes before that,
and when you lose one, it has a big impact because you've
been with him the whole time. Great. And. And,
yeah, and just the fact that, as I say, they just nail everything
so successfully. And it was sort of like that,
you know, with the. The Dangerous was like,
every time they attempted a new scene in a new genre,
I'm like, I couldn't quite believe they were pulling, like, the ninja scenes
look like ninja scenes, and the film noir scenes look like film noir scenes,
and the buddy cop scenes looked like buddy cop scenes. I'm like, it's,
it's kind of wild how they are pulling this, this off because it was,
you know, totally all over the place, but, but somehow successful. And I
think that's, that's what it is. Like, plant your feet firmly in the genre that
you want to tell this story in. Whip in a few, you know, one liners.
Don't be afraid to use genre tropes and
cliches that you've seen before because the audience expects it. They know what
they signed up for when they put the tape in. Like, you know, the audience
wants a little bit of that. Just find your own way to do a twist
on it, you know, And I think if people focus more on that
than like, man, I don't know about making this movie. I got to put a
lot of, you know, blood, guts, tits, you know, car wrecks,
whatever in it. Sure, all of that helps. And if you can afford to do
it, do it. But, but I, I don't know, man. Figure out
the basics first. I see too many movies trying to be grindhouse films without
ever really knowing what went into making an actual grindhouse film. So I
don't know, figure out the, the basics first and show me you can make a
movie with the basics and then, and then layer on all the other shit because
that's just window dressing to, you know, you got to get me to
come into the store and enjoy the store. You know what I mean? So that's,
that's what I would say to low budget filmmakers. Go watch these two movies and
pull the best parts from them and go ahead and make yours. That's what I
would say. Oh, yeah, yeah. 100%. 100% agreed
on everything you're saying. That's the end of this
zone. Troopers review and we hope you guys go watch it. But we
will be right back to close out the show.
More prophetic than his prediction of space travel in
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than his world. Drowning of nuclear holocaust in a time machine.
From H.G. wells, history's most credible prophet, now comes his
most incredible story. Empire of the Ants.
A terrifying tale of civilization fighting for survival against
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And man, the master becomes comes man the
slave. Joan Collins Robert Lansing HG Wells
Empire of the Ants From American International Pictures
Rated pg. Parental guidance suggested.
Empire of the Ants they shall inherit
the earth sooner than you think.
Well, that's a six or six. John Boy of Parade
Films that we have loved. I think when we get to,
we get to the 10th one, I think it'll be the 10th
and the 11th one because I think we'll split up the Betty and
the Cruisers films and we'll decide which one's better because
I have an opinion on which one's better and why
that is. So do I. And I think, weirdly, we differ
in our opinion. I do think we differ in our opinion, but I love both.
But there's one that I think is clearly better than the other one.
That's fine. But John, you have a lot of stuff going
on PM Entertainment podcast. I mentioned earlier, I keep mentioning on my
show that people should listen to it because that's, that's all about, you know,
sharing is caring whether you share a link or you share,
you know, word of mouth and anything is good publicity.
And John's been killing it with the interviews and the reviews and the guests
and brought back. Have I listened to this yet?
No, I haven't listened to the one where you brought more. Put MO back
on there. And I love when you guys get together. So that that's coming
tomorrow. I'm listening to the MO episode tomorrow. But yeah,
Shotgun baby. The shotgun of Jones.
Great. And what I'm also enjoying about the PM Entertainment podcast
is digging into some of their early stuff. I mean, look, everyone knows the.
Or the right people know. I'm gonna say everyone, but the right people know,
like the Don the Dragon Wilson stuff, the Jeff Wincott stuff, the Gary Daniels stuff.
You know, people know that 94 through to 97, sweet spot
of PM straight to video action where they were doing,
you know, Hollywood explosions on a tiny budget and Spiro
was flipping cars on the LA bridge. And like, yeah,
those are fantastic and those are phenomenal. And those are clearly the things
that bring people back to pm. But I tell you what, dude, delving into some
of their earlier stuff. A Shotgun and Midnight Warrior and
LA Heat and LA Vice and some of those early ones, dude,
there are some gems lurking Amongst the early 16mil and and
early 35mil PM entertainment collection that
I can't wait to get into. So yeah, the PM Entertainment podcast. Come listen.
Share Support Follow us on Facebook we're always over there talking
about what your favorite stunts are, what your favorite martial arts scenes are, who your
favorite PM Entertainment all stars are. We talk talk behind the scenes with
people behind the movies. We've got interviews with all sorts of
fun cats lined up. We've spoken to Ken Blakey,
who shot almost two thirds of their Films. We've, we've, we've spoken to both P
and M in PM Entertainment. That's Rick Peppin and Joseph May.
We had Kathleen Kimmel on talking about Art of Dying and Wings
Houser. She's obviously a genre icon in her own right. Done a ton
of great stuff. We've got Art Camacho coming
up on the show. So, you know, we're talking to all sorts of genre
legends both in front of and behind the camera. So come follow
us along. But that's not all. We've got two episodes of the After Movie
Diner that I found on the cutting room floor that Gary reminded me. I hadn't
put one up yet. And the other one. So there's a new parade after
movie diner parade episode going up this week, followed by actually
an old Jim Belushi Matt Paria episode that I had forgot to put up that's
also going to go up in the next couple of weeks. So those were
both missing episodes that I forgot to put up. So they're
gonna go up and then I am doing guest spots on the
Director Video, Connor Sersho. I did a guest.
I'm doing a guest spot on the Pint Pop Culture podcast.
And I might be on the forgotten film cast covering
Donald Pleasant's race for the Yankees effort within
the next month sometime. So I'm going to be out and about spreading the word
about PM Entertainment, spreading the word about Michael Pere and keeping
the airwaves open because it's about all we got left. The the Yankees
effort film. A film in which Donna Pleasant is drunkenly destroys
a bar with a chainsaw. So there's that, you know.
Yeah, it's phenomenal.
It's phenomenal. Any movie that starts with Donald Pleasance being dangled under a helicopter
with a net trying to catch deer while he's very obviously
drunk off his ass is well worth your time. You recommended
this film to me to watch and I watched it like the next day and
I was not, I was not disappointed at all.
If you want to see an outrageously effeminate George
Peppard in a big woolly hat chase down Donald Pleasance
in his hobo tank and you're like, what are you talking about, John? I'm like,
no, no, no. There's a scene in this movie where mountain men,
hobos build Donald Pleasant's a tank out of like bits of
things lying around in their garage. It this movie again, another thing
of beauty that that should just be experienced by all film lovers everywhere.
And that's the last thing I'm, I've said it before, but I'm going to say
it again. Go down rabbit holes, find something you like. Find an actor you
like. Find a genre you like. Find a director you like,
whatever it is. Go down rabbit holes, Watch whole career
spanning films by a certain person or starring a
certain person. Because the gems, my friend, the gems, we're finding
them with Parade. I found it with Pleasants, I found it with Hauser. Once you
delve, my friend, delve deep. The gems, my friend, that float
to the surface, it's a, it's a, it's a beautiful goddamn thing. And I,
I thank you for it, my brother. Gary. Yeah, man, it's fun
taking this journey with you for sure. I, I'm, I'm, I'm always, I'm always
down like a clown to, to talk with my good friend there, John Cross.
And it, it usually turns the shenanigans. And they're very, very good
shenanigans. Oh my gosh.
But yeah, what I got coming up,
by the time this comes out, you should have heard a brand new Last Call
of Torchies by now. You should have heard an episode which Mike White
I did about toxic dudes. We did the men's Club
from 1986 and then the Company of Men from
1987. Now these are films that, you know, may discuss you as far
as the subject matter goes and the way the men talk to the film.
But, but they are very well made films about toxic,
you know, with amazing performances in them. But beyond
that, X is on hiatus right now. X is doing
some family stuff. I'm not going to get into that because it's not, it's not
my business. But you know, either way, Suzanne may
show up, but in the meantime, it's going to be really, really a
smorgasbord of people. I, I mentioned a Mike White about doing more with me
because, you know, since my, my co hosts aren't always available. So I'm gonna
reach out to Mike to do some more stuff because, you know,
for a guy who, who's as busy as Mike White is with the projection
booth and everything else, he still takes the time to
take a chance on me like he did. I, I don't know, 12 years doing
the show now or something like that, where the man literally gave me a handbook
on podcasting to say, hey, you know what? Go out and play and,
and I, I, I tribute to him and, and Mike Murphy for, for making
me what you're hearing right now. The,
the confidence to be on the Microphone. But I may reach
out to Doug Tilly and Duncan McLeish, hopefully,
because Duncan has been, has been MIA
from podcasting lately. So I hope I can convince him to say, hey, Duncan,
you just want to do something random with me, you know, like, like the good
old days. This, this is what I'm after, is the good old days,
which makes me so good, makes me feel so good to record with John Cross
here because it reminds me of, you know, the good old days
were. I say this all the time. The Internet is not toxic,
people. If you go on the Internet, you find a buddy with common interests.
If you see a post about a film that's new to you, but you've
never seen it, and that film is fucking bonkers. I,
I see this so much time, so, so many times. So take
the Facebook, take to Instagram, maybe not so much X,
but take to those places you might find
joy in a person or in a film or
in a chocolate chip cookie or whatever the it
is that brings you joy. And just this ugly ass world of ours,
it's gonna make your, your day brighter. Okay,
here I am going Mr. Rogers and all your asses. But you know,
you guys, no, dude. I'll, I'll, I, I will say the same thing, man.
I'll echo what you're saying. You know, podcasting since 2011.
I got into it because of my good buds over the Profondo Cinema podcast
that was just legendary at the time and what an incredible show that was.
And through podcasting, as I say, haven't made
a lot of money. It'll never make my name a household name. I don't want
it to, I don't need it to. But I have made friends who are now
family and will remain family for life by doing
this thing of finding a pal, talking to
once a week about a movie that we love. And not only that, but it
has led towards, as I say, discovering jam upon jam upon
jam, which is if you are creatively fueled by movies,
you're always looking for that first time bite
again. You're looking for that little jab of excitement
that you first got when you first saw your favorite movie. You're looking for that.
That's what you're looking for. Yeah, sure, you can put on something that's comfort food.
We all like to do that as well. But you're looking for, like, the first
time you bit into that juicy steak and it tasted like no other steak.
And you know, you do that by, by going on these journeys with your friends
and, and, and Being brave enough to figure out some movies that otherwise,
and apparently according to IMDb, do not get a lot of love.
You suddenly go, oh, my God, these are. These are movies I'm gonna watch annually
now because I love them so much. And so, you know,
I can't speak higher of, you know,
the Internet is a tool. It's how you use it. And entirely too many people
are using it to bitch and moan at each other these days. I get it.
I understand why. I get the fear, I get the anger.
I get the division. I understand it. But if you all just took a deep
breath, if you all just took a deep breath and instead
were like, well, wait a minute. What movies do you like? What music do you
like? What? And I know people are like, well, that's ignoring the issue. It's not
ignoring the issue. It's pivoting the conversation to something we can all
agree on. And once we're all in a mode of agreement, we could then maybe
circle back to what's actually the issue, and maybe we'd then be in more
of a mood to have a friendly conversation about it as opposed to a
bullshit conversation about it. So, anyway, that's it.
I'm just adding to the Mr. Rogers Ness of it, but in my own
callous way. But that's it,
my friend. I love you. I love all the people I met through
podcasting. And long may we continue, because as I said,
I watch the. The Pump up the Volume. And there's that amazing scene at
the end of Pump up the Volume with Christian Slater being like, these are your
airwaves. Don't let them take. Take them from you. And at the end of the
film, everyone has started their own radio show. Well, everyone can
start a podcast now, and everyone has started a podcast now, and that's absolutely fine.
But the only way we keep getting to do these podcasts
and. And get heard doing these podcasts is if we support each other, if we
share each other, if we like each other, we comment on each other's posts,
that's the only way this works. Otherwise, all the
people who pay through the nose for their podcast, all the celebrities and.
And news people and all the rest who have podcasts who just shit
out interview shows every week, and no one learns anything new,
and it's all just repetitive garbage. They win. Well, don't let them win.
Share, like, comment on the independent stuff, the stuff that.
Where we're digging deep and doing the cool. That's all I'm gonna say. I'm done
now. Thank you. Oh, my gosh.
This is. This is all important, though, brother. But yeah, this is the
end Cinema Beef podcast for this time around.
But this has been your Cindy podcast. And I say your every time
because I mean that in my heart, man.
Where if you got beef, we've got the grinder. See you all
next time.