248 – Turn On

Turn-On turned viewers off

Jen and Tim unearth a cursed relic: the television show cancelled before the final credits even rolled, Turn On!

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Thanks to SoapsNThings on YouTube for archiving so many episodes of Peyton Place!

The offensive Aussie show Jen alluded to that also got cancelled during the first episode was Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos. You can see the singular episode at the Internet Archive!

The 7-second TikTok joke Tim referenced “Moving a photo in Microsoft Word“.

Finally, Gershon Kingsley’s “Popcorn” is kind of a bop.

247 – The Driver

Iggy and the Stooges’ prequel to The Passenger

Tim and Jen ride along with a taciturn Ryan O’Neal for Walter Hill’s sinuous neo-noir, The Driver!

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Walter Hill spoke with Deadline in 2024 about his influences, Tony Scott’s idiot brother, and of course, westerns.

Hill also talked about the controversy surrounding The Warriors in an interview for Esquire:

I think the reason why there were some violent incidents is really very simple: The movie was very popular with the street gangs, especially young men, a lot of whom had very strong feelings about each other. And suddenly they all went to the movies together!

246 – Heist

…my boat.

Jen and Tim examine some D-tier David Mamet: the by-the-numbers heist flick, uh, Heist.

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Chris Person of the worker-owned tech news site Aftermath dug up the previously unavailable special Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants in pristine broadcast resolution and made it available to the world once again. Read an interview with Person about the process and the importance of archiving conducted by David J. Roth and Dan McQuade of Defector, and watch the special at the Internet Archive. Fun fact: David Mamet directed the special!

Person also wrote a rundown of the cutting edge of analog media archiving (as of mid-2024, anyway) that is extremely worth your time.

245 – Casino Royale

Fred Schneider is John Waters as Salvador Dali

Tim and Jen suffer through a patchwork spy pastiche, Casino Royale.

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Errata: Jen attributed the anecdote about producer Charles K. Feldman removing the pay-offs to the jokes in the script to Joe McGrath, but it actually came from another director credited on the film, Val Guest.

Speaking of, you can look through some of superagent-turned-producer Feldman’s personal papers courtesy of AFI.

Robert Von Dassanowsky’s critical essay on Casino Royale just might be the final word on the film:

“Casino Royale’s relationship to Bond is only emblematic; it is a prismatic translation of Fleming’s milieu, not a linear adaptation. And it remains, even today, a wry and provocative sociopolitical satire. The often criticized inconsistencies of the film’s multiple James Bonds, including the banal 007 of Terence Cooper, brought in to cover Sellers’s unfinished characterization, intentionally work to confuse the issue of Bond, to overwork the paradigm until it has no value. As Walter Benjamin in his influential essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” would have it, the original artwork, with its auratic value, has been replaced by accessible but worthless copies. Here, the most unique icon of the era is intentionally made common – a fashion, a fad, a façade: the multiple Bonds are all copies of a first copy, Connery’s Bond.”

244 – I, Robot

I robot, doesn’t everybody?

Jen sends thousands of robots to compel Tim to discuss a film “suggested by” Isaac Asimov’s writings, I, Robot!

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The creepshot photographer Jen couldn’t remember the name of was Miroslav Tichý. You can see many of his surreptitious and admittedly beautiful works at ArtNet.

Speaking of Czech artists, we neglected to mention that Alex Proyas is currently working on an adaptation of Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R. (“Rossum’s Universal Robots”). This play, of course, is the one that brought the word “robot” to the English-speaking world.

If you love arid Will Smith blockbusters as much as Tim does (lol j/k), check out our episode on Wild Wild West!

243 – Prince of the Sun

You enlightened little shit

Tim can barely hold back his excitement about a movie that (kind of) has Cynthia Rothrock in it: Prince of the Sun!

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View the (kind of) English dub of the film at the Internet Archive.

Jen forgot that her Letterboxd list was called “Anti-Girlboss Movies“, and any movie starring Mai certainly qualifies for it. (Protip: there’s also a list of every single movie we’ve talked about on the show, and sometimes it’ll give you a little hint as to what’s coming up next!)

“we’ll fix it in post,” they said

242 – Psycho Kickboxer

…qu’est-ce que c’est??

Jen invites comedian Kath Barbadoro to enjoy Psycho Kickboxer, the martial arts schlock movie that put Virginia Beach on the map!*

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Hear more of Kath on the Lie, Cheat, & Steal and What a Time to Be Alive podcasts. She also riffs movies with Master Pancake Theater on Twitch!

When in Virginia Beach, visit the Hot Tuna, as seen in Psycho Kickboxer!

Read Daisy Thursday’s Sex Change USA: Transgender Life in the Supermarket Tabloid at the Shapeless Press website.

*I assume. I’ve never been.

241 – The Black Hole

Stare into the abyss and two big googly eyes stare back

A mysterious stranger returns to the show to evaluate a weak Disney stab at a dark sci-fi blockbuster: The Black Hole!

Zencastr gives you flawless audio, crystal-clear video, and effortless editing. Spend less time juggling tools, more time making great slo— uhh, content!

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The Hollywood Reporter looked back on the production of The Black Hole in 2019, including interviews with Joseph Bottoms, director Gary Nelson, and Robert Forster.

Wayne Barlowe‘s Hell is so fucking cool that even James Cameron, Clive Barker, and Guillermo del Toro have raved about it. See it at the artist’s website.

240 – Skidoo

Skidoo: what your dog does across the carpet

Jen welcomes Jesse Hawken of the venerable Junk Filter podcast to help her detox from the bad trip that is Otto Preminger’s Skidoo!

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See Preminger host his own trailer for Bunny Lake is Missing, and you better not show up late or he’ll open up a can of Vienna-sausage-in-chicken-broth whoop-ass on you.

Preminger and singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson appeared on the August 30th, 1968 episode of Playboy After Dark to promote, quixotically, their latest film. Nilsson seems to know what’s up, triggering Preminger’s always-present wrath.

Skidoo screenwriter (yes, they had one!) Doran William Cannon wrote a piece for the New York Times in 1971 about the painful experience of writing Brewster McCloud for Robert Altman.

239 – Blood Diner

You’ll horrifically bust a gut laughing!

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

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

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

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