The World's Only Podcast™ about bizarre, overlooked, and misbegotten media
Jen and Tim jack freely over a rote 1992 sci-fi action thriller, Freejack, starring Emilio Estevez and Mick Jagger. Your hosts kind of forget to talk about Jagger, but Tim does reminisce fondly about Four Loko.
Jen says “Psycho Ninja” when she was actually thinking of Psycho Kickboxer. The latter film is absolutely delightful, by the way.
If you’re curious about the gory details of Denise Richards’ divorce from Charlie Sheen, you can read them here, directly from the court document.
Tim and Jen enlist animal expert Emma Bowers (Hyenas and Gin on YouTube) to explain why the fascinating story of two man-eating lions resulted in a boring movie called The Ghost and the Darkness.
Watch a 1996 documentary about the man-eaters of Tsavo, which includes brief interviews with stars Kilmer and Douglas and director Stephen Hopkins. One interviewee theorizes that the local lions’ taste for human flesh stems from generations of slave traders who left injured or dying captives to their fate in the bush.
This 1996 Entertainment Weekly article sums up how bad Val Kilmer’s reputation got to be in Hollywood.
As Richard Stanley, who directed Kilmer for three days in The Island of Dr. Moreau before being fired, recalls, “Val would arrive, and an argument would happen.” Says John Frankenheimer, who replaced Stanley: “I don’t like Val Kilmer, I don’t like his work ethic, and I don’t want to be associated with him ever again.” And Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher calls his onetime star “childish and impossible.”
Entertainment Weekly, May 31st, 1996
You can watch the tiger attack video Tim mentioned, with added context. Rawr!
There’s even a mineral named Tsavorite which was discovered in Tanzania and named in honor of the area.
Finally, listen to our episode on the shockingly ill-conceived movie Roar, with special guest Emma!
Jen and Tim welcome Speed Racer evangelist Paul Jay to talk about, uh, the 2008 flop Speed Racer.
Over at culture blog The Sundae, Dean Buckley makes a case against Speed Racer as “art film” and for the Wachowskis as purveryors of schlock (in a positive way). Agree or disagree, it’s a thoughtful piece.
The Daily Beast has details of Emile Hirsch’s attack on a Paramount executive at a Sundance party, although the headline’s assertion that he “starred” in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a slight exaggeration (he had a small part as man-about-town hairdresser and murder victim Jay Sebring).
The documentary Riding Balls of Fire: Group B, The Wildest Years of Rallying presents a nice overview of that brief era of rally car racing, plus it’s free on Tubi!
Paul guested on the show many moons ago to talk about The Paul Lynde Halloween Special. Listen to that episode here!
Your hosts range widely and freely on the topic of horror: specifically, found footage horror. The films discussed are The McPherson Tape, The Blair Witch Project, Backrooms, and Horror in the High Desert.
Watch The Backrooms short we talked about here on YouTube.
Director Dean Alioto talked with the Found Footage Critic about UFO Abduction and Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, aka The McPherson Tape:
In 1989 Dean Alioto shot his first film, UFO Abduction, for a meager budget of $6,500—the master copy of the film was subsequently destroyed and thus the movie was never widely released. Ten years later Dean Alioto pitched UFO Abduction to Dick Clark Productions, who picked up the idea and gave Dean Alioto a $1.2 million budget to shoot a remake for television. In 1998, the remake was released entitled Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (a.k.a. The McPherson Tape).
Over the years the names of these films has resulted in a great deal of confusion. Even to this day, both UFO Abduction and Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County are referred to as “The McPherson Tape.”
Found Footage Critic
An explorer named Tom covered the tragic story of the Death Valley Germans at his blog, OtherHand.
Tim and Jen start spooky season early with a shockingly dark release from Disney, Return to Oz.
Jen forgot to mention that the main reason the film does not resembles the MGM film from 1939 apart from the Ruby Slippers™ is because all of the trappings of the MGM version were and are copyrighted. In fact, Disney had to shell out to use that plot device in the film. Hence, while Walter Murch’s desire to make a movie closer in spirit to the L. Frank Baum material is admirable, it most likely played second fiddle to the demands of copyright law.
Additionally, the movie finally made a profit from a 1949 re-release, not “like twenty years later” or whatever Jen glibly claimed.
Animator Doug Aberle made a video where he talks about his process for animating the demise of the Nome King. Plus, he includes interviews with the late Will Vinton.
If you want more details about the drama between Sarah Polley and Terry Gilliam, you can read an excerpt from her memoir here.
Tim and Jen defend a movie you either love or hate, Darren Aronofsky’s mother!
See crybaby Kyle Smith’s review of mother! at the world’s worst magazine if you want to know what kind of thing gets your hosts into a theater to see a movie.
Jen whiffed the explanation of the bad blood between Satoshi Kon and Darren Aronofsky. The situation is way more complicated than the latter purchasing the rights to Perfect Blue (which never happened, incidentally). The Animation Obsessive Substack did a deep dive.
Looking for an exploration of the meaning of the pelican-in-her-piety from someone way more informed than Jen? The nice people at the St. Mary Magdalen School of Theology have you covered.
For more Aronofsky, listen to the episode where we compared Pi to an obscure British television series, Hammer House of Horror.
Jen and Tim marvel at the cursed, ill-conceived, bloated sequel to Chinatown, The Two Jakes.
Errata: Jen was wrong and Polanski fled the country in February of 1978, not 1977.
The Two Jakes derailed the Robert Towne/Jack Nicholson friendship, which had been forged in the early 60s while both worked for Roger Corman, for at least a decade. Towne admitted as much in Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. However, in a 2006 interview, Towne parries a question about the film thusly:
Well, in the interest of maintaining my friendships with Jack Nicholson and Robert Evans, I’d rather not go into it, but let’s just say The Two Jakes wasn’t a pleasant experience for any of us. But, we’re all still friends, and that’s what matters most.
Robert Towne
So, you know, awwwwww.
The History Channel website has the cold hard facts about Jack Nicholson’s 1994 road rage incident, in which he attacked another motorist’s car with a golf club.
Tim and Jen welcome Doug Waugh of B-Movie TV and the Slashers podcast to discuss an overlooked Australian heist film that’s heaps good: Money Movers!
Purchase Umbrella Entertainment’s blu-ray of Money Movers at their website!
Urban Dictionary has a detailed entry on the Australian slang term “toecutter,” if you’re curious.
The “Barge Arse” clip Tim referred to may be viewed here.
We talked about Money Movers director Bruce Beresford way back in our episode about flop anthology film Aria, and Jen would like to formally apologize for calling him a “genteel hack.”
Jen and Tim welcome back Josh of The Worst of All Possible Worlds podcast to discuss the Oliver Stone version of the Eric Bogosian play, Talk Radio from 1988.
Jen got the date of the crash of Air Florida flight 90 wrong— it happened in January of 1982.
“The comment that brought Howard Stern his most notoriety during his time on Washington, DC radio in the early ‘80s was the infamous Fourteenth Street Bridge Incident. As morning man at ‘DC101’ WWDC, Stern was reacting to the Air Florida flight that crashed into the bridge in February 1982. ‘What’s the price of a one-way ticket from National to the Fourteenth Street Bridge?’ he asked. ‘Is that going to be a regular stop?’”
Via insideradio.com
Also Stern did not call the actual Air Florida ticket counter, because as most of us know, talk radio prank calls are faked. Just ask Bryan of Street Fight Radio! In fact, you can hear a deep dive into shock jocks for a pledge as low as $1 over at the Street Fight Patreon!
Shortly after his murder by white supremacists, a memorial piece about shock jock Alan Berg appeared in Rolling Stone. The author of the piece, Stephen Singular, later expanded this piece into the book Talked to Death: The Life and Murder of Alan Berg. You can read the original Rolling Stone article here.
And don’t miss our freewheeling episode with the TWOAPW guys about a sad little fake Hammer film, IT! starring Roddy McDowall!
Unlock with Patreon