Weirdhouse Cinema: Innerspace

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, guest-host David Striepe of the Talkin' Tofu podcast returns to chat with Rob about the 1987 miniaturization film “Innerspace,” directed by Joe Dante and starring Dennis Quaid, Martin Short and Meg Ryan.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
and today I have a returning special guest co host.
We're joined once more by David Streepy of the Talkin'
TOFU podcast. Dave, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Thank you, thanks for having me back, and hello to
all the stuffies. I think we agreed that they're called,
so hello again to all of you. Glad to be back.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
That's right, we're gonna be talking about the Gate three.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Right, yes, no, I wish, Oh my god, could you
imagine old Man Terry now?

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Instead, we're gonna be We were talking about like a
handful of potential movies and we ended up going with
the one. I think this one was probably the one
that you brought up that was the most holiday friendly
and I think might be a stealth holiday film because
they did see a Santa Claus at one point.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
That's all it takes to qualify, really, and this did
happen in California, so really, your only cues that it
is the holidays and a West Coast movie are from
the decorations and not from climate or any anything else.
That's going on. Yeah, we did have We had a
bunch of really strong contenders for possibilities, but I think
this one, in addition to its appropriateness, it's it's the

(01:26):
it's a big one, but it kind of made a
small splash and a big splash at the same time.
It's really really unique.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, I don't feel like Interspace, the movie you're talking
about in nineteen eighty seven's Interspace. This is Joe Dante.
Film got a great cast, I mean, starring Dennis Quaid,
Martin Short, Meg Ryan. I mean, it came out big
summer special effects movie, apparently made money. This was not
a box office bomb by any stretch, and it it

(01:56):
amazed a lot of kids. I was one of those
kids who watched this film multiple times. I guess I
maybe saw it on TV the first time and then
maybe just rented it a bunch of times after that
on VHS. But I was super into this picture. I
would make little lego models roughly based on the two
main submarine bots in the film.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, I think that you're right this one definitely. I
don't think it was a flop at the box office,
but maybe had higher hopes given the pedigree of everybody involved,
but I think it was a big renter. It was
a big VHS. I remember having a huge presence at
the video store, both in cardboard cutout, but also the
number of copies that were on the shelves, the availability

(02:37):
of the copies that were on the shelves. This movie
seemed to turn up quite a bit in sleepovers on
trips where you would get five bucks to go to
the video store and pick something out. I just remember
seeing this movie a lot, a lot, And I think
I mentioned this too. I texted you this while I

(02:57):
was rewatching recently. There's like a whole hour of this
movie that I completely forgot about in the middle.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's easy to expect with an
effects film like this, you have your big effects sequences,
you have your big finale. Those are the ones that
certainly stuck in my head the most. Also, some of
the like the Martin Short over the top freak out moments,
which I mean, if you're going to hire Martin Short,
especially you know during the eighties or the nineties or

(03:23):
well or subsequent decades, you're going to want at least
a little of.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
That or even now. Yeah, I think that's that's still
a stock in trade, and I think that, you know what,
I kind of maybe tuned out and we'll get to it,
of course, But what didn't really stick on my memory
was all the work needed to move Martin Short around
the board. Yes, and upon a rewatch, it's pretty compelling
stuff that's moving him around the board. But like you said,

(03:48):
I'm more fascinated with what's going on inside his body,
what the tech looks like, how he got there in
the first place, and how he's going to get out
of that situation. And there's a huge chunk in the
middle of that sandwich that I wasn't really thinking about.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yeah, it's a film that is, it's constantly in motion.
It keeps adding new elements, often wild elements on top
of the shu. Yeah, new characters. There's a whole whole
cast of villains in this picture, as we'll discuss. So
it's never boring, it's it's in constant motion. It is
like Martin Short as a film.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Martin Short
film film modified.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Now this is of course a miniaturization film. If you're
I think everyone out there is familiar with this subgenre
of science fiction by now, with the classic example being
Fantastic Voyage. This is essentially Fantastic Voyage through Martin Short.
I don't know that we've had a menturization film recently.
It seems like more recently you tend to see it

(04:49):
pop up like as a treatment on some sort of
a science fiction show. I think Rick and Morty did
a miniaturization episode years back, and I don't know that
we've had any kind of like big Fantastic to Voyage
style adventure recently.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
I think the one that stands out to me, and
it's not a movie, but the Futurama episode where Fry
eats an egg salad sandwich from a gas station, that's
a great one. The parasites from the sandwich colonize his
body and become super intelligent and have a whole civilization
in there, and they have to go inside to reconcile that.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yes, that's a great one because it's it's Fantastic Voyage themed,
but it is also a Flowers for Algernon themed episode,
so it has it has a fair amount of depth
to it as well, and then just a lot of
great jokes, and there's the whole worm thing why people
came over on the sandwich. Great stuff. All right, let's
go ahead and listen in to at least some of

(05:44):
the trailer audio here. Let's let it roll.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
Test pilot Tuck Pendleton wants to make history. Supermarket clerk
Jack Putter needs a vacation. Late.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
That's not good, you know.

Speaker 4 (06:01):
It's Lieutenant Pendleton is about to be miniaturized, placed into
this needle, and then injected into this.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Rabbit back and roll. But something went wrong.

Speaker 4 (06:17):
And Tuck's about to get a new destination inside Jack Putter.
Give yourself a shot of adventure inner space.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
All right, David, I see you had a note here
about the music in the trailer, possibly the trailer we
used here, but possibly another trailer. But still, this is
a great point regarding the music.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, this is the music used for the Fertelly chase
scene in Goonies, The dun dunt dun dun't. It's always
great when a podcast guest just like hums a line
nolesly for you. But it's really really it's opening scene
of Gooney. It's really iconic bit of music. Cool to
see it here, but also a little bit strange to

(07:05):
see it here too.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yeah, it's like when you encounter a trailer where they're
clearly using the Aliens theme song, you know, it's like,
that's great, you're really getting me amped up, but amped
up for a different movie.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Right, just kind of dug through the drawer for it
and got something that you knew I would recognize and
knew would pull me in.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
I guess they still do this today, right, use because
the music's not always together when you're putting together a trailer,
or you're just like, well, we have rights to better music,
let's sell this puppy.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah. I think that's you know, the marketing can be
that detached from the actual production that unless you've got
the Star Wars theme ready to go with your Star
Wars trailer, you're gonna take some liberties. And it really,
you know, matches the tone of the movie in a
way that if you weren't again hyper familiar with goonies
the way that I was as a kid. That was

(07:54):
the other video that I was renting. The music fits
the tone of the trailer, fits the tone of the
movie really really well. It's a wacky, wacky movie.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, absolutely, all right, So some of you might be wondering, well,
where can I watch innerspace before proceeding with the rest
of the episode. Well, luckily for you, this was a
major motion picture. It has not been entirely forgotten. It's
maybe not as celebrated as it should be, but you
can find streams of it, you know, digital rentals and purchases.
A Blu Ray edition is out there. And I do

(08:25):
notice that it has an older director's commentary on it
with director Joe Dante, producer Michael Finnell, co stars Kevin
McCarthy and Robert Piccardo, and also visual effects supervisor Dennis Murreen.
Obviously an older director's commentary. I haven't listened to it,
but I don't think I've ever listened to a Joe
Dante commentary track. But he's one of those guys that's

(08:48):
so knowledgeable. I bet bet it's pretty great.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
It's really interesting that Kevin McCarthy and Robert Piccardo would
be the sit ins on that commentary and not Quaid
or Short or even Meg Ryan.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Well know, sometimes you can't get the big fish. They
move on to other projects I don't.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Know, and their presence in the movie is pretty significant.
These guys are not bit players at all. They're huge
parts of the movie.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Plus with Joe Dante, you know that he loves like old,
older actors, you know from classic Hollywood pictures, So you
know there's Kevin McCarthy, and then he loves to cast
Robert Riccardo and put him in strange romantic situations such
as with the made up Grimlin from Grimlins too.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
He's it's he's so weird in this movie is character.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
I can't wait to get into that character.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
All right, well, let's let's talk a bit more about
the people involved here, starting with Joe Dante born nineteen
forty six. Joe and I have previously discussed Joe Dante
on Weird House Cinema because we talked about Grimlins too.
One of the things that I pointed out, just sort
of to try and sum him up, is that he's
one of these guys that seems to have a foot
in two worlds, Like on one hand, he's like a

(10:05):
horror legend, and on the other hand he's this obvious
Spielbergian ambulin entertainment guy. And you see more of the second,
but also a little the first in this one. On
the horror front, you have the likes of the Howling
from eighty one Piranha from seventy eight, and then you
get into that Grimlin zone, which is kind of crossing
the threshold. He directed the segment It's a Good Life

(10:27):
in Twilight Zone, the movie from nineteen eighty three. But
then he also did things like nineteen eighty five's The Explorers,
eighty nine's The Birds, nineteen ninety three, He's Manatee, and
this film especially, it is definitely in that ambulance zone.
It is an ambulin entertainment picture.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Yeah, he's definitely, you know, he's He's This sounds like
a dig but I don't mean it that way. He
is like a ranch dressing of a director in that
he can go in any direction. I think he's got
strong horror chops, but he really shines when he's bringing
a bunch of differ different elements to a bunch of

(11:02):
different genres to the movie and creating something that's completely unique.
See it in Grimlins one hundred percent, and you really
see it here where the slapstick wouldn't work without the
spy espionage angle, without the tech angle, without the sci
fi element of it, like it all blends together and
creates something that is really his signature, you know.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yeah, and I would argue that it even feels more
cohesive than Grimlin's. Grimlin's certainly a better known film, but
that's one that I always felt like it didn't completely
know what it wanted to be. This film, I feel
like it balances everything pretty nicely. You know, nothing feels
out a step.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
I agree. I think that he's having fun here, and
not to say that Grimlins is not fun, but Grimlins
feels like it's trying to send you a message as well,
and I think there's no message here. The message is
what if this happened?

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Let's watch and let's keep upping the anti Yeah, yeah, Oh,
I have a post editing insertion to make here. You
might have caught my mistake there. I just referenced a
nineteen ninety three Joe Dante movie that I said was
called Manate. The film is, of course, Mattine, but I

(12:22):
left the mistake in because I don't know about you,
but I'm suddenly really fascinated with the idea of a
nineteen ninety three Joe Dante film about Manates. Who knows
what that would have consisted of. All right, now, let's
get back into the episode. Let's see getting into the
writers on this Jeffrey Boehm, who of nineteen forty six

(12:44):
through two thousand has I believe the mainscreenplay credit here.
Accomplished American screenwriter whose credits include seventy eight Straight Time,
eighty three's The Dead Zone, eighty seven's The Lost Boys,
eighty nine's Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, as well
as a couple of lethal weapon movies. He also directed
and wrote one episode of Tales from the Crypt titled
Creep Course.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
Wow, I mean this is just home Run after home Run?

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah? Yeah, he was involved in a lot of big projects.
The other name on the screenplay also story and co
producer credit, Chip Prosser for nineteen forty six, writer and director,
probably best known for this film, though we also worked
in the screenplay to some degree. I'm I'm not sure
to what degree with nineteen eighty four is Iceman?

Speaker 3 (13:26):
So is this a top Gun prequel? No?

Speaker 2 (13:29):
It is an unfrozen cave man movie, all right. Now,
getting into the cast for Innerspace, it is pretty extensive
with some great bit parts and cameos, which is pretty
standard for Joe Dante. So I'm going to try to
either go light on a number of them and just
skip some as well, and then also maybe come back
just in passing to some of the cameos as they

(13:51):
turn up. But the star, and I mean, really, this
is a picture that has a trio of leads. But
Top Bill anyway is Dennis Quay playing Tuck Pendleton.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
What a name?

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, the names are pretty good. You're Tuck Pendleton? Is
that you can guess? He is like a test pilot.
He's he would he would be at home in Top Gun.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah, yeah, he's definitely. Look, kid me couldn't get much
cooler than this actor in this role. I mean, yeah,
he in all the worst ways too. I think as
an adult, I'm a little bit repulsed by his demeanor,
his swagger. But as a kid, this was eighties cool.

(14:37):
With a little bit of reflection, I can see what
a rip on Tom Cruise this this delivery is. And
it really seems like it's trying. He's trying for a
Maverick type thing. Almost Maverick and Iceman merged together to
be a competent pilot who is also just a big
jerk as well.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Oh my goodness, I didn't even think about the Top
Gun connection, about sitting a riff on on Top Gun.
That's a film that kind of for me, it kind
of stands out of time for me, like I don't
necessarily think about it in connection to other projects, But
now that you've pointed out, yeah, I can't unsee it.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
I think that you know, I made the mistake of
using these films as cues for how to act in
real life, which I think is is a frequent eighties
kid misstep. But because of the frequency of viewing of
this uh interspace Goonies Top Gun, it created a percent
that was very not organic to me and and stuck

(15:34):
out like a sort of thumb whenever I would try
to use it.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Yeah, I mean, he's not the it's not the worst
role model you could latch onto as far as a
lead character in an eighties picture. But yeah, he's he's
obnocked right right from the get go. He's obnoxious, he's drunk,
He clearly is a mess, and but he's he's portrayed
as a likable man, a lovable mess.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
Yeah, it's a very very kind and funny take on
all because he's drunk for a lot of the movie,
and alcohol is his motivation in a lot of cases,
he will get to it, but designs a robot to
pour a drink for him and does it poorly. One
of his big orders of business for Martin Short is
to pour some alcohol for him. He's really booze centered.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
Just drinking giant molecules of whiskey. As we'll get back to.
But yeah, I mean Dennis Quaid. This is not an
actor that we really need to introduce much. I think
everybody knows who Dennis Quaid is, famous leading man brother
of Randy. Credits go back to the mid seventies and
he's really been in all sorts of stuff, Like it's
really weird to look through his filmography, like just looking

(16:42):
at twenty twenty four. He managed to star in the
GOP Cinematic Universe film Reagan as Reagan, and he played
a major role in the body horror film The Substance.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
Oh, I have not seen The Substance yet. I'm excited too, though.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, I haven't seen anither of him yet. I'm gonna
I probably need to do him back to back. But yeah,
his career that was full of stuff like this, Like
it's a mix of genre films and mainstream dramas and
comedies as well as biopicks. I think he played Jerry
Lee Lewis in a biopic at one point, so yeah,
it's kind of hard to pin him down. I think
for my own money, When I think of Dennis quaid films, though,

(17:19):
I instantly think of nineteen eighty five's Enemy Mine, where
it's it's Dennis Quaid Lewis gossip junior, human and alien
on a strange alien world. I was always very captivated
by that one.

Speaker 3 (17:32):
For me, it's this movie. This is the image that
instantly comes to mind is his image from the poster,
which is, you know, he looks very handsome. He's got
a joker grin, a Jack Nicholson joker grin that's maybe
digitally enhanced to be a little bit bigger than it
should be, and it just really sells his swagger. You know,

(17:53):
that look on a space the way it's on the
poster really sells who he is in this movie.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah. Yeah, he's having a great time. Yeah all right.
Our other main character that Dennis Quade's character is going
to be inside of in a miniaturized form is the
character Jack Putter, played by Martin Short born nineteen fifty
another name that scarcely requires introduction. Martin Short is just
a comedy legend.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Yeah. I don't know what to say about Martin Short,
so sorry that you had me on your podcast, but
he's just great. I mean, he's he's been a part
of my comedic sensibility since I was very very young.
In every role that he's in, from Three Amigos all
the way to only Mergers in the Building, he's just
fantastic and he is himself. He delivers every time, and

(18:42):
he's a chameleon in appearance, but his sensibility, his timing,
his slapstick is always very very Martin Short specific. I
think my favorite role of his has got to be
Jimmy Glick, a huge Click fan, and I was delighted
this past year when he reprised the role and did
a few more bits of him.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah. I mean, he's one of those actors that when
I when I think of Martin Short, I instantly think
of those really you know, over the top in high
energy characters I think of of Glick, I think of
Ed Grimley of course his character and Arrested Development Jack Dorso,
you know, and he's he's great at that, and he's
great at those like freak out performances in a way

(19:24):
that they are very I feel like there are very
few actors I would even compare him to, like maybe,
you know, compare him to the likes of, you know,
Robin Williams or or Jim Carrey even you know where
they can they can hit that level of intensity, comedic intensity.
But then I would also compare him to the other
two in that, especially when you look at some recent
Martin short performances, like he's he's a really strong actor,

(19:46):
you know, he's he's really great in these smaller non
comedic roles or stretches as well. And I think you
really see that on Only Murders in the Building, a
great TV series, obviously comedic series. It doesn't take it
itself too seriously, and he's surrounded by great actors and actresses,
but I am most frequently impressed by the smaller moments

(20:11):
with his character on that show.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, I think, especially in Only Murders in the Building,
I think he does a really good job of representing
not just the comedic bits, but the building itself and
life in the building and what it means to be
at that stage of your life in that building and
getting on in years and what that means for your
relationship with your family, And yeah, that's never not never,

(20:33):
It's rarely the focus. But when it is, or when
it turned to that, it doesn't seem out of character
or a stretch for him to be believable in those
somber moments.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah. So I don't think we see as much from
him along those lines in Interspace, but again, certainly in
other projects. He was also really good. Recently in the
series of The Morning Show, he had a small part
is a disgrace director named Dick Lundy and the name
sounds like a Martin Short character, but it was like,

(21:07):
it's like a really serious, like creepy kind of character,
a charismatic, charming, sexual predator sort of a guy. Wow.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Going back to comparing him with Robin Williams and Jim
Carrey almost called him James Carrey.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Jim Carrey, I think you know it's James now that
he's back in Sonica.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
That's right. I think he the roles the characters that
he creates, and I think this movie is a great example.
You can't imagine anybody else being these characters, and that's
true of Robin Williams and James Carey. You can't imagine
somebody else doing the mask or ace Ventura, you know,

(21:51):
you know, I was reading somewhere. I don't know if
this is true or not, but early versions of this
movie were pitched as Michael J. Fox enters the body
of Arnold Schwartzenegger. And I think it's a good one
two to show the difference in those characters in the movie.
But taking that literally, what a different experience that would

(22:13):
have been, you know what I mean? And even assuming
in that scenario that Michael J. Fox would be playing
the Martin Short role, even if the miniaturization were reversed,
it would have been a completely different read, completely different character.
No shade on Michael J. Fox, of course he's brilliant,
but it would have hit completely differently, been a completely

(22:34):
different kind of movie.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, I agreed, absolutely, all right, get into the rest
of the cast. Here we have Meg Ryan playing Lydia
Maxwell Meg Ryan born nineteen sixty one, another huge name
that I think most everyone's familiar with, mostly known for
I guess her biggest successes were a handful of just
highly successful rom coms of the eighties and nineties. Eighty

(22:56):
nine's When Harry Met Sally ninety three, Sleepless in Seattle
the Eights, You've Got Mail, So I'm pretty pretty big deal.
She's been in other things, for sure. She was in
nineteen eighty three's Amityville three D, for example, the one
with the claw busting out of the VHS cover.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
Also in Top Gun, Oh well, yeah, plays Goose's wife.
I think I kind of feel like this is a
Top Gun episode, Rob I'm gonna dot Top Gun episode.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah. But again, Yeah, she's great in this, we'll get
into It's an interesting role. There is an interesting love
triangle in this picture that I was totally lost on
me as a kid, but watching it as a grown
up is just it's deeply weird. It's strange that they
ever even went for all of this, even with all
the restraint they show that it's a strange love triangle. Yeah,

(23:51):
but she's great. She has great chemistry with everyone, including
Dennis Quaid, who she would end up marrying after this picture.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
And spoiler she marries his character at the end of
this movie.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
So I got a lot to say about that. Yeah,
that guest list is wild.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yes, yes, it feels like a rap party. I'll go
back to it. All right, Now, getting into the many,
many villains of this picture, we'll start with the lead
villain that we eventually are introduced to, and that is
a Victor Scrimshaw, played by Kevin McCarthy, who of nineteen
fourteen through twenty ten American actor, nominated for an Oscar
for his performance in the nineteen fifty two adaptation of

(24:28):
Death of a Salesman, but I think known to many
out there for his just wonderful paranoid performance in nineteen
fifty six is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the original
black and white one. Also perhaps known to many of
you for his role in eighty nine's UHF. I assume
I don't remember who he played in UHF. I'm assuming
it was a villain, like a studio TV studio villain

(24:52):
of some sort.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah, I don't recall. That's maybe we'll do UHF next time, Rob.
That's a a great movie that it's been way too
long since I've seen.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah. Clearly though, Kevin McCarthy was a favorite Joe Dante's
because some of his other credits include The Howling the
Birds Piranha. He also pops up in nineteen ninety one's
Eve of destruction. That's one that I never saw, but
saw the trailers for all the time. It has like
a killer lady terminator in it.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
I remember him most specifically from The Distinguished Gentleman, The
Eddie Murphy movie from nineteen ninety two, where great premise,
Eddie Murphy runs for Congress using he has the same
name as a deceased congress person and uses the fact
that nobody knows whether their congressman died or not to
get elected.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
But that real that I have never heard of this movie.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Amazing premise. Yeah, great, it's pretty fun movie. Pretty fun movie.
It's part of that Eddie Murphy era with Boomerang early nineties.
But another great movie. But Kevin McCarthy plays a seasoned
congress who knows the grift very well, kind of takes

(26:04):
Eddie Murphy under his wing and shows him how to
how to grift in in the right way, which is
to say, the political way.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
All right, No, that sounds pretty fun.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
Really slimy guy. McCarthy plays him really well.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah he is. He's really good at playing the slimy villain,
all right. Other villains include his kind of partner in
crime here is doctor Margaret Kanker. Canker played by Fiona
Lewis born nineteen forty six, British actress who we've discussed
on the show before because she was in nineteen seventy
two's Doctor Fivees Rises Again starring Vincent Price, and her

(26:43):
other credits include sixty seven's To Fearless, Vampire Killers, seventy
three is Blue Blood with Oliver Reed, the nineteen seventy
four Draculas starring Jack Palance, seventy five Listomania, seventy seven's
Tintoria Killer Shark, seventy eight's The Fury, and eighty three
Strange Invaders. This was her last film role before her retirement.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah, I wasn't familiar with her, but I felt like
I was. She looked so familiar, her performance was so
familiar to me, but I could not place it even
through an IMDb. I couldn't remember what she stood out
to me from. But fantastic role, fantastic performance, and just
something it's gonna nag me until the day I die.

(27:25):
What I remember it from?

Speaker 2 (27:28):
All Right? The next villain. Oh, this is the one
of the big ones, if not the biggest one, This
is the one I think everyone remembers. This is mister
Igo played by Oh they always intimidating. Vernon Wells born
nineteen forty five Australian actor, best known for playing heavies
for that like signature mug of his and he's played
some really iconic ones.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
He's bad news. Yeah, he's just in this movie in particular,
the most fun kind of bad news, but menacing without
all right, there are a few tells that he had,
like really specific tells through the movie, but most of
it is just the aura that he brings to the screen.

(28:09):
He's he's a menace. He's one to watch out for.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, and we'll discuss like his character is probably one
of the better sort of terminator esque villains, like spin
on Terminator without going too hard on the terminatorness, you know, like, yeah,
he's not really a cyborg, but he's got like this
cool prosthetic hand. And I was always like all in
unprosthetic hand villains at this at this age when I

(28:33):
was a kid, you know, And this guy's got all
sorts of cool gadgets.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
He does feel like more of a little stinker in
his actual actions than he is a terminator that will
end your life, even though that's always the threat whenever
he's around.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah, but he'll also just pop a clown's balloon for
no reason except that he hates fun. So yeah, Wells,
Vernon Wells, he had some great roles. He played Wez
that's the mohawk, the mohawk guy in eighty one's The
Road Warrior. He was the Lord General in eighty five's
Weird Science. Oh, and then a big one he's been
at the guy with the mustache and Commando Amazing. He's

(29:09):
the one that he kills last because he likes him
the most. I can't I can never remember how that
that's right. But yeah, his Australian TV credits go back
to the mid seventies and he's one of these guys
that remains highly active in genre pictures. He's got like,
you know, like three dozen upcoming projects. That's sort of cheeze. Yeah,
so he's great. But then we're not done with the villains.

(29:29):
We also have one more and it's another very memorable one,
and it is the Cowboy, played by Robert Picardo born
fifty three, Frequently cast by Joe Dante in a variety
of roles. He gets to play a bad guy here,
though with plenty of comedic elements, and I just have
to say, an accent of unknown origin. I have no
idea what they were going for here. I think it's

(29:52):
inoffensive because I have no idea, like what part of
the globe it's supposed to be. Like, I always thought
he was maybe supposed to be Russian, but I don't know.
I saw some write ups online where people make arguments
for other corners of the world.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
You know, you're gonna get mad at me, rob but
this is exactly like the Bad Guy Meg Fighters and
Top Gun, where they're they're from somewhere else. They're not
gonna tell you what country they're from because they don't
want to get at that country upset. But they're just
kind of other, you know.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
I think that in Robert's case, this accent is either
super offensive or engineered to be as inoffensive as possible,
because it could not be real and could not harken
to any specific existing accent.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Yeah. And then on top of that, he has this
like old Hollywood cowboy persona that he has completely taken on.
So he's always wearing the cowboy boots often the other
bells and whistles as well. It's it's a fun and
perplexing villain role.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
He's I kept having to remind myself that he was
a villain. He doesn't seem villain. Most of his scenes
are pretty silly, and I keep I kept having to
remind myself of what he was there to do, yes,
and why they needed to stop him.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, he is. The plot gets fairly complex, but basically
he represents a buyer for stolen technology. We don't know
exactly who he's representing. But he's the bag man, right,
He's the guy with the money.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
Who's just going to go out and dance when he's
in town.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah, he's he's also going to party. He's he's up
to like sleep with any of the leads of this picture,
like it doesn't matter to him. But yeah, he doesn't
really do anything bad. I don't think he tries to
kill anybody, right, he's No.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
He's pretty pretty silly guy. Uh, just good at his job.
I guess we don't really see that, but we're told
that he's good at his job, and he seems pretty
confident all things, you know, considered, He's a pretty confident
guy who knows himself, knows what he likes and pursues it.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah. Well, Picgardo was a familiar face I think to
film and TV viewers in general because on the TV
front he was on the Wonder Years or he had
some roles on the Wonder yearside, and he wasn't I
don't think he was main cast. He was in China Beach,
Star Trek Voyager of course, and Stargate and then films.
You know, we had the Howling, we held Total Recall.
He was Johnny Cab in nineteen ninety and he's also

(32:22):
part of the cast of twenty sixteens Coen Brothers the
Coen Brothers film Hail Caesar, but that has everybody in it,
so I don't know that we really need to single
him out for that. But yeah, he's always a terrific
presence funn act.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yeah, I'm a big, big fan of his from Star
Trek and Total Recall of course, probably my favorite movie
of all time. But a role that was created for him,
the Johnny Cab, I believe, was molded in his image
before he was even signed on to the project. They
wanted him to be the Johnny Cab that badly.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
You take Johnny Cab out of that picture, the whole
thing falls apart too.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
It truly is the glue, all right?

Speaker 2 (32:57):
And then the final main character and supporting character, I
guess really I'll mention is Wendy Shawl, who plays a
character named Wendy This is Jack's coworker at the grocery.
Born nineteen fifty four. I'm mentioning her mainly because she
was in Creature from eighty five, an alien knockoff that
Joe and I discussed on Weird House Cinema here. She

(33:19):
did a lot of TV, but her later film credits
include Oh, nineteen eighty seven's Munchies, It's a Gremlin's knockoff,
a Gromlins movie, You Got Batteries not included eighty nine's
The Burbs, And she did a lot of TV as well,
X File, six Feet under a Star Trek Voyager, and
she's also done a lot of voice acting for a
family guy in American Dad.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Great job here too, being she does a lot with
a little doesn't have a ton of screen time, but
you really get a vibe of exactly who she is
from very few lines and just kind of her presence
and reaction to things.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, all right, now, on the effects end of things,
this was a big industrial light and magic special effects movie.
So it involved just an army of talented professional and
it won an Oscar in nineteen eighty eight for Best
Special Effects, beating out Predator. So Predator versus Interspace Interspace
wins clearly. So, yeah, an army of people involved here.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
It's no surprise this is a really well done movie
effects wise, in that you don't notice half of the
effects that are happening. They're so organic. Particularly for me,
anytime he's inside the body or we're seeing inside the body,
I'm not even clocking that as an effect. Most of
the time. There are a few set pieces inside of
the body that are tremendous, and we've got to talk

(34:39):
about those, But for the most part, you just kind
of believe that he's inside of body and that he's
on the other side of an ear or an eye,
and you know, you don't clock the amount of work,
or I don't clock the amount of work that's going
into creating an effect like that.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah, and I thought the effects held up really well.
This is not a film where I felt like I
saw any wires, any scenes. You know, it all holds
up extremely well, So, you know, well deserving of that Oscar.
Dennis mun was the visual effects supervisor for ILM, and
I also mentioned in passing that Rob Bouteen born nineteen

(35:17):
fifty nine, a special makeup effects designer and creator. On
this picture. He was involved in a lot of you know,
squirmy and drippy special effects pictures, the likes of Squirm,
the Howling, the Thing, RoboCop and Total Recall.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
So he made the worm face.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, yeah, he was involved in the worm face. I
didn't get a chance to look up exactly what he
did on this picture, but I have this. I highly
suspect that it is the morphing the face morphing sin
that we'll get into, because that's one of those that
is it's not grotesque unless you stop and really look
at it, and then you start really, oh this is

(35:56):
this is grotesque.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
But there's one that There are two big morph scenes
that I that I have in mind, and one of
them is a full blown you can see that that
is an effect set piece.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
You know, Oh that's the remorph. I think, yes, yes.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
The full head goes on for a long time. But
just there are scenes with Martin Shwort's mouthwork where it's
just his mouth and it's Martin short. It's not a prosthetic.
It's not you know, a stand in dummy head where
it's just remarkable, how believable an effect like that is.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
All right, and then finally the music. It's a Jerry
Goldsmith score who lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand
and four, film music legend. His other scores, of course,
include the likes of Grimlins and Alien from nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Amazing and great stuff here. I think even right from
the jump the synth, the opening credits is incredible.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Let's get into those opening credits, because this is I
did remember the opening credits from because this one really
blew my mind as a kid, because you go into innerspace,
you're expecting all that, you know, the beautiful inner wonders
of a micro world, and that is where we are.
But as we zoom out, we realize we've just been
inside cocktail ice for the whole you know, opening of

(37:23):
the credits.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah, it's a tremendous effect. I think it's really really
well done and not really a trick either, because it
shows you the molecular level of what a glass of
ice would be. You just you're kind of entranced by
the pre science of it.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
All and we realized that this cocktail ice is that
some sort of a party, some sort of a formal
get together of military test pilots. There's cake there, models
of planes there, a bunch of of of you know,
a very top gun s test pilot dudes. And then

(38:00):
in to the fray enters Lieutenant Tuck Pendleston. This is
our main character, and he is again already completely wasted.
A big embarrassing scene follows where he falls through a table.
He gets into a fight with the other fly boys
in the kitchen and clearly he has a number of
monkeys on his back here.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
Yeah, the one thing that stood out to me during
this sequence is the fight choreography inside the kitchen. This
is another thing like it didn't need to be a
well choreographed fight, but it actually is well blocked. It's tight.
There is interesting action happening here. It could just be
this drunk guy pushes off a couple of guys, get subdued,

(38:42):
and Lydia takes him home, but it's more than that.
It's an actual interesting action sequence that doesn't really have
a lot of business in this movie. And you see
that happening a few more times throughout the film.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, it's like the stunt team knew they weren't going
to have many fisticuff scenes, so they were going to
really sell them yeah when they had them. So we
also see Lydia Maxwell. This is Meg Ryan's character. She
is his girlfriend, I believe, but she's also a reporter.
I don't know if she is here as a reporter
or as his girlfriend, but she kind of serves in

(39:16):
both capacities.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah, it seems like there's an estrangement here, so I
think it's a former girlfriend. I'm not sure how recent
the formerness is, whether it's a fresh breakup or an
on again, off again relationship. But this embarrassment, her responsibility
for him from this embarrassment. Maybe that's just a gesture

(39:38):
of kindness to everybody else in the room of being
I'm the one who can get him out of this situation,
or more of a responsibility of this is my date
and I need to get him out of here. There's
definitely a strong connection between the two and Tuck we
see in the next scene kind of wishes that it
were more.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah, so she drags tied back to his pad, and
this is you know, is you're figuring out who these
characters are. It becomes really apparent that this is his place,
this is not their place, because there are photos of SR.
Seventy one blackbirds on the walls. There's also all this
bunny memorabilia that's going to make a lot more sense
here in a little bit. There's a Santa Claus on
the desk, so you know, Holiday movie confirmed? Or is

(40:22):
this guy's pad just so sloppy that there's a Santa
up year round. Yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
And right in the middle of the apartment on the table,
huge nineteen eighties robotic arm. And anybody who was alive
during the eighties knows exactly what this robot arm is.
It's got one hinge and it's got a pincher as
it's hand. It's meant to pinch things, pick them up,
move them somewhere else, and release the pinch. Here. He's

(40:49):
got it built to pick up a bottle of booze,
turn it over to pour it into a glass. He
does it poorly, or whoever's controlling this robot does it poorly,
obviously meant to convey that Tuck's doing a bad job
of it, probably because he's wasted. But somebody on this
team is really good at articulating a robot an eighties

(41:11):
robot arm because you see it happen a few more
times throughout the movie, and it's done very elegantly every
other time.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
Now would this would this have been before the or
after the nes RM that played the Little Spin Top game?

Speaker 3 (41:26):
Oh so this would have been after the Robotic Operating
Buddy rob for the Nintendo Entertainment System, where it's a
similar thing. You had to use the controller to make
the robot pick up a spinning gyro and drop it
onto either a red button or a blue button, which
would affect the level on the screen that you were

(41:47):
trying to play and allow your guy to pass through.
A terrible game, terrible concept, but I think similar idea of, hey,
we're supposed to be a robotic society at this point,
we'd better start acting like it and developing all of
these things that were just clunky executions of what a
robotic society would do.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Yeah, so that energy is very strong in this picture
for sure. So they get settled in for the evening
and and more or less we're picking up the next
morning because that's when Cabby Dick Miller, a frequently mentioned
actor on Weird House, cinema because he pops up in everything.
I think he has popped up in more films than

(42:30):
than than any other actor that we've covered here on
the show. But he's there as a cabby to pick
Lydia up in the morning. She is trying to sneak out,
leave a note and leave Tuck behind forever. And we
get this, we get this, you know, comedic but very
very hunky scene where Tuck comes out wearing only a

(42:52):
towel and he's going to try and talk her out
of leaving. The towel gets stuck in the door, cab
rides off, towel goes with the cab full backside exposed. Yeah,
so there's a lot more beefcake in the picture than
I remember.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
Yeah, it's a really really hunky scene. A lot of
hunks in this movie, a lot of honky activity, and
even Martin Short gets to participate in being a hunk
a little bit later. One thing I think it's important
to point out here is that Lydia did try to
leave the night before and a drunk Tuck blocked her exit.
So big red flag there does it casually, which shows

(43:33):
again what a lithario this guy is. And maybe gives
a little bit of insight into his character. But he,
either for concern for his well being or because he
is such a wooer, plays the old timey song Cupid
for Lydia, which I guess is their song, and that

(43:56):
convinces her maybe to stay the night. I don't know
that that's what does it, But to your point, we
see her leaving the next morning and trying to get
away for good. So it at least satisfied what Tuck
was trying to get at that night. But the song
Cupid comes back into play a little bit later.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yes, that one will be important. Now at this point
we switch over to our other main character, because here
we have Jack Putter played by Martin Short, in to
see his doctor, and this is some pretty fun character
work with the guy playing the doctor is William Shallart
who lived nineteen twenty two through twenty sixteen, who did

(44:33):
a lot of TV shows. But basically we catch on
pretty quickly that Putter is a hypochondriac that's coming in
all the time. It's clearly dealing with a lot of
very serious anxiety issues regarding his work, and he starts
telling this story about what this nightmare he keeps having

(44:55):
that he's very concerned about, in which he is hideously
overcharging this woman at the checkout register at the grocery.

Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah, and the doctor's prognosis or prescription to this grocery
store clerk is you should simply go on a vacation. Yeah,
you should simply go on a lavish vacation. Which how
times have changed? Really that that's just that's the that's
the direction.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yeah, this guy's having a mental health crisis, like at
this point, like he's he he is having a very
hard time, and it's just like, here's a prescription for
a trip to Mexico.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
Right, you can probably afford it.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Yeah, all right, So you know at this point, okay,
the pieces, the main pieces are on the table concerning
our protagonists. But then we got to get into the
real plot. How are we going to get miniaturization involved here?
So we pick up with Silicon Valley dudes stuck in
traffic discussing a project. We have one of the guys
from the top Gun academy graduation thing earlier and it's

(45:57):
there he's like, well, who have you hired to pilot
this prototype or whatever? And now like, oh, we got
Tuck Pendleton. We hear he's great, and this dude's like,
that doesn't sound too great for me to me, Tuck
Pimdleton not a great get for whatever you do we're
doing here. And then we kind of like fast forward

(46:18):
a bit and then here's here's Tuck Pendleton getting ready
to jump into the We don't know yet it's going
to be a pod of some kind, but he's getting
himself amped up with slaps to the face as well
as as well as with a fair amount of inappropriate
coworker flirting.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah, it's really strange the way that he walks in.
I believe one of the scientists or tech workers kisses
him on the cheek. He doubles back and does a
full blown mouth kiss with her. Just a real again
Lefario level of swagger coming into this test pilot job.

(46:56):
You know, while the Silicon Valley dudes were arguing in
the car, he was defended Tuck as being somebody who
did his homework and can do the job. And you
see that, Like, that's the duality that we get with him,
is that he is a mess in every other realm
of his life, but he's a good test pilot. He
might be a drunk test pilot. But he's a good
test pilot, and he reinforces that kind of on his

(47:19):
walk in, and once he gets into the mind, he
is down to business. He knows exactly the right questions
to ask, the right things to check. He's the voice
of authority.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
And it becomes clear pretty quickly that what they're about
to do is he's going to get in this pod
that is pretty really cool looking, looks like a cross
between a submarine and some spaceship, and they're going to
miniaturize him and inject him into a rabbit. Now, one
would assume that this is there have been multiple phases
before this, that they have tests, you know, unmanned miniaturization,

(47:52):
that they have tested manned miniaturization, and they've also injected
miniaturized objects into to test animals, and that now we're
only finally getting to the point where they're going to
send in a human being into a rabbit. But who knows,
maybe they're just really having to push this project along

(48:12):
and this is just test number one. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
Yeah, and this is where we learned the reason that
rabbits were so prominent in his apartment, And yeah, I
get it, But all the rabbit stuff at his apartment
was like a fan of rabbits, not somebody who's studying
rabbits intensely. It's somebody who like bugs. Bunny is in
there and things like that, And so this guy likes
rabbits a lot more than he really needs to to

(48:37):
perform his scientific role of being inside of a rabbit.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Yeah, he's researching at the wrong scale. I think. Now,
I do really love these scenes where he's getting into
the cockpit of the pod. I think it feel like
this is all really well done. It has a great
textured and believable NASA feel to it. You know.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Yeah, it's a very busy, very eighty in the sense
that it feels cramped. There's so much machinery on top
of itself, and the space is not, you know, a
designer friendly lab, which I think you'll see a contrast
to that later on in the movie, But here it

(49:17):
just seems like these guys are scientists. They're bleeding edge
R and D. And then once you see the space
that the pot is in, it's mylar city in the
best way. There's that gold NASA milar wrapping the entire room.
All of the reflections off of that milar are heightening
the effect. It's really really perfect.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Yeah, you can get and then inside and outside you
have like all these pixelated computer screens, video feeds. I
feel like there are more robot arms yeah, and whatever
robot arms are up to. So yeah, it all feels
very real. I love the look of all of this,
and I feel like it's aged really well and in
a way that's something that non analog wouldn't have, you know,

(49:57):
if it was all touch screens and you know, next
generation and stuff.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
Yeah, there's a little bit of what you could arguably
say as a Hokier design tactic or effects tactic that
has lights superimposed on the pod while it's being miniaturized.
It looks a little bit inauthentic compared to all of
the other effects work that's going on, but again, it works.

(50:21):
It's in that milar space. It's supposed to be crackling
and electrifying, similar to how the DeLorean does right before
it's about to jump through time, and so it works.
It's just a little bit lower five than some of
the other stuff we see, and.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
They seem to pull it off. They spin the thing
around in a centrifuge, they shrink it down to size. Now,
the pod is this tiny speck inside of a syringe.
They use a magnification effect to take a look at it,
the lead doctor does. But you know that something is
going to shake things up, and that takes the form
of an attack by gas mask wearing goons. They come

(50:58):
in with an acid key card to short out the lock,
and they're clearly trying to take over the operation.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Yeah. The thing I love about this takeover is that
they got these gas masks, but they're not flooding the
space with gas. They're using a fire extinguisher type device
to point the gas at somebody, shoot a blast of
gas directly at them so that only that person is
knocked out by it, which is genius. Like, yeah, that's

(51:25):
how gas warfare would be should be. I am not
advocating for gas warfare, but I were, that's how you
would do with it.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
They have a pretty non violent approach, like they're clearly
trying to cut down on casualties, though they do punch
a few people, which seems uncalled for if you have
those great gas cannons on hand. But still they quickly
take over things, and this is where we first see
Fiona Lewis's doctor Kinker taking control of the computers there.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
That's right. Clearly the bad guys have invaded this space.
But it did occur to me at this moment were
the other guys the good guys. I don't know what
the purpose of this project was. They don't really state
what they're going to do after they've successfully completed the
Rabbit project, but we're just supposed to assume that their

(52:18):
intentions were good. These guys' intentions were bad. And I
think you know, I mentioned that Grimlins was trying to
tell you a message in this movie is not Maybe
this movie is trying to tell you a message about
early Silicon Valley tech espionage and that it's really just
bad guys versus bad guys, and it's a question of
which one are you rooting for.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
I did have a fun time trying to piece together
like the intended endpoint for this research, and we can
kind of feel it out a little bit by seeing
the capabilities of the pod. So the pod allows the
pilot to ultimately see and hear through the host and
or communicate with them, though I guess that did this

(53:00):
necessary and then also deliver a powerful electromagnetic pulse that
can destroy electronics within a short term radius, and so
it seemed to me I was like, Okay, I can
imagine that this is building up maybe to having a
human pilot a rat into a sensitive environment and then
set off that pulse, or of course, ultimately to some extent,

(53:21):
like is planting a spy inside of a human being
and potentially doing that electromagnetic pulse elsewhere. But oh, then
we see other capabilities that shake things up even more,
which we'll get do later.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Yeah, I think it's probably says more about me than
it does about the movie. But every application of this
technology I could think of was a really dark and
depressing one that used another living being as a vessel
to achieve something via a smaller human being inside of
that vessel that might be small enough to escape whatever

(53:57):
situation it's putting the larger vessel in.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Yeah, I mean, they kind of they definitely allude to
these espionage applications, but they never even once hint at
a medical application, not directly. I mean, there are a
couple of jokes, but for the most part, Yeah, the
idea that you would have a little submarine inside of
person is not even explored. Is a medical breakthrough here.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Well, Tuck casually turns Putter into if you're getting ahead
of ourselves, but he casually turns it into like a
superhuman just yeah, because it's convenient for that scene. So
the technology is very easy to do once you're in there, apparently.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Yeah, once you're inside at that scale, you can do
anything you want, change faces up, cure diseases, I guess,
but also make computers explode. And that seems to be
the prime focus here. All right, So what happens? Okay,

(54:52):
so we have the miniature I sub it's in a syringe.
They were going to inject it into the rabbit, but
then all hell breaks loose. The doc, the main doctor
here is, escapes with the syringe and then our villain,
doctor Canker, calls for mister I go to chase after him.
So we get this big car bike chase, a number
of big chase scenes that take place in the picture.

(55:14):
On all heads to the mall and hey, that is
where Jack is trying to book relaxing vacation. And I
think you know where all this is going to come together.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
Yeah, And I just got to say this car chase
on the freeway again, way more elaborate, way more action packed,
way more elegant than it needs to be. It could
have been a quick shot that gets you to the mall.
But it's really fun and there are convertibles, there are
This is actually happening on a busy freeway. It's really

(55:43):
really exciting.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Yeah, and then yeah, we get to the mall. Mister
I goes using he's the finger gun, which I remember
just thinking was super cool when I was a kid,
This crazy robot hand of his that he can make
the make the finger guns and then actually fire the
finger gun.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Yeah, it's very into spectro gadgety in the way that
the tip of the finger kind of comes off to
reveal the gun. But I mean, aside from that, like malls,
this mall in particular, this is the height of mals
at nineteen eighty nine. You know, you get not just
a really busy, active, vibrant mall. You get one that's

(56:20):
got mascots walking around giving away or selling balloons, a
lot of strange things happening for the scientist and mister
Igo to disrupt from this chase, you know, they're really
knocking a lot of people out of the way, ruining
a lot of these mascots days. One of the mascots
is a penguin who's giving away balloons to a pair

(56:40):
of nuns, which is a very very funny visual throwaway.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Yeah, this whole sequence is feels very Joe Dante, like
the bit where the doctor with the syringe. He ends
up injecting Martin Short in the buttock and then falls
into the arms of three or four different mascots and
dies and we get that that hazy pov of him
looking up at the mascots looming over him.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
Yeah, fantastic.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
So at this point we have miniaturized Pendleton tuck inside
of full sized Jack Martin Short and that, and we're
off to the race. It's like, this is the this
is the plot. It's we're going to get into this
whole situation of how does Pendleton make Jack aware of

(57:31):
his presence inside him? What kind of gadgets are going
to allow that to happen, and then how are they
going to figure out, you know, what sort of plot
is going on, and how they're going to maneuver their
way out of it.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
Yeah, I you know, throughout this whole basically from this
point on, I have a tough time reconciling how big
Tuck and the pod are supposed to be inside of
the syringe and inside of Martin George's or Putter's body,
that they're points at which the action is high and
the pod is shaken around. So it's like, oh, so

(58:06):
you must be big enough to be like moving, to
be moved along by by the motions of the body.
But then there are points where Tuck is so so
so small that he can get through. He's at the
atomic level to where he wouldn't be impacted by these
other things. And this is me trying to apply my
people outside and like trying to unsuspend my disbelief and

(58:27):
pick it apart. But they do lean on just he's
just small enough, Okay. They lean on you to just
accept that fact and just go along for the ride,
which I'm happy to do.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
The pod is as small or as large as the
plot requires it to be. Can it be grabbed with
a pair of tweezers? Yes? Can't. Can it cut its
way through the wall of an artery without causing any
kind of trouble inside the body? Absolutely? All right, So
at this point we're gonna we're gonna proceed with like
a little less attention to every little detail here, but

(59:00):
we want to talk, certainly in broad strokes about like
the central piece of technology here, the pod. I definitely
want to talk about the love triangle and the big
finale and any other moments that stand out to us.
But yeah, the big, the big thing about the pod,
and this was something that you know I loved as
a kid, is that we get like this this first

(59:21):
contact between Tuck Pendleton and Jack, where you know you
can use well, for first of all, he uses a
device like fires a harpoon into the inside of his
eyes so that he can see out of his his
eyes see what Jack sees. And then later he also
uses some sort of a harpoon type device inside of

(59:42):
his ear so that he can hear him as well.
And then at that point, like Tuck Pendleton is just
completely jacked into the whole system. He can do all
sorts of things as we'll see. You know, he can
he can adjust like is adrenaline and then ultimately change
his face one them really in addition to the electro

(01:00:03):
magnetic pulse thing, changing his face, shifting his face into
the face of another person, well, that one really up
the ante here. It's like, Wow, we can do anything
in there.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
That one is more okay. I feel like the effects
of hooking into the eye looked painful, and you know
that's an effects success as far as I'm concerned. Same
with the ear, but those all seem like I can
wrap my head around those. And then yeah, he changes
his face, which it's like, I feel like you need

(01:00:33):
outside pieces to do that. You're not just read rearranging
cells at that point. You know, you're trying to take
on an appearance and give a hair color and a
hair consistency that he doesn't or I guess he had
his original hair or he had Jack's hair still, But
it just seemed like a huge leap of technology to

(01:00:55):
be able to do that, and all of a sudden
Tuck knows how to do this. Yeah, this is his
first voyage too, or maybe not, maybe was it his
first voice.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
Well, he was planning for rabbits, so he should if anything,
he should be okay, but not particularly experienced with shifting
rabbit faces around it. But a full blown Martin short
face that seems like a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Yeah, he should have been able to turn the rabbit
into the cowboy. Yeah, but not Jack Putter into the cowboy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
Yeah, because that's a very expressive face. To change into
another very expressive face, you need something a little plainer,
I think for your first big.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
Hurrah, exactly exactly. I think, you know, I blame this
movie as a child for my impression that I still
have today, where my instinct is that there's a lot
of empty space in the human body and you can
travel between the organs with you know, the same way
that you're traveling between planets and the Solar System, that

(01:01:51):
there's just a lot of dead space there, which is
not true. Anybody who's seen a diagram of what's going
on inside a human body knows how just packed together
absolutely everything is. But my child mind saw the human
body as spacious, well lit, lots of areas between your

(01:02:11):
vital organs that you could just kind of hang out
in and fly between.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Yeah, he's inner space, not inner goop.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
That's right, exactly exactly, And the title yeah supports that
backs that up. I will say that I don't know
how big or small this pod is. I'm ready to
move away from that gripe. But he's able to get
around that body real fast.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Oh yeah, Like he starts off in the buttock and
is almost immediately at the optic nerves. Maybe they cut something,
but maybe he also he is just like firing through
those blood vessels.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
Yeah, he gets into blood vessels and somehow is able
to because it seems like a blood vessel is like
a highway. Like the vessel goes to one part of
your body and maybe has some off ramps on the
way there, but you don't have full agency of where
else to go in the body unless you kareene out
of that blood vessel, which you're going to start causing

(01:03:03):
damage to to your host at that point.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Yeah, he does make the host uncomfortable at times. It's
there's some some related symptoms.

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
I'm shocked that that Martin short did not display any
sort of existential I mean, he had some existential dread
at the beginning before he realized that there was a
pot inside of him.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
M hm.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
To me, that would have just heightened the existential dread
that there's now something, an actual thing inside of me
that's talking to me and manipulating my body without me
being able to stop it if I if I wanted.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
To Now some important plot stuff that you mentioned too,
is that eventually okay? Well, first of all, character wise
Jack and Pendleton, Jack and Tuck, Uh, they come together,
they end up bonding over things like it becomes a
very close relationship, not only because one is literally inside
of the other, but but you know, they're they're they're

(01:03:59):
the only people who can talk to each other, you know,
they can. They have this this very intimate relationship, which
I think the movie does a good good job with,
you know, building this relationship between the two. And then
of course is ultimately gonna introduce Meg Ryan's character Lydia.
And then this is where we're gonna end up with
this love triangle, which I have to say is one
of the stranger love triangles I've ever seen, because again,

(01:04:21):
we have Jack in large, we have Tuck in small.
She is Tuck's X. Tuck ends up essentially being like
the romance whisperer for Jack, helping him to pursue his
ex at the same time, like he still has feelings
for Lydia and they and also Lydia, I'm sorry. Also

(01:04:44):
Jack and Tuck end up kind of bunding butting heads
over this as well. It's it's bizarre and and at
the same time was completely lost on me as a kid.
But it has to be one of the stranger love
triangles I've ever seen in a picture.

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
Yeah, it's tricky because you don't really get a clear
picture of what Jack's steaks are and emotionally, and I mean,
you get the idea of his physical stakes, but you
don't know he's obviously attracted to Lydia, but he's characterized

(01:05:20):
as somebody who does not need a lot of convincing
to help Tuck out. And sure that's motivated by the
fact that Tuck is in his body and Tuck needs him,
and maybe that is something that Jack wants as well
as somebody to need him or need his help. But
he's pretty willing, both motivated by fear of the spies

(01:05:42):
catching up to him, trying to get Tuck out of
him their way, which is going to be ugly, trying
to find a better way to do that, but also
trying to help him, like you say, romantically, convince Lydia
to trust him and to trust that Tuck needs her
help as well. It's it's really interesting and kind of

(01:06:03):
puts Jack in the middle in a way that supports
kind of his warming warm He's not the right word,
but the fact that people push him around on a
regular basis. He's kind of being moved around as well,
emotionally and not just physically the way that Tuck is

(01:06:23):
doing to him with the pod. But I do think
we've got a ticking clock here that we didn't speak about,
which is Tuck's oxygen is running out.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Oh yes, yes, that's the Tucks you guys running out.
He's eventually going to die in there if he doesn't
get out right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
So you've got ticking clock a which is there's these
guys on your tail that you don't want them to
catch you because they're happy to kill Jack to get
Tuck out of him if they need to. B If
you want Tuck to succeed at again whatever he's doing,
you need to get back to the good lab quote
unk quote good lab before tucks oxygen runs out and

(01:07:03):
it gets real close and then you somehow have to
save Tuck and Lydia's relationship. That's the sea ticking clock.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Yeah. We also learn that there are like two little
chips that are involved in the miniaturization process. There are
other groups out there who have been working on miniaturization,
and they can miniaturize things, but apparently relargifying things is
the hard part, and that's where you need both chips,
the chip that is out here in the full sized
world and the chip that is now on that pod

(01:07:32):
inside of Jack's body. And so that's what the bad
guys want. They need to get that chip off of
that pod, and as we'll learn, they'll do anything in
their power to do so.

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
So that's where Robert Piccardo comes in as the Cowboy,
the agent employed to retrieve one of the chips, and
their plan is to appropriate the Cowboy's face onto Jack's
face and then infiltrate the meeting with Scrimshaw to get

(01:08:06):
that chip to take back to the quote unquote Good Lab,
right so that they can re enlarge Tuck and save him.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
Right. But then at the same time, they've already had
some run ins with the Good Lab where they've overheard
the good scientists saying, you know, it's actually easier if
we just let him die inside of Jack's body, because
nobody can get to that thing, it's miniaturized. Just let
it go, you know, he'll get I guess, you know,
excreted one way or another from Jack's body and it'll

(01:08:35):
just be lost to time. And maybe that's easier, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
I gotta say, all things being equal, taking humanity out
of the equation altogether, which is what these scientists are doing,
that's not a bad case.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
Yeah, and especially considering what mister Scrimshaw wants. We have
a great later. So Drag gets abducted at least twice.
I feel like it's like he's constantly escaping and re
escaping and getting caught. There's one scene where mister Scrimshaw
gets this great villain monologue about like, you know, nuclear
weapons aren't there in the future. Space is in the future.

(01:09:10):
It's miniaturization. So great villain monologue there. But then we
get what we also get time and time again, a
Pendleton Tuck assisted escape by Jack. So Jack's not necessarily
he didn't realize when he's been trapped or see the
light of the escape route. But that's where Tuck comes in.
Tuck has this great gut instinct where he's like, okay,

(01:09:30):
punch now, kick now, jump out of the moving vehicle now.
And so you know, the movie stays in constant motion.

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
Yeah. Jack gets a lot of heroic stunt opportunities to
really look like like the hero, you know, and it's
a lot of it's driven by Tuck, but he's the
one doing it. It's not that Tuck's making his body move.
Tuck's just guiding him through what to do. And that's
kind of a Dumbo feather to Jack, where he's he

(01:09:58):
has the confidence to actually execute on a lot of
those things, and he's successful at it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
So at this point I don't know which thread to follow.
We have more of the love triangle plot that is
propelling Jack ever closer to a sexual encounter with Lydia
it would seem though, Again this is a PG film,
so we're dealing in very broad strokes here, and a
lot is implied. And then and then we have the
whole scheme to figure out what Cowboy is up to, uh,

(01:10:33):
to seduce Cowboy and then and then take advantage of him,
and then the morphing of the face, the infiltration of
the batties. Uh. And this is of course going to
involve another round of chasing and escaping and everyone going
after those chips.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
Yeah, I think it, you know, just to quickly top
lined the cowboy thread, I think they realized or they learned,
that the Cowboy goes to a club Inferno whenever he's
in town because he loves to go dancing and meet women,
so they go to Club Inferno as well. That's where
Jack runs into Wendy from the grocery store. Wendy sees

(01:11:11):
a new bad boy side of Jack that piques her interest.
But the long story short there is that Lydia is
able to seduce the cowboy bring him back to the hotel.
That's where they're able to knock him out and appropriate
his face to go to the meeting with Scrimshaw. That
disguise starts to fall apart in the middle of that meeting.
I think that the cowboy has a gold toothcap that

(01:11:35):
falls out of fake Cowboy's mouth, which tips Scrimshaw off
gets all of the bad guys up in arms to
capture Jack. Which there's a great line in lieu of champagne.
How about some real pain pro pain. I had to

(01:11:56):
give it a lot of flowers for going past. How
about some real pain and add an another pain.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
To the Yeah this is and we get some more
Inspector gadget Shenanigans for mister Igo because he pulls out
the blowtorch. Uh, that's right, appendage or maybe the blowtorch
is just always in there as a as part of
his Swiss army hand. But they're gonna they're like, oh,
you know, the cowboy is known for his incredible pain tolerance,
so let's just get an example of that here.

Speaker 3 (01:12:22):
That's right, and this is where the actual grotesque transformation
scene from Cowboy face back to jackface happens. It freaks
out everybody in the room. S Grimshaw's terrified, and rightly so,
because it's it's a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
Yeah, it is. It's very well done because if you
slow it down or watch it twice, you're like, oh, yeah,
this is this seems like boutine material right here, like
this is the thing, but it is, but it's it's
blurry and sped up in a very comedic Looney Tunes fashion,
and that ultimately like overwhelms the horrific aspects of it.

(01:12:57):
But it's very well done. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:00):
Yeah. Another thing to point out, they obviously, you know,
escape this this scenario, Lydia helps them escape. Jack transfers
Tuck to Lydia through a French kiss. Yes, which again
I'm just gonna say, yeah, that works, you can do

(01:13:22):
that first try. You know. While that happens, Tuck is
inside Lydia's body, sees that Lydia is pregnant, presumably with
his child. But the thing that gets me is that
they then transfer Tuck back to Jack through another French kiss,
which is like, I'm just this good at it that

(01:13:43):
we can do this again. And it happened so quickly
that it's like, I guess Tuck was just there at
the mouth ready to go.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
French kisses work. French kisses are a complete exchange of
all saliable content of the mouth and esophagus, right, That's.

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
What we were warned about when we were younger.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
Yes, yeah, but again, like the whole the baby, the pregnancy,
like this love triangle is very complex. One might even
argue too complex for a picture that is just trying
to be a big summertime explosion of special effects. But
it's one of his charms that it's all there.

Speaker 3 (01:14:20):
Yeah, and I think it is. It does serve the
function of while Tuck is in Lydia's body, Jack's not
necessarily aware of that yet, and he is still acting
like a heroic, you know fighter. He's knocking people out,
he's you know, doing all of the things that Tuck

(01:14:41):
told him to do. Once he realizes that Tuck's not
inside him, is inside Lydia. He loses that, he loses
that Dumbo feather, and the confidence kind of quickly at
that Dumbo feather exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
Yeah, so all that's really well executed. But I know
that those of you who grew up watching Innerspace are
you've been waiting for us to get to the big showdown.
The big showdown is twofold because so basically they bring
captive Jack back to the bad guy lab, which is
super sleek and very military. We'll describe their pod here

(01:15:16):
in a minute. But of course Lydia is able to
take control. She built out a handgun. But after they
have already injected a new villain into Jack's body, they'll wait.
At the same time, Tuck is not in Jack anymore
at this point, right, Tuck is in Lydia, but they
inject mister I go inside of just a frightening like

(01:15:40):
military combat pod with big claws, an amazing design here.
They injected that into him to go after the original pod,
to get those chips and to kill Tuck.

Speaker 3 (01:15:53):
That's right, this enemy lab, it looks like the TV
room from Willy Wonka's cog factory. It's just all white
and tons of space in contrast to the other lab,
which has just stacks of machinery on top of stacks
of machinery. But yeah, this this exopod, it's a suit,
whereas the you know, tucks in a little chair inside

(01:16:15):
of a small room. It feels like this is a
scuba suit that has attachments. It's a lot more menacing.
Presumably this guy can whip around more quickly within the body,
and he is designed to cause damage. That's what the
suit is for, you know, so pretty scaring. Of course
it's all black compared to the silver white pod that
Tuck is in.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Yeah, it's frightening. And you got the one portal so
you can have mister IGO's face like the horrifying mug
of his, like sneering through it and grinning. Yeah, terrifying pod.
Enemy pod here like a fighter pod that they have
now injected into Jack, miniaturized and injected. And we get
a nice bit from Scrimshaw where he turns to doctor

(01:16:58):
Canker and he's like, you know, it's going to be
easier if we just re enlarge him inside Jack's body afterwards,
which is which is like, we we never see something
like that happen in the show, But just by mentioning
the idea, it does bring about a certain amount of menace.

Speaker 3 (01:17:13):
Yeah, I love that. Again, take the humanity out of it,
and these are all the sound These are as sound
ideas as any other suggestion. At this point, Lydia gets
Tuck back into Jack with an intentional kiss to get
him in. That's where Tuck can help Jack fight off
mister Igo. Lydia also forces all of the scientists Scrimshaw

(01:17:38):
and Canker into the miniaturization pod or into the miniaturization
chamber and shrinks them all, does not shrink them all
to a microscopic size, which they are for the rest
of the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
Yes, So the big showdown then is twofold in the
world at large. We have Jack and Lydia driving you know,
down the highway in San Francisco, and then Scrimshaw, miniaturized
Scrimshaw and doctor Kenker attack from the back seat, so
they're wrestling them in the front and back seat. Meanwhile,

(01:18:14):
inside of Jack's body on his esophagus, there is now
a battle between the original pod and the new pod,
between a Tuck and mister Igo. And this is just
a really cool battle. Like I'm not saying it's like
RoboCop RoboCop two level, but it's pretty great with lots

(01:18:35):
of gadget arms and cutting of robotic components, some nice
back and forth.

Speaker 3 (01:18:42):
Well, and it moves to the stomach for the final
blows of the scene, and that is probably my favorite
set piece of the entire movie. It's this raging sea
of stomach acid at the bottom. Again, a ton of
distance from the top of the esophagus where they enter
the stomach to where the acid is. And Tuck has

(01:19:02):
to get Jack's allergies. A Chekhov's gun that was introduced
earlier in the movie needs to get him I forget
what he's specifically allergic to, but needs him to activate
his allergies to get his stomach acid going.

Speaker 2 (01:19:16):
This is a great set piece for the finale here
the stomach is like this. Like you said, there's a
lot of space there is. It's very well lit. That's
another thing about the inside of the body. You just
go by innerspace and fantastic voyage. It's like a well
lit nebula in there, which works. It is an inner space,
and so it should look like some of our most
colorful visions of outer space, whereas in reality it's like

(01:19:38):
that old saying, like a man's best friend outside of
a book is a dog, and inside of a dog,
it's too dark to read.

Speaker 3 (01:19:44):
It's very dark and so well and I misspoke. It's
not his allergies that he needs to trigger. He stresses
Jack out to the point where he gets reflux from
the ay. Yes, and that's what causes the churn to
which the fight then leads mister Igo down in the
stomach acid, where he is eaten up, down to a
skeleton an aka kaak bones skeleton, which.

Speaker 2 (01:20:07):
Is a skeleton and the remains the prosthetic arm trying
to drill through the portal of the original POD's Yeah
so good, great great villain kill quality, kill here all
the way.

Speaker 3 (01:20:18):
Yeah yeah. So they get back to the good lab,
they can't get Tuck out, or they can't quickly get
Tuck out. The oxygen is at zero. At this point,
they think they've lost all hope. Jack realizes that he's
allergic to hairspray, which is the element that was introduced

(01:20:40):
earlier in the movie, is given some hair spray, sneezes
Tuck out onto one of the scientist's glasses, and.

Speaker 2 (01:20:48):
Then they tweezer it, they tweeze her it, and they
get it back into the chamber. They re size him,
they re enlarge him, and we got our big, happy ending,
which is of course a wedding in true Shakespearean fashion.
We end with a lavish wedding. But who's going to
be married, Well, we know who's going to be married, right,
It's going to be tucking Lydia.

Speaker 3 (01:21:09):
It's tucking Lydia. Jack is the best man, which, again
just met these guys, but they've been through a lot together.
So I kind of understand that. What I don't understand
is why Wendy is at the wedding. Don't understand why
mister Wormwood, the boss at the grocery store, is at
the wedding. What I don't understand is why the doctor
who prescribed the vacation for Jack is at the wedding.
This is not Jack's wedding.

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
Yeah, the jerky military guy is there apparently with his son.
It's this The events of this film just brought everyone
together into this like tight knit community, this tight knit family,
in ways that are perhaps a little inexplicable.

Speaker 3 (01:21:45):
Yeah, and so it seems like a happy ending, but
not quite we see that the cowboy is the limo driver,
and that I believe Scrimshaw and Margaret are inside of
the suitcase. Yes, placed into the trunk. So they're driving
off on their happy wedding honeymoon drive down a twisty

(01:22:06):
mountain road, and Jack realizes that the job's not done
and he needs to help them out.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
That's right. Oh, and we also find out that Tuck
has the chips, the very coveted dangerous technology chips are
his cufflins. So they set up a sequel here that,
of course never happened. But I remember at the time
as a kid, I just thought, if you set up
a sequel like this, it will happen. It's going to happen.

(01:22:33):
I feel like I spent spent a fair amount of
time just assuming Interspace too was coming right down the pipe,
and then it was coming up next. Never happened.

Speaker 3 (01:22:41):
I kind of love the and then the adventures continued
layer of it. I wish that more franchise films took
that under advisement. I think it's okay to say Indiana
Jones went on more adventures after this one, and that,
you know what, I don't really need to show you
what the last one is or the second to last
one is, or continue that storyline if I don't want to.

(01:23:03):
Sometimes it's fun to just say. And their lives continued
to be that exciting, and so I agree with you.
I think that there was this left a door opened
to a sequel, and there seemed to be a lot
of enthusiasm for that. Maybe the mid box office return
diminished that hope, but I kind of like it where
it is, where if the job's not done, they're still

(01:23:26):
going to have more fun. This guy's life has been
inexplicably changed for and put on a different path that
he didn't choose, but he's going to roll with it,
you know. He's a different person now, and I kind
of really like that for him.

Speaker 2 (01:23:38):
Yeah. Yeah, It's like, I think it's great you have
to set up these sequels that never happened. As long
as you told a complete story, you put everything on
the table, then I'm fine with just sort of dreaming
about what else could have been possible. And this is
a film that does leave everything on the table and
busts out all of its tricks. So yeah, I don't
feel like they held anything back with Inner Space. They

(01:23:59):
just left that indow open to potentially dream up interspace too.

Speaker 3 (01:24:03):
Yeah, it's very strict. I mean, it's such a bizarre
fever dream of an ending scene where all of the
characters from the movie are invited to the wedding of
somebody who most of the characters have never met, and
then all of the bad guys are also at the
wedding in disguise to attack these two characters after the wedding,

(01:24:24):
What are they gonna do to Tug? I guess they're
good they I guess they know about the coup leaks.

Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
Yep, somebody's gonna getized again. It's they're gonna be Shenanigan's.

Speaker 3 (01:24:33):
Yeah, great time. Twist in the night Away takes us
into the credits. The credits are actually a pretty tight
credit roll where you're not it's not ten minutes long.
It's like a good three to five minutes credits twist
AND's playing the entire time and then you're out.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
Yeah, and that's inner space.

Speaker 3 (01:24:49):
Yeah, fun, fun time.

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
Yeah. I really enjoyed revisiting this one, and I feel
like it largely held up. Yeah, you know, it was
still very entertaining today. The effects were tremendous. Perform This
were great. You know, you never know exactly what it's
going to be like going back to a film from
you know, the nineteen eighties, mid nineteen eighties and see
how everything lands. But yeah, this was a fun one,
good pick.

Speaker 3 (01:25:10):
Yeah, yeah, this one for me, it like we were
saying at the top, it's stitched into my memory of
being a certain age because of how much I saw
it at that age. And even though I did drop
out a significant chunk of it from my memory, a
lot of it took me back into that spare bedroom
at my grandmother's house, sitting and watching it on a

(01:25:32):
tiny TV. And to that point, it's not just the
nostalgia of that viewing it holds up. It's fun. I'm
having the same kind of fun that I was having
back then watching it again.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
All right, Dave boy, as we begin to lead out here,
let's talk talk in Tofu for a minute here in
case listeners don't remember from last time, tell us a
little bit about what Talking Tofu is and tell us
what has come out recently in the podcast and what's
coming out in the future.

Speaker 3 (01:26:01):
Sure, yeah, so Talking Tofu is myself and my co
host slash wife Becky Streepy we're both vegans, and we
felt like there's not a lot of fun vegan content
out there. Some of the stuff that you see about
being vegan can be kind of hard handed in the
way that it convinces you of the value and the

(01:26:22):
virtue of adopting a different lifestyle, whereas we don't really
think about that much on a day to day basis.
We just have a lot of fun with it. We
love food, we love eating food, we love trying new food,
we love crusting out on junk food, and so our
podcast is a lot of that. It's us trying new things,
trying new foods. Usually each episode we'll talk about some

(01:26:44):
takeout or a restaurant that we went to, whether it's
in town or on one of our travels. We travel
quite a bit, and we'll usually try a new snack
on the pod, and then we'll spend the other seventy
percent of the time talking about whatever bs has happened
to us that week, whatever show we watched that week,
what movies were into. We just talked about Wicked at length,
which we both saw in the theater and loved it

(01:27:04):
and has a very strong pro animal message unintentionally, I think,
but just a lot of fun, some of the stuff
that we've talked about lately. We just went to Disneyland
recently and did a round up of all the vegan
snacks and food you can eat at Disneyland in and
around those parks. We've traveled to Vegas recently, did a

(01:27:26):
couple of trips to Vegas and a few Vegas episodes.
We are traveling this weekend to New York City, probably
come out with a New York City roundup. Obviously will
not be comprehensive, as there are lots of vegan options
in New York City, but just kind of a rundown
of what we did while we were up there. And again,
we're just having fun and keeping it light and showing
that it's fun to be vegan. So yeah, that's that's

(01:27:53):
what we're up.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):
To, all right, that's talking to That's t a l
k I n Apostrophe TOFU podcast. That's right, So look
that up. You can find that wherever you get your episodes.

Speaker 3 (01:28:05):
Yeah, yeah, we gotta get you on there.

Speaker 2 (01:28:07):
Yeah, anytime. All right, all right, We're gonna go ahead
and close out this episode, but I'll just remind everyone
out there that stuff to blow your mind is primarily
a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
weird films on Weird House Cinema. And if you want
a full list of the movies we've covered over the years,

(01:28:28):
you can find them on letterboxed our username there is
weird House got a nice list there, so you can
just dive in there and see what we've chatted about
in the past. As always, thanks to the great JJ
Possway for producing and editing the show, stitching everything together
and making it sound right. And if you want to
reach out to me, to Joe to JJ, or if

(01:28:49):
you want to reach out to Dave, I'll shoot that
on todave as well that you can email us at
contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.