Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Gunhed

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, enter a world of Japanese cyberpunk, killer AIs, giant robot tanks and more as Rob and Joe discuss the 1989 Toho movie “Gunhed.” (orignally published 04/02/2021)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamba.
Today we have one for you that originally published four
to twenty twenty one. We're going to be talking about
the nineteen eighty nine Japanese sci fi film Gunhead. This's
a lot of fun. You get into some nice cyberpunk
territory with this one. So let's dive right in.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
And I'm Joe McCormick and it's Mech Day on Weird
House Cinema. Rob. Is this our first No, wait what
am I asking? I was gonna say, is this our
first full on mech movie? But we did Robot Jocks
that's like an all time fave.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, yeah, this is coming. This would be our second
mech film. It's going to be what our second Japanese film,
And in a very broad sense, I guess it's like
what our second cyberpunk film.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
I guess it depends on what you count as cyberpunk.
So today we're going to be looking at the nineteen
eighty nine Japanese cyberpunk movie gun head aka gun Hato
and gun head. I know what you're thinking. Is that
spelled right?

Speaker 1 (01:26):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:27):
It is spelled with an hed instead of an hga
D like that. Isn't there a band that's called like
head p or something. I don't know anything about that band.
I remember them from when I was in high school
and they also spell it AGD. No comment, There nothing
interesting about that.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
I have nothing to add on that. I don't know
anything about p head though Gunhead with the AGD spelling
would be a great name for a band.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
It would be. Actually, I was just thinking that. Not
only that, the logo for the movie, where the title
is rendered in the full on screen fall looks like
a band logo. It looks like the Van Halen logo
or something.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah. Now, some of you might be wondering, especially if
you're going to this episode's sight unseen? Is this about
a This is a Japanese cyberpunk film about a guy
with a gun for a head. No, even though that
would be a perfect perfect plot device for a Japanese
cyberpunk film.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Sure, like a guy who gets some kind of virus
inside him that causes his head to fuse with a gun,
and it's all about like his identity changing as his
mind is taken over by the gun mind.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, that would that would be totally an expected plot device.
In fact, it may exist. But no, gunhead stands for something.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
That's right, it's your classic acronym. This stands for rob.
You dug this up, so I have to trust you
on this one, but I think you're correct. It stands
for gun unit of heavy eliminate device.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah. It's one of one of those kind of cheap
acronyms where they they get two letters from the second word,
So if we were being really strict about it, it
would be goohead instead of gunhead. But you know, gunhead
sounds cooler.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah. Well, it's like those government bills that are called
like the Opportunity Act or something. An opportunity is an acronym,
and they're grabbing three letters from here and one letter
from there in the middle of a word. It's just
all over the place. They're back engineering the actual name
from the acronym.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
So again, this is a nineteen eighty nine film, And
for those of you out there who you know follow
like Japanese media, maybe a little bit enough to just
know to have picked up on the title at times.
You may have noticed that there is a manga. There
are two different video games, nineteen eighty nine's gun Head
for PC and Gunhead The New Battle for NES. It

(03:43):
might make you wonder, like what came first? Is this
a movie based on a video game? Is it a
movie based on a manga, which is certainly something you
see a lot of these days. But no, this film
is original IP and these are all things that were
adapted from it.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
God, I love a sci fi movie that's original IP.
It's a beautiful unicorn.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, I mean is this yeah? Especially today? But yeah,
this was this was This was an original IP and Joe.
You even found us some screenshots from these games.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Oh, that's right. So I found that. I don't know
if it was ever released for the Nees in the
United States or internationally, but it was released for the
Famicom in Japan, I think, which was the I believe
the Japanese equivalent of The Nees.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, that's my rough understanding. I'm not really an expert
on that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
But at least the version I found is a Famicom
game called Gunhead. I guess this was Gunhead the New
Battle or something, but it looks like it is a
combination of like a real time or turn based strategy
game where you would be like managing Gunhead units, which
are these big battle robots as they move around into
positions on an island. So you know, it'd be like

(04:54):
Warcraft or StarCraft or something. There's a map in you're
managing units, and then I think when the unit it's meat,
it goes into a different type of gameplay where it's
like a side view real time battle where you're shooting
at each other and stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, with some kind of amusing looking sprites.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
I like these now, based on what I saw within
the game, this would not be based within the same
timeline as the movie itself. It looks like this would
be the prequel to the movie. I think this would
take place during the Robot War that is the background
we're told about in the opening text crawl of the movie.
Though I also read on the internet that the Gunhead

(05:31):
I don't know that this is true because I really
don't see much resemblance here, but I at least read
the claim that there is a turbographic sixteen game called
Blazing Lasers that was also inspired by Gunhead. I looked
it up. It's one of these vertical scrolling space shoot
them up games. I guess, kind of like Space Invaders,
but where you're like moving quickly down across a background.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, I'm glancing at footage from it now, and yeah,
I don't see a lot of shared DNA, but maybe
that's just.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
I never had this game, but I did have a
Turbographic sixteen. I had one of those weird off brand
consoles that I remember playing games like Bonk's Adventure, which
was a game where you play a think a baby
caveman with a giant head and you would hit people
with your head.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
So this is a system that didn't have Mario, didn't
have Sonic, but it had Bonk the Baby Caveman.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
It had Bonk and perhaps dubious gunhead ripoff ip.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
I was trying to write the one line elevator pitch
for this movie, and I was just failing. So that
must be reflected in my actual pitch, which is, in
the future armored mechs will be so advanced that humans
do not have the slightest chance to understand what they're doing.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, yeah, this, I have to add the caveat here.
So first of all, I'm not the initial intended audience
for this. You know, this was released largely in Japan
in nineteen eighty nine, and the version I watched, obviously
I'm watching it for the first time, you know, sometime later,
decades later, I'm watching it dubbed. And of course anytime

(07:05):
something has been dubbed, there are some great dubs out there,
there are some not so great dubs out there. So
it's possible that that contributed to me maybe not understanding
what was going on in the film most of the time.
So I found myself watching the film while also checking
regularly checking in on the Wikipedia plot summary for the film,

(07:27):
which didn't really This didn't make the film like a
poor movie vig going experience. It just kind of made
it more It's like reading reading a historical text, where
you need to keep checking in to see what's being discussed, like,
all right, what are they talking about here? What's supposed
to be going on here? Because if I just had
to go on the movie itself, I would have been

(07:47):
lost very quickly.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
I would argue that this was only really a problem
for us because we're having to record a podcast about it.
I think if I had just been watching this movie,
I would not have looked up anything. I would not
understood a lot of what was happening on screen, and
I would have loved the experience. Nevertheless, this is a goot.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Like, in terms of just recommending this movie, I highly
recommend this movie to play in the background with other
music on top of it. Like, as we'll get into,
the visuals in this are wonderful. The visual world of
this movie is very rich. But yeah, if you're watching
it for a podcast intending to speak coherently about what

(08:26):
happened in it, that's where our cross referencing comes in.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Actually, when I was reading about this movie before we
decided to watch it, one of the most common things
I saw in like user reviews all over the internet
and stuff was I don't know what happened in this movie,
but I loved it.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Anyway, let's hit some trailer audio.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
My god, look at this junk. Give it up, Brooklyn.
All the ten seconds to contact.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Of the two Marcus cross fire.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Gun head.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Now in the English language trailer. I don't know if
this is the part we just got clipped, but one
of my favorite things about it was that it was
it had the announcer, you know, the same guy who
does the inner World part also reading quotes about the
movie from critics. So it's this Duke newcom voiceover saying
things like totally delivers the goods.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, though I have to say it did sound like
like a third rate in a world narrator, you know,
like it's not the narrator who does the big cinematic trailers.
This is the narrator type of narrator that does trailers
that you watch on other DVDs that come out in
the mid nineties.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Right, yes, yes, well, actually no, I stand by my
original comparison. He sounds like Duke Nukem. I don't know
who did that voice, but that was very close for me.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah. Well, let's start where we normally start. Let's talk
about the people of note the connections here. The first
connection to make here though, is not really you know,
individual human specific. It has to do with the production
company because this was a co production between Nippon Sunrise
as well as a number of a number of other
companies like Bandai, the toy company was involved.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
There were like seven companies listed yeah on the.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, but the big one, the one that instantly gets
our attention, is of course Toho. The best yeah, legendary
film studio, most famous, I guess for many listeners for Godzilla,
but also for various other films, such as especially the
early films of Kira Kurosawa. But it was founded in

(11:03):
nineteen thirty two as the Tokyo Takarzuka Theater Company. It
controlled traditional theaters throughout Tokyo, and as films began coming
in from overseas, they got in on the production as well.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Every time I see the Toho logo at the beginning
of the movie, I have a Pavlovian reaction to it
because I know I'm about to watch something I adore.
I know Toho must put out bad movies too, but
I guess somehow the bad ones just never make it
to me in my personal brain archives. It's either going
to be like a lovely Kaiju Meet Slam or a

(11:38):
Kurosawa masterpiece, or something else of godly merit.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah. Yeah, if you're not like a regular consumer of
Japanese cinema, then you've seen a Toho film. It's probably
a Godzilla film or a Kurosawa film, and in different
ways the great results. So anyway, like I was saying,
they started out as being just a theater company, but
then they got in to producing films as well. Their
first film was nineteen thirty five's Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts.

(12:06):
This was a drama, and apparently drama and historical pictures
pretty much defined the first couple of decades of Toho films,
which included the early films of legendary director at Kira Krrosawa. Now,
during the post war period, specifically in nineteen fifty four,
things got really interesting, so the company nearly bankrupt itself,
putting out first Karisawa's latest historical film and a giant

(12:30):
monster movie. These were, respectively, the Seven Samurai and Godzilla
films that would become major box office successes and lead
to a string of hits from both Karrosawa and The
King of Monsters.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Can you believe that Seven Samurai and Godzilla came out
in the same year from the same company. I mean,
that is a good year.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, and they were taking a risk doing it. Yeah.
So Godzilla was to Ho's first sci fi or horror film,
depending on how you look at it. We were discussing
this off mic beforehand about just how dark that first
Godzilla film is.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Yeah, if, in fact, if you've never watched it, you
should definitely go back and watch the original fifty four
Godzilla because it is it is very unlike the silly
monster romps that would come in decades following, Like the
first Godzilla movie is a dark, bleak, scary adventure.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, but it was a monster movie. It was a success.
So after this, Toho continued to bust out stuff. In fact,
that very same year they busted out Invisible Man in
fifty four, and then Godzilla was back in fifty five
for the first of just endless sequels. Like even as
we're recording this, Godzilla is debuting in a new motion picture,

(13:46):
so he absolutely cannot be stopped, and he gets bigger
every time.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
If you've never heard me advocate it before. One of
the recent movies I have loved the most is shin Godzilla.
One of it. It's not part of the recent I
don't know what you'd like, the American partnership or the
international Godzilla pictures that have lots of American actors and
stuff in them. This was a Japanese production. I think
it came out in like twenty fifteen or sixteen something

(14:10):
like that. Does that sound right? Yeah, it just just magical.
It's a movie that is surprisingly focused on government bureaucracy
in a strangely compelling way. And it's got great music,
great monster effects. I just love it.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Yeah, it's so absorbing. I remember I watched it in
its entirety in mute with subtitles on an airplane once.
It was one of those where I was listening to
music and I was like, Ah, another Godzilla movie. Let
me give it a preview. I'm just curious. And then
I started watching it and just watched the whole thing
just sucks you in.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Have you still not seen it with the original soundtrack?

Speaker 1 (14:44):
No, I haven't. I have no idea what it sounds like.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Oh oh, oh, you've got rob I think you would
love the soundtrack to it. It's got fantastic music, a
great kind of nervous string theme. It's just wonderful, I
guess I should say. By the way, directed by hidiaki
On and Shinji Higuchi, cool.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Yeah. I need to come back to it for sure,
real quick. About some other Toho films of note, One
of my favorites that we may have to come back
to in weird El Cinema is nineteen sixty three's Matango,
which is about a haunted island of mushroom people. It's
really kind of grizzly with people being infected by spores
and slowly mutating in the mushroom people. It's pretty horrific stuff.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
Oh, that's definitely on the list.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
And then of course one that I know has we
have on the list already and we've actually heard from
some listeners about Toho also put out the nineteen seventy
seven Film House.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
Best Haunted House film of all time.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Now, speaking of Bandai, yes, there have been and our
models and toys of Gunhead, which is the central robot
Slash Max Slash tank in this film. And you know,
I'm assuming they must have put some I'm really assuming
they put some sort of toy out back in the day.
I couldn't find evidence of it, but I was looking around,

(16:00):
and you can still get a high quality model kit
of gun Head. There's a one thirty fifth scale model
that was released in twenty twelve from Codo Bokeya and
it is a pricey kit, especially imported and out of production,
but it's said to be really fun. It's a three
hundred part kit to build and it looks at Japan

(16:21):
has long had a very strong scale model culture, and
I've never built a kit from this company, but I
understand that they specialize in both traditional kits and also
pre painted collectible so stuff that includes major brands like
Star Wars and even things like Texas Chainsaw, Massacre and others.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
I feel like this time in the late eighties here
was a really high point for toy etic movie and
TV development. Unless I'm wrong, this was also the era
of Transformers, right, which was a very much a toy
driven media property, and there were others like it.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
So I can only assume a film like this a
major production, you would have had Gunhead toys back in
the day. I mean, they made video game I'm a
video game of it for crying out loud, so there
had to have been toys.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
So all of the existing Gunhead games they look like
sort of high budget graphical affairs. But what if there
was a gun Head text adventure like Zork, Right, it'd
be pretty good. You say, you say go east, and
then it says you were absorbed by a biodroid.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
All right, let's talk about some of the actual humans
involved in this baby. First of all, let's talk about director,
co writer Masato Herada born in nineteen forty nine. As
a director, it looks like most of his directorial credits
are for the sort of non genre drama film that
tends to be far more successful domestically in Japan, as

(17:48):
well as some award winning historical dramas. As an actor,
though this is fascinating. He only has two credits on IMDb,
but they're both West films that Western viewers are likely
to be familiar with, So he had a villain role
in both two thousand and threes The Last Samurai starring
Tom Cruise and two thousand and six is Fearless starring

(18:09):
Jet Lee.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Interesting why is that so often such a pleasing turn
when somebody who is primarily a film director later in
their careers starts taking acting roles, especially as villains. David
Cronenberg did it, Remember he plays a really creepy serial
killer in that movie Night Breed, and he's had some
other acting roles. Of course, Werner hertzog right, for some reason,

(18:33):
later in his career, I was like, yeah, I'll play
some villains.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, I mean, like with Cronenberg for example, and Grant.
He's a much older director at this stage. He's been
far more active as an actor recently than a director.
He's even shown up on one of the new Star
Trek shows.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Oh I didn't know that, but I wondered if you
noticed this, Rob. When I was watching the opening credits
to Gunhead, the director was listed as Alan Smithy. Do
you know anything about what the story is here?

Speaker 1 (19:02):
I do not. Of course, that tends to mean that
there was something bad happened, he got out of control.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
Yeah, Alan Smithy Films. I'm not an expert on the industry.
My understanding is that happens when the director has gotten
their name removed from the film, or when the production
company wanted their name remove. I mean, I guess it
indicates some kind of dissatisfaction or dispute.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe at least it didn't say
directed by Chiron five and you know, something went really bad, right,
But yeah, I don't know the full story on that. Now.
Another interesting thing about this film that pops up is
when you look at the at the writing credits. Again,
Herata also has a co writing credit, But then there's

(19:47):
this guy James Bannon on there credited as co writer
and he's written a couple of other things. But when
you look him up on IMDb, you see that he's
he's mostly involved in the industry for his work as
part of an ad R loop group.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
Now, that led me to suspect that his writing credit
could have had something to do with writing English lines
or possibly writing for the English dub.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
That. Yeah, and that's what I thought, Well, that sounds
sounds pretty reasonable. But then I started looking around on
IMDb more and the truth seems to be that he
won a Godzilla screenplay contest hosted by Toho, and in
this original screenplay, Godzilla would fight a giant robot, and
this ended up not being used, but various elements of
his work eventually became Gunhead.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Now, I guess this would post date Godzilla versus Mecha Godzilla.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Right, yeah, yeah, so Godzilla.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
Has already fought a giant robot at this point, but
I guess you can have different kinds of giant robots.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah, I mean, Godzilla has done everything at this point,
so it's just coming up with new ways to have
him do the same thing over and over again.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Well, thank you, James Bannon for whatever role your giant
robot idea played in inspiring this wonderful film.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
All right, let's talk about the cast. Masahiro Takashima plays
the character Brooklyn. He was born in nineteen sixty five.
This was only his fourth acting credit, but he's had
a long career on Japanese TV and in Japanese film,
including an appearance in Godzilla Versus Destroyer in nineteen ninety five.

(21:14):
We'll talk more about Brooklyn as we go here, but
you know, Takashima is perfectly acceptable in this role as
the handsome hero who loves carrots.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
I warmed up to him as the movie went on.
There's kind of a weird introduction to him because when
we very first meet him, he's acting kind of like
nervous and quiet. He's got a scarf over his mouth
and he doesn't talk much, and I'm kind of wondering,
how is this guy going to be the hero? But
somewhere around I don't know, a third of the way
through to halfway through, he just suddenly like reveals his

(21:44):
very beautiful jawline and then starts delivering with confidence. I'm
not sure exactly what the transition is there, but yeah,
he works as the hero.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah, all right, and then we have another major character,
and this is Texas Air ranger Sergeant nim so she
is an American or at least a Texan character. I
don't know. I don't know if if Texas is still
part of America in this future you get into. You
often get into sort of weird like splintering of the

(22:13):
United States and your futuristic scenarios, especially cyberpunk stuff.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
Yeah, a lot of Actually, this is something I've seen
pretty often in either alternate histories or future sci fi
written by people who were not themselves Americans. They often
postulate somehow that Texas has taken over North America or
that Texas is its own country. I feel like I
could think of half a dozen things off the top

(22:38):
of my head that have like a Texas like that.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
There's a post apocalyptic board game that I enjoy called
Niroshima Hex and it's also I think an RPG brand
as well. They've kind of fleshed out the world. But
it's a Polish company if I remember correctly, But it
involves like, you know, I can't remember if Texas has
its own army, but Mississippi has its own army. New

(23:02):
York has its own army. So it's it's stuff like
that that, you know, maybe it's a little more giggle
inducing to American audiences, and maybe, you know, works a
little more seriously in the Polish context. Or I don't know,
maybe maybe the you know, it's Polish inventors are also
having a laugh. I don't know that there's a lot
of a lot of satire in works of this nature,

(23:24):
for sure.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
I will say that the atmosphere in Gunhead looks sufficiently
polluted to be set in a world where Texas is
a major international player.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
All right, so the character is Texas Air Rangers Sergeant Nam,
played by Brenda Baki. If she sounds familiar, that's because
she was in Tails from the Crypt Demon Knight, which
we previously discussed, though we didn't really discuss Baki enough.
I think we were too distracted by the other cast members.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah, Billy Zane, Jada Pinkett, William Sadler. There are a
lot of people sucking up screen oxygen here.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Yeah, those perfectly fine. In that she played Cordelia. If
you remember, she's one of the regulars there at the
down and out hotel that used to be a church,
and she's kind of a mid film victim of Billy
Zane's demon crew.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
I believe she's the one who sets Thomas Hayden Church's
nipples on fire.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yes, with the electrodes. Yes. So yeah, yeah, she's good
in that. And I remember watching some of the behind
the scenes features where various cast members were talking about
how she was just super nice and a pleasure to
work with. But yes, in this she plays badass Texas
Air Ranger Sergeant nim Now. Other than these two films,

(24:42):
I guess her biggest screen roles were in La Confidential,
where she played Lanta Turner, Hot Shots Part Due and
also Under Siege two Dark Territory, which we've also mentioned
on the show before.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Not because we watched it. It seems there's a lot
of intersection there. We keep coming up against actors and
directors who worked on that film.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, so Baki's worked a lot in TV and film,
but we should probably highlight her work in Death Spot
from nineteen eighty nine, And interestingly enough, her first screen
credit was a nineteen eighty six comedy that I've not
seen called Last Resort, which also featured Charles Grodin, Megan Malay,
John Lovett's Garrett Graham. Gary Graham, Yeah, who pops up

(25:24):
in a lot of B films. He was in Chopping Mall.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
But he was also Beef in Fan of the Paradise.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
Yeah, Mario van Peebles whoa and Phil Hartman whoa. Yeah,
so interesting. I don't know anything about that film, but
that's quite quite a cast to kick off with. And
I don't think it was a bit part for I
think it was a fairly decent part in the film.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
Now, I do think it's an interesting choice that they
make the representative of Texas in this movie, not a
character like texts in Robot Jocks, who's just you know,
Buck Strickland from King of the Hill. That instead they
make the representative of Texas this kind of cool, unflappable
air cavalry lady.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, she's There's not really much I guess you'd say
t exploitation going on with this character. She's not even
wearing a cowboy hat.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
She doesn't even have an accent. No, no, I mean
it's not a Texas accent. She might have right, more
kind of West Coast sounding.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, she's a you know, she she's good. I guess
she's kind of Ripley esque without you know, being that
like strong a screen presence at all. But you know,
she does a good job. She's a kind of a
fun character as much as any human in this film
as a fun character, but as far as other characters
in the film. So there's a there's a whole crew.
We'll discuss this as we go. There's a there's an

(26:41):
initial crew in the film that gets weeded out pretty quickly. Yeah,
but there are some some fun actors in it, at
least initially, and one of them is this guy, Micky Curtis.
Sometimes that's spelled mickey, like Mickey Mouse in English. Other
times you see it spelled with more with I guess
kind of a Japanese kind of spelling in English vonts miki.

(27:06):
But this was one of those guys that I had
no clue about this guy previously, but watching this film
force me to look him up. And he's a super
interesting character in this he plays the weird pilot Captain
Banshow But in reality he's a Japanese actor, singer, and
media personality born in Japan to English Japanese parents, and

(27:27):
he's been in a lot of things over the years
and it's still active to this day. Born in thirty eight,
but still acting in things. Seems like He's one of
these guys who's kind of just continually recreated himself and
tried different things, like I think he's done country music
more recently. But he apparently rose to fame initially, at

(27:48):
least in part, as a member of the avant garde
rock band Mickey Curtis and the Samurai in the late
nineteen sixties. They started out as rockabilly, but then they
switched to more of a prog rock kind of sound,
and their nineteen seventy one album Kappa said to be
a masterpiece of heavy progressive rock in Japan, at least

(28:08):
according to prog archives dot com.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
According to the Progtologist.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
Yeah, now, I'm no prog rock expert or anything, especially
within the context of the Japanese music scene, but I
look this up. I wasn't able to find it on Spotify.
It's listed on discogs, It's certainly listed on progarchives dot com.
I was able to find the full album on YouTube.
I was streaming it there. I'll include it on the

(28:34):
post for this episode at Simmutamusic dot com. But it
sounded really cool to me. I was really enjoying this album.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Well, I will say as a licensed and accredited progtologist
that this is really good stuff. You know. It has
some elements that will sound familiar from a lot of
the sort of heavy psych of the late sixties early seventies,
things that will remind you of like Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly,
but it also very much has its own sound like it.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Yeah. The last track on the album, though, is a
twenty minute percussion instrumental piece. Just be ready for that.
But you know that's the last track on the album.
By the end, you're already won over or you stopped listening.
I was looking at some of the liner notes on
this album and I noticed that they are dubbed. In
the liner notes, the band is dubbed as Japan's water Children,

(29:22):
I guess owing back to the Koppa theme on Oh.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Oh I See like the Kappa. The monster, the water
monster we've talked about that reaches up what was it?
It reaches up through your anus and removes your liver.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah, and it causes the body to bloat in all
you know, a spirit a monster of drowning, a rural
folk belief in Japan. And there's actually the cover art
for this album is a representation of that monster.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
So I will say, one of my main complaints about
this movie is that the rest of the cast does
not survive longer to sort of fill it out with
their different personalities, because very quickly this movie kind of
narrows it down to a small core of characters who
survived to the end. I kind of wish we got

(30:10):
to see more of the salvage slash heist crew. Some
of these characters only have a couple of lines before
they get iced.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, I mean Captain Banchow seems great. I mean, he's
got all this charisma. He's such a weird cat. I
want to see more of him. But yeah, it doesn't
last too long. It's like if if you had that
whole ragtag bunch in I don't know, a film like
like Aliens, you know, and you just wipe them all
out within a few minutes. And then you know, Aliens

(30:36):
does wipe them all out, but it takes its time.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, it gives you a taste of them first. Yeah,
and then by the time there is a massive attack
and many of them are killed, Like, you really have
started to cherish the characters who do survive, and so,
like you know Vesquez by that point, you know, Hudson
by that point.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah, but in this one, like there's scenes later where
Brooklyn is talking about like he's reminiscing about ban Show
and we're like, oh, yeah, Banchow. He seemed to interesting.
Too bad he died like five minutes into the film.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Yeah. So about the other characters in this crew, there
is one who is played by an actress named Aya
in Joji, who is depending on It sounded like there
were different parts where she was either being called Babe
or Babe in the English translation, and I feel like
I heard both, but they anyway, I should explain, all

(31:23):
of the thieves have like cute nicknames that start with B.
So it's like band Show Brooklyn, Beabey, Boxer, Boomerang, Bombay.
But I think Bombay is not like the city Bombay.
It is like bomb Bay as in on an airplane,
m okay. That's all in the English version. I'm not

(31:43):
sure how that all translates in the Japanese. But anyway, Bebe,
one of the main thieves, is played by Aya and Joji,
who is a Japanese film and TV actress. She was
born in nineteen sixty. I don't recognize a lot from
her filmography, but she's still working as of recent years.
She's done a lot of stuff. In this she plays
this character Bebe, who's kind of a no nonsense cyber

(32:04):
thief with like an implant. She's got sort of a
cyber eye, and it seems like she is in a
leadership role in this gang. She might be like second
in command under Captain Banshow I think.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
Yeah, But anyway, looking around through her filmography, it looks
like another one of the big things that Njoji did
was a TV series in the nineties called gto Colin
Great Teacher onie Zuka, And I just want to read
the description quote onie Zuka, a former delinquent finds himself
in the role of a high school teacher, facing students
who behave just as he used to. Using unusual methods,

(32:40):
he manages to reach through to his students and help
them with their problems.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Delightful.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
I know I've seen an exact version of the story before,
but I can't remember what it was. Is that what
happens in the principle?

Speaker 1 (32:53):
Oh wait, is that the principle is that the one
with what's his name Tom? Not Tom? He's got Bearringer
in it Tom Beringer.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
Barringer could be Tom Behringer. He was like I was
a sniper when.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, Like it's that kind of maybe I'm thinking of
a different film then that one. It's like he's like
a former Special Forces guy who comes in and like
fights back against the punk kids. You know. It's kind
of a Hell City Hell School film from I guess
probably the nineties or the early two thousands.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
Okay, I guess I've never seen it. I think maybe
I saw commercials for it on TV when they were
going to like play it on TNT or whatever.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, but No, the idea of like the former troubled
student becoming the teacher who reaches out to troubled kids,
I feel like that's a common enough trope, but it's
in the sort of film that I either don't see
or certainly don't remember.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
Yeah, but you could look at that kind of like
the role of the gun Head Machine itself in this story.
You know, he's got experience from the past where he
didn't do so well, and then the Gunhead Machine sort
of sort of shepherds the humans through their their final
conflict with the Chiron five.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
Yeah. Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
I'm reaching here. Okay, I was just looking at a
couple more of the actors from the main crew. You've
got a guy named James Brewster Thompson who plays a
character named Barabbas also gets killed very quickly in the movie.
But this guy was an actor and a competitive judo practitioner.
It looks like he was also in the movie Lion
Heart with Jean Claude Van Dam Okay, and then I'll

(34:21):
give a shout out to Jay Kabira who plays Bombay.
Kabira was also a Japanese actor, born in nineteen sixty
two in Okinawa. Looks like Gunhead was his first movie.
He's still acting. Don't recognize anything from his IMDb, but
he provides some nice levity in the first third of
this movie.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, I remember him being kind of a fun care
another fun character that died too soon. Yeah, all right, well,
let's get into the plot of this film. It begins
with that beautiful toe hoo title screen, which, like we

(35:00):
said already, just is beautiful and invites you in. It
gleams like the sun.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
It's gorgeous. I'm salivating, my brain is salivating. But anyway,
that is a short prelude to what in this film
is I'm just going to say, a ridiculous amount of
opening exposition and backstory. You get opening text, you get voiceover, narration,
you get all kinds of stuff. But I think we
should actually go over the opening text because that will

(35:27):
set the scene for the world in which this movie
takes place, and we can comment as we go on.
But the first thing you see is you're getting I
think the first thing is just on a black screen
and you see text that says. In the early twenty thirties,
Mankind discovered a new substance, text mexium, which enabled the
entire world to be controlled by a new generation of supercomputers. Now,

(35:52):
this text mexium is a major plot point, and I
love it.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah, I love a good fake element in a sci
fi picture. I mean, whether you're talking about unobtainium or
what have you. But but text mexium has to be
the absolute best I have ever heard it. I mean,
maybe the creators of this were not as familiar with
text mechs, the you know, the the American slash Mexican

(36:19):
culinary tradition. But it also seems impossible because text mechs
has itself kind of spread around the world.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
Yeah, we were trying to make sense of this name.
Why is it called tex Mexium. Now we know there
are some plot elements in the movie that involve Texas,
maybe as like its own country, And there are also
mechs as in mechs, which I guess you could shorten
to ex So is that I don't know. Is that
how it's coming together here?

Speaker 1 (36:46):
I guess I don't know. I think maybe it's just
an ultimately an example of something that has more appeal
to like non Americans or even non English speakers, like
it's I mean, and this goes both ways. You see this,
of course many of times with where American creators or
English speaking creators take something that they think sounds cool

(37:07):
in another language and applies it to their fantastic visions.
So you know, it goes both ways. Yeah, but yeah,
tex Mexium initially made me laugh, though after a while
I kind of got over the humor of it and
kind of like bought into it. It's like, Okay, it's
tex Mexium, it's important stuff.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
Well I never got over the humor, but I love
it anyway. Yeah, but okay. The opening text goes on
it says, because of the danger for its misuse. Supplies
of text mexium were kept under heavy guard at the
hyper nuclear facilities that power every major city. At the
same time, mankind's continued depletion of Earth's natural resources has

(37:46):
resulted in a scarcity of the materials necessary to build
the all powerful computers. Conductive plastics and computer chips are
more valuable than gold, and a new breed of treasure
hunter has evolved to fill the demand, seeking machine parts
lost or discarded by earlier generations. These soldiers of fortune

(38:07):
will brave any danger in their quest for chips, even
the forbidden zones.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
And that already is awesome. Like, I was instantly interested
after absorbing this opening text, and ultimately I think this
is one of the things that this movie does really well,
Like it establishes an interesting sci fi world.

Speaker 3 (38:27):
Oh yes, these renegade thieves rummaging through the trash of
the wars of ages past to find computer parts that
can be repurposed into the technology that we now need
to run places like I guess Japan and Texas. Okay,
so you think, after all that you're done with the
opening exposition, but nope, after that you get voiceover narration

(38:49):
as we pan overshots of a flaming battlefield full of
machine wreckage and dead bodies in power armor, and the
narration goes in the year two thousand and five on
a tiny volcanic island designated simply eight Jo. It's the
number eight Jo, located one thousand miles from the Asian coast.

(39:11):
The Cybor Tech Corporation that Cybor with an oar. The
Cybor Tech Corporation built the world's first fully self contained
industrial complex. Its purpose to manufacture the most advanced robots
ever known. At the heart of this complex a computer
more advanced, more powerful than any other that came before,

(39:33):
the Chirn five. Chiron five controlled every aspect of its world.
For twenty years, everything appeared to run smoothly. A handful
of technicians and their families were stationed on the island
as custodians, but the cruel fact was human beings were unnecessary.
On July fourth, in the year twenty twenty five, Chiron

(39:55):
five declared war on the world. The Allies dispatched a
gun head, but Italian to eight Jo. The Great Robot
War began. Level three eight nine, Chiron's last line of defense,
air robot. I think I got all that as a
direct quote. Now, we have not been told anything about
gun heads before this. This is like the opening narration,

(40:17):
but the Gunhead Battalion is there. And then we get
some more texts that tells us we're at this three
hundred and seventy third day of battle, and we see
this giant cyber tank crash through some facility wall and
you've got heavily armed ground troops apparently human, marching in
all around it. The tank, I believe is one of
the gun head units, and the text on the screen

(40:39):
tells us that on this day, the beleaguered Gunhead Battalion
pushed ahead for one final attack, and we see how
it all went down. It's mech versus mech. So you've
got these different types of giant armored tank type vehicles
advancing on each other, exchanging fire. So it's the human
allied gun head tanks, which look kind of like the

(41:01):
giant Skynet kill tanks, like the Hunter Killer models from
the future and Terminator, but they're more complicated than that.
They've got this combination of legs and wheels and a
bunch of different guns pointing off of them in all
different directions, and those are the gun Heads. Those are
the good guys, and they're against the Aerobot, which I
was trying to think of how to describe. It has

(41:22):
a characteristic front facing triangle orientation of three glowing eye
spots that shoot energy beams. And then on top of
that it has these arching claw arms that hang down
in front of the vehicle, sort of like a drooping
sauropod neck. So imagine a metal brachiosaurus with multiple necks

(41:44):
and heads that has this triangle of blaster eyes.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Yeah, for anyone out there who is who follows like
mac fiction and Japanese science fiction, these this sort of
design will look familiar because you've seen variations on this
theme plenty of times. You know. They're beautiful looking, though,
especially Gunhead, Like Gunhead is just this really well designed,
cool looking sci fi tank, and arrow Bot is this

(42:14):
other sci fi tank. It's maybe less interesting looking, but
different looking, so we can tell them apart in battle,
and you know, and also kind of cool.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
Good joyce with the three eyes in the triangle, it
helps you distinguish which one is which when you know
you're seeing the models clash at each other.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
And boy did they clash. Oh yeah, they clash a lot.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Yeah, so they're shooting at each other. One of the
Gunheads sort of looks like it has a gun that's
blasting highly focused jets of steam. I don't know if
that's what it was supposed to be, but if so,
that's a cool idea. And things are not looking so
hot for the gun Heads in this battle. The Aerobot
is a tough cookie, and in the end it seems
like the Aerobot smashes the Gunhead battalion and the human

(42:55):
allied forces. And then finally you get your title screen
just say as gun Head in the Van Halen esque
kind of font.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah. So, ultimately this is all still set up. We
haven't even really gotten a proper movie yet. This film
spends a lot of time prefacing the core plot. But
like I say, the world creation in this film is
one of its best attributes. It's really it's in my opinion,
really wonderful. And it takes a bit to set up.

(43:24):
They use all these different gimmicks to do it, but
the result is a perfectly grimy cyberpunk future set in
the aftermath of a supercomputer seemingly failed rebellion against the
human race. And and I guess to a certain extent,
the human race is sort of ambiguous victory over the
computer threat. You know, it's kind of a it's kind

(43:45):
of a rough, inconclusive ending to a terrible conflict.

Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
Now, when I say cyberpunk, I should stress that this
is cyberpunk in the Japanese sense, which certainly has a
lot in common with the Western concept of cyberpunk, shares
many of the same elements. You see a lot of
interplay between the two. Like American and Western cyberpunk may
in many cases be inspired partially by Japanese models. Likewise,

(44:12):
Japanese cyberpunk will draw inspiration from key pieces of Western
cyberpunk sci fi, But Japanese cyberpunk is sort of in
general more hard industrial and often features a more disturbing
and even nightmare interpretation of human machine synthesis.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Yeah, to oversimplify, I might say that where American cyberpunk
is more likely to have laptop bikers, latex bodysuits, and
glossy dusters, perfect emo hair, Japanese cyberpunk is more likely
to be choking on eruptions of metallic robot tumors.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Yeah, it can definitely lean more into body horror. And
kind of a surreal nature. So some of the key
examples of Japanese cyberpunk include nineteen eighty nine's Tetsuo the
Iron Man, which is a very kind of Lynchian, cronen
Burger kind of a film.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah, very metal tumors again.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Yeah, Akira the anime from nineteen eighty eight. And then
another name that often comes up is Chosen Fukuoi's films,
particularly nine sixty four Pinocchio from nineteen ninety one. That's
one I've seen that one. That one is also wild,
very very similar in tone to Tetsuo the Iron Man.

(45:34):
But other films that are also noted that I haven't
seen include nineteen eighty six Death Powder in nineteen eighty
two's Burst City. I wanted to mention those because those,
of course, are two examples that pre date Gunhead, whereas
we have this weird situation where we can't say that
The Gunhead was inspired by Tetsuo the Iron Man because
it came out the same year, and it only comes
out a year after Akira, So it seems to be

(45:57):
a film that was very much a part all of
this this sci fi aesthetic movement in Japanese media. At
the time, a.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
Very nineteen eighty eight eighty nine cyberpunk zeitgeist.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
You might say, yeah, so there's strong elements of Japanese
cyberpunk in gun Heads visual universe, as well as elements
of the plot. It's difficult to really sum up Japanese
cyberpunk as a whole, because, of course it's not a
whole thing. It's composed of individual films and individual works
by individual creators and media companies and toy companies, et cetera.

(46:33):
But you can suffice to say it has its own
elements and themes that stand apart from Western cyberpunk.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
Right of course, with all of the continuous back and
forth cross fertilization.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah, So to get back.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
To the movie, picking up after the title screen, you
might think we're done with narration, but nope. At this
point I was literally laughing out loud because there was
more voiceover narration. So we get like the camera sailing
over some clouds and we're watching lightning flash out the fog,
and then we hear for thirteen years, a deep silence

(47:03):
has surrounded the island. It has existed under a veil
of mystery, almost forgotten by the world until now. So
now I think we're finally into the plot.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Yeah, and ultimately watching this, you know, if you're watching
this through the first time, you might be relieved that
the narration ends. But looking back on it, I kind
of wish it had universal narration throughout. I missed the
narrator voice telling me what was happening.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
So, yeah, we're with this futuristic airplane that is soaring
through the gauntlet of thunder, and we see that the
plane is called the Merry Ann And then we're inside
meeting the crew. They try to do some intros. Honestly, again,
most of these characters get killed pretty fast, so you
don't have a lot of time to get to know them.
Some of them I really can't identify much about them,

(47:50):
but some I can. So you got Captain Bancho, that's
the guy we mentioned. Mickey Curtis, who is He's great.
He's a rowdy rock and roll air wizard wearing a
leather bomber it with a light seasoning of George Carlin
Sauce I would say, yeah, yeah. And then you've got Brooklyn.
He's gonna end up being one of the main heroes
of the movie. I guess in the end, the main
heroes are Brooklyn and Sergeant Nim but Brooklyn again is

(48:14):
played by Masa hero Takashima, and they identify Brooklyn immediately
as a mechanic. When we first meet him, he is
flying the plane because Captain Banshow has apparently bullied him
into flying the plane. But it's clear that Brooklyn is
not supposed to be piloting the plane and does not
feel good about it. He's having some kind of severe

(48:35):
anxiety about piloting and this will go on to be
a major plot point throughout, and ban Show is sort
of gently harassing him. I think he's joking that, like, hey,
if you get air sick and throw up on my plane,
I will make you eat your vomit, which is cute.
But Brooklyn is kind of a spiky haired, initially taciturn
young man in sunglasses with a scarf over his face,

(48:58):
and he is holding a carrot in his mouth like
a cigar.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Yes, yeah, which I get it. Kind of maybe this
is a bugs bunny kind of thing. I don't know,
but yes, it becomes clear that Brooklyn loves carrots. He
is perhaps growing carrots on the airplane. I'm not certain
on that.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
There's one part where we see a giant colander full
of enormous carrots.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
Yeah, so they they brought them at any rate, Like
carrots are important. I mean, if you have carrots in
the post apocalyptic or semi post apocalyptic cyberpunk world, eat them.
You know they're good for you.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah. Oh, and Brooklyn keeps playing with a revolver underneath
his coat. It's like when you know, you know those
guys who like they play with a knife. They've got
a pocket knife and they just fiddle with it a
lot that open it and close it and stuff. But
he does that but with a gun.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Yeah. Bancho is quick to remind him that this is bad.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
Luck, like that that's the problem. It's bad luck. And then,
of course, also we meet Babe played by Aya and Joji,
who is in some she's some kind of leadership role.
She's like the lute. I think she does not tolerate
any horsing around. She might be the most like just
straight to business character. And then you meet barabas Thus

(50:09):
played by James Brewster Thompson, the judo guy. He seems
to be like the tough guy, the heavy gun hero
of the crew. You meet Bombay, who is Jacobira. He
is I would call him the goober of the bunch.
Like he's dressed in a funny way. He's covered in
pieces of flare, like he's got a hat that's studded

(50:29):
with all kinds of little pins. There was one part
where I paused it to try to see if I
could recognize what any of the pins are. But they're
I don't know, you know, like pins you would wear
on your lapel. But he's got tons of them all
over his hat. And then he's wearing a duster coat,
and inside the coat there are like a thousand spoons
or if I don't know what they were, some little

(50:50):
metallic objects just dangling inside his coat flaps. But anyway,
I was wondering, what do you call this character type?
It seems like something that's an archetype that's common enough
you need a word for it. It is the character
who is the funny, cowardly but somehow still lovable complainer,
very much like Bill Paxton and Aliens.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Yeah yeah, or to a even more comedic extreme. You
had the sidekick of El Santo in the Dracula movie.
We discussed in a recent episode. Oh yeah, what was
his name? Abio or something it was. I know it
was parakeet in Spanish.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
What was it, periico, Yes, yeah, And then there were
some other ones. There is Boomerang, who I think she
does like radar and tracking stuff. And then there's a guy. Yeah,
there's a guy named Boxer who we don't really get
to know very well at all. I think maybe he's
I can't remember if he's the same guy who you
see with a bunch of grenades on him. But there's

(51:48):
one thing I noticed on the Marianne. They've almost got
like a mess haul on the plane in the Marianne,
and they've got a refrigerator full of guns, just like
in split second.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Yeah, I noticed that. That's an interesting touch. I don't
know why that is. It just seems like you're dealing
with a bunch of props, especially in kind of a
cyberpunk or dystopian future scenario, why not just use that
old refrigerator for gun storage.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
So the Marianne is closing in on this island eight Jo,
and we know the thieves are there to recover those
conductive plastics and computer chips that we read about in
the opening text, and the plane spots a giant complex
with the landing pad on top of this three hundred
story central tower, and they go into land on top
of the tower, and where I noticed that the Marianne

(52:37):
is a fixed wing VTOL aircraft because it doesn't have
to do a horizontal runway landing. It just kind of
jets down like a helicopter.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Yeah, ultimately it benefits from being a model airplane. Yeah,
they could despite how it looks, they can just make
it land however they need it to land. I mean,
but it's an impressive model. The models look good in
this film.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
I mean, I guess you got the Harrier jets and stuff,
so maybe this is a descendant of that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Yeah, I mean it's a specialized technology that it's quite complicated.
But yeah, this film, I mean, this particular airplane does
not really look like a Harrier jet or an ospray
or anything like that. So I don't know, it's kind
of a mystery how it's achieving this. But yeah, sci Fi,
you let it.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Go, right. So they're doing all their initial scanning and assessment,
they pop out of the belly of the plane like
coming down through a hatch. They don't even have a
ladder or stairs or anything. Why is that? Like, how
do they get back into the plane. But they just
drop out through this hatch in the bottom of the plane.
And they already know, of course about the computer and
everything on the island. Then they know there's a Chiron five.

(53:37):
They're talking about it, so they're not in the dark here.
I think they know what they're getting into. And while
they're scoping the place out, they see a crashed helicopter
on fire. They look at it through binoculars and see
that it is a helicopter of the Texas Air Rangers.
So I suppose their jurisdiction includes the Pacific Ocean. And
they don't quite know what to make of this, but
they're like, oh okay, now. Bombay, in his role as

(53:59):
the the Hudson of the movie, the Bill Paxton of
the movie, is of course afraid. Once he sees the
crash helicopter, He's like, let's go to Borneo. I got
a great tip on a club medsite plastic. He wouldn't believe,
but anyway, a portion of the crew breaks off to
head inside, while I believe Boomerang and Boxer stay up
by the aircraft and pretty much as soon as they

(54:20):
are left alone, they're like immediately killed unceremoniously. The defenses
of the Chiron five just slaughter them.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Yeah, because even though the supercomputer here was seemingly defeated
or there was enough of a stalemate where it's no
longer a threat, it still has a threat to the
outside world anyway. It still has these very active self
defense mechanisms that are quite lethal.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Right. So, the breakoff part of the crew is wandering
around inside the facility. They're trying to figure out how
to get to the chips they're looking for, and Captain
Banchow is musing about whiskey. He says, it sure would
be nice to have some of that two thousand and
one whiskey right now. I hear it was ship here
a long time ago, used to make the robots dance.

(55:04):
So he claims he's going to find some. But I
wonder if that will come back later in the plot.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Oh, you know, it just might.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
So the infiltration continues. While they're wandering around in the facility,
there is a wonderful Pepsi machine jump scare, and I
will say this is a huge improvement on the standard
cat In a closet jump scare, Bombay gets freaked out
when a pepsi machine lunges out of him, lunges at
him out of the dark, and they start talking about this.

(55:41):
They're like, wow, robo cola, and Brooklyn says, robo cola
pepsi type. It was produced in twenty twenty three on
Island eight jo It's precious and the reference to it
is precious. It actually reminds me of a very poignant
scene in Cormick McCarthy's The Road where they drink a
scavenged Coca cola and they talk about how good it is.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
I think about that every time I think about having
a Coca cola, or I guess in this case of pepsi.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
Well, you think how much better it would be if
if there were there were nothing this sweet in the
world anymore.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Yeah, I mean, if you haven't had one in a while,
there's nothing that sweet in the world anymore, right, Yeah,
So yeah, imagine that the sweetest thing you've had is
a carrot, and then you're going from that to robocola
pepsi type. I also love that this implies, or maybe
more than imply, it's explicitly states that pepsi in the
future is made in the same facility.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
As the robots mex kill people.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Yeah, well robots to kill people, but also this extremely
volatile h you know, super element text Mexia or mex Texia.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Tex mex Mexium tex Mexium. Yes, that's a good point.
But I was also like, does this robocola? Does this
mean it's for the robots to drink or is it
just roboc like the monoail cafe in North Haverbrook, you know,
is it just like everybody's got robot fever? So you
know when you go into the store, everything's called that,

(57:08):
it's you know, robo glue, and I don't know what
people buy in the future, robo chips.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Yeah, I just took it to be the The cola
delivery system is robocola, and this one has pepsi, so
it's pepsi type. It feels good looking back. I think
I'm correct here, Joe, And this may be the last
element of the film that I fully understood. Of course, yes,
it's kept rolling on. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
So the team starts going down an elevator and Brooklyn
suggests because he realizes that part of the robot war
took place here, He's like, hey, what if we were
to harvest gun head parts here instead of chiron chips.
He says gun heads are very valuable, but a Captain
Banchow says, no, we are here for the chips. We're
here for the conductive plastic. We do not want gun

(57:50):
head parts.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Very sensible.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yes, Brooklyn and Bancho have a face off here where
banshow he it's kind of like the part in Jaws
where Quinn crushes his organic can and then Hooper crushes
his styrofoam cup, but instead it's that Ban show pops
open his cool ancient cigurio case and then Brooklyn opens

(58:13):
up his cigarette case, except it's full of carrot sticks.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
But then right after this light moment, there is a
disaster because something attacks them in the elevator. I think
it's the defenses of the Chiron five Ban Show Captain
Banchow our lovely rock and roll fly boy. He is killed,
Barabbas is killed. When Barabbas gets like a pipe shoved
through his guts, Bancho just gets dropped down a three
hundred story shaft. And now the original team is down

(58:39):
to just Brooklyn, Babe and Bombay. And after the attack,
they immediately pretty much meet Brenda Baki, the Texas Air
Ranger Sergeant Nim and Babe immediately realizes who she is.
She you know, knows, okay, this is a ranger from
the crashed helicopter, and Brenda Baki plays her like she's

(59:00):
you know, too cool for school. She's sitting there with
a major injury. I think she has also been attacked
by Chiron five's defense programs. But she's just sitting there,
like bleeding, lying against a wall, and she's got a
cigarette in her mouth and she's like got a light.
So it's that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Yeah, she's a cool, cool cucumber.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
One thing I noted that I thought was interesting she
has some kind of medical spray. So there's a wound
on her body. And after Brooklyn helps her, like I think,
unstick herself from some kind of thing she's like stabbed
into on the wall, she just heals herself by spraying
something out of a WD FOURT y type can all
over her wound and then she seems fine And isn't

(59:40):
there I think there is first aid spray in the
Resident Evil games. Isn't that the medical thing you get
in there?

Speaker 1 (59:49):
I haven't played a lot of those, but I know,
I've encountered this sort of thing in other pieces of
futuristic media, the idea that there's some sort of spray
or goo that can just be applied to the wound
it does some sort of advanced healing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Yeah. So anyway, Nim reveals her backstory. She is there
on the island chasing a biodroid that went berserk in
Texas and killed its colleagues at a hyper nuclear facility.
And she has tracked the droid here to eight to
Island eight Jo, but Chiron five crashed her helicopter, killed her,

(01:00:22):
her partner or her partners, her colleagues, and now she's
all on her own. But she's still determined to catch
that droid.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Yeah, and unfortunately Narration guy is not here to tell
us exactly what a biodroid is. But when we finally
get better, looks at it like there's no question, like
this is a this is a very Japanese cyberpunk creature.
It's you know, this kind of like bioorganic mass of
what might be flesh, what might be mushroom, what might

(01:00:51):
be mechanical parts, So you know, you get this this
biomechanical confusion from it. That is Yeah, I don't know.
You could compare it to get but not very geagory,
very like, there's a very based in Japanese cyberpunk, and
it looks good, it looks creepy.

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
I love the biodroid. I mean the biodroid is a
is a humanoid shaped engine oil coated nightmare with binoculars
for a head.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Yeah, and it is. It is at the heart of
Japanese cyberpunk because it's not just like the Western idea
of becoming a machine, you know, will damage your soul.
It's more becoming a machine well, yeah, it'll damage your soul,
but it'll also just make you really gross. We'll do
gross things to your.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Body, right, Like, I could imagine the biodroids human friends
might be like, hey, you know you smell bad and
you are covered in engine grease? Could you take a
shower before you hang out with us? And it would say,
why would I need to do that? I am perfectly
lubricated for maximum optimized efficiency.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
Yeah. So on paper, at this point, the plot's rolling
pretty well. You know, we have this fabulous setting, we
have this we have outside an outside four C. We
have this outside enemy. So we have multiple pieces on.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
The table, right, now they continue their journey. Nim is
looking for the Biodroid and the three remaining thieves are
looking for the computer chips. But then there is a
There are a number of attacks. There is an attack
by sound activated mines that are part of the Chiron
five's defense system, and they get attacked by the Biodroid,
and Bombay is killed by the Biodroid when he is

(01:02:25):
knocked onto a hook dangling from a chain in the
room of the Lament Configuration, which is in the Chiron
five facility for some reason. But eventually Brooklyn, Babe and
Nim make their way into the heart of the Chiron
five Level three, p. Ninety the Chiron Dome and I
loved this set. So there was like a control room

(01:02:47):
full of computer monitors with just skeletons sitting at them.
I guess these are the former custodians of the facility
who have been killed, but their bodies are still sitting
there at their workstations. And then inside the core itself
there is a line green lake and there's a vial
of text mexium, this precious substance at the Chiron Core.

(01:03:08):
I believe the Biodroid brought it here. This may be
something I'm misunderstanding, but I was trying really hard to follow.
I think the biodroid stole the text mexium from the
hyper nuclear facility in Texas and for some reason brought
it here to Island eight Jo to put into the
core of the Chiron five. Maybe because the Chiron five

(01:03:28):
needed needed text mexium for some reason.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's the power source or something, right,
like it needs it to fully activate itself again.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Right. And then while they're in there in the room,
I think the biodroid is like swimming around in the
like it's swimming in the lime green liquid and jumping
out at them like killer croc. And it ends up
knocking Babe into the Limrida lake and that that of
course is not good for her because obviously no human
can survive this liquid. But who knows what could come

(01:03:58):
of this submerge. And then only Brooklyn and Nim are left.
It's just down to these two and they start fighting
over the vial of tex mexium. They end up falling
through a shoot down into some warehouse are There are
multiple shoot surfing scenes in this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Yeah, a lot of shoots, a lot of elevators like
ultimately they again, they do a great job of creating
this enormous industrial environment. There's just this other worldly world
that is the result of supercomputer and its robots just
doing its own thing without really much concern at all
for humans for decades.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Yeah. Now, at some point in here, they get attacked
by the dreaded aerobot with the triangle of three eyes,
and it's coming after them, and I think they escape
it by going down yet another tube, so tube surfing
yet again, and at some point when they get to
the bottom, they are rescued by children. So finally we
have a couple more human characters. Again, there are two kids.

(01:04:55):
They are the only surviving kids of the original humans
who took care of the Chiro. So I guess maybe
their parents or grandparents or whatever were the people sitting
at those consoles at the heart of the Chiron five
and the two kids are named seven and eleven. Seven
is the younger brother and eleven is the older sister. Now,
when we first meet them, the kids are are they

(01:05:17):
could you tell? Are they supposed to be dressed as
robots like they're trying to blend in in the facility,
or are they just wearing some kind of protective suit.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
Yeah. I wouldn't show on that either if it was
environmental gear or what.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
But anyway, Brooklyn and Sergeant Nim get to know these
two kids seven and eleven, and they talk about ways
to escape the island, and they conclude the only way
to get through the island's defenses is to go through
chirn And so they start salvaging parts from the robot
war gun head parts because they decide that they need
a fully functioning gun head in order to defeat the

(01:05:54):
aerobot so that they can get through Chiron five to
get back to their airplane and escape. And Brooklyn thinks
that he can repair a gunhead, but he's very clear
he needs someone else who can pilot it, because I
think the implication is that he is still afraid of
piloting vehicles and maybe one of the kids would have

(01:06:15):
to drive it or something.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Yeah, but that's not going to work. Clearly has to
he has to summon all of his courage. He has
to find a way to not only fix the gun
head but pilot it, defeat the aerobot with the gun
head so that they can escape. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
And meanwhile, back at the Chiron Core. Strange things are afoot.
We see some kind of like weird creature busting out
of the lime green pool, and there's a computer screen
which presumably has just been showing this cybor tech screensaver
for seven years or however long it's been. Suddenly it
changes and it says irregular vibration detected, which is my

(01:06:52):
favorite Beach Boys song. I'm picking up irregular vibrations, And
of course that's because it's the biodid mock. Tw We
get the new Biodroid reveal, because I think what has
happened is that the Biodroid somehow absorbed or merged with Babe.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Yeah. And this again, this is very Japanese cyberpunk. The
idea that you could just sort of slip and fall
into a puddle of cyberpunk and become cyberpunk very good.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
So they end up getting the human characters end up
getting some plot exposition from a computer screen, and I
think the computer screen is supposed to be the central
computer of a reactivated gun head. But we learned that
the Chiron five went dormant after the Robot War in
order to give humanity the time to develop what it

(01:07:43):
would need in order to conquer the entire world, and
what it needed was tex Mexium. So I think the
idea is like, it's like, Okay, I can't win right now.
I'm just going to settle down and stop fighting, and
I wait for I don't know, this hyper nuclear facility
in Texas or whatever to get enough text Mexium that
I can have it stolen and brought to me and

(01:08:03):
then I'll take over the world.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
Yeah. I mean we kind of discussed this in recent
episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind this week about AI, Like,
if you're any mortal AI, time doesn't matter, you could
do things like this and be like, well, let's just
push pause on this war, and once technology is improved,
I'll steal it and then I will be in a
better position to win.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
Now, eventually the humans part ways, because again I was
finding it hard to follow exactly what's going on here,
but I think Nim and eleven, the older sister, they
go off on one mission to do something with the
chiron core, and then Brooklyn and seven are there trying
to build, trying to restore the gun head and get
it working. And of course this movie is, you know,

(01:08:47):
like any good movie of this type it's a good
scrap fest, so great sets, full of compelling shattered garbage.
The characters are crawling over and picking through.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
Yeah. I no matter what was going on with the
dialogue or the plot, I always bought the setting and
the props and the various robots and robot effects. As
Gunhead eventually becomes able to talk and have long conversations
with our hero, there's like one scene where Gunhead is

(01:09:16):
represented by just like one of these arms or tentacles
of Gunhead, and he's having a conversation with it, and
it was a pretty fun scene. I love the practical effects.

Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
I love what a stand up guy Gunhead is. Once
he finally starts talking and we get to know him,
Gunhead is so positive, he's such a good friend. I
mean it's heartwarming.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
I also like, while they're doing the Gunhead assembly, Brooklyn
is still eating carrots, and I'm thinking, how does he
still have carrots? After all he's been through where these
carrots coming from?

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
I mean, how would he survived this long without carrots?
I mean he must just have him secreted on his person.
He's got him like duct taped to his leg and
stuff underneath his clothing.

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):
Yeah, I guess Brooklyn has all kinds of means for
getting carrots through customs. Yeah, but like I said, once
the Gunhead was rebuilt, it starts talking to Brooklyn and seven,
and it's this very positive presence in the movie. It's
just so affirming. It really gives you, it really gives
them confidence, and it's a great friend. But of course
this comes down to I think one of the character

(01:10:17):
conflicts in the movie, which is that Brooklyn is afraid
of piloting things, but he must face his fears and
pilot the gun Head. Now, when that happens, he starts
piloting it. And I don't even know how to describe
all the different ways that the gun Head moves. Like,
the design of these robots is beautiful, practical effects work,
all the models they must have built. I don't know

(01:10:39):
exactly what scale they were working. But the movie in
a way is kind of murky. I mean, like it
doesn't give you really like clean clear looks at everything.
But as much as you can see, it looks really good.
The models are awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
Yeah, the models are great. I think the problem and
the reasons that I wasn't very invested in the big
battles that tape place is that for one thing, it's
kind of just like two robot tanks exploding at each
other and running into each other for what seems like forever.
But then also the environment of the very environment here
is just unreal. It's like, like, how do I how

(01:11:14):
do I relate to this as a human being? A
world where tanks are moving up like vertically, yeah, for
stories and stories and then battling each other in long
haulways and like just industrial cathedral spaces.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
Yeah. So at this point in the movie, tank time
has come, and a lot of what happens from here
on out is just tank play, you know. There is
it's tank versus tank, mech versus mech, and we're seeing
the different types of like you know, gun head weapons
or defenses versus Chiron five weapons or defenses.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
Yeah, it basically becomes tank'sploitation in the latter stages of
this film.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
Though, I mean just several A lot of the things
about the gun head are great, Like I love how
it doesn't it's not purely wheel powered or leg powered.
It has sort of a combination of legs and wheels,
kind of like rolling track legs. Sometimes it sort of
walks like an enormous metal turkey with guns all over it.
Other times it has tracks and rolls like a tank.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Yeah, so it has different modes I guess to deal
with different terrain types.

Speaker 3 (01:12:17):
Yeah, that's interesting. So I know, big thumbs up to
the gun Head. I like the gun Head. But anyway,
what's going on with the humans at this point? I
think there's I don't know. Again, it's it's not exactly
the easiest to follow right here, but the Biodroid I think,
is supposed to be returning the text mexium to the
Chiron core, but is also just injecting itself with text

(01:12:38):
mexium along the way, like it's using heroins. So it's
taken it up to the core, but then like it
stops to have a little taste.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
It earned it. It earned it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
There's also a lot of cute stuff with Brooklyn and
Seven bonding during their gun Head quest throughout the facility
at this point, Like, well, there are some things where
like Seven is trying to help and he's playing around
underneath Gunhead feet and I'm like, Seven, stop doing that.
That is very dangerous. But other times there's like one
part where it's seven points a gun at Brooklyn a

(01:13:10):
real gun and he makes it, you know, pewpw shooting
sound in Brooklyn warns him not to do this because
in a callback, it is bad luck. I'm not sure
that's the main problem with it, but I don't know.
Maybe there's like a dubbing translation issue. I mean, I
could imagine like bad luck being another way to say
that it's dangerous or something.

Speaker 1 (01:13:28):
Yeah, I'm not sure. I think that the scenes with
the kids tended to be the scenes where I was
cross checking on Wikipedia to see what the plot was
was doing at that point.

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):
Yes, yeah, I agree, those were some of the hardest
to understand.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
Now, now I've talked about how Gunhead is like really
really motivating and really confident and positive. There's a great
part where Gunheads starts doing this extended baseball metaphor to Brooklyn, Yes,
about the Brooklyn Dodgers. He's talking about some baseball game
where they were behind but then they fought through it,
and I thought that was really funny. There's a part

(01:14:04):
where the Gunhead has to be refueled using we find
out that he can refuel with any ethanol based something.
You know, basically alcohol can refuel him. And what do
you know here's that salvage whiskey that Captain Banchot was
talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
Yeah, if you look at the images of that gun
Head model kit that I referenced earlier, there is a
whiskey cask attached to its leg.

Speaker 3 (01:14:26):
Beautiful. Now there's another thing that I didn't fully understand,
but I enjoyed at least visually. There's some kind of
double cross with the older sister with Eleven. At some point,
light starts coming out of her mouth. I like this effect.
But then she like locks up Sergeant Nim and her
brother and she's going to initiate control for the Chiron five.

(01:14:48):
I think she has some kind of computer implant controlling
her behavior, Like she's she's a double a sleeper agent
for the AI. Yes, and then we get this a
big gun Head versus Aerobot showdown. Aerobot is overpowered, but
Gunhead has a strategy, and his strategy is to take
out Aerobot's three triangle eyes. And eventually Brooklyn and the

(01:15:11):
gun Head are victorious. They destroy the Aerobot. Meanwhile, somehow
Sergeant Nim stops Eleven from doing something with the text
Mexium vile. I'm not sure what it was, but she
was trying to do something bad in the Chiron five core,
and Nim she gets in there and stops it from happening.
And then the Biodroid is in the mix here and

(01:15:34):
I couldn't exactly follow what's going on, but at some
point the biodroid like vaporizes itself. I don't know if
she has. It's like the babe part of the Babe
part that is now absorbed into the biodroid, has a
crisis of conscience when it sees Brooklyn and the kids
there and Sergeant Nim, and it's like, no, what have

(01:15:55):
I become? And then just like turns to light.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
Yeah. Yeah, one thing that it probably could have used
more fleshing out if we were to really buy it.
It kind of comes out of left field here, but yeah,
but fair enough.

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
But anyway, you get a standard escape sequence. Elevin is
somehow cured of her Chiron glowing mouth. I don't know
what happens to fix that, but now it seems like
she's okay, and the four humans all scramble to escape
to the Marianne and they fly away. Oh and then
the best thing of all with the ending is as
they're flying away, they get a message on the computer
screen in the plane. They say Gunhead has sent a

(01:16:28):
message to us. In fact, they thought he was destroyed,
but he's alive back on the island, and he says
the Gunhead Battalion has completed its mission. And then we
get we get a very charming carrot chomp from Brooklyn
right at the end.

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
And that is Gunhead. It's a like, I say, I think,
a great film to put on in the background, given
how wonderful the visuals are. It's it was not that
surprising to learn that Canadian electro industrial band Frontline Assembly
used with permission, gun Head footage as the basis for
their nineteen ninety two music video Mind Phaser. And they

(01:17:07):
didn't just use the film's excellent footage. They actually shot
themselves in costumes that looked like they belonged in gun
Head and inserted themselves into the world. So look that
up Mind Phaser if you want to see just flashes
of this film.

Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
Oh interesting, I hope one of them became a biodroid.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
I think they all become biodroids. It's kind of the
electro industrial dream, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:31):
I love the biodroid. I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
Yeah, yeah, the biodroid is good, and I think the
biodroid is ultimately more relatable because it is humanoid. The tank.
I mean, I love sci fi tanks. I love movies
with sci fi tanks in them. I build sci fi
tanks sometimes. But it was just I was kind of
hard to get behind these admittedly cool sci fi tanks

(01:17:55):
in this film, and I was thinking about this. I
was trying to think, well, why is that? And then
I had to ask myself, well, what tank movies do
I actually like? And I think the for me, the
best tank heavy movie I can think of is Kelly's Heroes.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
I've never seen it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
Oh it's good. It's you know, World War two kind
of a heisty situation, uh, you know, rogue characters, heavily
involves tanks. The tanks are important to the plot, but
not more important than the people, you know, And I
guess it kind of comes down to sort of the
reality of tank warfare too. Like tanks cannot exist on
their own. Tanks need uh support from from from human

(01:18:32):
beings as well, both inside and out. And that can
be said for the plot of a film as well.
Because when I started looking at lists of tank movies.
Granted there were many that I had not seen, but
there were others where I'm like, oh, that that was
no good. I did not like that. You have had
a sci fi tank, but it wasn't that good. The
sci fi tanks are best in my opinion, when they're
they're utilized within the film, like they show up in

(01:18:53):
a couple of scenes, but they're not the whole deal.

Speaker 3 (01:18:57):
Yeah, I like the I like the digital tanks in
trent On.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
Those were good tanks. Yeah. I think another thing about
like mech combat, and in this case mech tank combat
is that, like I said, when they were battling each other,
it were just kind of exploding at each other.

Speaker 3 (01:19:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:12):
Robot Jocks, which granted is more about more humanoid robots
in those battles, like everything they did mattered, like they
were setting up particular moves as being important and there
was discussion about what they were. So we saw less
of that in this for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:19:27):
I'd say the color palettes of robot Jocks versus gunheader
entirely opposite. Yeah, Robot Jocks is dominated by bright light
colors and takes place in broad daylight where you get
a very clear picture of exactly what you're looking at
to an almost comical extent, whereas Gunhead is very it's more,

(01:19:49):
you know, the dark, gritty, cyberpunk thing where everything in
the movie looks kind of like muddy and grimy and
dimly lit, so you never get a really clear look
at anything.

Speaker 1 (01:19:59):
Yeah, but it's still well, it's beautiful in its own way. Like,
I absolutely love the look of the film. All Right,
you're probably wondering, well, where can I see Gunhead? Well,
it looks like it has streamed recently on Prime, but
it's not currently available to us anyway at this point
on Prime. There's a DVD that is available from Section
twenty three Films in the United States, and that's how

(01:20:22):
we watched it. We actually rented it from Videodrome, our
local video store in Atlanta, Videodrome dot TV, so that's
how we got to see it. But I believe there's
also a copy of this on archive dot org as well.

Speaker 3 (01:20:35):
For future historians to refer to.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
Yeah, but of course stuff comes and goes on streaming platforms.
For instance, when we reviewed Robot Jocks, it was not
available on Amazon Prime. Now it's on Amazon Prime as
of this recording. So you know, just be patient. Sometimes
in these films pop back up.

Speaker 3 (01:20:51):
We were told when we reviewed Robot Jocks by several
listeners that it was quite coincidentally available on a platform
called too b Yes, tub I Yes. If you haven't
listened to our Robot Jacks episode, go listen to that.
You'll understand the joke.

Speaker 1 (01:21:08):
All right, We're gonna go ahead and close it out here,
But obviously we'd love to hear from everybody out there,
people who saw this film back in the day, people
who saw it because we mentioned it on the show.
We'd love to hear from anyone out there who's more
versed in, say Japanese cyberpunk, Japanese science fiction in general.
What are your thoughts on this film and its place
in Japanese cinema. What are your thoughts on tank movies?

(01:21:30):
Do you have a favorite example of tank exploitation? If so,
let us know.

Speaker 3 (01:21:35):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other
to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot.

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
Com Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.