Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Innerspace

In this classic 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. (originally published 1/3/2025)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Rob Lamb and today we have an episode that originally
published one three, twenty twenty five. This episode features a
guest host. My friend David Streepy of Talkin' Tofu the podcast,
returned to the show and discussed with me the nineteen

(00:24):
eighty seven miniaturization film Interspace, directed by Joe Dante and
starring Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan. A movie
that I loved as a kid and has just a
fabulously weird love triangle at the heart of it. So
let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Hey you, 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 Talking
TOFU podcast. Dave, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Thank you, thanks for having me back, and hello to
all the stuffies. I think I think we agreed that
they're called, so hello again to all of you. Glad
to be back.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
That's right, we're gonna be talking about the gate three right, yes, no,
I wish.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Oh my god, could you imagine Old Man Terry now?

Speaker 1 (01:28):
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
I did see a Santa Claus at one point.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
That's all it takes to qualify, really, and this did
happen in California, so really you're 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 the it's

(02:09):
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 1 (02:16):
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 amazed

(02:40):
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 (03:00):
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

(03:20):
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

(03:41):
was rewatching recently there's like a whole hour of this
movie that I completely forgot about in the middle.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
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 moment,
which I mean, if you're going to hire Martin Short,
especially you know during the eighties or the nineties or

(04:06):
well or subsequent decades, you're going to want at least
a little of that.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
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,

(04:31):
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 1 (04:44):
Yeah, it's a film that is, it's constantly in motion.
It keeps adding new elements, often wild elements, on top
of characters. Yeah, new characters. There's a whole whole cast
of villains in this picture, as we'll discuss. So it's
it's never boring. It's in constant motion. It is like
Martin Short as a film.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Martin Short
film film modified.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
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

(05:32):
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 Voyage style
adventure recently.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
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,
become super intelligent and have a whole civilization in there,
and they have to go inside to reconcile that.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
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 a fair amount of depth to it
as well. And then just a lot of great jokes,
and there's the whole worm thing, like why are people
came over on the sandwich? Great stuff? All right, let's
go ahead and listen to at least some of the

(06:27):
trailer audio here. Let's let it roll.

Speaker 4 (06:35):
Test pilot Tuck Pendleton wants to make history. Supermarket clerk
Jack Putter needs a vacation. I'm very late.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
That's not good.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
You know, it's coupon day.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
Lieutenant Pendleton is about to be miniaturized, placed into this needle,
and then injected into this.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Rabbit rock and roll. But something went wrong.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
And Tuck's about to get a new destination inside. Jack Putter.
Give yourself a shot of Adventure Inner Space.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
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 (07:27):
Yeah, this is the music used for the Fertelly chase
scene in Goonies, the dun dun't dun't dun't. It's always
great when a podcast guest just like hums a line, no,
timelessly for you. But it's really really it's the opening
scene of Gooney. It's really iconic bit of music. Cool
to see it here, but also a little bit strange

(07:48):
to see it here too.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
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, right.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Just kind of duck through the drawer for it and
got something that you knew I would recognize and knew
would pull me in.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
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 (08:16):
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 Goony
is the way that I was as a kid. That

(08:38):
was 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 1 (08:47):
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 pictures it has not been entirely forgotten it
to make 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

(09:08):
I do 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 Murrean 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

(09:31):
those guys that's so knowledgeable. I bet it's bet it's
pretty great.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
That'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 1 (09:42):
Well, you know, sometimes you can't get the big fish.
They move on to other projects.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
I don't know, and there are their presence in the
movie is pretty significant. These guys are not bit players
at all. They're they're huge parts of the movie.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Plus with Joe Dante, you know that he loves like
an old, older act, 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 (10:15):
He's so weird in this movie is character.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
I can't wait to get into that character. Yeah all right,
well 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

(10:40):
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 horror legend, and on
the other hand he's this, you know, obvious Spielbergian Amblin
entertainment guy. And you see more of the second, but
also a little the first in this one. On the

(11:00):
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 in Twilight Zone,
the movie from nineteen eighty three, But then he also
did things like nineteen eighty five, It's The Explorers, eighty
nine's The Birds, nineteen ninety three, He's Manatee, and this
film especially, Yeah, it is definitely in that ambulance zone.

(11:22):
It is an ambulin entertainment picture.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
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 different elements to a bunch of different

(11:46):
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 1 (12:08):
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 of step.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
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 1 (12:42):
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 called Manatee. The film is, of course Mattine. But

(13:05):
I 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 lived nineteen forty six

(13:27):
through two thousand, has I believe the main screenplay 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 In 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 (13:47):
Wow. I mean this is just home Run after Home Run. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah, he was involved in a lot of big projects.
The other name on the screenplay also a story and
co producer credit Chip Prosser born nineteen forty six, writer
and director, probably best known for this film that we
also work in the screenplay for to some degree. I'm
I'm not sure to what degree with nineteen eighty four
is Iceman?

Speaker 3 (14:10):
So is this a Top Gun prequel?

Speaker 1 (14:12):
No, 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

(14:34):
they turn up. But the star, and I mean, really
this is this is a picture that has a trio
of leads. But Top Build anyway, is Dennis Quaid playing
Tuck Pendleton?

Speaker 3 (14:48):
What a name?

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, the names are pretty great. Tuck Pendleton is the
you can guess he is like a test pilot. He
would be at home in Top Gun.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
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.

(15:20):
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 1 (15:40):
Oh my goodness, I didn't even think about the Top
Gun connection, about this being a riff 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 (15:54):
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 a frequent eighties kid misstep.
But because of the frequency of viewing of this interspace
goonies Top Gun, it created a person that was very

(16:15):
not organic to me and and stuck out like a
soort of thumb whenever I would try to use it.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
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 (16:39):
Yeah, it's a very very kind and funny take on
alcohol 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 outlcohol for him. He's really booze centered.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
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

(17:25):
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 (17:36):
Oh, I have not seen The Substance yet. I'm excited
to though.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
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 biopick at one point, So yeah,
it's kind of hard to pin him down. I think,
for my money, when I think of Dennis Quaid films, though,

(18:02):
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 (18:15):
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 gran 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,

(18:36):
that look on his face, the way it's on the
poster really sells who he is in this movie.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
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 (19:02):
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

(19:26):
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
Jiminy 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 1 (19:47):
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 on 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

(20:07):
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,

(20:30):
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 that doesn't take itself
itself too seriously, and he's surrounded by great actors and actresses,
but I am most frequently impressed by the smaller moments

(20:54):
with his character on that show.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
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,

(21:17):
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 1 (21:29):
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
as a disgrace director named Dick Lundy and the name
sounds like a Martin short character, but it's like a

(21:51):
really serious, like creepy kind of character, a charismatic, charming,
sexual predator, sort of a guy.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Wow. Going back to comparing him with Robin Williams and
Jim Carrey almost called him James Carrey, Jim Carrey.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
I think you know it's James Now, he's son.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
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,

(22:34):
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 Schwarzenegger, 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

(22:56):
have been, you know what I mean? And even I'm
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

(23:17):
different kind of movie.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
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 nine's

(23:40):
When Harry Met Sally ninety three, Sleepless in Seattle ninety eight,
So You've got mail, So 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 (23:57):
Also in Top Gun. Oh well, yeah, his wife. I
think I kind of feel like this is a Top
Gun episode. Rob, I'm gonna do best in a Top
Gun episode.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
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,

(24:34):
but she's great. She has great chemistry with everyone, including
Dennis Quaid, who she would end up marrying after this picture.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
And spoiler, she marries his character at the end of
this movie.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
So I got I got a lot to say about that.
That guest list is wild.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yes, yes, it feels like a rap party.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
We'll get back all right.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Now, getting into the many, many villains of this picture,
We'll start with the 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 Death of a Salesman, but I think
known to many out there for his just wonderful paranoid

(25:19):
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 of some sort.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Yeah, I don't recall. That's maybe we'll do UHF next time, Rob,
that's such a great movie that it's been way too
long since I've seen.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah. Clearly though, Kevin McCarthy was a favorite of Joe
Dante's because some of his other credits include The Howling
the Burbs 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 (26:04):
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 the congressman died or not to
get elected.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
But that I have never heard of this movie.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
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 person who knows the grift very well, kind of

(26:47):
takes 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 1 (26:59):
All right, No, that it sounds for fun.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Really slimy guy. McCarthy plays him really well.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah he is. He's really good at playing a 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 Phibes Rises Again starring Vincent Price, and her other

(27:26):
credits include sixty seven's To Fearless Vampire Killers, seventy three's
Blue Blood with Oliver Reed, the nineteen seventy four Dracula
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 (27:46):
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
me from. But fantastic role, fantastic performance, and just something

(28:07):
It's gonna nag me until the day I die. What
I remember it from?

Speaker 1 (28:11):
All Right? The next villain, Oh, this is 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 (28:32):
He's 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. He's he's a menace. He's one to

(28:54):
watch out for.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, and we'll discuss like his character is probably one
of the better sort of terminator esque villains, like a
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

(29:15):
this age when I was a kid, you know, And
this guy's got all sorts of cool gadgets.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
He does feel like more of a little stinker in
his actual actions than than he is a terminator that
will end your life even Yeah, that's always the threat
whenever he's around.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah, but he'll also just pop a clowns 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, and then a big one. He's he's been it,
the guy with the mustache and commando amazing. He's the

(29:52):
one that he kills laughs because he likes him the most.
I can't I can never remember how that that's right.
But yeah, his Australian TV credit 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 cheez. Yeah.
So he's great. But then we're not done with the villains.

(30:12):
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

(30:35):
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 (30:49):
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 from somewhere else. They're not gonna
tell you what they're from because they don't want to
get at that country upset. But they're just kind of other,
you know. I think that in Robert's case, this accent

(31:10):
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 1 (31:21):
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 on the
other bells and whistles as well. It's it's a fun
and perplexing villain role.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
He's I kept having to remind myself that he was
a villain. He doesn't seem villainous. 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 1 (31:54):
Yeah, he is. The plot is 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 (32:08):
He's just going to go out and dance when he's
in town.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
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.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
No, 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 1 (32:42):
Yeah. Well, Pagardo is 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 Years, and he wasn't I don't
think he was main cast. He's in China Beach, Star
Trek Voyager of course, and Stargate and then films. You know,
we have The Howling We all total recall he was
Johnny Cabb in nineteen ninety and he's also part of

(33:06):
the cast of twenty sixteens Cohen 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,
fun act.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
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 Cabb, 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 1 (33:35):
You take Johnny Cab out of that picture, the whole
thing falls apart too.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
It truly is the glue.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
All right. And then the final main character supporting character
I guess really i'll mention is Wendy Shall, who plays
a character named Wendy. This is Jack's co worker at
the grocery. Born nineteen fifty four. I'm mentioning her mainly
because she was in Creature for eighty five, an alien
knockoff that Joe and I discussed on Weird House Cinema here.

(34:02):
She 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 is The Burbs, and she did a lot of
TV as well, X File six Feet under Star Trek Voyager,
and she's also done a lot of voice acting for
a family guy in American Dad.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
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 1 (34:33):
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 professionals 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 (34:57):
It's no surprise this is a really well done movie
effects wise, and 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

(35:22):
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 1 (35:38):
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 Murren was the visual effects supervisor for ILM
and I also mentioned in passing that Rob Boteen I'm

(36:00):
born nineteen 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 (36:16):
So he made the worm face.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
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 obviously I highly suspect
that it is the morphing the face morphing Seine 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 this is grotesque.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
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 1 (36:53):
You know, Oh, that's the remorph.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
I think, yes, yes, the full head goes on for
a long time. But just there are scenes with Martin
Short's mouth work 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 1 (37:24):
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 (37:37):
Amazing and great stuff here. I think even right from
the jump the synth and the opening credits is incredible.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
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 opening of the credits.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
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 all.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
And we realized that this cocktail Ice is at 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 a very top gun s
test pilot dudes. And then in to the fray enters

(38:46):
Lieutenant Tuck Pendleton. 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 flyboys in the kitchen, and clearly
he has a number of monkeys on his back here.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
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,

(39:25):
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 1 (39:37):
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 both.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
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

(40:21):
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 1 (40:42):
Yeah. So she drags Tud 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

(41:05):
this guy's pad just so sloppy that there's a Sanda
up year round?

Speaker 3 (41:09):
Yeah? Yeah, 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

(41:31):
pinch here. He's 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

(41:53):
a robot an eighties robot arm, because you see it
happen a few more times throughout the movie, and it's
done very elegantly every other time.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Now, would would this have been before the or after
the nes arm that played the Little Spin Top game?

Speaker 3 (42:09):
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 are

(42:31):
trying to play and allow your guy to pass through.
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 1 (42:51):
Yeah, So that energy is very strong in this picture
for sure. So they get settled in for the evening
and in 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

(43:13):
than 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 but very very hunky scene where Tuck comes out

(43:34):
wearing only a 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 there's a lot more
beefcake in the picture than I remember.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
Yeah, it's 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 and be
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,

(44:15):
which shows 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 timy
song Cupid for Lydia, which I guess is their song,

(44:37):
and that 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.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Bit later 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,

(45:16):
who did 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

(45:36):
keeps having that he's very concerned about, in which he
is hideously overcharging this woman at the checkout register at
the grocery.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
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 vac cation. Which
how times have changed. Really that that's just that's the
that's the direction.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
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 (46:16):
Right, you can probably afford it.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
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

(46:40):
there he's like, well, who have you hired to pilot
this prototype or whatever? And they're 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 Pimpleton,
not a great get for whatever you do we're doing here.
And then we kind of like fast forward a bit

(47:01):
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 (47:16):
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,
the Fario level of swagger coming into this test pilot job.

(47:40):
You know, while the Silicon Valley dudes were arguing in
the car, he was defending 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 and he reinforces that kind of on his walk in,

(48:03):
and once he gets into mind is down to business.
He knows exactly the right questions to ask, the right
things to check. He's the voice of authority.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
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,

(48:35):
that they have tested manned miniaturization, and they've also injected
miniaturized objects into test animals, and that now we're only
finally getting to the point where they're going to send
in human being into a rabbit. But who knows, maybe
they're just really having to push this project along and

(48:56):
this is just test number one. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
Yeah, and this is where we learned reason that rabbits
were so prominent in his apartment, and I get it,
but all the rabbit stuff in 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

(49:18):
lot more than he really needs to to perform his
scientific role of being inside of a rabbit.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah, he's researching at the wrong scale.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
I think.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Now, I do really love these scenes where he's getting
into the cockpit of the pod. I think feel like
this is all really well done. It has a great
textured and believable NASA feel to it.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
You know, Yeah, it's a very busy, very eighties 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

(50:00):
it just seems like these guys are scientists. They're bleeding
edge R and D. And then once you see the
space that the pod 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 mylar
are heightening the effect. It's really really perfect.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
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 and whatever robot
arms are up to. So yeah, it all feels very real.
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, if it

(50:41):
was all touch screens and you know, next generation stuff.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
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 and off compared to all
of the other effects work that's going on, but again

(51:04):
it works. 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 they.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
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

(51:41):
in with an acid key card to like short out
the lock, and they're clearly trying to take over the operation.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
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 set. 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

(52:09):
how gas warfare would be, should be. I am not
advocating for gas warfare, but I were, that's how you
would do it.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
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 (52:37):
That's right. Clearly the bad guys have invaded this space,
but I did 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

(53:01):
their intentions were good. These guys' intentions were bad. And
I think you know, I mentioned that Gremlins 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 1 (53:22):
I did have a fun time trying to piece together
like the intended endpoint for this research, and we can
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

(53:43):
that's not necessary, and then also deliver a powerful electromagnetic
pulse that can like 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

(54:03):
to some extent, 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 (54:17):
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 situation

(54:41):
it's putting the larger vessel into.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
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 (55:00):
Well, Tuck casually turns Putter into we're getting ahead of ourselves,
but he casually turns them into like a superhuman. Yeah,
because it's convenient for that scene. So the technology is
very easy to do once you're in there, apparently.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
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,

(55:35):
so we have the ministure 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,
escapes with the syringe, and then our villain, doctor Canker,
calls for mister Igo to chase after him. So we
get this big car bike chase, a number of big

(55:55):
chase scenes that take place in the picture. 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 (56:05):
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

(56:27):
really exciting. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
And then yeah, we get to the mall, Mister I
goes using He's is 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 (56:41):
Yeah, it's very inspector 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 malls
at nineteen eighty nine. You know, you get not just
a really busy, active, vibrant mall. You get one that's

(57:03):
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

(57:23):
of nuns, which is a very very funny visual throwaway.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah 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 hazy POV of him
looking up at the mascots looming over him.

Speaker 3 (57:50):
Yeah. Fantastic.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
So at this point we have miniaturized Pendleton tuck 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 his

(58:14):
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 (58:26):
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.
The there are points at which the action is high
and the pot is shaken around, so it's like, oh,

(58:49):
so 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 and 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

(59:11):
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. Yeah,
I'm happy to do.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
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?

Speaker 3 (59:28):
Can it?

Speaker 1 (59:29):
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 we want to talk, certainly in broad
strokes about like the central piece of technology here, the pod.

(59:50):
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 of
about the pod, and this was something that you know
I loved as a kid, is that we get like
this this first contact between Tuck Pendleton and Jack where
you know you can use well, For first of all,

(01:00:11):
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 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

(01:00:33):
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 of them really in addition
to the electro 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, he

(01:00:55):
can do anything in there.

Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
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 could
wrap my head around those. And then yeah, he changes
his face, which it's like, I feel like you need

(01:01:17):
outside pieces to do that. You're not just read or
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

(01:01:38):
to 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 his was
it his first voice?

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
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 (01:02:00):
Yeah, he should have been able to turn the rabbit
into the cowboy. Yeah, but not Jack Putter into the cowboy.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
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 hurrah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
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 there's just

(01:02:34):
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 vital organs that

(01:02:56):
you could just kind of hang out in and fly between.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
Yeah, he's inner space, inner goop.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
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 1 (01:03:14):
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 (01:03:25):
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 gonna start causing damage

(01:03:47):
to your host at that point.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Yeah, he does make the host uncomfortable at times. There's
some related symptoms.

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):
I'm shocked 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 pod
inside of him. 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

(01:04:16):
body without me being able to stop it, if I,
if I wanted to.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
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, 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 the only people who

(01:04:43):
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 going to 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 we have Jack

(01:05:05):
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

(01:05:25):
also Lydia, I'm sorry. Also Jack and Tuck end up
kind of bunding butting heads over this as well. It's
it's bizarre and 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 (01:05:43):
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 you get the idea of his physical stakes,
but you don't know he's obviously attracted to Lydia, but
he's characterized as somebody who does not need a lot

(01:06:05):
of convincing to help Tuck out. And sure that's motivated
by the fact that Tuck is in his body and
he 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 catching up to him, trying

(01:06:27):
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 convinced Lydia to trust him and to
trust that Tuck needs her help as well. It's really
interesting and kind of puts Jack in the middle in

(01:06:49):
a way that supports kind of his warming warm he
is 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 doing to him with the pod.
But I do think we've got a ticking clock here

(01:07:11):
that we didn't speak about, which is tux oxygen is
running out.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
Oh yes, yes, that's the pot Tuck. You guys running out.
He's eventually going to die in there if he doesn't
get out right.

Speaker 3 (01:07:23):
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
unquote good Lab before tucks oxygen runs out and it

(01:07:46):
gets real close and then you somehow have to save
Tuck and Lydia's relationship. That's the sea ticking clock.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
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

(01:08:15):
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 (01:08:27):
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 cowboys face onto Jack's
face and then infiltrate the meeting with Scrimshaw to get

(01:08:49):
that chip to take back to the quote unquote Good
Lab so that they can re enlarge Tuck and save.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
Him, right, But then at the same time already had
some run ends 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

(01:09:18):
just be lost to time. And maybe that's easier.

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
Yeah. 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 1 (01:09:32):
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 scrimshow
it's this great villain monologue about like, you know, nuclear
weapons aren't theren't the future. Space is in the future.

(01:09:53):
It's miniaturization. So great villain monologue there. But then we
get what we also get time and time again, and
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 his great gut instinct where he's like, okay,

(01:10:13):
punch now, kick now, jump out of the moving vehicle now,
And so you know, the movie stays in constant motion.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
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

(01:10:42):
has the confidence to actually execute on a lot of
those things and he's successful at it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
So at this point I don't know which thread to follow.
We have more of the love triangle plot when 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.

(01:11:16):
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 (01:11:33):
Yeah, I think it, you know, just to quickly top
line 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.

(01:11:53):
Wendy sees a new bad boy side of Jack that
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

(01:12:15):
cowboy has a gold toothcap that 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 give it a

(01:12:40):
lot of flowers for going past. How about some real
pain and add another pain to the line.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Yeah, and we get some more inspector gadget Shenanigans for
mister Igo because he pulls out the blowtorch. Uh, that's right, appended.
Or maybe the blowtorch is just always in there as
part of this 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 (01:13:05):
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. Scrimshaw's terrified, and rightly so,
because it's it's a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
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 bouteine 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,

(01:13:41):
but it's very well done.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
Yeah. 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

(01:14:05):
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 transferred Tuck back to Jack through another French kiss,
which is like, I'm just this good at it that

(01:14:27):
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 1 (01:14:34):
French kisses work. French kisses are a complete exchange of
all saliable content of the mouth and esophagus, right, That's.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
What we were warned about when we were younger.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
Yes, yeah, but again, like the whole the baby, the pregnancy,
like this love triangle is very complex. Yeah, 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 (01:15:04):
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 told

(01:15:25):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
At that Dumbo feather exactly. 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.

(01:15:57):
We'll describe their pod here 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

(01:16:21):
just a frightening like 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 (01:16:36):
That's right. This enemy lab, it looks like the TV
room from Willy Wonka's Coca factory. Of 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, Tuck's in a little chair inside

(01:16:59):
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
that Tuck is in.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
Yeah, it's frightening, and you've 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

(01:17:42):
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 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 (01:17:56):
Yeah, I love that. Again, take the humanity out of it,
and these are all 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.

(01:18:17):
Lydia also forces all of the scientists Scrimshaw and Canker
into the miniaturization pod or into the miniagurization chamber and
shrinks them all. Does not shrink them all to a
microscopic size, which they are for the rest of the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
Yes, so the big showdown then is twofold in the
world at large. We have Jack and Lydia driving uh
you know, down the highway in San Francisco, and then
Scrimshaw miniaturize Scrimshaw and doctor Canker attack from the back seat,
so they're wrestling them in the front and back seat. Meanwhile,

(01:18:58):
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. I'm not saying it's like RoboCop
RoboCop two level, but it's pretty great, with lots of

(01:19:18):
gadget arms and cutting of robotic components, some nice back
and forth.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
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

(01:19:45):
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 1 (01:20:00):
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

(01:20:21):
like 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 (01:20:27):
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 refluxed from
the ayesh yes, and that's what causes the churn to
which the fight then leads mister I go down into
the stomach acid where he is eaten up down to
a skeleton an aka ka ka kak bones skeleton, which.

Speaker 1 (01:20:50):
Is a skeleton, and the remains the prothetic arm trying
to drill through the portal of the original pod. Yeah,
so good, great, great, and kill quality kill here all
the way.

Speaker 3 (01:21:02):
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

(01:21:24):
earlier in the movie. Is given some hairspray, sneezes Tuck
out onto one of the scientist's glasses.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
And then they tweezer it. They tweezeerr it, and they
get it back into the chamber. They resize him, they
re enlarge him, and we get 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 (01:21:52):
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 1 (01:22:12):
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 (01:22:29):
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, and are being placed into the trunk.
So they're driving off on their happy wedding honeymoon drive

(01:22:49):
down a twisty mountain road, and Jack realizes that the
job's not done and he needs to help them out.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
That's right. Oh, and we also find out that Tuck
has the chips, the very coveted dangerous technology chips are
his cufflings. 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.

(01:23:16):
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 (01:23:25):
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.

(01:23:46):
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 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 gonna have

(01:24:10):
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 gonna roll with it. You know, he's a
different person now, and I kind of really like that
for him.

Speaker 1 (01:24:21):
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

(01:24:42):
just left that window open to potentially dream up innerspace too.

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):
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,

(01:25:08):
what are they going to do to Tug? I guess
they're good they I guess they know about the cup leakes.

Speaker 1 (01:25:12):
Yep, somebody's gonna get minurized again. It's they're gonna be Shenanigan's.

Speaker 3 (01:25:17):
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 1 (01:25:30):
Yeah, and that's inner space.

Speaker 3 (01:25:32):
Yeah, fun, fun time.

Speaker 1 (01:25:35):
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, performances 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 (01:25:53):
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

(01:26:15):
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 1 (01:26:27):
All Right, Dave Boy, As we begin to lead out here,
let's talk Talking 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 (01:26:44):
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

(01:27:05):
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

(01:27:27):
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

(01:27:48):
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
reas 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

(01:28:09):
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,

(01:28:36):
that's what we're up to.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
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 (01:28:48):
Yeah, yeah, we gotta get you on there.

Speaker 1 (01:28:50):
Yeah, anytime. All right, all right, we're gonna gohe 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 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, you

(01:29:12):
can find them on letterboxed. Our user name 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

(01:29:32):
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 2 (01:29:47):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows