Episode #81 Embrace the Absurd

Marvelous Mike takes a journey into the strange and profound world of HOWARD the DUCK and takes a detour when extreme sports meets international spies in the Vin Diesel action ride XXX! Also featuring DEADLY SPAWN - With very SPECIAL GUEST Giant Glenn B!

Episode Transcript

(00:30):
Hello, hello, Legions, and welcome, welcome once again to probably the most special episode
of Whatcha Been Watching podcast ever.
It is.
I am your host, the marvelous Mike Dudley, joined as always by, wait a minute, a new

(00:55):
player has arrived.
I am not joined by the infamous MD3, I am instead joined by my good friend, my good
cohort, the giant Glenn Bryce.
That is correct.
How are you, sir?
Glad to be here.
First time on the show, long time listener, first time caller, so.
Top tier Legionary.
Very happy to be here though.

(01:15):
Yeah.
Going in for MD3, so.
Yeah, yeah, we had to call it a pinch hit, but don't worry, it's going to be the same
silly irreverence and...
I hope I can do Marcus Justice here.
Nah, you just do yourself.
I hope he's half as good as he.
Well, he's not half as good as he thinks he is, so don't worry about it.
See, I'm half the brain you do.

(01:39):
Anyways, we are broadcasting live from the satellite stations of the Whatcha Been Watching
studios here in Tallahassee, Florida.
Big shout out to our intro music, Katza, always bright, always a banger.
Also big shout out to Mr. A1 himself.
He's a quadruple threat.

(02:00):
He's a singer, a dancer, music producer.
What else does he do, Glenn?
I'm not sure, but I groove to the music for y'all's show every single time, so yeah, big
ups to Katza and Mr. A1.
He's also an intergalactic bounty hunter, just in case you were wondering.

(02:20):
That is the correct answer.
You can reach him at a1reality.music at gmail.com.
Also thank you once again to MK Dudley Art for the banging banner.
That is correct.
It's the flag with which we all hail.
Yeah, so let's get into it, man.
You got something you want to ask me?
Oh, I get to ask you this time.

(02:42):
I'm amazing.
How am I going to do it?
How am I going to do this?
My friend, whatcha been watching?
My man.
I went off on a Fast and Furious variant, and I rewatched the classic mid-2000s Triple
X starring Vin Diesel.
So I gotta say, your Fast and the Furious kick has gotten me... I haven't watched any

(03:06):
of them, but I've thought about watching them, which is more than I've thought about Fast
and the Furious in many, many years.
So yeah, I would love to hear about Triple X.
Okay, so it's like the Fast and Furious, but take out all of the fun and whimsy and try
to turn it into a straight up... They try to do a modern day... It's like James Bond

(03:30):
meets the X Games is the best way I can put it.
And Vin Diesel is just playing Vin Diesel at this point.
This is the movie where I think he figured out what his brand was.
And so he's very much doing the stoic, badass, almost like Jason Statham, but not nearly

(03:51):
as charming.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a very slick... Basically what happens is this group of Russian anarchists get their
hands on this super chemical viral weapon, a la The Rock or something like that.
And instead of sending a drone strike or the world's best military troops to go in, Sam

(04:16):
Jackson comes up with a great idea.
Hey, what if we got a bunch of X Gamers and thrill seekers?
So X Games meaning like the Olympics for MTV type stuff?
Yeah, like skateboarding and PMX bike, illusion, skydiving.
And it's Vin Diesel.
Yeah, and it's Vin Diesel.
He's like this... So he starts off as this... Basically he's like an extreme YouTuber,

(04:42):
right?
So he steals this Senator's car.
And you can tell the Senator's a douchebag because he pulls up in this really nice Camaro,
whatever.
I don't know sports cars, but like... And then on the bumper stickers, skateboarding
is a crime.
So you automatically know he's a douchebag, right?
And of course he tosses the keys to the valet and goes, make sure you don't get any scratches

(05:04):
on it.
Parlez-vous Inglés?
You speak English?
And of course valet nods and takes the keys and hops in, but the valet turns out to be,
guess who?
If it's not Vin Diesel, I'm going to be... It is Vin Diesel.
So he steals the car and then uploads a live video stream of him stealing the car and explaining
that this Senator's such a douchebag because he's trying to make skateboarding and BMXing

(05:31):
in parks a crime and he's trying to ban rap music and violent video games.
And he's like, come on, man, some of us, that's all we got.
I'm like, that's all you have is violent video games and rap music?
You're 28 in this, dude.
Yeah, I'm trying to piece like... Because yeah, what year is this?
When did Vin Diesel... I'm just trying to picture Vin Diesel in it.

(05:54):
Okay.
Give me one second.
I'm going to pause for station identification.
That would be 2002 Vin Diesel.
2002 Vin Diesel.
I need to picture that.
He's just coming off of, I think Fast and the Furious had come out the year before.

(06:15):
Okay.
All right.
So this is 2002.
This is pre Chronicles of Riddick.
Maybe he had already done Perfect Darkest Riddick.
So like you were saying, just on the cusp of Ridiculous Vin Diesel.
Yes.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So yeah, anyway, so he proceeds to hijack the Senator's car and then jumps it over a

(06:36):
bridge, like just crashed it and then parachutes off and filmed it the whole time.
Okay.
And it's interesting because I actually know the bridge where they were at.
It's in Northern California, just outside of Sacramento.
Because every time we drove over it in a convoy, somebody would go like, this is the Vin Diesel
bridge.
This is the triple X bridge.
So I know it very, very well.

(06:58):
But yeah, so anyway, Sam Jackson gets the brilliant idea.
Instead of sending well-trained military task force to eliminate the threat, let's just
get a bunch of X gamers and train them and that'll work out.
So yeah, so invariably they run Vin Diesel through a series of tests.
They basically just kidnap him.
They drop him in the middle of a diner.

(07:19):
He wakes up in the middle of a diner and there's this whole scenario that's, the waitress hands
him a piece of paper that says call 911 and she's looking around nervously.
And he figures out it's a whole fake scenario because A, the waitress is wearing high heels
and no woman that's on her feet for 16 hours a day would be waiting tables in high heels.
So he like kopey-ashimaru's it.

(07:39):
He like figures it out.
Basically, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
One of the guys in the corner is reading the financial report and it's a Sunday.
So of course, the stock market's closed on Sunday.
So why would he be doing that?
So he immediately wakes up and goes like, well, this isn't right.
Family.
Yeah.
So he basically becomes their guy and then they ask him to go infiltrate this terrorist

(08:05):
organization called Anarchy 99.
And it's, yeah, exactly.
That's what I'm saying.
It's like Fast and the Furious, but less clever as possible.
So yeah, so there are a bunch of apparently there are a bunch of former Soviets soldiers
that became disenfranchised after the fall of the union and yada, yada, yada.

(08:29):
So they decided to form this, this anarchy group that's all about like extreme heists
and you know, taking life by the horns and every moment has to be filled with the games
kids versus the anarchists.
Well, it's specifically Vin Diesel versus I mean, the anarchist kid.
He ends up being the only one.

(08:50):
The others either drop out or get shot or whatever.
So he's like the only guy.
So so he basically goes in and they figure that he can that he can use his his internet
notoriety to kind of slide in there and be like, yeah, that's why I do what I do.
I'm tired of all the capitalist bullshit and I'm trying to, you know, like tactfully bring
it down, you know, by making bold statements about, you know, extremists and living your

(09:13):
life to the fullest.
And like, of course, Russian guys like, I like you.
You come with us.
This sounds extremely cerebral for being a Vin Diesel action movie.
I don't know if it's really not.
This is the plot line and they use it just as the barest of premise to get Vin Diesel
to like jump a motorcycle or like parachute out of a thing.

(09:35):
Yeah.
Like, oh, let's just put him on a skateboard and have him kick ass, you know, like fighting
like a Ninja Turtle.
I don't know.
So anyway, anyway, Asia Argento plays the femme fatale, the love interest.
She's originally with I think the guy's name is Gregor is the lead guy's name.
But anyway, she's with him and then invariably she starts falling for Vin Diesel and they

(09:57):
have a real like will they won't they should they shouldn't they because everything's so
dangerous and she figures out that he's a double agent, but she wants to help help him
anyway because, you know, I was into this for the kicks and then all of a sudden it
turned into genocide and murder and now it's gone too far.
So again, it just seems so complicated for what it is.

(10:17):
But it is.
I don't know.
It is.
It can't decide if it wants to be a like taut like spy thrill.
I was going to say, yeah, James Bond type of thing.
Well, I guess that's what you were saying.
Yes.
It's James Bond meets Fast and Furious.
But then they just interject with like, oh, we're just going to have him jump off of a

(10:38):
fucking rocket now.
Like they literally build a speedboat as the delivery method to like take it up the Danube
or whatever it's like in the heart of Paris.
And so, of course, Vin Diesel has to like eject her seat parachute onto the moving boat.
And then there's a gunfight and then he has to like reach in and pull out the bomb before

(10:58):
it goes off.
And it, you know, there's no way that's the easiest way to make that happen.
I just yeah.
Drone strike.
Yeah, the movie would be over.
Yeah, just we're got clearance on there in sectors 34A.
Here's the coordinates.
The point of having spies is that you do things like under the radar, right?

(11:19):
So you don't have to jump out of buildings and off of speedboats.
They typically are nondescript people.
Like you wouldn't hire no one would ever know.
But you wouldn't hire Jake Paul to go like solve the Middle East crisis.
Like Jake Paul, there's a bomb somewhere in Dubai.
We need you to go get it like fucking right, dude.

(11:40):
Make sure I got plenty of prime.
I don't know.
It's overly, overly complicated.
And there's just no fun to it.
I think it's trying to be.
OK, it's in the same category as like when old middle aged men try to write like a teenager

(12:00):
like coming of age teenager story and they get all the lingo wrong.
They're like, you know, they're like, yeah, kids still go to the sock hop.
You know, like it seems like that.
It's like it seems like it was written by a writer's room with just nevish nerds who
are like, yeah, and then what if he like jumps off a rocket and then he's got this.
And of course, like he's going to get the girl, right?
Like and there's going to be all these shots of her in like lingerie and stripping down

(12:23):
silhouette style and like we can't actually show titty, but we can kind of show a little
bit of titty.
You know, like it's just I don't know.
That's not anywhere near as exciting sounding as Fast and Furious.
I got to say it's really not because at least Fast and Furious leans into the camp.
And so it kind of becomes like almost like a bad, like a good bad movie where like it

(12:46):
knows what it is.
It's so bad that it goes full tilt and just leans into it.
You're like, it's actually kind of awesome how bad this is or how ridiculous this is.
This one, like I don't know.
Maybe just two different films set together, maybe like they had the spry thriller plot
and then they got Vin Diesel attached and then they were like, oh, now we have to put

(13:08):
in like BMX racing him being a ninja, even though like he's five foot four, you know,
stand on Apple boxes the whole time.
I don't know.
I don't know about that one.
Yeah, I don't know what else I can say about it.
I'm going to go ahead and rate triple X.
One X.
I'll give it one X.
That's actually a really good fucking good job.

(13:30):
See you are doing good.
I'm sorry.
I'm getting there.
Let's see.
What else did I see?
Oh, finally saw Sonic 3.
I can't.
I think I talked about on the previous podcast, but I can't recommend it enough, especially
if you like a little kid movies.
Yeah, they've been doing good things just in general with just little kid animated movies.

(13:56):
I think there's a lot of halfway decent ones.
Oh, there's a lot of shit.
Well, there's a lot of bad ones, but I don't know.
No, the problem is that they they pump out so many of them that the bad ones get lost
by the wayside and really only the good ones stick out.
You know, I guess so.
Yeah, but I wouldn't even hear all the bad ones.
Yeah, but I will say I really like Jim Carrey in that.

(14:18):
I've seen one, two and three and I think he really carries the franchise because it's
just Jim Carrey doing silly rubber faced Jim Carrey stuff.
So I always enjoy that.
You know, some people it's I know a lot of people think it's really overdone and hammy,
but I like it.
I like I like silly cartoon voices, you know.
Yeah, so that's good.
And Keanu Reeves is awesome.
They go full Super Saiyan and at some point both the hedgehogs level up.

(14:42):
Let's see.
After that, man, I think that's about all I've got, man.
You want to take a cool?
Yeah, let's take a quick break here and we'll come back.
And what do we have after that deadly spawn?
After that?
Oh, yeah, we got shitty movie night and we got Marvel movie classic.
And no, it's not the one you think of.
So we're going to take a break from our sponsor, Joe Roma's Cajun sushi.

(15:06):
We'll be right back.
And we are back.
Hello.

(15:30):
Hello from our sponsors.
So Rome was Cajun sushi.
Come in, ask about our three for one lunch special.
If you're into Cajun sushi and that's a reference that will come in handy later.
Yeah, we'll put a pin in that.
That's OK.
All right, man.

(15:51):
I guess the only burning question remains my man, Glenn, what you've been watching.
So what have I been watching?
So unlike you and Marcus, you watch movies of class and sophistication.
You watch good movies.
I prefer I don't want to say bad movies, but movies that you kind of have to make your

(16:13):
own entertainment out of or movies that you kind of.
You have to like put in something to get something out of it.
I guess it's one thing if I'm going to and I guess we might get into this, but it's one
thing to go to a movie knowing it's going to be good and have it be good.
But it's totally different to go into a movie not having any preconceptions about it.

(16:36):
They have to be good.
Sure, sure.
That's amazing.
And so that's kind of what I watch is stuff that maybe people forgot about, maybe kind
of underdog movies.
Forgotten gems.
Forgotten.
Yeah.
Diamonds in the rough, I guess let's say.
I will say you do have to dig through a lot of coal.
There is a lot of coal in those diamonds you got to get through.

(16:59):
But yeah, I mean just me and you go back a long time watching shitty movies.
Oh yeah.
We've seen one of the ones I remember long ago introducing you to was Space Thunder Kids,
which was that it's this Korean.
It's basically an animation.

(17:21):
It's an animation made up of like 10 different Korean bootleg animated movies that are rip
offs of other things, all cut together and trying to make one big movie that kind of
makes sense and it doesn't.
Right.
It's all spaceships and fighting robots.
It's shooting into just nothing, just guns shooting at things.

(17:44):
It's like they have like three minutes of a clip from one animated movie and six minutes
of another one.
Yeah, and they have nothing, no characters in common, no one has names in this movie.
So they just Frankenstein it together.
Yeah.
And yeah, we've over the years have kind of got, we've we've did shitty movie night where
we'll just get together and watch movies because they are fun to watch with people.

(18:07):
It is fun.
It's very akin to like this is going to date myself on this one because no one else will.
It's akin to go into the video store and literally just picking out a movie based on the box
cover.
It is.
It's literally how I find movies a lot of times, obviously like, man, I need to see

(18:28):
what that's all about.
I miss that.
Like I hate this.
I hate now when you go like scroll through your streaming services.
All they have is just like a thumbnail of something that's happening in the movie.
Like show me some art.
Show me.
Yeah, it's not a yeah, it's just maybe a title, not even like a well done.
It's just a still shot of like, yeah, yeah, I don't know.

(18:51):
Yeah, there's just this actually right now in my room here, there's this empty space
on my wall that I'm waiting for in the mail.
I'm getting the Japanese poster art for Army of Darkness.
Nice.
You've seen this where it's it's called Captain Supermarket.

(19:13):
It's you have to look this up.
It's like me.
You have no idea how to slip cans on it.
And I was like, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.
I have to have that in my house because I love that movie Army of Darkness.
I had no idea that that's what the poster was.

(19:33):
And that right there.
Well, because Campbell's Soup, because Bruce Campbell's in the movie and he's kept the
supermarket.
Right.
So it's like a double.
It's like, I don't know.
So yeah, I don't know.
It's like I just looking at the art of something and being like, I need to just I need to see
what that is.
Does that happen in the movie?

(19:53):
Right.
Right.
What is the deal with that?
So yeah, recently we ran across or on our latest bad movie night, The Deadly Spawn was
one of these.
Yeah, the art to this is just this three headed monster thing.

(20:16):
What is that?
I have to see this movie that this is in.
And so that's why you how we ran across The Deadly Spawn, which I've kind of been wanting
to see for a while on my bad movie list.
What was it that attracted you to the movie?
Was it the the box description of like in a world where it was?
Well, I saw a review of it somewhere.
OK.

(20:37):
I was just talking about it somewhere and it was just in my back on my watch list, I
guess.
OK.
Stuff to watch.
But I guess getting back to the question of what have I been watching?
So The Deadly Spawn we just watched, we could actually talk about before that.
What's the what's the basic premise of Deadly Spawn?

(20:57):
Give me a run.
So Deadly Spawn is aliens invading Earth, basically.
So first shot of the movie, little light comes down from the sky and crashes and someone
sees it.
And now there's aliens.
And so from then on, it's.
One house, one maybe two.
It's one or two or possibly three really ugly 70s houses that people are hiding from aliens

(21:28):
in.
So this movie looks like the 80s that I remember from living in the 80s as a kid.
So like when you see the 80s in movies and stuff, it's all neon and New Wave and punk
and stuff.
But that's not really what the 80s looked like.
The real 80s was wood paneling and paisley wallpaper, floral print wallpaper on every

(21:55):
surface and just so these houses are just it's impossible to tell where anyone is, where
every any room is in relation to each other.
Didn't you say at some point we were watching and you were like, they live in a doll's house.
Yeah.
Like if you stared at the wall for too long, your eyes would go out of focus because it's

(22:20):
like a magic eye.
And yeah, so it's just a very disorienting movie because it's impossible to tell where
anyone is or people be in the same room and they won't show them on screen at the same
time like multiple times.
They just pass like strangers in the night.

(22:40):
Yeah.
And we're getting off topic.
We're getting off topic.
But yeah, that's so basic premise.
Basic premise is aliens aliens come to earth and they kill people in this house and multiple
houses.
So this guy runs across.
He goes in his basement.
It might be the attic, but I think it's the basement and he goes in the basement and there's

(23:05):
this three headed alien thing down there and it actually looks pretty good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It looks like it looks like a combination of the alien from the thing, you know, that
the Kurt Russell movie and Aubrey from Little Shot of a Horse.
Audrey too.
And a little bit of like grab oids from tremors.
Yeah.
But this is one of the things that I like about the kind of move bad movies I watched,

(23:29):
which is 80s and 90s bad movies, is that someone had to make this deadly spawn is that there
this deadly spawn physically exists in some effects person's garage.
This was built out of physical material and it's not just in a computer.

(23:49):
It's not just CGI.
Someone physically made this and put it on screen and made a whole movie about it.
I always do appreciate the use of practical effects over CGI.
Like I understand the need for CGI.
There's certain things.
Yeah, I'm not knocking CGI, but it's yeah, there's something about the fact that this
all the stupid little aliens in this were physical things that they had to interact

(24:12):
with and yeah, it's just a whole movie of people getting killed by little aliens and
stuff in these ugly 80s houses.
Yeah.
So the main alien secretes babies or I guess I guess that's the spawn.
They look like little tadpoles with piranha faces.

(24:37):
Yeah, kind of.
They worm their way through carpeting and floor and stone and whatever's in their way
to where the people are and eat them, I guess.
I want to be where the people are.
But that's really all there is to this movie.
I'm trying to think of what, like just people would show up, new characters would get introduced

(24:59):
and we had to keep track of them.
Whole bunches of them.
They went to a potluck at one point with a bunch of old ladies.
They had college kids.
Yeah, there was like college kids.
One of them looked like John Cusack, but not.
He did look like Wish John Cusack.
Yeah, there was a little kid who was like obsessed with horror movies.

(25:21):
Right, right, right, right.
And they all were just in this house.
And he wore this like fake.
It was like a dream, you know.
It's hard to piece together what actually happened.
I think we talked about it a little bit when we were watching it, but I think I forget
who said it, but they hit it right on the head where they're like, oh, this was supposed
to be two different movies.

(25:44):
See I don't know if that was the chase.
It does kind of feel like it's they made one movie about a little kid fighting aliens in
this ugly house.
Right.
And then they made another movie about three college kids fighting aliens in this ugly
house.
And then they made another movie about a potluck with old ladies fighting aliens in this ugly
house.
And then they just kind of put them all together.

(26:05):
See I think it's something like that.
I bet the sequence of events was they made the movie about the little kid fighting aliens
in his in his basement because they had the whole thing where he sets up the booby trap
to try and you know, burn the alien.
Yeah.
We're like, oh, he's going to have to home alone his way through this.
You're going to have to Macaulay Culkin it.

(26:26):
I think that they made that movie.
They realized that the runtime was 75 minutes and then they were like, fuck, we need to
pad this movie was only like 80 some minutes.
It's not like a sad.
It's not like this is some long war of the ring.
This is like a 82.
I don't watch movies that are longer than 90 minutes.
My attention span is not long enough for that shit.

(26:49):
Sir, you have me for 70 to 82 minutes.
Have aliens killing people and get out.
And that's my favorite kind of movie.
Maybe a few boobies here and there.
Maybe.
Yeah, that'd be nice.
But even then, I'm not like that's not going to make or break a movie.
It's going to hurt in my book.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(27:09):
Yeah.
It's just.
I mean, there wasn't enough movie and then you just kind of made the movie again with
different people.
Yeah.
The point is, I think that they were they definitely realized, oh, we got to pad this
runtime.
They definitely did not have enough movie for that movie.
I want that on the t-shirt.
That's going to be our next merchandise.
They didn't have enough movie for that movie.

(27:30):
I want that on a hat.
Yeah, I don't even know what else to say about that.
I mean, I guess, but granted, if we paid more attention to that movie, it might have made
more sense, but I don't know how much more sense.
It's hard to pay attention when the whole movie sounds like it was like audio recorded

(27:50):
in a broom closet.
None of the lighting is there.
The only lighting that they have is literally like a construction like.
Listen, this movie was well lit compared to what I usually watch.
You got to lower your standards for these kind of movies.
This movie was totally fine in terms of production, in terms of sound, in terms of I had no problem

(28:12):
with that at all.
They filmed the whole thing with a spotlight.
They had one light.
I'm fine with that.
I think it looked terrible.
Glenn's like, hey, they had a light.
You could tell what was happening on stream, which is more than you can say for a lot of
these movies.
No, no, I could see what was happening.

(28:33):
You can see what was happening.
I had no idea what was happening.
Your eyes could discern something was happening.
The visuals on screen.
Yeah, this house was.
I know we keep talking about like we're not sure if it's one house or three houses, but
I got to stress to you people like you don't understand.

(28:53):
There are characters that don't interact at all in this movie, and yet somehow they're
tangentially related to each other.
Okay, here's as far as I can tell what happens in the climax of this movie.
The little kid.
Okay, so there's two of the- Where do we start?

(29:14):
Where do we start?
There's two of the college kids left over.
They go up in the attic, right?
So they're hiding in the attic.
Then the little kid has a plan to kill the big one.
Right, the main.
The main three headed deadly swan.
It's in the basement.
So he corners it in the basement and blows it up, but then it simultaneously blows up

(29:39):
in the attic with the other two college kids.
So unless there's two- Unless there's either two that both blow
up at the same time or they're all in the same place and the attic and the basement
are the same room.
Now, granted, I might have just been not paying close enough attention to this movie, but

(30:00):
also I shouldn't have to have a PhD in topology to figure out where people are in the deadly
swan.
So- Who designed this house?
MCS?
Yeah, it was.
It was like House of Leaves.
I generally pay attention to movies pretty well.

(30:21):
Every once in a while I'll catch a little bit of like, wait, what did I just miss?
I wasn't so disenfranchised, so far removed from this movie that I had no idea-
None of us had any idea where anyone was or what anyone was doing in this movie.
The spatial awareness in this movie is non-existent or fantasy-

(30:41):
That was the star of this movie was this house.
Because that's the only thing I can keep thinking of about this movie.
It's dominating our conversation is how nonsense the geometry of this house is.
We have one comic on the alien-
Tesseract.
It's right.
We had one comment on the alien like, oh, that's kind of cool.
What the fuck is up with this house?

(31:04):
Where are they?
Why?
Why are we doing this?
Oh, anyway.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know what else to say about it.
I mean, it's worth a look, but you got to really, really stretch your ability to like-
You can't be invested in who, what, why, or where in this film.

(31:25):
And I know that sounds ridiculous because those are all essential pieces of storytelling.
It's got fun aliens.
It's got a good effect.
I don't want to say good effects.
It's got, I guess, effects, I think.
Yeah, I mean, there's some decent gore effects.
A lady gets her face ripped off.

(31:46):
The electrician dude gets eaten and gets his hand bitten off.
So it's cheesy.
They kill the one guy who turns into a Jackson Pollock painting.
That's right.
They kill this dude in silhouette.
It's just some stagehand out of the shot just throwing paint on the walls.
It's ridiculous.
You're like, wow, I would really love to see this kill right now because it seems pretty

(32:09):
vicious and gory, but guess we ran out of budget for that one.
What would you rate this movie if-
What would I rate it?
Yeah, what would you rate this?
I do rate movies on a scale, so I'll tell you how many stars I rated this movie, but
I want to hear your-
We don't do that here.
I am going to rate Deadly Spawn somewhere between three and five levels of a house.

(32:37):
I'm not sure how many levels are in this house.
Yeah, it was very hard.
Yeah, I rated three out of five stars.
Honestly, honestly, that was not a terrible movie.
It was better than the average movie I see.
Glenn, I wouldn't go so far as to call it average.
I would go so far as to call it average.
I would go that far.

(33:01):
Is it more appealing than an ISIS beheading video?
Yes.
I'm never going to watch it again.
There you go.
But you're glad you spent time with it at least.
Yeah, it was fine.
I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time or anything on it.
That leads to an interesting question.
In your opinion, what makes a good bad movie?

(33:28):
It's easy to be a bad movie.
It's difficult to be a good movie.
It's even more difficult to be a good bad movie.
No, it's not even that it's a good bad movie.
It's that it's movies that are good in spite of being bad or things I like.
Okay.
Okay.
Here's the thing, you could make things I don't like, Birdemic, that kind of stuff like

(33:50):
the Sharknado.
Those kind of modern ones.
Yeah, those that know it's not good.
It's not any fun if it knows it's bad, right?
It's fun if it thinks it's good and is bad.
So the analogy I always give is like, okay, it's not funny if someone you never heard

(34:11):
of slips and falls on their face, right?
Sure.
But it is funny if Usain Bolt slips and falls on his face in the middle of a hundred yard
bash, right?
Right, right, right.
Because he knows what he's doing.
You would imagine he's supposed to be good at this and is good at this.
Okay.
So your expectations are at least you would, although even then it's hard.

(34:34):
Yeah.
See, to me it would be even more somebody challenging Usain Bolt to a foot race and
being 100% confident that they're going to win.
That's probably more, that's more on the nose of what I'm getting at.
It's the dude going like, I could take Connor, but you're not going to fight him.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's the misplaced confidence.

(34:55):
That's why The Room works as a bad movie is that it thinks it's the best movie in the
world.
Right.
That's the Tommy Wiseau Room, not the...
But even then, there's a real good, there's a place for movies that are like, know they're
bad but are fun.
You know, see, even then that's, I don't want to count the birdemic and stuff like that

(35:16):
in it.
It's hard to, it's a very fine line that I'm trying to piece here.
Well something like, I think you hit it on the head with like the birdemic or the Piranha
3D or something like that where it's like, you spend all this money just to make a purposely
shitty movie.
Whereas I think in reverse, like if you scrap together every dime you have to make the best

(35:40):
movie possible and it still turns out shitty, but it's got a lot of like heart and honesty,
you know, honesty.
That's it.
Yeah.
Is that they, yeah, like despite not having any budget, they like tried to make the best
movie they could.
And like whether it's good or not, there's something to be said about that.

(36:01):
Yeah.
And like if it's good, then like, well, I didn't expect that to be any good.
That was amazing.
And you get like mutilations, which I've shown you guys.
That's right.
It's another one of my favorite bad B movies, which is just people with zero budget going,
I'm going to make a movie and it's terrible.
And that, it doesn't matter.

(36:22):
Yeah.
I think it's, I think it has something to do.
Like in a weird way, like everybody wants to be Sam Raimi.
Everybody wants to be evil dead.
Everybody wants to be trying to think of some other good ones, you know, like Rocky Horror
Picture Show or the first Halloween or something like that, where it's just like, oh, we made

(36:44):
this movie for a handshake and a ham sandwich and like, look how big and bad it got.
But like in a weird way, like it's weird to walk the line because then you go into something
like the room that is so, it is trying so hard and Tom So is putting all his, his skill
and effort into like making this really dramatic piece and it all just falls apart and ends

(37:09):
up becoming hilarious.
And so that's why we've fallen in love.
Well, I guess that's kind of two different things then is you have the room on one side,
which is three, I think that's a $3 million movie.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That is objectively terrible.
I guess I'm not a little, I don't want to say that.
I'm never going to say that, but it is widely regarded as being very bad.

(37:34):
But on the other hand, yeah, you have something that costs a tenth of that that is really
good.
Like we saw a really good movie with almost zero budget was that hundreds of beavers.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
You saw like the very end of that's an excellent movie.
It's like basically just a live action.

(37:55):
Yeah.
It was a live action Looney Tunes type movie.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which by the way, highly rec, if you can get your hand on that hundreds of beers, it's
fun, like clean family fun.
Like I don't think there's any cursing or nudity.
There's a little bit, but it's no worse than like an old bugs bunny cartoon kind of thing.
So I mean, they're not showing tits or anything.
No, no, no.

(38:16):
A lot of, a lot of beaver.
I've been sitting on that joke since we started talking about it.
I had to get it out.
I will get you there by hooker by crook Glenn.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
It's it's kind of, you can go one of two ways.

(38:36):
Like you can fall in love with the movie because it generally tried.
It's like the little engine that could like it just, it tried so hard that it won you
over or you can go the opposite direction.
Like I think the movie that we fell in love with originally that kind of got us into the
whole thing.
Tokyo Gore police.
Yeah.
Where objectively that's a bad movie.
It's, it's, it's completely, you know, campy Gore and stuff like that.

(39:00):
And weird special effects and people, you know, body dysmorphia and people getting their,
their hands cut off and then their hands turn into knives and getting their eyes plucked
out and their eyeballs turn into guns.
And like, it's this weird, I don't like amalgamation of Frankenstein.
It's a special effects.
It's a bunch of people were like, Hey, we want to have, we have a bunch of people.

(39:20):
We want to have a bunch of ideas for special effects.
Let's put them in a movie.
And like that's kind of its own fitting of an awesome.
That's the Sam Raimi idea.
Right, right.
We're like, we've, we've found one thing about it.
We were like, that's just an awesome premise that like the whole movie is whatever, like
the plot line doesn't almost doesn't matter.
You watch that movie to see like what other fucked up things are they going to do to the

(39:42):
people that are going to be cool and awesome?
Like, I don't know, it's in a weird way, finding something that is funny to you in a way makes
it makes a good bad movie, but that's so subjective.
Is that like, you can't aim for that as a filmmaker.
Yeah, yeah.
You can't be like, Oh, 10% of the population.

(40:03):
What you can do as a filmmaker is be earnest, is be like, I'm, this is a stupid idea, but
I'm going to make this movie anyway.
Right.
And some of the, whether they're good or bad, there's something to be said about that is
because even if it's the good or bad, it's good or bad on its own merits and not the
merits of, Oh, some reviewer said it was good or Oh, cinema sins said there was something

(40:29):
wrong with it or, you know, like you're critique.
Yeah.
You're not going off of like what people say about it or what, like I like movies that
I've never even heard of or I've heard one person remark about and like, it just turned
out to be like even terrible.
It turned out to be good or terrible.
Like either way, you know, like it's like, it's like, uh, like searching a new land.

(40:55):
It's like discovering a new planet or like a new form of life or something, you know,
like you're just, there's no judgment on whether it's good or bad almost even on some
level.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're just kind of accepting it for like, okay, this is a movie about a three headed

(41:16):
alien and kills people and impossible to understand how's that's the movie and they made it right.
There it is.
You can't say they didn't make that movie.
They did the thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, like, you know, like, you're diving into, diving into a, a, a, not a new pool,

(41:40):
but like a body of water you've never been into before.
Nobody's ever seen before.
Like the experience of it's like you were saying before, the video store experience where
you go and knowing nothing about a movie other than what a picture, right?
You're like, I need to see what that's about.
I have to know what the deal is or just a blurb on the back of the box.

(42:02):
Like, what was the movie I gave you?
Just the blurb ankle biters.
I was like, you have to see the blurb on the back of this box.
I'm going to read you it and you're going to want to watch it.
See, okay.
I, that's a, to me, that's a bad, bad movie.
That is a pretty bad movie, but, but I actually got enjoyment out of that because it's almost
like watching a comedian go up and completely bomb just the awkwardness of it.

(42:26):
Like you, like you have to sit in it and stew and it'd be like, Oh, how bad does this get?
You know, like, like how, how much worse does this, does this rabbit hole go to go down?
You know, like, and it just gets worse.
And you're like, Oh my God, like they filmed this thing with a, with a rock.
They, they, nobody's wearing a microphone.
They have, they have one tripod with a wobbly leg.

(42:46):
Like how fun, like in a weird way, just it's, it's watching disaster happen and unfold
in slow motion in front of you and you just can't turn away.
You're like, I got to see how big of a blood bath this becomes.
Like this is a seven car pileup and I see it happening right now.
There's like, I just think this is something that people don't discuss a lot is there's

(43:09):
these different reasons people see bad movies.
Like there's a different reason that someone who's like into mystery science theater would
watch a bad movie versus someone who is into something.
I don't know.
Some other, like I would watch a bad movie.
Like I have legitimately watched movies that have been on mystery science theater.

(43:30):
Raw.
I have, I've, I've raw dogged things before I actually, things is like another like classical,
not class, but it's a pretty, I don't want to say well known as far as this stuff goes,
but people know about this movie as being a bad movie and riff tracks has done it.
Who's like the mystery science theater guys later did riff tracks and they did an episode

(43:55):
on things.
I just watched the movie.
It's not just me and things I was like, I have to sit down and watch this movie on its
own merits and like I actually got a kick out of it.
Like I was at the best we've ever seen.
No, it was terrible.
What I, but like, did I get something out of that that I wouldn't have gotten by watching

(44:18):
someone make fun of that for me?
Like no, I like sure.
Like it's this.
Yeah.
Yeah, you need to make fun of movies for yourself.
Don't let other people do it for it.
Don't let me and Michael make fun of this movie for you.
Go out and watch the deadly spawn on your own and see how that hits you.

(44:42):
Cause there's something to be said for just doing that with movies that you have no idea
what it is.
And even with no pretense, like it's some old eighties, it's an old eighties, eighties,
alien invasion movie.
Yeah.
That's it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's, that's kind of the whole, you know, the whole theme of it is, is don't

(45:05):
let anyone else tell you what's good or what's bad.
Find out and discover for yourself because there's movies that, I mean, I'm a huge Nicholas
Cage fan because I love it because for all the reasons that we've talked about, you know,
he swings for the fences every time and sometimes when Nicholas Cage is on and it's brilliant.

(45:26):
And then when he's off, it's also kind of entertaining because wow, he is really, really
off in this movie.
Like, I wonder how bad it's going to get.
Usually pretty bad, but so like make your own decision.
It's all subjective, you know, like, like embrace the, the absurd, you know, like that's
my theme for this year.
And that actually brings us to probably our next point of discussion here, which is a

(45:52):
movie I wanted to bring up with you.
This is something I've been getting into as of 2025, which is a classic Marvel movie
that predates the MCU.
Oh, and it is a little movie called Howard the Duck.
All right.
So Howard the Duck.

(46:15):
So this year began and I was like, I'm going to need some kind of new year's resolution
or some kind of way to look at the upcoming year.
Just because 2025 is kind of ridiculous.
If you just look at the world in general.
And so I was like, I'm going to need a way to deal with this.

(46:37):
And so I decided to just embrace absurdity in the, the philosophical sense that the universe
is cold and meaningless and this greatly disturbs humans to think about.
And we deal with that by embracing the absurd.

(46:59):
And I am doing that in the personification of Howard the Duck, who is the Marvel character
from the seventies.
So if I can, if I can just sort of put a, a, a ribbon on your philosophy, if I may, it's
sort of laughing into the abyss rather than being.
Well, it's saying that I'm a, it's a, he's a duck in human world.

(47:23):
Okay.
Right?
Okay.
That's ridiculous.
That's absurd on its face.
Sure.
Right?
So everything is like that.
And so you need to look at, I'm trying to look at everything like that.
In that sense of just, so my thing was like, I need to get into something that's stupid.
That's my kind of stupid, like bad movies.

(47:44):
Like, and I was like, okay, comics is something I used to like that haven't been into a while.
What's the stupidest comic book I can possibly think of to get into that no one could possibly
give me shit about being into.
And I settled on Howard the Duck.
No one, all of his comics came out before I was born, like in 1975 and stuff like that.

(48:09):
No one collects Howard the Duck.
All of his issues are a couple bucks to collect.
So easy marketing.
So it's easy.
Yeah.
And I'm like, okay, I'm going to go around.
My goal this year is to collect the original run of Howard the Duck issues, but I have
to do it in person.
So I'm going to actually go to comic book stores and go to conventions and try to collect

(48:30):
Howard the Duck and that's going to give me something to do or reason to get out of the
house, reason to talk to people.
Yeah.
Like I said, it's one thing to like just push, you know, add to cart on Amazon or stuff like
that.
It's another thing to go out and like the hunt of it all.
Yeah.
Because I'm a collector.
I mean, right now we're sitting and we're recording this in my house, which is full

(48:51):
of robots and collectible things.
It is a mecca to transformers.
Every transformer in the world is in here.
And yeah, that's just how I am.
I like collecting things that are important to me.
And that's what I decided is going to be important to me because it might as well be Howard the

(49:11):
Duck.
So how many issues?
So there's 33 issues of the original Howard the Duck plus like some others, like an annual
and stuff like that.
But not hard to do.
I went to Fallout Comics or a local comic book place and got, I cleared them out of
Howard the Duck.
And we have like, I think, 13 or 14 issues out of that.
So already well on my way there.

(49:32):
There you go.
And yeah, as part of this, I decided to watch the movie, which I hadn't seen since I was
very little when it first came out.
I was probably like seven years old.
Came out in 1986.
I was just looking that up.
Interestingly enough, do you know who the producer of this movie is?

(49:52):
Who is that?
George Lucas.
That would be George Lucas.
Star Wars fame.
Yeah.
Yes.
So yeah, George Lucas produced this.
Find out who the director was.
Yes, the director was Willard Huck.
And I'm not making a goofy noise.
That's literally how his name is.

(50:14):
H-U-Y-C-K.
You tell me how it's pronounced.
Huck?
And I forget, he did some other weird things.
He directed other certain things.
I don't remember him being huge.
I did look this up, but I don't remember it being.
Let's see.
He did Messiah of Evil, French postcards.
Oh, American Graffiti.
That's I think the only thing that.

(50:35):
OK.
The other George Lucas movie.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So.
So yeah, so Howard the Duck.
Give me a basic premise.
What's the...
Take me there, son.
Basic premise is Howard the Duck lives in a duck planet.
Duck world.
Yeah, it's all ducks, which I would watch a whole movie of just this duck planet.
It's all like basically George Lucas got every little person after he knew in Hollywood from

(51:00):
doing Star Wars and was like, hey, you want to be in my duck movie?
So there's like a million ducks.
Pause.
Can you imagine you're a little person and George Lucas comes to you and says, do you
want to be in my duck movie?
Do you have questions or do you immediately just be like, yeah, sure, sign me up?

(51:20):
Most of these people are also in Garbage Pail Kids.
So I would imagine they've just did whatever.
It's really interesting looking at some of these actors and the movies they were in at
the time.
Like, for example, the Howard the Duck himself.
You know what they say, though, right?
There's no little parts.
There's only little actors.
Well, well, Ed, speaking of which, the main guy.

(51:45):
So Howard the Duck is played by a bunch of different stunt people and different.
And mostly, though, is played by Ed Gale, who also played Chucky in Child's Play.
Oh, so that murderous doll.
Yes.
So that is who is actually playing Howard the Duck.
And Howard the Duck is a very well done, like animatronic figure for 1986.

(52:06):
I have to say it was Stan Winston that did that one.
I'm not positive, but it looks very I'm sure it was.
I mean, this is a weird thing about this movie is that this is the first Marvel.
And I want to say this very precisely.
I want to say this is the first cinematic Marvel feature since World War Two Captain

(52:33):
America.
Yeah.
Yeah, they used to do the whole.
So for some reason, they were like, we're going to make a movie based on a Marvel IP.
And out of all the Marvel IPs they could have made to make a movie, they picked Howard the
Duck.
Can you imagine that sales and George Lucas produced it like they put a lot of effort

(52:53):
into this Howard the Duck movie.
And it just blows my mind.
All right.
So picture this.
We're going to a Marvel movie.
OK, we got George Lucas attached.
OK, what can we do?
We got we got the Spider-Man.
We got the Hulk.
We got the X-Men.
Fuck that.
Make it about the duck.
I love your producer character, by the way.

(53:14):
I just have to say that's.
And the whole rest of it.
They were like, yeah, Howard the Duck.
That's the one we're going to hang our hat on.
That's our that's our Marvel movie.
But again, it's at some point, everyone.
This is the thing about this movie.
In my notes, the very first line of my notes, because I knew what this movie I'd be like,
what the hell?
This is stupid.

(53:35):
Multiple times.
The very first line, my note says reverse duck is a guy.
So an isekai is like an anime genre where someone gets sucked to an alternate world.
So it's like Wizard of Oz or Narnia or something like that.
And so this is an isekai where a duck gets sucked into the human world and he is sitting

(53:58):
on his couch.
He doesn't even have to leave his room to get sucked into the human world.
And what does it is a laser spectroscope.
Well, that sounds scientific.
Which well, do you know what?
Can you parse that word and tell me what a laser spectroscope?
What do you think a laser laser laser seems self self defining?

(54:21):
OK, laser spectroscope, a spectroscope, a spectra like spectrum dealing with the spectrum
of light.
So it's a laser that operates on different light functions or a different scope.
So what is a scope?
It looks at things.
So so a laser spectroscope is something that looks at the colors of lasers.

(54:44):
Right.
So somehow this sucks this duck, you know, across the universe.
I'm going to say it's sounding a lot less scientific.
We break it down.
It's a model of delete.
And so, yeah, so he gets sucked into 1980s Cleveland where Leah Thompson, which is the

(55:07):
best Cleveland, right, 1980s Cleveland.
Pick one.
I mean, this one has Leah Thompson in it as a as a like punk band leader who is I would
rank as up on the upper echelon of 80s babes, I would say.
Leah Thompson.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was that was Ferris Bueller's sister.
She was in Red Dawn.

(55:29):
Oh, what's the dancing movie?
Patrick Swayze.
Nobody puts baby in the corner.
I don't know if we're thinking about the same person here.
Leah Thompson.
Yeah.
No, that's Jennifer Gray.
Sorry.
Leah Thompson was in Marty McFly's mom.
Yeah, I was going to say because I'm not like I said, I don't watch good movies.

(55:49):
So I was like, wait, is this?
No, that's not right.
Anyway, so yeah, Lance Thompson, one of the she can actually pull off crimped bangs, by
the way, very rare.
Okay.
So, by the way, the music to this is all written, not all the music, but the rock music that
like the band plays is all by Thomas Dolby, who did like blinded me with science.
And yeah, he created Dolby sound, you know.

(56:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, he did that.
And he Wow, that's what a what a weird poll.
I'm curious as to what the connection is on that.
That has to be somebody has the same agent or something like that.
Well, no, he did.
He did blinded me with science.
He was a he did music, too, as well as inventing.

(56:33):
No, no.
I'm just saying, like, that's a weird musical connection.
Like how do you land on Thomas Dolby other than like reverse duck is a guy.
Thomas Dolby was sucked into it.
Yeah.
So that's no, that's the answer for any question about this movie.
So, so yeah, so he meets Leah Thompson and kind of they start a friendship, but you don't

(57:00):
really get to see it on screen.
It just is oh, by the way, lest we skip over as how the duck is being pulled out of his
living room, traveling millions of light years towards Earth.
What does he see as he passes over and crashes through people's walls?
I don't remember that.
You don't remember duck boobs?

(57:20):
No.
Oh, my God.
As he's being pulled through the wall, like he's being pulled out of the apartment.
I trust you.
He's crashing through all the apartment walls.
And there's a lady duck sitting in the bathroom and she has duck boobs.
Well, all right.
I don't know.
Again, I don't know how that works because ducks are birds.
But apparently not.

(57:41):
I mean, they might be birds, but they got a great back.
He tries to fuck Leah Thompson later in the movie, evidently.
But with this little curly cute dust.
Yeah, I don't know how that even works.
But so, yeah, so like we're literally 15 minutes into this movie and he already is at Leah
Thompson's house and they're already like friends.
So at this point, I'm like, well, how is this movie?

(58:03):
This movie is like two hours long.
This is a decently long movie.
How are they possibly going to fill this time?
What more has to happen?
Right, right.
You can do a whole thing of fish out of water.
But they don't.
Like I said, the whole their whole relationship feels like it happens off screen.
This feels like it's the edited version of the real movie or like that this movie was

(58:27):
edited from like a TV series and they just didn't show all the character development
scenes where these two characters actually meet and like get to like like each other.
And so it's like so it's like Game of Thrones.
But they just meet and they like live together then.
And then the next day they go and talk to Tim Robbins, who is like a grad student at

(58:50):
the I think he works at the laser spectroscope lab.
OK, that makes sense.
So they go there to try to figure it out.
And at this point, they all break up.
All the characters like break.
They all hate each other for some reason.
And at this point, Howard the Duck, like they give him a job like forcefully, like evidently

(59:12):
in Reagan's America, if you don't have a job, like it's just some you go somewhere
and it's some lady's job to like force you to work.
And so it's called the unemployment.
So the day after he shows up, they're like, you don't have a job.
You have to get a job, doc.
Also nobody's addressing like the anthropomorphic duck.

(59:35):
It's up in the air as to whether people can tell he's a duck or not.
It's kind of come see come saw.
What are you?
No, it's not.
I'm probably not using that correctly.
No, I just mean the sense of like in the real world, if an anthropomorphic duck walked up
and was like, hey, give me a job, you'd be like, what the fuck?
He doesn't ask for a job.

(59:56):
They just give him a job.
Oh, so he's already in the system because he I don't know.
They're just all of a sudden, the lady is like, you better get a job and gives him a
job at like he doesn't have a Social Security.
He doesn't have reverse duck isekai.
Oh, God damn it.
I'm telling you.
So I hate that.
That's your answer for everything.
So yeah, so he gets a job at like, I don't even know where it is.

(01:00:17):
It's like some I say it's a sex dungeon, but there's no way it's a sex dungeon in a PG
movie.
No, it's like a weird like massage parlor with like a mud bath.
Okay.
And he has to clean it.
And there's a whole scene with this and I don't get how it's a rock like a PG movie.
So it's one of those like trendy like spas where you can go get like cucumber.

(01:00:41):
It's way sleazier than that.
It's like a Turkish bath.
Yeah, it's much sleazier than that.
And so evidently he works there.
And anyway, they got all back together.
He goes back to the bar where this band plays and like fires their manager and now he's
their manager because he tries to kill their old manager.

(01:01:03):
He basically threatened.
He like threatens to kill him right in front of everyone at the bar.
And he's like, fine, you can be their manager like shit.
So he's their manager now.
And at this point, how long has he been on earth at this point?
Because it's two days.
As far as I can tell, this is the second day of him being on earth.

(01:01:26):
Oh, so at this point, they almost fuck.
And as we were saying before, I don't know how this works.
They put this in my brain, you know, like ducks, right?
So like you were saying, they're corked, one of them is corkscrewed one way and the
other one is corkscrewed the other way.

(01:01:46):
OK, right.
So like the guy duck is corkscrewed one way and the girl duck is corkscrewed the opposite
direction.
It's like a right handed versus like as uncomfortable as possible for ducks to have sex, which is
why like you live in Tallahassee, you've been to Lake Ella, right?
You've seen ducks fuck.
They hate it.
I thought they were really into it, but I don't speak duck.

(01:02:07):
So I always they seem to hate it to me.
And that's why.
So I don't know how this is going to work with Leia Thompson.
Like if I met a girl duck, would I be able to fuck the girl?
Like if I met Leia Thompson and she was a duck.
OK, I'm with you.
Would that work?
Like, I don't know.
Is your penis corkscrewed?
Well, the movie fucking everything.

(01:02:28):
We think so.
And like, what's he going to if he goes home, then what's he going to say to his buddies?
Like I fucked some weird monkey girl.
That would be the equivalent of you telling me like, you know, I fucked this duck, but
you're the duck lady.
So anyway, they're about to fuck.
And fortunately, Jeffrey Jones walks in in flagrant elicto.

(01:02:53):
First of all, nobody's ever said, fortunately, Jeffrey Jones walks in before.
So I appreciate that.
So anyway, the thing of this movie that you have to understand is that Jeffrey Jones is
very hard to look at.
He's very uncomfortable to look at.
All right.
Time out.
Time out.
I feel like we're about to get into a subject here that we need to let's tread lightly.

(01:03:19):
If you don't know who Jeffrey Jones is, he was the principal in Ferris Bueller's Day
Off.
He was the dad in Beetlejuice.
He was the German hunter in the past.
Long list of accreditations.
Do yourself a favor or don't and look up or don't his Wikipedia page and find out that

(01:03:42):
he's been having.
Well, I would not look up his Wikipedia page because I learned far more about any that
I ever wanted to know about this guy from his Wikipedia page.
Long story short, he's creepy and I don't want to look at him for reasons other than
his physical appearance.
Right, right, right, right.
So he is in this.
He's like the boss of this laser whatever.

(01:04:04):
And the laser science factory.
Yeah.
So he oh, by the way, the random there's a random thug in the bar who's the janitor
on Pete and Pete.
I made a note of that.
That's another already.
No, not already.
He's like he's the janitor on Pete and Pete.
I don't remember him.
You would have to.
Anyway, so yeah, so he like stops them and they go back to the laser spectroscope place

(01:04:32):
and he gets like possessed by some demon thing when they turn on the laser again.
So they turn on the laser again and like some demon like overlord like some dark overlord
of outer space comes and like possesses it.
Yeah.
If I remember correctly, they were trying to dial in back to Duck Plant so they can

(01:04:53):
send him home.
They miscalculate or something and ended up pulling in.
I think he is trying to not get him back to.
I think he messed it up on purpose or so.
I don't know.
OK, OK.
So anyway, he gets possessed by this thing and from then on he is basically Gozer the
Gozerian.

(01:05:14):
But like also he like is creepy in real life.
You have to look at.
And so they take him to Denny's and he fucks up.
They take him to Joe Romo's Cajun Sushi.
There we go.
And they like he.
Thanks to our sponsor.
And then he like turns into the he like starts shooting, lightning out of his hands and stuff.

(01:05:35):
And like he wrecks this Denny's and they have to run away.
And so at this point, they get broken up and he steals a semi truck and kidnaps Lita Thompson,
who is playing a character named Beverly Switzer, who is a canon Marvel character from the Howard

(01:05:57):
the Duck comic.
So it is they are at least one character.
I think in the comic book, she's more of a like a personal assistant or a secretary.
Yeah, she's a like an art model.
She does like modeling for art classes in that book.
So yeah, I've been reading Howard the Duck to fill in the complicated lore.

(01:06:22):
He fought Hellcow.
He was running.
He's running for president at the time.
Yeah, there is a cow who's a vampire named Hellcow named Hellcow.
He fought an evil like accountant.
A guy who was possessed by a turnip.
OK, yeah, this is what this is.
So yeah, this is what I've been reading.

(01:06:43):
But so yeah, so he takes her in a stolen semi to the nuclear power plant to get more energy.
OK.
Meanwhile, Howard the Duck runs away with Tim Robbins.
So at this point, there's they split the party.
Right.

(01:07:04):
So now Tim Robbins and Howard have to go find Leah Thompson, save the day, stop the dark
overlord like well, we're kicking into third.
At this point, they completely do two completely separate movies simultaneously.
OK, where it's it's Lord of the Rings.
Because the two longest chase scenes you can possibly imagine where one of them is the

(01:07:26):
semi truck where they go to the nuclear power plant, crash through the barricade to get
in and then somehow sneak in after that as if it was just as if no one noticed them crash
a semi truck through the gate.
Sure, sure.
Right.
So they were doing that simultaneously.
Howard the Duck and Tim Robbins find an ultra light aircraft like one of those tiny little

(01:07:50):
like go kart planes.
Oh, yeah, like the like the fly it around.
I guess they're going to the lab.
But goddamn, do they take their sweet time doing it.
They go everywhere.
They go to the lake and fuck with some fishermen.
They like fly through us like a trailer.

(01:08:13):
They do by the end of this.
This this aircraft is falling apart.
The wings are falling off.
It's one point.
Tim Robbins has to climb on top and fucking hook the gas tank back up while hanging off
the side of it.
And it's like the end of Mad Max 2 with the gyrocopter.
But like totally not exciting at all.

(01:08:37):
And any second that Howard the Duck is physically not on screen, this movie just dies.
It is so long.
So in your opinion, you're going to give the underrated performance of the week to Howard
the Duck.
I would give my underrated.
Well, yeah, yeah.
Howard the Duck.
I'll take it.
I'll take it.

(01:08:57):
So yeah, they long story short, get back to the laser lab.
And finally, this dark overlord comes out and it's awesome looking.
He comes out of his body or whatever.
Yeah, it's a big stop motion, awesome looking monster that I this is all I remember of this
movie from a little kid is I love this monster and would like draw it.

(01:09:22):
So I remember drawing this monster from Howard the Duck when I was like seven years old.
That's cool.
Because I was on VHS.
I remember writing this movie more than once because they had an awesome alien at the end.
Plus duck boobs.
It looks kind of like a tarmac like from Magic the Gathering.
A little bit like that.
It's kind of hard to place with a weird.

(01:09:43):
All right, nerd.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that's a pretty cool thing.
But the problem, I guess, with this movie is that after watching it, I felt like I didn't
know anything more about any of these characters.
Like I was hoping I would like to learn something about the universe or the Howard the Duck or

(01:10:03):
his character, some sort of like emotional resolution of like, hey, I should watch.
I should read the book or whatever to figure out what happens.
And like, not really.
Like, aside from him just being kind of a wisecracking 80s dude, he's kind of like a
quarter of a Ninja Turtle in a way.
What do you mean by that?
Well, he's well, he's not really a whole Ninja Turtle.

(01:10:26):
He's like, you know how the Ninja Turtles are like wisecracking 90s dudes in the cartoon,
at least they're very generic.
That's kind of how Howard the Duck is in this.
He's not like I've been reading the books and in the books, he's like a Serbic and smokes
a cigar constantly.
I guess he's doing that in the movie.
OK, so he's doing like a Robert Downey kind of thing like a little bit Robert Downey or

(01:10:51):
not Robert Downey Jr. but the original Morton Downey, Morton Downey.
Yes, a little bit, but not quite as like me.
He does have like a heart of gold ultimately, but ultimately he is an absurd creature dealing
with his predicament in the way that ultimately all of us have to.
OK, where no matter whether we're a duck trapped in a world he never made or some guy sitting

(01:11:19):
at an intersection, we still have to live the next minute and I didn't get that out
of the movie.
OK, the movie just kind of was a bunch of I mean, what did I expect out of Howard the
Duck the movie, I guess.

(01:11:39):
But yeah, I just didn't feel like I felt like the movie took place off screen.
OK, at least all of the character development and all of the reason why any of these characters
should be hanging out together.
It sounds like the problem was this is a movie that should have taken place over like a year.

(01:11:59):
Like this is a year of Howard the Duck.
Yeah, and they they truncated into like four days.
Yeah, so the whole story, everything has to move at an accelerated pace.
Even if the movie was the same length, they could have said they could have done better
at pacing that because there's no reason for that chase scene in the middle of this movie

(01:12:22):
to be 40 minutes long or whatever it is.
It's ridiculous.
It's just it's the most boring chase scene I've seen in a very long time in terms of
just they just keep going and going and going.
You're like, man, when are they going to get it?
It's not even clear where they're going.
But it just drags in the middle and you don't learn anything about, like I said, who Howard

(01:12:45):
the Duck is, what his world is, what his whole point of view as a character is.
See, this is the thing about the people who made this movie fundamentally did not understand
the character of Howard the Duck.
Sure.
If you interview the people who made Howard the Duck, they would be like he's existentialist,

(01:13:06):
he's absurdist, he is a satire of a 70s and 80s access.
Sure.
And that's one of the things that drew me to him.
Like a mirror darkly.
Yeah.
Is that if we culturally kind of are heading to this reactionary place, I will need to

(01:13:28):
look at the countercultures of the past in reactionary times.
Sure.
OK.
Like the weekend years and then like what what did weird people because they existed
back then.
Right.
What were they?
How were they getting through life at the time?

(01:13:48):
And I.
The answer is drugs, sir.
A lot, a lot of drugs.
Like what I'm trying to get the mindset of these characters.
And that's yeah, like I said, there's something about this character that that the people
who made what I'm getting to here is that the people who made Howard the Duck, they

(01:14:08):
there's an interview with the writer of this movie who said, yeah, it's not we're not looking
for any kind of existentialist thing.
It's a duck lost in space.
Like that's literally the almost a quote that she said.
But it's like, no, that is literally not like it actually is about seriousness in ridiculousness

(01:14:30):
is that the only difference between something being serious and stupid is your point of
view.
Right.
OK.
And from the same point of view, this vampire cow could be the stupidest thing you've ever
seen or at the end of that story, you actually feel a little bit bad for this vampire cow's

(01:14:51):
plight as a character is being a cow who never asked to be a vampire.
And I know I'm reading way more into that, but maybe they put in.
I mean, but none of that reading into it is in the movie at all.
Right.
The movie is just little kids, Doc probably think is fun.

(01:15:14):
Sure.
And they don't like I'm trying to think of things that maybe did get that.
The existential.
Yeah.
That that 80s existentialist better.
And I can't really.
I mean, American psycho.
Yeah.
I mean, that's that's kind of on the nose, but for sure.

(01:15:35):
Yeah.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, in terms of just like, look at how ridiculous this world is, this world of excess,
this world of not accountability, of access.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can do anything I want because I make enough money.
I'm in the right set.
I'm in the I'm in the right crowd.
I'm in the right financial tier.

(01:15:57):
You know, like so sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And but I think in a weird way, maybe Howard the Duck is the flip side of that of of of
just a guy who is trying to make it in a world of everybody's what do you do?

(01:16:18):
What do you drive?
You know, this world of you got to have a job.
You got it.
You got to do something.
You got it.
You got to make it, son.
You got, you know, like it's OK.
So Howard the Duck trapped in a world he never made.
Yeah.
That is the tagline to the series, Howard the Duck.
And we are all ducks trapped in a world we have never made.

(01:16:38):
None of us asked to be here.
And we have to deal with that.
We have to get through whatever happens, whether it's ridiculous, whether it makes sense.
Yeah.
Whether I'm living in a world that just is meaningless.

(01:17:01):
Like, you know, if you live in a meaningless world, what do you do?
And that's where Howard the Duck is kind of coming from, is he's just living in this world
that doesn't make any sense to him.
And how does he live just as a duck in human land?
I don't know.
There's just something about that to me that is kind of like apropos for the modern age.

(01:17:25):
And I don't know if I can convince one person with this podcast to give Howard the Duck
a point.
I'm not even saying the movie is any good.
I didn't even particularly like the movie.
The movie I gave two out of five stars.
So I'm not saying the movie is a good representation of Howard the Duck at all.
But yeah, just give some of this old ridiculous stuff a chance.

(01:17:48):
Sure.
Sure.
Sure.
I mean, going into bad movies like it's going back to that.
You can sit and watch a bad movie and it's just you in the movie and you got to get through
that movie and whatever you got to do to get through that movie is right.
And there's something I don't know.
I don't know if I'm just thinking way deep into this, but there's something to be said

(01:18:10):
about that.
But it's just getting through it.
That's a nasty.
Yeah, I'm just going to sit in this and and and.
Fuck you movie.
I'm going to see you to the end.
You are not better than me.

(01:18:30):
Also counterpoint, you could just turn the movie off and find something better.
Why?
That defeats the whole purpose, Michael.
Me and you watch movies for totally different reasons.
No, I do.
I do know what you're saying in terms of like just sitting in a movie and or or not in a

(01:18:54):
movie, just doing any circumstance and just sort of reveling in the like, OK, well, here's
the the.
How I put this, here's the not absurdity.
Here's the the all the different points of it all.
Like it's whether it's good, bad, absurd, weird, uncomfortable, like just sitting in

(01:19:16):
and experiencing that emotion and just sort of writing it out, you know, or just just
that again, just just the idea that like you again, me sitting in that traffic circle or
whatever to everyone around me, I'm just some guy.
It makes no difference who I am or what I'm where I'm going or what I'm doing.

(01:19:39):
And kind of that's what all word all are doing, really.
So you might as well be authentic about it.
You might as well embrace these ridiculous things and make them mean something, because
otherwise nothing means anything.
I like that.
So that's that's I mean, I guess that's probably a really good sum up of why I like weird old

(01:20:04):
movies and.
No, no, I I I think I get what you're saying.
It's it's.
How do I put this?
It's experiencing the moment.
But also.
Trying to find not necessarily the lesson, but just the humor, the the whatever the emotion

(01:20:27):
you have to bring yourself to the thing you're watching.
Yes, make your own entertainment out of it in a way.
And you're really doing that to good movies, too.
You just don't realize it.
It's just easier.
It's easier to do.
Yeah, because because with a good movie, it leads you to like you spend your life like
like like Schindler's List is going to lead you like, oh, wow, humanity is horrible, but

(01:20:49):
there's also a glimmer of hope and like, yeah, but it walks you.
It's going to walk me through that emotional resonance.
Whereas, you know, like.
What deadly deadly spawn spawn is going to walk you through like, wow, humanity matters,
but also what the fuck is up with this house?
Yeah.

(01:21:09):
Aren't we all in a ridiculous house that makes no sense on the inside?
Aren't we all lost in some kind of architecture?
A Rubik's Cube of building and architecture.
Yeah, that's an interesting.
I like that, man.
I like the idea of embracing the absurd and bring your bring yourself to the table no

(01:21:30):
matter what the situation, you know, like I dig that.
That's a really, really good philosophy.
I think you I think you're on to something there.
So all right, man, I don't really.
I think that's why we've covered a lot, actually.
Yeah, I did.
I do have a list of recommended.
Oh, hold on.
We always want to do that.

(01:21:51):
Wait, wait.
I got to rate that's how are the rate Howard.
Yeah, Howard.
The duck.
I'm going to rate Howard the duck to duck boobs.
That's more than I remember seeing, but I will take your word for it.
Yeah.
I think of a short list of absurd or 10 recommendations, not in any order.
I will give you the name of the movie and a short description of what it is.

(01:22:14):
OK, exterminator city.
Film the war puppet robot solving a case involving porn star murders.
I like all those words.
Number two, alien beasts.
This is this is the worst movie I think I have ever seen.

(01:22:36):
And I'm saying that from my point of view.
Alien Beasts is like shot on VHS.
It's one guy.
Aliens come to town.
It's basically kind of there's not even like.
I wish I had more to say about this movie.
It's one of my favorite horrible, horrible movies.
It's worse than you can possibly imagine.

(01:22:59):
It's the worst movie I can think of that physically counts as a movie, meaning you could go to
the store and buy or rent it.
That's my lower bound for what counts as a movie.
Alien Beasts is the worst movie I've ever seen.
Not just like my cousin and I shot a thing on VHS.
Yeah, not like home movies.
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
It's almost the whole.
It is a whole movie, but you could order it and rent it at Blockbuster.

(01:23:20):
So Demon Cop is a cop kind of turns into like a werewolf, but they call it a demon.
And the whole movie is told in flashbacks within flashbacks, within stories, within
Inceptions.
OK, Mutalations, I saw showed y'all at one point.

(01:23:42):
Mutalations is like a super low budget.
Mormons find aliens and they are put to siege in a cabin movie.
I remember that.
It's one of those.
I love movies that are random kids getting stuck in a cabin and weird shit happens to
them.
And it's one of those movies, but it's adorable.

(01:24:03):
Just the effects in this movie.
Mutalations are fantastic.
Fat liners, not flat liners.
The Julie Roberts.
Not flat liners.
The Keeper Sutherland.
Fat liners.
OK.
And then we've got UK wrestlers who some kind of weird alien gods makes it so the heels
win all the time in real life.

(01:24:28):
So face UK wrestlers have to go back in time to make sure all the faces win throughout
history.
This sounds awesome.
I'm not going to lie.
I watch flat liners.
I love that movie.
Spookies.
Kids in a house.
They see a bunch of weird monsters and they're awesome weird little special effects things.

(01:24:53):
One after another awesome little special effects things that are adorable.
Things is another one.
Things is a bunch of drunken Canucks get stuck in a cabin in the woods and weird shit happens
to them.
OK.
Very, very bad, but very I love it.
Black Devil Doll from Hell.
Black Devil Doll from Hell.

(01:25:15):
Like a woman gets a possessed ventriloquist dummy from a thrift store and ends up falling
in love with it.
Again, super low budget shot on VHS from the 80s almost pre time period.
You would think such a thing is possible.
This has got to be one of the first of these type of movies to exist.

(01:25:36):
So interesting just for that.
Troll, not Troll 2, but Troll 1.
The one on I think it's on Full Moon with Phil Fondacaro's in this movie who's like
awesome.
He is I'm trying to think of another movie he's in.
He's like he's one of those little people actors who's like he's an elf in a bunch

(01:25:57):
of movies.
OK, OK, OK.
He was off the top of my head.
I'm sorry.
I can't think of any, but love his work.
Troll in the one is amazing.
And then finally, Gullys 3, Gullys go to college.
Not any of the other Gullys, but Gullys 3.
Well, wait, if I haven't seen Gullys 1 and 2, am I going to know what's happening in

(01:26:20):
Gullys 3?
You will.
I think Gullys 3 is the only one where they crack jokes while they kill people.
So it's worth it for that.
It's also on a college campus and I work on a college campus.
So that was fun for that.
And don't they do like a panty raid thing like a I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, they do.
Yeah.
All right.
Gullys on a panty raid.

(01:26:40):
I love it.
Gullys 3.
So yeah.
So that's my list.
Ten recommendations, not in any order, not the best or worst movies I've ever seen.
Just I wanted to write some, so I had something to talk about.
So good deal, man.
Good deal.
All right, man.
Well, it's been a great, great episode.
This has been a banger.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for having me on.
This has been awesome.

(01:27:01):
If you ever need to call on me again, I will.
Oh, we definitely will.
Yeah, man.
You're like Avengers Reserve, man.
Like you're not you're you may be not on the team officially, but you're always on call.
And on that note, I guess we're just going to say go see a movie, embrace the absurd

(01:27:22):
and talk about it with somebody that you love.