Solarbabies (1986)

Brian and Cargill skate past the flaws of--and quench their thirst for--the wild and wonderful post-apocalyptic mania of Solarbabies! 

Seriously, what's going on with that torture robot?!!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We live in the New Time.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
The year is forty one, and the Protectorate controls all
the water.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
On Earth and therefore all life.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
That's a meaning junk and watching Rabbish.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
You gonna come out.

Speaker 4 (00:13):
And stop me?

Speaker 5 (00:32):
All right?

Speaker 1 (00:33):
This is Dick Miller. If you're listening to junk food Cinema, who.

Speaker 5 (00:37):
Are these guys.

Speaker 6 (00:56):
Reporting live from the dog block of orphanage forty three.
It's junk food Cinema, brought to you by destroying the Protectorate.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Dot org dot com DoD.

Speaker 6 (01:08):
There are no rules at the arena. This is the
weekly cult exploitation filmcast. So good it just has to
be fattening. I am your host, Brian Salisbury, and I'm
joined as per usual, by my friend and co host.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
He is a novelist, he is a screenwriter.

Speaker 6 (01:20):
A LIEUTENANTI of megaphors, the man who has already achieved
a decent life grid, mister c Robert Cargill.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Hi, how's it going man?

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Well, I mean we've finally got into one of your
bucket list items, one of.

Speaker 6 (01:33):
My bucket list items, and I believe one of your
bucket list items. Oh yeah, you lit up like a
Christmas tree when I dropped a piece of trivia and
last week's episode about the movie we're covering in this
week's episode, because Cargill, it's the year forty one and
we're having some post apocalyptic fun kind.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, we just.

Speaker 6 (01:55):
Cannot get away from our roots. We are all about
the popac this year, and I am fine that.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah. Yeah, We're all about covering movies that go sub
five on IMDb because you know, this isn't a good movie,
but it's a great movie.

Speaker 6 (02:15):
That's goddamn right. And if you would like to hear
us covering more great but maybe not good movies, we
have eleven years of episodes on your favorite podcast. You
can also follow us on social media. And if you
really like the.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Show, I mean you really like the show.

Speaker 6 (02:30):
You like it as much as I am seriously considering
buying a brand new pair of roller blades, you can
go to Patreon dot com slash Junk Food Cinema and
help financially support the show and maybe get me those
roller blades, which will have me equipped for a little
film from nineteen eighty six called Solar Babies.

Speaker 5 (02:46):
Earth, one thousand years in the future, out of the
heavens comes a mystical and powerful force.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
It is called Bodie. Are you gonna get third eye?

Speaker 6 (02:55):
Yes, we are.

Speaker 5 (03:01):
Unanimous. The law requires that I take them to my headquarters, only.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
A lonely one.

Speaker 6 (03:17):
Are you sure take a bad.

Speaker 5 (03:24):
Armed with the power of the magical being Bodie. A
young band of rebels is our only hope to conquer
the forces of evil that would destroy the planet Earth.
The The Mystery The Adventures Solar.

Speaker 6 (03:45):
Babies right off the back cargol I have to ask
you this question, why is this movie not called roller Babies?

Speaker 1 (03:56):
I mean, look in the history of terrible titles for
a movie, Solar Babies is clearly in the top ten.
I mean, they are neither babies, nor does does this
have anything to do with solar anything.

Speaker 6 (04:11):
Discuss great point. I mean, not calling it roller babies
is just money left on the table. What are we
doing here?

Speaker 1 (04:18):
I mean, there's there's so much wrong with this movie
that it kind of goes all the way around and
it all becomes right with the movie. Yes, this movie
got savaged by critics when I came out. It was
a colossal bomb colossal and I don't disagree with any
of the criticisms of the movie, except to say those

(04:42):
are all the reasons I love this movie.

Speaker 6 (04:43):
Yes, I could not agree more. This is again the
epitome of it's not a good movie, but it's a
great movie. And so many times we're applying that moniker
to post apocalyptic films. But yeah, I still, as much
as I love this movie, and I do, I still
wrestle with that title because I'm not, like I read
some description of this is about the children of the
Sun living their lives, et cetera, et cetera. I'm like,

(05:06):
the children of the Sun, what do they fight the nightman?
Are they masters of karate and friendship for everyone? What
do you mean their children of the Sun? Get the
fuck out of here.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Wasn't there a great song from the odds called Children
of the Sun?

Speaker 6 (05:22):
Oh, I'm sure there was cargo and I'm sure you
rocked out to it in whatever car you had duct
taped the passengers eat together to roll down Lamar like. Yes,
I'm sure that there was a song called Children of
the Sun. It was probably a Sound Garden song, who knows,
But no, this is Solar Babies from nineteen eighty six.
This is one of the movies that I get to

(05:43):
say this about. And if you didn't already know it.
It's gonna sound like I'm doing a bit. Are you
ready for this? This is a movie produced by mel Brooks.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
What yes, it is.

Speaker 6 (05:51):
If you didn't know that, you're going what. I don't
get the joke. There is no joke. This is a
movie produced by Brooks Films, which was the studio founded
the great mel Brooks. And what I love about the
studio founded by mel Brooks is mel Brooks produced some
really incredible things that aren't really comedies at all, that
have that seemingly have nothing to do with mel Brooks's

(06:12):
wheelhouse at all, you know, and we've got stuff like
this like this off the Wall. I don't like saying
so bad it's good, but you know, following definitely the
core value of not a good movie, but a great movie.
But then he releases actual great movies like The Elephant
Man under the Brooks film banner, and this same year
Cargil that he released Solar Babies. Brooks Films also puts

(06:34):
out David Cronenberg's The Fly, and for those of you
playing at home, The Fly has a Rotten Tomato score
of ninety two percent. Solar Babies has a rotten Tomato
score of zero percent.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
That's a little low for Solar Babies.

Speaker 6 (06:51):
I have to imagine it's just that no one on
Rotten Tomatoes has rated it yet.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
I mean, the thing is his critics annihilated it when
it came out and tried to be fair. Like if
you look at Ciskel and Ebert's review of it, they
really like the performances, they really like the characters, they
really like the setup. But everything comes down to what
is kind of glorious about this movie is that it

(07:16):
has no idea what kind of movie it wants to be, Like,
none whatsoever. It is a bunch of different genres thrown together.
Is it a kid's movie? It's constructed like a kid's movie.
Then why is there all this gore and horror in it?
So it's a it wants to be a teenager movie,
but it's still kind of a little kiddish. And it's

(07:41):
a post apocalyptic science fantasy sports movie.

Speaker 6 (07:48):
Yeah, this movie has no idea which of its five
movies it wants to be. And I appreciate that to
no end. And Cargo, you said that the critics tried
what now, they tried.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
To be fair, and you know, and I appreciate that
effort for sure.

Speaker 6 (08:05):
I also appreciate the fact that the reason we're talking
about Solar Babies this week is because last week we
talked about the movie Point Blank with the great Lee Marvin,
and the director of that movie was John Borman, who was,
believe it or not, Ladies and Gentlemen, the original choice
to direct Solar Babies. Another piece of trivia that I

(08:26):
feel like, if you didn't pay attention last week, is
melting your brain right now. Yes, John Borman of Deliverance
and Zardawes was the first choice. I guess the Zardars
part of his resume makes him a little bit more
apt to direct a movie like Solar Babies. And indeed,
he really liked the characters and he wanted to flesh
them out, and he had all these ideas about all

(08:47):
the different characters representing different religions and ideologies, and there's
still a little bit of that left in here. But
he wanted more time to flesh that out. And mel
Brooks is like, I don't think you understand. I'm mel
Brooks and I'm producing Soul Babies. I don't have time
for more time, Like this thing's gotta get I'm filming
this in Spain because I have this great sci fi
post of apocalyptic epic basically on roller skates. So the

(09:12):
perfect place to set a movie on roller skates is
the Spanish desert, where it's very easy to roller skate.
And I just don't have the time or the money
to really be spending more time flushing this out. So
Borman leaves and incomes Alan Johnson. And Alan Johnson was
really more of a dancer choreographer Broadway guy. In fact,

(09:32):
he had choreographed Springtime for Hitler. For mel Brooks and
the producers, he had choreographed I'm Tired from blazing saddles
and the putting on the rich soft shoe from Young Frankenstein.
So this is somebody who had worked with mel Brooks
several times before, just I don't think necessarily as a director,
and he comes in and makes this movie. Now I

(09:54):
want to stop there for just a second, Cargill and
do a sidebar. And this is one of those tumbling
down the rabbit hole of something completely different, But it
connects to this because this was also a Broadway show,
and I think we need to talk about it.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Are you familiar with the musical Merlin the Musical.

Speaker 6 (10:20):
No. So apparently in nineteen eighty three there was a
musical that was put on by illusionist Doug Henning. He
came up with this concept for a musical about Young Merlin.
So Doug Henning makes this musical about Merlin and it's

(10:40):
directed on Broadway by fucking Ivan Reitman, and all the
music is done by Elmer Bernstein. So immediately I'm like,
this is probably where they met for Ghostbusters, the two
of them. But the cast of this show, like Doug
Henning is playing Merlin, but then like you've got a
young Nathan Lane playing the petulant Prince and then an
even younger Christian Slater as Young Merlin. And this is

(11:02):
one of This show apparently had like sixty some previews,
preview performances, which is very unheard of for Broadway, and
it it shuddered, uh within just a few weeks or
a few months, and it just I just want to
I just want to repeat this. This was a musical
about the life of Merlin put on by a magician
by the name of Doug Henning, and the show featured

(11:23):
several actual illusions. So this the whole play, the whole
musical seems like it's probably more befitting of like Las
Vegas than Broadway. But it was also directed by Ivan Reightman,
music by Elmer Bernstein, and starring Nathan Lane and Christian Slater.
And I'm not even saying this is how I got there,
because it's literally just occurring to me now, but it
is kind of perfect that I fell down this rabbit
hole into the Merlin musical. And now we're pivoting to

(11:47):
talking about the movie that was almost directed by John Borman,
who very much directed Excalibur. I desperately wish that I
could see this show, that I could travel back in time.
Everybody talks about what they would do if they had
a time machine. Moving up my list very quickly is
seeing a performance of Merlin on Broadway, because this show
sounds fucking insane.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
That's nuts.

Speaker 6 (12:11):
I mean, can you okay Doug Henning as the star
of a musical that also has magic tricks in it?
I just the world is a bizarre place, and I
think we need to just embrace. I was literally looking
up something else entirely and fell down a rabbit hole
that led me there. And then when I saw that
the director of Solar Babies. Alan Johnson also had a

(12:31):
lot of Broadway experience. I was just like, this feels
like Kismet and we need to talk about it. So yeah,
if you have parents or grandparents that saw this fucking show,
please get at me, because I want to know everything
about it. Like yesterday s Dargrove.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
So not only does this movie have more ideas than
it knows what to do with, it has more talented
cast than it knows what to do with. Oh hell yeah,
like this movie not only at the like at the time,
the two names in the movie were the chief villains

(13:10):
and uh, and we'll get into them because they're both amazing,
and we don't talk about either of them enough. But
then you get this cast of young kids, four of
whom go on to be huge actors. Uh and uh,
you know, two of them going on to be you know,

(13:31):
great character actors and of course ending up in classic
stuff all over the place.

Speaker 5 (13:38):
You know.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
There, I guess also a third notable actor in their
very small role by one of our favorites, Charles Dirning.

Speaker 6 (13:48):
We're gonna talk about Charles Derning much like Lee Marvin,
because I did not realize Charles Derning was a war
hero on the level of Lee Marvin.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Oh yeah, yeah, like he's he's one of those guys
who was fucking in it. But like, so, where do
you want to start here? Because you know, well, do
we want to go into the batship? Yeah, let's go
into the batship? Bananas nature of this fucking movie. So
it is a post apocalyptic movie set in a dystopia

(14:17):
that we never fully see. We're not quite sure what
society looks like. We never see society, but we had.

Speaker 6 (14:24):
To figure out Okay, I'm sorry this movie can't even
figure out its own timeline. That's the first thing I
love about this movie is it says it takes place
in the year forty one, but that basically all life
on Earth ended a thousand years ago. It's like, wait,
so a thousand minus forty one or but then Charles
Dirning says he can remember what the Earth used to
look like, so is he over one thousand and forty

(14:45):
one years older? It literally like the first few sentences
of this movie, I'm like, I'm already lost. Take Solar Babies. Yeah, hi, Hi,
I'm already lost. Can we back up a little bit?

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Uh, it's not necessary. There's there's no need for logic
and solar babies.

Speaker 6 (14:59):
We're literally gonna eight on by everything.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
And look, once you get to the point that we
are in a post apocalyptic future, in a wasteland of
sand and we're rollerblading, nothing else needs to make sense. Like,
quite literally, you've just said nothing matters. You know, we're
not going to create some kind of wasteland sport. We're

(15:25):
going to create a sport that requires concrete, which is
made with water. I mean, it's what are what are
we even doing here? I mean it's just there's the
logic just goes out the window.

Speaker 6 (15:44):
And so yeah, no, sorry, I'm sorry you have just
like we've had problems with the foundation of movies before,
but we literally have a problem with the foundation upon
which this movie is built.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
I mean, that's kind of the gloriousness of it. In fact,
that the reason I bring it up is because when
I was a teenager and this movie came anteen No,
in fact, this movie came out when I was eleven.
This movie, by the way, let's just start with the
fact that when I said it's a colossal bomb, this
movie was made for twenty three million dollars and its
total box office was one point five million, and that's

(16:18):
with a re release under a different title.

Speaker 6 (16:22):
The irony of that being that the original budget for
this movie was around one point five million, and then
because of all the problems that it faced, including too
much rain in the desert. That is correct, Bell Brooks
had to find more money to get this movie finished,
including putting a second mortgage on his own house.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Are you saying to me that filmmakers go out into
the Spanish desert and then discover that it rains there
as well? Are you from La Mancha?

Speaker 6 (16:52):
No, but I think Sting is about to write a
really boring song about the production of this movie because
there is so much rain in this desert and nobody,
including the plot of this movie, could have predicted that.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yeah. So, so this became what I like to think
of as a Saturday afternoon special. I did not see
this movie in a theater. I saw this movie about
a billion times on u HF and v H u
HF channels on Saturday afternoons. It was one of those
tuned in and Nude for Bettle Beyond the Stars, followed

(17:26):
by Solar Babies at too, And that's how I watched
this movie I didn't see this movie without commercials until
I was already a man. You were born into the
into the solar babies molded by it.

Speaker 6 (17:45):
Anyhow, you only adopted the serial commercials. I was born
with them.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
So needless to say, this was one of those movies
that I watch again and again and again, and uh
it was it. Even as a kid, I was just like,
why are they rollerblading in the sand? I don't understand.
Are the roller blades cool? Yes? Why do they have
in a world without you know, water? Why is plastic

(18:13):
readily available? And why are we bothering to put batteries
in our our hockey stick so that they can glow
and light up? I don't understand, Like, none of this
makes any sense, So let's just go so no, I
am gonna blow past the Uh is it year forty one?
Is a year thousand forty one? I don't fucking know.

(18:34):
This movie doesn't fucking know what is Bodaie. Nobody fucking knows.
They never fucking explained bowtie at all, and he's kind
of a centerpiece of the fucking movie.

Speaker 6 (18:44):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
This movie does not care to explain any of itself
to you, which is why I get why Bormann was
developing it at some time, like this, This is Zardaz
for kids, Zardas without all the creepy, weird sex shit,
thank god, because Lord only knows if you know, uh,
if Bormann was on this, we may have had an

(19:07):
it situation with the single female character in this fucking movie.

Speaker 6 (19:12):
And those Solar babies became solar adults in one scene.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
How do we fight the you know, the the oppressive government.
I have an idea sewer gang bang.

Speaker 6 (19:24):
Yeah, like guards. There's only one rapist in this movie.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
That is correct. So yeah, so so this is so
post apocalyptic. We're in the desert and for some reason,
this dystopia we never see needs cops. And so what
we do to make cops is we take kids from
their parents and we raise them without identities. We give

(19:47):
them singular names and we train them, and the ones
that are really great turn out to be e cops.
What is the East End for? Who cares? There's a
lot of things in this movie. He bikes, E Sportsprescient.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Because that's the ship we're dealing with now, E bikes
and all that ship.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah so uh yeah, so so we're raising kids to
be cops. And one of the things we do is
we play this game uh that is kind of like
roller lacrosse a bit la.

Speaker 6 (20:28):
We'll call it La Hockeyla hockey.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
And uh there is a group called the Scorpions who
are under the you know, uh, the local Prefect. I
guess we never really get to know what his is
uh rank is uh in particular, but uh he uh
his name is Grock and he uh is uh you know,

(20:54):
training this group, this group to be the best at
these for some reason.

Speaker 6 (20:59):
Also train your tweets to absolutely suck.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
That is correct. But at the end of the day,
the Solar Babies are better than them, and they call
themselves the Solar Babies because they don't need to intimidate anyone.
They're just playing better. And they even have a mascot.
And so we have a match in the beginning of
the game, in the beginning of the movie. Is this

(21:24):
going to be important later? No, no, not at all.
There's no big competition, there's no nothing. They just this
is a sport they play. So it gives us an
excuse for them to carry their gear into the desert.
And while they're escaping, one of them, played by Lucas Haas,
who we've talked about on the show before and who

(21:47):
is a tiny little child in this movie. Is the
mascot of the team and would go on to an
incredible career of just so many fucking great movies, Like
so many great movies. We talked about them in Leap
of Faith. But he's best known for films like Inception
and Mars.

Speaker 6 (22:03):
Attacks and when he was very young.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah, and just a great character actor. Uh and is
delightful here as the starting off as death but then
cured little kid when he finds some kind of alien
orb that is an intelligence that possesses magical powers uh

(22:26):
and that can cure him, can summon rainstorms, and can
shock people. His name is Bodai and we never find
out exactly what Boadae is. Uh, no idea know and whatsoever.

Speaker 6 (22:40):
I want to inject a couple of things here, Senator.
First of all, you're right about the cast. I mean
this with all love, and I mean this complimentary. This
cast is we have the Brat pack at home.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
That's kind of what we don't need the Brat pack.
We have the Brat pack at home. We have I mean,
let's run through them real quick. You've got Jamie Gertz,
who was really big.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
In this era, the ultimate Girts next Door.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Well, yeah, and you know, she was one of those
girls who was in everything I was watching at that age,
so she was definitely on the list. Jason Patrick Peter Delowiz,
who was just about a year I think away from
hitting Jump.

Speaker 6 (23:28):
Street this is true, and a year after being in
one of my favorite film discoveries of all time, which
is the Midnight Hour that I watch every Halloween.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah. Then Adrian Pasdar, who did have we we've covered
Near Dark, right, Yes, we have. We've covered Adrian Pasdar,
who's very Native American coded in this and yeah.

Speaker 6 (23:52):
Okay, I'm gonna but I'm gonna say this, it would
be offensive except if a thousand years have actually passed,
this could be considered native. I don't know anymore because
the movie and I wanted to say this too. Gargil,
you're right in that the movie doesn't explain anything, but
it goes further than that. It takes one more step

(24:12):
out the crazy door by explaining so much.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
At the beginning, I am the warden of Orphanage forty three,
one of the many orphanages that border the Wasteland children
are brought here at an early age to be indoctrinated
to serve the system.

Speaker 6 (24:28):
Saying so much and actually not signifying anything.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Sometimes in my dreams, I see the earth as it
was before, green, with flowing rivers and mighty oceans.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
Can it ever be like that again?

Speaker 6 (24:42):
Like Charles Derning has this long ass monologue at the
beginning of the film to explain all the exposition just
exposition dump after exposition dump.

Speaker 2 (24:50):
There is a legend tale told by the Chichans that
speaks of a visitor that.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Came from the heavens. The people called it Bodeye.

Speaker 6 (25:00):
And when he's done, he's talked for us solid three
minutes and none of it means shit.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Is this legend true? Who knows? Yeah?

Speaker 6 (25:08):
That's what's crazy is they do explain a lot, but
in explaining a lot, they explain absolutely.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Nothing, absolutely nothing, Like, for example, he's Native American coded
and then he escapes the the orphanage he's in. By
the way, his name is Darstar Ar, not dark Star Darstar.
He escapes and finds his tribe, which is very nearby

(25:38):
and walkable, apparently, only to find out that they're not
Native American at all. Like they're just barbarians. They are
wasteland barbarians, straight out of Mad Max, and he's like gone,
gone in a very different direction.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
I'm gonna say this politely.

Speaker 6 (25:56):
Had had Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome not come out a
year before this movie, I don't believe this movie would
have come out. That is how beholden. I believe Solar
Babies is to specifically Mad Max Beyond Thunderno.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
I would not doubt if they reused sets, and that's
why this movie got made.

Speaker 6 (26:16):
The two Bounty Hunters are Australian. They were filming in Spain.
Explain that to.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Me, there's nothing to explain. There are no oceans anymore.
They said that, you know everything is walkable now.

Speaker 6 (26:31):
You know what, car Gil, I think there are no
oceans anymore? Is the new Forget it, Jake, it's China's own.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
For get a jac it's sho forget to Jake. There's
no oceans.

Speaker 6 (26:39):
There's no oceans anymore. You know what? The pleasure is
in the chase and the stun. That's what we're doing here.
The Protectorate tells us that the pleasure is in the
chase and the stun. So right now, We're in the chase,
and I love it.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
After these messages, we'll be right back.

Speaker 4 (26:53):
On the streets of the future. A new breed of
warrior is rising. A deadly paramilitary gang has taken control,
and only one young hero has the courage to stop them.
Roller Boys aren't just another gang. The O owned buildings, factories,
foreign investments.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
I need someone on the inside.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
It's not easy. You don't know how easy it is.
The reviews are rolling in and it's three stars from
the Daily UNI and Variety calls Prayer of the roller Boys,
blood Pumping Entertainment. Say your prayers because Prayer of the
roller Boys. He's coming to video cassette exclusively from Academy Entertainment.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
And then, of course we've got James Lacrosse, who would
go on not to be big, but to be a
great character actor and show up in just tons of stuff.
You would just see him all over the place in
indie films. And he's on set. He's appeared in severance recently,
so he's still around. He's still working here forty years later,

(28:00):
despite solar babies.

Speaker 6 (28:02):
So this is something I'm not throwing you onto the
bus because I just found this out myself.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
His name is actually pronounced LaGrow.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Oh, LaGrow okay.

Speaker 6 (28:09):
I never knew that myself. And apparently one of his
favorite hobbies, this is completely true, is collecting misspellings of
his last name, video clips of people mispronouncing his last name.
That's like, that's something he thinks is very funny, but
it is pronounced apparently LaGrow.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Okay. Well, he's also not the Blue Ranger. You would
swear up and down. This is the Blue Ranger, not
the Blue Ranger, I assure you.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Without even looking.

Speaker 6 (28:34):
Cargill. That actor's name is David Yost. I hate that
I knew that off the top of my dome, but yes,
his name is David Yost.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
And then, of course a actor turned producer to round
out the cast, Claude Brooks. He acted early, you know,
earlier in his life and then left to become a
p and is probably the least famous of the group.

(29:05):
So yeah, so that's our group. We've got these seven
kids that start out as a team of five and
their mascot and then the tagalong character, and these are
the kids who must help bodai Uh do what Bodaie
wants to do, which, of course we find out early
in the movie, as Jason Patrick, the intrepid leader of

(29:27):
the group because of course he is, gets a vision
of the rest of the movie in uh in quick succession,
and that thus realizes there is something great going on,
a movie they need to get into. Uh uh and
really no, it would have been better off staying home. Uh.

(29:47):
But uh so this alien maybe uh intelligence ends up
getting taken by Darstar and uh. Daniel played by Lucas
has chases off into the desert to try to get
his alien friend back, and then the rest of the
Solar Babies pursue him and then get involved in Mad

(30:12):
Max's knockoff. So we go from weird dystopian future Sport
two uh, which which is kind of like Rollerball but
not really, and then we turn into you know, a
prison film, and then we get into a tour across

(30:33):
the wasteland until we finally, in the third act, get
to what is ostensibly the third act of your Hunter
from the Future.

Speaker 6 (30:43):
Look, we love post apocalyptic movies here at JFC. Oh
yes we do, but we especially love post apocalyptics slash
dystopian movies featuring their own future sport. We're talking about
Death Race two thousand, We're talking about Rollerball, We're even
talking about Blood of Heroes. Right, all of these movies
are about the post apocalypse or a dystopian future where

(31:06):
we've created a new brutal game, and we love all
of that. And to that end, I think the game
of skateball is fucking rad. I think skateball is essentially
like I liked Rollerball, but I wish it was a
little bit more like Starlight Express, do you know what
I mean?

Speaker 3 (31:21):
Like I want to put my.

Speaker 6 (31:23):
Hand you were just dude. And part of that is
because this this cast is dripping and we'll get there.
But I like skateball so much in this movie that
a part of me wishes more of the movie was
about the skate ball. But then again, that's not really
what this movie is. What this movie is is it's
it's like an adolescent adventure in the wasteland. It's a

(31:46):
it's a descent into a deeper and deeper, unfolding helix
of mythologies and genres and so many things at once,
and it shouldn't work at all. And yet because of
this cast, I am on board for the entire thing.
I am absolutely with them. I want these kids to succeed.
I love them all. I love Bodai and he's literally

(32:08):
just the fucking orb Like. There's no reason why I
should form an emotional connection with Bodaie at all, And
yet because Lucas Haas does, and Lucas Hass is so
goddamn adorable by the transitive property, I form a connection
with Bodaie great, and I'm I'm on board for I'm
on board for like. And that is why I don't

(32:29):
care that none of the rest of this film makes
any goddamn sense at all, because as we're going along,
I'm just excited to see what's going to be waiting
around the next turn. Because, in addition to the cast,
we've mentioned that this was another one of those those
movies Carghill, where the further down the IMDb list you go,
the more incredible discoveries you make.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Go ahead.

Speaker 6 (32:46):
For example, there is a character in this movie who's
sort of the leader of dar Stars tribe, played by
Terrence Mann, who you'll see his face, you'll immediately recognize
him because he's one of the two bounty hunters in
the Critter movies, like the really gaunt, angular interesting looking
dude apparently, And this is something I didn't know the
last time we mentioned him in a movie. He was

(33:09):
also basically in every successful Broadway show of the eighties
and nineties. I had no idea like, for example, he
was rum Tum Tugger in the original run.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Of Cats on Broadway.

Speaker 6 (33:20):
Of course he was, because if nothing else, I love
that I get to say the name rum Tum Tugger
on this pod, I get to say Tugger on junk
food cinema and it's not for the usual reasons, and
I appreciates that. And then later on in the movie
we meet this like devious protectorate scientist lady played by
Sarah Douglas. Oh yeah, Ursa from Superman and Superman two.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
For folks, greatest female villain of the eighties. She is
not just in Superman and Superman two. She is the
Queen in Conan the Destroyer. She was Pam Pamela and
v She was on Falcon Crest. If you needed an
evil woman in the late seventies or early eighties, Sarah

(34:07):
Douglas is who you got. And she was always evil,
and she was always fantastic, and she always chewed up
the scenery in the best way. She's barely in this movie.
And she's amazing in this movie.

Speaker 6 (34:17):
I know Millenniu, I know gen Z thinks they've cornered
the market on being completely infatuated with women who can
beat them up. But you're gonna have to hold my beer.
I'm gonna let you finish. We had Sarah Douglas and
Grace Jones, so yeah, yeah, a lot of fetishes being
formed at formative ages for sure. And then on top

(34:37):
of everything, Cargil, one of the two bounty hunters, one
of the two Australian bounty hunters that we mentioned is
Bruce Payne, the villain from Passenger fifty seven. Yeah, like
this cast is like everywhere you look, it's like oh yeah,
oh yeah, oh hey, what are you doing here?

Speaker 1 (34:52):
And and Gronk is played by Richard Jordan correct who
we sadly lost way too young, was a great villain
slash foil. You guys would remember him best from probably
from Hunt for aut October Yes, as the what do
you mean you lost another Submarine, one of the greatest

(35:14):
line deliveries of that era. Also Fucking Duncan Idaho in
Dune in the original Dune, a role that would be
reprised by someone very different than Richard Jordan, but also
fucking going all the way back to Logan's run and
whose final role was in Gettysburg. Like, this is a

(35:37):
guy with incredible fucking career, just an incredible actor, and
boy is he having a lot of fun chewing up
the scenery as the bad guy here.

Speaker 6 (35:46):
This is his second appearance on Junk Food Cinema because
he was also in The Yakuza with Robert Mitchum. He's
making a return to Junk Food Cinema here. Yeah, absolutely incredible.
And not only is he a great bad guy, there
is something about the uniforms and the look like everyone
else in this movie is dressed like you would expect
someone who saw Beyond Thunderdome to dress, you know, like

(36:08):
they're in the fucking Thunderdome. And then you've got this,
I don't know, sergeant of the E Cops.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Hell bend for pleasure, hell.

Speaker 6 (36:17):
Bend for bleather. I would say his uniform looks like
if one of the robots in Heart Beeps was a Nazi.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
That is as bout as on the nose as you're
gonna get.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
Okay, just wanted to make sure we're on the same
page about that. Basically like he.

Speaker 6 (36:30):
Is air heartbeats uh and he's just he's so fucking good.
He's backing the Scorpions in this game. That apparently means
enough that the e Cops have a favored team, but
then doesn't mean anything because we drop it early. But
I also love the fact that the Scorpions are basically
if Cobra Kai lost all the time, like there's a

(36:51):
bunch of fucking bullies who can't seem to beat the
Solar Babies.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
And with only one named actor actor in the name
character in the entire Scorpions, we never meet another Scorpion.
And then for some reason, this one lead Scorpion is
in every scene with the villain for no other apparent reason.

Speaker 6 (37:09):
Yes, for some reason, the blonde haired, blue eyed leader
of the Scorpions gets inducted into the e Police. I'm
just saying that the the symbolism is wearing a hat
on a hat, and both of those hats have skulls
and crossbones.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
That is correct.

Speaker 6 (37:25):
But you know what, as much as this movie is
crazy and silly and off the wall, and you know,
doesn't make a lick of sense and had a really
troubled production, I do appreciate the amount of depth in
the religious references and allegories going on here. Like I
had to look at it because when I heard that
one of the things that John Borman wanted to do

(37:47):
was infuse the characters with more subtext, I started looking
into their names, and sure enough, like, for example, bodie
is a term from Buddhist culture which refers to a
state of enlightenment, specifically a state of enlightenment achieved by
the Buddha. And then you've got Daniel obviously obvious Christian mythology.
You've got Jason as in Jason and the Argonauts. You've

(38:09):
got Greek mythology represented here. You've got Metron. There's a
literally a character named Metron, which I was like, well,
you almost got a Transformer and there you were close,
but no Metron. In the New Testament is it refers
to one's sphere of authority or influence, usually as defined
by God. It's basically about understanding the limits and boundaries

(38:29):
within which God has placed a person operate and exert
their influence. So it's like that's actually a really deep
New Testament cut. And then beyond that, like you've got
groc which could be a reference to Grock from Hindleines
Stranger in a Strange Land, which actually mean it's a
Martian word in that story, which both means to empathize

(38:49):
or communicate sympathetically or to drink, which, of course this
movie is about an evil organization, you know, withholding water
from people.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
So again, and Jamie Girz's name is literally Terra, and
she comes from she comes from the Eco Warriors.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah, the the Eco Warriors.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Now, now what do you think Tug has to do?
My friend so Bodie h.

Speaker 6 (39:15):
And again the enlightenment achieved by body. You know what, Cargo,
I'm not gonna talk.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
About DeLuise is playing Tug. What are we supposed to
get from that name?

Speaker 6 (39:24):
Cargil, I'm not gonna talk about Tug until we finished
talking about the Stranger.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
I'm sorry, the Stranger in a Strange Land?

Speaker 6 (39:30):
What did I say? Frodi and Slip don't worry about it.
Uh No, I just I think it's really interesting. I
think the fact that there's really only one pop song
on the soundtrack by Smokey Robinson. It's called Love Will
Set You Free, But it's a Smokey Robinson Christian song
that's about Jesus's offering an invitation for Christian discipleship. It's
like literally quoting Jesus's sermons in that song. So it's

(39:51):
a religious Smokey Robinson song. So this movie really wants
to have like metaphorical and philosophical depth to it. And
I appreciate the big swing. Does it clear the fences?
Hell no? But I love the fact that it's like
really trying to make you think.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
It's wanting to make you think.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
I mean, it really thinks. I mean it's aiming at
hi higher things than it ever achieves. Like that's just
straight up that is what it is. And I get it.
The thing is, why do we like this movie so
much if we've spent the last thirty five minutes bagging

(40:30):
on it? Honestly, A the cast has so much chemistry together.
They really do, like from the get go, feel like
they're lifelong friends. Like they just in terms of this
kind of a movie where you're aiming at kids in
the eighties, having that plucky, diverse band of heroes all

(40:55):
working together and being a family together, they nail it.
Like everyone feels like they are intrinsically a part of
this group. Every once in a while, they fall into
the tropes like of course the kid with glasses turns
out to be the techie, Like duh, you know, uh,
but uh it really that really works. Two, the eighties

(41:19):
post apocalyptic design is fucking on point, you know, the
the E Cops cars, the worthless transport vehicles, Like there's like,
I love cheesy eighties design in which we're trying to
make it seem like futuristic. Like there's a weird grate
that spins around on the Cops vehicles where Groc is

(41:41):
standing and riding around for some reason, just to be cool.
It doesn't serve any real tactical purpose whatsoever. It's just
kind of fucking there. It's really neat, you know.

Speaker 6 (41:56):
Also a cargil. Do my eyes deceive me? Or do
the E Cops have their own armored wasteland utility vehicle?

Speaker 1 (42:03):
Oh? They do. They might have a battle truck. Battle truck.

Speaker 6 (42:08):
They have a fucking battle truck.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
And I'm not convinced they didn't just repaint the buggies
from megaphores and throw a couple extra panels on. I'm
not convinced of that. That may be where some of
those went.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
The good guys can recycle even in.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
The eighties, the bad guys even yes, so you know
the design there's on point. It keeps, it never stays
anywhere too long. Like anytime the movie ends up in
a new location, they have as much fun with that
location as they can. They get the fuck out and

(42:44):
we end up in a new part of the movie
and a new movie. This is a movie that is
kind of like the closest thing I can compare to.
It really does feel like your Hunter from the Future
in that every three, uh, every act of this movie

(43:05):
is a completely different fucking film.

Speaker 6 (43:06):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
You know. The first act is a kind of a
kids in prison movie. It's kind of an orphanage movie,
you know, it skirts the line between those two. And
we've got this magic ball that shows up and this
sport we're playing. How does the magic ball help us
win the sport? Don't fucking worry about it, It's not
gonna matter later. Then the second is a post apocalyptic

(43:28):
wasteland journey where we're all going through the wasteland and
visiting all these various you know places of course, all
the stuff that you'd expect, not only uh, drawn from
the previous Mad Max films, But then would be explored
in the later Mad Max films uh far after It,
in which you know, we've got you know, tire Town,

(43:49):
which is very much a Mad Max thing.

Speaker 6 (43:51):
To get all Tiretown.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
Fiostone rule tire Town.

Speaker 6 (44:00):
The michelin Man rule tire Town.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
And then we end up getting the classic eighties trope
of Hey, the natives have come out of the sands
and have stopped the bad guys. And then we turns
out they have their own beautiful underground oasis where they're
hiding with plenty of water and we can stay and
live here forever. But wait, we need to go into
the rest of the movie. And then we go into

(44:24):
the sci fi future compound where all of a sudden,
we've got robots and we've got lasers, and we've got
fabulous outfits and uh uh and we have to break
in and break out bowt Eye uh and destroy the

(44:44):
center while we're at it. And as it turns out,
uh they have all the water on Earth enough to
flood and uh uh fill the oceans again, how did
they do that? Don't worry about it. Just don't worry,
pretty little head about a maybe eight none of your
cauld You just.

Speaker 6 (45:00):
Need to understand that the Protector. It's the greatest thing
the Protector it ever did was neuralize the entire planet's
knowledge of how a damn works, because evidently all this
water was just hiding behind one giant dam and nobody
questioned it.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
No, because it's not behind a damn, because that would
evaporate and cause rain. This is underground water that just
pours out when they blow up the dam. None of
it makes it leg a goddamn sense. There's a reason
it has its four point eight on IMDb. Like, do
not try to make any logic out of this movie,
but it's just such goofy fun like this. This is

(45:40):
one of those movies that I feel like is pure,
still undistilled, straight from the bottle nineteen eighty six, Like
it is trying very hard to, you know, to make
the kind of movie that is connecting with kids my
age at that time, and it's doing all of the

(46:00):
things we want and not doing any of them correctly.
After these messages, we'll be right back.

Speaker 5 (46:07):
The Return of the roller Blade seven. Chaos has spread
throughout the wheel Zone Slavery Murder.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
There was a rain of terror. There was only one
man between light and everlasting Darkness.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Join us off.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Join Us.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
Return of the roller Blade seven.

Speaker 5 (46:42):
Find yourself in a land where every dream is a reality,
every waking hours a nightmare.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
In a world of destruction, despair.

Speaker 5 (46:54):
And doom.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
Only the Blessings survive. Only one man can stop the
evil Offender.

Speaker 5 (47:13):
Return of the roller Blade seven.

Speaker 6 (47:21):
So I want to talk for just a second about
the two writers on this movie, because everything we're saying,
I think can be explained by the pure, undistilled lunacy
of these two gentlemen. The first is a writer by
the name of Whalon Green, who he knows mel Brooks
because he actually wrote a draft of The Fly when
mel Brooks agreed to produce it, but then fired Charles

(47:42):
Edward Pogue right, and so Charles Edward Pogue gets fired.
When Melbrooks comes on board, he asks Whalen Green to
write a draft of The Fly, and then, once it
was decided that Green's draft was even less satisfactory than Pogue's,
Pogue was rehired, only to get fired again when Cronin
joined the project and said he wanted to rewrite the
script himself. So Pok got double fired and Whalen Green

(48:05):
got fired once off of that movie. But the other thing.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
About Whaling Green that I think is really interesting is do.

Speaker 6 (48:11):
You remember that weird psychedelic sequence in Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, the one that haunts all of our dreams?

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Oh? How could I forget exactly.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Because of the nightmares and the therapy.

Speaker 6 (48:20):
Yeah, there's a sequence in there where you know, we're
just looking at random images, and there's one that makes
Mike TV's mom sick where a millipede is walking across
the guy's face. That's Waylan fucking Green. That's Waylon Green
being filmed by a guy named Mel Stewart so that
they can have that clip in that sequence, so that
that is literally the the millipede crawling across Waylon Green's face.

(48:44):
And then you have d A. Metrov, who again sounds
like a rejected transformer. That name d A. Metrov decided
to become his his he lost his interest in uh
in cinema because he was he was a visual artist,
and he had kind of lost his entire interest in
cinema until his roommate, I'm sorry, a friend of his

(49:06):
shot his first feature in Metrov's apartment. That friend was
Able Ferarra, and that movie was Driller Killer. Driller Killer
restored Metrovs's interest and cinema, and that is why he
then wrote a thirty two page treatment with drawings for
solar Babies. So in a direct way, Abel Ferrara is

(49:27):
responsible for solar babies. Let that sit with you for
a while. It is sitting, probably not sitting well, but
it is definitely SI Like. That's how this movie begins,
is with those two lunatics, and I fucking love that.
So it's not hard to understand why a lot about
this movie doesn't make any sense. And again it could

(49:49):
sound like this is a bad movie that we're just
dunking on. But what I love about that movie, what
I absolutely genuinely adore about it, are the big swings.
I've said it time and time again, when a movie
is bad, but it is fucking going for it, when
its reach is completely exceeding its grasp, I am on

(50:10):
board for that. There is something so admirable about how
much how much ambition this movie has, and I love
it like let's I could talk literally for an hour
just about Terminac, which is this fucking robot in the laboratory.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
I think it's any robot a torture, robot programmed to
enjoy torture.

Speaker 6 (50:35):
What in the deep holy hell is this thing? One
second question, why were there no Solar Babies action figures?
Because I would have bought a Terminac action figure believe.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
You me one point five million dollars at the box
office on twenty three million dollars.

Speaker 6 (50:49):
Okay, that's the answer to the why I still wish
there were action figures from Solar Babies. But he's sort
of a Okay, if you haven't seen the movie, Terminac
is a robot, spider crawfish. Does that? Does that help?
Does that help you visualize it in your head? Because
that's what he fucking is.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (51:07):
He is described as a multi capable masterpiece who can
squeeze the color from a ruby or definitely pluck the
eye from a living bird. Yeah, let's see any of
the robots in fucking Star Wars do that? God damn it.
And as car Gill mentioned, he's been programmed to enjoy
what he does. He has been programmed to be a

(51:30):
sex killer and enjoy torturing and murdering things. So I
don't know, did they keep Ted Bundy's brain in a
jar and put it in this robot. I don't know.
It's fucking crazy, almost as crazy as the fact that
they're gonna try to drill bowd eye apart to get
to the energy within. And where is that drill located
on Terminac right in the v of his robocrotch. Guys, guys, guys,

(51:58):
my dudes. I need you to talk me through the
design of Terminac, because this is doing it for somebody.
Turminac was completely designed in incognito mode, That's all I'm
gonna say. And yet Cargill, incontrovertibly, Terminac is a bigger
hero in this movie than Jason Patrick is. He does

(52:18):
more to help the Solar Babies than Jason Patrick.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Does not intentionally though.

Speaker 6 (52:23):
No Cargil, which speaks even lower to the hero level
of Jason Patrick in this movie. Like, don't get me wrong,
I love that he's in this I love that it's
him and Jimmy Gertz a year before Lost Boys, which
officially makes Lost Boys a Solar Babies reunion and not
the other way around. God damn it, I love that.
But there are so many people in this movie that
are arguably the heroes of this story, and none of

(52:46):
them are named Jason Patrick.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Also true, like he's the leader of the group, but
he doesn't really do a hell of a lot except
have a vision.

Speaker 6 (52:57):
No, like the four year old played played by Lucas
Hass in this movie is a bigger hero. By the way,
Lucas has a member of the Texas Film Hall of Fame,
which is fucking rad. But yeah, and then and then again,
we got people in this movie like James Lagroe. James,
and the connections are flying all over the place because
he was the guy that Don Coscarelli chose to be

(53:19):
recast as Mike and Phantasm too well, Universal decided to
recast and Don Cascarelli personally chose James Lgrow. We've got
Jamie Gertz in this movie. Who I did not know
this Cargill. I don't know if you're aware of this
is apparently one of the wealthiest women in America, okay,
because her and her husband literally own the Milwaukee Brewers
and the Atlanta Hawks. No, just like she could retire

(53:43):
from acting whenever she goddamn wants to. And I just
I mean, and this is an actress who we love
not only in the eighties but in the nineties of
course as well, because of Twister. She's so fucking good
in Twister. I love her so much in that movie.
Now we've got to talk about Charles Derning. Yes, Charles Derning,
who is arguably an antagonist because he works for the Protectorate.

(54:04):
But he makes sure to tell you in his opening
monologue he doesn't like his job. He doesn't like what
he does. He doesn't like being the guy who shepherds
all the stolen children into the system. But he's got
to do his job. Like he's basically like, it's bold
car Gill in a movie that has characters literally in
naza uniforms to have a character we're supposed to like
come out and say, hey, I was just following orders.

(54:25):
But that's essentially what happens here. I did not realize
Charles Derning was a massive fucking war hero. Like he
has three purple hearts. He has three purple Okay.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Well, it just means he got shot a lot, dude.

Speaker 6 (54:41):
He got shot in the legs and the hit by
machine gun fire and then despite that went on to
become a professional dancer. Charles Derning was a professional dancer
who taught at the front of stair school when he
needed money. This is a real thing that happened. As
soon as he arrived in France, a German landmine injured
him and he spent the next six months covering from
shrapnel wounds in England, got his got his first purple

(55:03):
heart there, and then went back to the front lines
where he got shot up and got his second purple
heart and still went on to become a fucking dancer.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
And then at one point he was he came.

Speaker 6 (55:12):
Face to face with a teenage German shoulder soldier couldn't
bring himself to shoot the young man, but then that
soldier stabbed him with a bayonet. So Derning turns around
and kills him. Like we're talking about shit that would
end up in saving Private Ryan actually happened to Charles Drning.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
Oh yeah yeah. And by the way, I kid of
Purple heart's a fucking badass, so no disrespect. You just
kind of ran with it. I was like, oh, I'm
not getting a chance to walk that back, am I No.

Speaker 6 (55:38):
I'm just gonna let people sit with that. Cargo thinks
purple heart recipients are weaklings. That is what he said
on the show.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
It's crazy, not even remotely, not even remotely.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Yeah, it's yeah, no, he's he was one of those
badasses kind of like, oh god, I'm blaying on his
name all of a sudden, Scottie James doing, Yes, James Doing,
who famously hid from on Star Trek, his his missing
finger that he lost fighting Nazis.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
You know, James was doing a lot to those knots.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
I mean, it's it's weird some of our fait, it's
some of our favorite character actors. All. You know, in
World War Two, they fucking did it, man, they fucking
did it.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
I'm just saying, like shrapnel from a land mine.

Speaker 6 (56:26):
As soon as you get to France, one purple Heart,
go back to the front lines, then you get machine
gun fire in your leg. Here's another purple Heart, go
back to service, and then finally takes a bullet to
the chest, gets a third purple Heart, and finally gets
to go home like Jesus Christ. Charles Durning, that's that's like,
there's like War Hero and then there's Charles Dirning.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
That's fucking insane to me.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Okay, So I want to talk about a couple of
the things that I think this movie does absolutely right.

Speaker 6 (56:56):
Let's go first of.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
All, how fucking cool. Is that torture device that fucks
with your head.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
The Jonathan Crane machine.

Speaker 6 (57:06):
Yeah, yeah, Scarecrow from Batman absolutely to designed this. It
makes you just see your worst fears and hallucinate.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
Them and experience them. So like, we have a character
who's literally covered in ants, and by the way, I
didn't have CG to do that in nineteen eighty six,
so that dude's just covered in fucking ants.

Speaker 6 (57:24):
Yeah, Terrence Man was probably covered in ants for that scene.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
I like by women like, I love my coffee covered
in ants.

Speaker 6 (57:32):
You want to talk about critters, Terrence Man, because you're
covered in fucking critters.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Yeah. And then one of the things I do really
like is I like this whole weird concept that they
have for this movie, which is that part of the
dystopian nature of this future is that they strip people's
culture away. And I think that's a great subtle element
to this movie that why these these kids are all

(57:59):
by on it is they share a common background of
having no background and not knowing who they are, not
having a name, not having parents, not having family, not
having a culture, and then a couple of them, you know,
along the way, kind of discover their culture. And discover
where they belong and and how radically different they are

(58:20):
from their brethren without that destroying their friendship. And I
think that's a really cool fucking idea. And had they
explored that a bit more, you know, might have been
something really interesting. Also, I don't know if you spent
time looking at some of the the the promotional shots

(58:43):
of this movie, No, oh, they are glorious. Oh yeah,
oh they make they make the solar babies look like
American gladiators. Like it is fucking rad. It is super fun.
The uh, it's just the few things that gets into

(59:04):
the design of the stuff going on. The people working
in the art department fucking nail this movie. It looks cool.
Cinematography is good, you know, it's paced very well. Like
as silly and stupid as it is, it never gets
fucking boring. And the visual effects of the rotting hand

(59:26):
uh during one of the torture sequences is particularly rad.
So as silly and goofy as this movie is, there's
a lot going on. People are trying to make a
good movie here and just it's not And it's not
any one person's fault, it's just it is a movie
full of way too many ideas and never fully exploring

(59:48):
any of them.

Speaker 6 (59:49):
And on top of that, it's got a great score
by Maurice Chare who scored I don't know, Lawrence of
Arabia and Doctor Chivago for David Lean Get the fuck
out of Here, Like not only that, but Dreamscape, Antal Attraction,
and even Top Secret, a movie that we've covered recently.
Like it's fucking insane how much might there was behind
this movie and no small part of that, of course,

(01:00:09):
is because Melbrooks is producing it now. Melbrooks also decided
to shoot this in Spain to avoid unions and make
the production costs cheaper, which I think his penance for
that was how disastrously this movie's production went, Like not
just the extended rains that delayed shooting, but apparently the

(01:00:30):
director Johnson was fighting with the cast constantly, so much
that Melbrooks had to fly to Spain and tell everybody
to get back to work or they were all fired.
Like literally, he had to come over there, he had
to turn the car around. He had to be dad
for this movie and be like, if you do not
stop fighting, we're turning this whole movie around. And ended
up because of the all the the production delays and

(01:00:52):
the extra cost for special effects, Brooks had to raise
an additional twenty million dollars. The original budget was five
million in was gonna put up most of that. Melbrooks
was going to invest one point five of his own funds.
Mel Brooks has to raise an additional twenty million to
complete the film, which included taking out his second mortgage
on his house. So when the movie comes out and

(01:01:13):
is not a huge success.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
By any measure at all, by.

Speaker 6 (01:01:17):
Any conceivable measure, he loses about nine million dollars, but
has noted that over the years, thanks to home video
and DVD sales, the film has about broken even. So
it's taken generations, but the movie's about even at this point.
But we still love it because it is such a
fucking crazy, wonderful visual buffet, full of characters that are

(01:01:40):
genuinely likable, a story that is a lot of fun
in the way that it unfolds despite itself. And at
one point Cargill I swear to god, they're in the
set from Waxwork, like when they discover that tribe in
the desert, and they're literally they walk into this building
that used to be a wax museum. There's like wax
sculptures of you know, guillotine executioners and cowboys and shit,

(01:02:03):
I'm like, what the fuck is going on?

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Oh yeah, we had a leftover set from something.

Speaker 6 (01:02:10):
We had a leftover set from something. Is it could
have been the mantra for this movie. Just it's it's
so great, Like it's got the natural beauty of Spain
and the fucking castles and the desert, and it's got
all of this great production design, even when it's blatantly
stealing from Beyond Thunderdome. The greatest post apocalyptic movies, the
ones that Cargi and I love the most, are unabashed

(01:02:31):
in their theft, are absolutely shameless in their plagiarism. I
would never hold that against a post apocalyptic movie.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
This isn't plagiarism. It's plagerismo. Plagiarismo. Now, speaking of which,
we're gonna do prayer for the roller Boys at some point.

Speaker 6 (01:02:49):
Oh okay, god damn it, all right, I'm gonna sidebar.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
Oh you knew you knew this was coming, because I
got we gotta get here, and that takes us to
part three. So let's go. Let's fucking go.

Speaker 6 (01:03:07):
When you said that this is uh, this is an
oppressive dystopian protectorate that is stripping people of their culture.
I immediately thought about my culture, cargol, and my culture
is shitty rollerblade movies.

Speaker 4 (01:03:20):
Inline skates have taken over the country.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
Yep.

Speaker 6 (01:03:23):
My culture is knowing the entire catalog of Donald G. Jackson. Yeah,
I'm talking about the roller Blade seven. I'm talking about
the movie roller Blade that he released the same year
as this movie. Of course, this is also the director
of Hell Comes to Frogtown. He's the director of the
roller Blade seven, the legend of the Rollerblade seven, in
the Return of the Rollerblade seven, in addition to Roller Gator,
one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life.

(01:03:45):
This is a man who bought in to the inline
skating technology more than any human, the.

Speaker 4 (01:03:50):
Hottest new fitness trend in this century.

Speaker 6 (01:03:53):
He bought into that more than the director of Virtuosity
and lawnmow Man bought into virtual reaction.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
And I fucking love that.

Speaker 6 (01:04:01):
He was refused. He refused to give up that dream
in that passion. Thank you, Donald G. Jackson. But in
addition to that, car Gil I had always been told,
because I have an aunt that was like a big
sister to me growing up, and one of her favorite
movies of the early nineties was Prayer of the roller
Boys and for years she would talk about it and

(01:04:23):
I had never watched it, and I literally watched it
for the first time to goddamn day in preparation for
this episode, and I have it in my notes, Cargil
to ask you what your feelings on it are, because
my first thought is I would love to cover this
next week.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
I mean, the thing is is that, uh, Prayer for
the roller Boys and Solar Babies lived in my head together,
oh forever, because they came out a couple of years apart.
Also both very is very popular Saturday afternoon specials, like
they were just you know it, just you know and

(01:05:01):
next up at four o'clock Prayer for the roller Boys
and then would live forever in my head as the
inspiration for a movie I dug almost fifteen years ago
called The FP, which was a satire of these movies

(01:05:22):
in which the whole idea was let's make fun of
this era of post apocalyptic sports movies with but instead
we're playing Dance Dance Revolution.

Speaker 6 (01:05:34):
Well, carg Glenar are trying to say, is that our
collective movie taste is toe up from the motherfucking flow up.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
That is correct?

Speaker 6 (01:05:42):
Oh my god, So I guess what we're saying is
we're absolutely covering Prayer of the roller Boys, right, Like that's.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
I mean, at some point we got to do that.

Speaker 6 (01:05:49):
I loved that movie. That movie was like the most violent, vicious,
awesome after school special I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
It is a motherfucker.

Speaker 6 (01:05:58):
Oh. I'm so excited to talk about that movie. I'm
so excited that we got to talk about solar babies.
I'm so excited that Adrian Pastar has an owl and
a fucking hawk and all manner of birds in this movie.
He's basically, uh, Aquaman for the land. He's animal.

Speaker 1 (01:06:13):
No, he's the fucking beast Master.

Speaker 6 (01:06:15):
He's the beast. Of course, he's the beast Master. Cargill.
Hell yeah, he just is absent a couple of ferrets,
and he would absolutely be the beast Master.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
That is correct, sir.

Speaker 6 (01:06:27):
I fucking love this movie. I'm so happy we got
to talk about it is it is everything that is
junk food cinema. It's got an amazing cast, an amazing
amount of might and effort. Behind it, and even though
it fails, it fails in the most glorious spectacular way possible,
which is all we ever ask of cinema. God damn it.

Speaker 4 (01:06:44):
That in a roller blade blades of a new rage
and the momentous stagger of smoonions of people are lacing
up and blading off.

Speaker 6 (01:06:51):
To keep the bodular flow going. It is now time
for the junk food pairing. And with the amount of
water talk in this movie, in the amount of we're
getting water from this ancient underground glacier, I figured the
best possible junk food pairing for solar babies would be
some water ice. Or if, like our good friend Scott Weinberg,
you are from the Philadelphia area, you would call it

(01:07:12):
water ice. This is of course a Philadelphia variant on
Italian ice, which is just shaved ice combined with fruit
juices or possibly some some fruit extract to make what
we are part of the country would maybe call a
snow cone.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
But it's very specifically.

Speaker 6 (01:07:31):
This Philadelphia variant is very popular in the spring and
summer months in the city of brotherly Love. So shout
out to our own Philly fanatic, mister Scott Weinberg. I
feel like water ice would be a great pairing with
the very arid, very dry, very thirsty in a lot
of ways, solar babies.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
That it's interesting that you and I kind of went
in the same direction here. Oh, this is a nineteen
eighty six movie that you'd watch on a fucking Saturday
with a goddamn Slurpe. Like, I mean, it is so sugary,
it is frosty. It's not good for you in any way,
shape or form, but goddamn it, this is it is

(01:08:11):
the embodiment of this movie. So yeah, watch this movie
with a goddamn Slurpy.

Speaker 6 (01:08:18):
Is there any difference between a Slurpy and a slush
Puppy or were those just different company?

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
Slurpy is the branding got you know, and I think
Slurpy in particular had the rights to Coca Cola in
particular to make a Coca Cola Slurpy got It, which
frankly is my personal favorite of the Slurpies.

Speaker 6 (01:08:36):
So we're talking band aid versus adhesive bandage. Yes, okay, gotcha,
gotcha understood. Yeah, I would say that, especially as we're
moving into the summer months and it's already getting hot
as balls in Texas. Watching this movie made me desperately
want some kind of frozen concoction to help me hang on.
And in my case it's water ice. In your case
it's a slurpy. But in both cases it's goddamn refreshing.

(01:08:56):
It's like it's like rain not on your wedding day,
but inside your your post apocalyptic hovel. So isn't that ironic?
Thank you for joining us as we skate past all
of the weird logic issues and talk about everything we
love in Solar Babies, shining a bright light on everything
we love in Solar Babies. If you would like more
Junkfit Cinema, you can find us once again eleven years

(01:09:17):
worth of back catalog wherever you get your podcast, follow
us on social media.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
And if you really like the show.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
I mean you really like the show, you like.

Speaker 6 (01:09:24):
It as much as I have several more questions about Terminac.
You can go to patreon dot com slas Junk Food
Cinema financially support the show. We greatly appreciate it. Cargill,
where can people find you on the interwebs?

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
You can find me at Blue Sky at c Robertcargil
dot Bluesky dot Social you can find my latest movie,
The Gorge, streaming on Apple Plus. And you can find
my new book All the Ash We Leave Behind Limited
Edition for sale over on Subterranean Press's website Awesome.

Speaker 6 (01:09:50):
You can find me out Brig Guy Salisbury at Junkfitcinema
on all of the basic social media platforms. So we're
going to wrap up this show and just remind you
to keep the flow, keep the popular flow. I'm pretty
sure Bodular is not the work