Turkey Shoot (1982)

It's summer 2025, and Brian & Cargill are ready for an Escape 2000! Sorry, that was awful. Sometimes coming up with ideas for these intro paragraphs can be a real Turkey Shoot.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's our pleasure to welcome you to your friendly drive
in theater. Ultra Martin Snack Bar is now open and
ready to serve you. How about thick, crunchy hamburger, a
big cup of hot chips or fish and chips, icy
orange or lemon drink, smooth creamy ice cream and giants
size hot dogs with sauce or mustard. Thanks everyone, we

(00:21):
trust you have a very pleasant evening.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Us a mean jog. You're watching rubbish?

Speaker 3 (00:28):
You gonna come out and start me?

Speaker 1 (00:48):
All right?

Speaker 3 (00:48):
This is Dick Miller. If you're listening to junk food cinema.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Who are these guys? I am a deviant, the lowest
form of life on earth, and so are you. If

(01:15):
you're listening to junk food cinema brought to you by
Business Casual Werewolf dot.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Au A you guys dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Love it. This is, of course, the weekly cult exploitation filmcast.
So good it just has to be fattening. I'm your host,
Brian Salisbury, and I'm joined as per usual by my
friend and co Ho's. He is a novelist, he is
a screenwriter. The man from Hong Kong by way of Austin,
Mister C. Robert Cargill. Hey, how's it going, man?

Speaker 3 (01:45):
You know the usual, getting nominated for an Emmy, hanging
out watching movies, talking about them, drinking. You know this
to weekday. You know it's a Tuesday.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Well, congratulations on that. That's fantastic.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
I am I'm a little disappointed that the movie we
were talking about today was not an award winning film,
because it fucking should be.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Well, we're gonna get into that, but.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Before we do, just to remind you, you have eleven
years of this horseshit available on your favorite podcast you
can follow us on social media, and if you really
like the show, I mean you really like the show,
you like it as much as there's a character in
this movie that loves a good widow speak, you can
go to Patreon dot com slash Jack Food Cinema financially
support the show. We greatly appreciated car Gill. I cannot

(02:32):
help but feel like we are getting back to our
core values today in a major fucking fashion.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Well in a major way in that. Look, let's get
something out of the way first. This is gonna be
one of those political episodes. Oh no, politics are gonna
come up. We're gonna make comments if that's the type
of thing, Like I wish you'd leave politics out of
the show, guys and just talk about the movies. You
can't do that here. So this is not the episod.

(03:00):
So for you, we do suggest you watch the film
and try to, you know, dig into its themes and
the story it wants to say. But this is not
that also important to say, we're not watching this film
and talking about it because of what's going on today,
although it really really really feels like that's exactly why

(03:23):
we're doing it. This is a movie I literally thought
we did ten years ago, and like when Brian reached out,
I was like, no, no, no, I'm certain we've done
this because we've talked about this, Like I have talked
about this movie a lot over my career, and of
course I covered it here and he's like nope, and
I googled it. I was like, the hell, man, how
do the fuck have we not done Turkey Shoot? I

(03:45):
know we've referenced Turkey Shoot at least half a dozen
times over the years, if not more, but yeah, today
we are talking Turkey Shoot aka Escape two thousand.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
If politics are not your thing and you're looking for
the appeal of this movie outside side of the political realm.
Think about it this way. It's the summertime, a perfect
opportunity to get out and run around in Bruce Lee
jumpsuits while being hunted. I mean it's it's This is
a movie about a type of summer camp of sorts.
So in that way, I think it's very fitting to

(04:18):
talk about it. Now it's time for a vacation, It's
time for an escape two thousand aka Turkey Shoot.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
It is nineteen ninety five, all fine season. Hunting is
the national sport by the pray. The world is ruled.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
By strict cragime.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
I'm the one you can't fridge.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
I'm what you've been afraid of all your life.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
I'm afraid of nothing. You're afraid of failing. Now I'm
at the bar. Yes, Honey, should on side. Should kill.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
The hunters and the hunted, the quick and the dead.
Shit who will survive?

Speaker 3 (05:23):
The blood and thunder shocker of the year.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
I am so excited, But like Cargill, I too thought
maybe we had already covered this movie because this is
a film by one of our absolute favorite directors. This
is a movie by Bts and no we ain't talking
K pop here. We're talking about.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
The original BTS.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Original BTS Brian Trenchard Smith, and I just want to
say up top, any chance that Cargo and Cargola and
I get to revisit the world of osploitation is a
welcome sojourn. And of course, in preparation for this episode,
I not only watched Turkey Shoot aka Escape two thousand,
but I of course revisited Not Quite Hollywood, the documentary

(06:22):
about osploitation as well.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
You should as.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Well, everyone fucking should. And on top of all of that,
on top of this being from the wild and wonderful
world of oz ploitation, this is one of the most
fun and exciting entries into one of my all time
favorite subgenres, and that subgenre is people people who hunt people.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
And by subgenre we mean they're all remaking the same
short story slash movie the most Dangerous Game.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yes, But what I like about Turkey Shoot is it's
super duper dystopian. It takes place in the far flung
future of nineteen ninety five, and it's it's a dystopia
where it's it. I feel like the movie is every
bit as much like a Logan's run as it is
the most Dangerous game, and it's the fusion of those
two things that I really do love about it.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Well, what's interesting is it is a most Nadurius game
knockoff like that, It absolutely is. Uh, there's no getting
around that except the first half of the movie. Oh
and there'll be a quick sidebar after I make this point.
First half of this movie is a concentration camp movie.
It's not a Most Dangerous Game movie. And as much

(07:35):
as it is a movie that is set in the
far flung future of a dystopian maybe Australia, maybe America.
Who knows the accents won't give you a clue because
they're all over the map, But the it is very
much about the Nazis. It is very much about the

(07:58):
zeitgeist of you know how people in the eighties were
still looking back at what happened in the forties and
scratching their head and going, how did this happen? Or hey,
we know how this happened. It can happen again, and
we're feeling that rising tension. Now. There was a big
fear in the eighties that fascism would take root, and

(08:18):
fortunately it did not. Entirely. I mean so much so
that it was released. This movie was released in the
UK under the title blood Camp Thatcher.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Blood Camp Thatcher, the fucking swinging balls.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
The balls on the distributor like there was, I mean,
and there was a very real, you know, fear between
Reagan and Thatcher that the you know, the Western world
was gonna give itself over. Little did we know, you know, uh,
it would take about forty five more years before Alligator
Alcatraz became a thing. And boy howdy, this movie's one

(08:55):
one gator scene short of being Alligator Alcatraz.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Be fair, don't be fair, It would be a crocodile
scene in this case. But that's being sac I.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
Mean, depending on where it's set. We don't know. I mean,
there are Australians in this, There are Americans in this.
They don't quite say where they're located. They're flying F fours,
which were an American plane. But did the did Australia
have them? Probably because they were an ally who knows.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Well, that's one of the great things about ousplitation that
you know, if you watch the documentary enough, you know
this already. But a lot of these osplitation movies were
not made with the express purpose of promoting Australia. They
were in fact made for American and other foreign audiences.
So a lot of times they would go to great
links not to mention that this was filmed in Australia
or set in Australia because they were trying to sell

(09:45):
it to UK and American audiences. So this is another
example of we're just not gonna say specifically where this
takes place, and in fact, we're going to open the
movie with all of this riot footage that is I
feel like to be stock footage of actual civil unrest
from all over the globe. Yeah, just to further obfuscate

(10:07):
where this movie is set.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
Oh and by the way, I promised a sidebar that
I didn't deliver on. And this is a very important
point to make for those of you. And maybe we
put a warning up top, maybe it gets in the
right up. I don't know. But there are two ways
to watch this movie right now. You can see it

(10:30):
for free on Prime, but the free version on Prime
don't watch it is the pan and scan cut chopped
down American version from the eighties, which is short fifteen minutes.
If you go ahead and rent it, you will get
the beautiful Christine Redone full version with all of the

(10:57):
content in it fifteen minutes long and is the significantly
better film. So I highly recommend if you're going to
revisit this throwing down the four Bones and watching it proper,
you will thank me for it.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
So I think to get into the context of that,
let's just briefly touch on the plot and then talk
about the history of the production this movie, because it
explains exactly what It explains exactly what we said.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
What the plot was. It's the Most Dangerous Game.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, Basically, it's nineteen ninety five. It's a dystopian future,
and all political dissidents are sent to re education camps
for behavior modification. And it's some of the camps, and
this one particular is run by a man named Greg Abbott.
By Greig Abbott and.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Uh, I mean, tell me I'm wrong. Look at that
guy and separate him from Greg Attt. That's Greg Abbott.
There's only one difference between that actor and Greg Abbott.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
And yeah, uh yeah. So at this camp, you know,
every year, the stature guy picks a few prisoners to
be exact to be human prey, and what he calls
a Turkey shoot and he invites his circle of VIPs
to participate in a human hunt. That's the general plot synopsis.
I want to talk now, Let's go back up top
and talk about Brian Tranterrosmith for just a second. This

(12:15):
is a man who we've already talked about BMX Bandits
that he directed, we talked about Dead and Drive in
that he directed, and we've talked about Siege of Fire
based Gloria. So this is not even a hat trick.
He's going for the four piece right.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
Well, we've also didn't we do stunt rock at some point.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
We discussed a kind of a wide swath of ousploitation
in an episode devoted to Everett Duroche, but I don't
we haven't done a specific episode on stunt Rock. We
also haven't done an episode on Death Cheaters or The
Man from Hong Kong, and I feel like every single
one of those movies deserves an episode. Like to me,
Brian Trinchterrosmith is the king of osplitation directors. I love

(12:52):
him for a lot of reasons. I love that he
got started, you know, as an editor of film trailers,
much like Joe Dante, and then he started making documentaries
for Australian television and almost all of them were focused
on stunt performers and martial artists because he is a
guy very much like us, who loves stunts in movies,
who loves, you know, kick ass martial arts sequences. He
formed a relationship, a friendship with a guy named Grant Page,

(13:15):
who you know we lost a year or two ago,
who is one of the most fearless men who ever lived,
and that just kind of snowballed into this career of
making incredible genre films. So the but the other piece
of this is that the movie was produced by Anthony I. Ganane, who,
in addition to being touted as Australia's Roger Corman.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Also that name sounds like an Australian uphimism.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Literally what I was about to say, also has possibly
the most ozzy name of all time. It is half
a syllable away from his name being Tony Goaday. Come on,
Anthony A. Ganane, Like that's how you practice doing an
Australian acts and you just say this guy name, You
say this guy's name.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
The name the gist was more than anybody else is
Anthony Aigenang. He was the producer of almost every single
genre film that came out of Australia, and that I saw.

Speaker 4 (14:08):
I wanted to blessings up have people being chased around
with knives and guns.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
I didn't want to put to sleep.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Watching the documentary this time around, I realized that I've
seen almost everything he produced, Like this movie of course,
Thirst the Survivor Harlequin, which is a big favorite of Cargills.
Oh yeah, Patrick Strange behavior, Like this guy really is
the Roger Korman of Australia and produced some of the
best ousplitation movies out there. But what's crazy about this

(14:38):
movie is that the original script, and I don't think
this is going to be surprising based on what Cargill
just said, the original script was set in the depression
era South that was going to be the original setting
of the movie, so like nineteen thirties Deep South America.
But it turns out they had tax based financing in
place on the condition that it was supposed to be
set in Australia. So again, while they don't explicitly state

(15:02):
that it's Australia, they don't explicitly state that it's not
Australia either, so that they could get these tax breaks.
So Brian Trincher Smith is the one that suggested setting
the movie in the future so it makes it more universal,
again obfuscating that it takes place in Australia. And he
wanted to make a tongue in cheek but gutsy action
movie with subtext about corporate fascism at the beginning of

(15:23):
the Reagan Era. So that's like, okay, we've retooled. It's
no longer in the Deep South. Now we're gonna make
a movie that is very satirical about the Reagan Era.
And it fucking is. That's why the main antagonist name
is Thatcher. And if you're one of those people that
thinks that politics should stay out of genre films, first
of all, you're wrong. Secondly, chew on this. This movie

(15:44):
was by a country mile, the most successful in the UK,
where it was released under the title of Blood Camp
Thatcher during the reign of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Clearly
people were not put off by the political satire of
this movie.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
They were not my political satire. We mean, if there's
no relation to reality at all, there certainly isn't some
terrible island out there where we have people, especially women
imprisoned to be the playthings of rich elites like that
is just so removed from reality and definitely not at
all what we're talking about today.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
I also think it's important to note that because of
budget constraints, the first fifteen pages of the initial script
were removed, as well as a four page helicopter chase scene,
and the shooting schedule was cut down from forty four
days to thirty And there's.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
A company eight from what I saw twenty eight from
forty fourty eight days. Twenty eight days is rough when
you don't have action scenes.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Not even the movie twenty eight Days was filmed in
twenty eight days. Yeah, neither was twenty eight days later. Look,
the point being that when you watch the movie, I
feel like there are a couple of moments where you
feel like there are elements that are just kind of
overlap from where it was cut out of the original
version of the script. And we'll get into that, but
what's really important to understand is that as much as

(17:08):
Anthony Eigenane is the Australian Roger Corman, there's no substitute
for the actual Roger Corman. And it was in fact
New World Pictures that distributed this movie in America in
October of nineteen eighty three. This is the part where

(17:32):
I have to you know, I love the man and
his passing really affected me. But I have to wag
my finger a little bit in Corman's face because well,
I'm gonna a cheer ended jeer at the same time.
The cheer is that when the MPa required New World
to make huge edits to the film because of graphic violence, gore,
and rape scenes to qualify for an R rating, New

(17:55):
World basically said they were going to do it and
then tried to pass off a lesson edited cut for
distribution as the one they had cut down. And they
might have gotten away with it if it weren't for
those medling kids. No, if it weren't for the fact
that another producer had just pulled this on the NPAA,
so they were like they were watching for it, so
they caught them and forced them to edit the movie down.

(18:16):
And as Cargo mentioned, the version that's on Amazon is
the New World cut down version, and it fucking sucks.
I Like, there's so much about this movie that only
works if you buy into sort of the over the
top insane wildness of the back half of the movie.
That's sort of the dessert that helps the medicine of
the front loaded satire go down. So when you start

(18:37):
cutting that away, the movie seems a little more preachy
than I think it was intended to be. So I
have a real problem with the New World edited version,
and I hate that that's the one Amazon has. But
I discovered completely by accident that that's the one Amazon has,
because we were watching it together in Discord, you know,
a bunch of patrons and I, and then I realized,
you know, I couldn't hear it too well, so I

(18:58):
put it on my TV from Plex as well, and
I started noticing because I sync them up, I started noticing,
wait a minute, that's cut completely differently. Wait a minute,
we're on to a completely new like they started pulling
away from each other, and that's when I noticed the
difference in rum times. That's when I started noticing how
much the movie was cut, not just in terms of
the graphic violence, but like literally like in fight sequences,

(19:20):
they would have the shot mirrored where like people were standing,
you know, instead of one on the left, one on
the right, and it it would be flip flopped and
like all of these weird like conversations were being cut out.
It wasn't just edited for content. It looked like it
was edited to get as many viewings at the drive
in as possible, Like they cut this thing. Wagh the
fuck down?

Speaker 3 (19:38):
Oh yeah it's there's it's fifteen minute difference. Because I
started watching that version and I said, wait, this is
pannin scan and yeah, I know that there's gotta be
a nicer version out there. Let me just double check.
And I went to check the rental version and oh,
look at the run time and the rental version significantly longer.

(19:59):
And so I just like, yeah, I'm dropping. I'm dropping
the four bucks and watching the full version. I mean,
not just because I'm doing this podcast, but because I
deserve it.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
You do deserve it. And that's the thing about Brian
Trinchard smith movies is that he is such a brilliant
filmmaker and an expert at crafting action sequences, but he
also is somebody who likes to let loose and just
put some really wild, unbridled shit in his movies. And like,
I literally made a list of all my favorite insane

(20:29):
moments in this movie, and we'll talk about it, but
a lot of those are cut to the bone in
the New World re edited cut, and it just it's
really disappointing. So I highly recommend not watching that version.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
And by the way, that version is the one called
Escape two thousand. Correct, So you are looking for Turkey,
shoot not Escape two thousand. If it says escape two thousand.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
Hit escape immediately.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
After. These messages will be right back.

Speaker 5 (21:01):
If you thought Billy Jack was fast on expect, wait
till you see a man.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
From Hong Kong. This man doesn't need a weapon.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
He is a weapon.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
New Bruce Lee, Jimmy, why h Vice is Australia's on
James Bond. George Lasonby in The Ultimate Duel Action speaks
louder than words when You're the Man from Hong Kong.
For the first time on television Tonight's eighth thir eight
here on Channel ten.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
So we are introduced to the hero of this movie,
Steve Railsback. Welcome back to the show, Steve Railsback.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
Guy, I once bummed a cigarette too.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Oh really.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
He was at a screening and I didn't recognize him
and he came up to me and he was like, hey,
can I bub a smoke and I was like, yeah, sure,
and we had a smoke and chatted for a moment
and he wandered off, and then somebody came up. He goes,
did you know you were just hanging out? Was Steve railsback? Nope,
I do.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
He is the only actor I think to have the
distinction of having played both Ed Geen and Charles Manson
and made for direct to video movies, So that certainly
is something.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
But also he beloved great actor by the way.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yes, also in Life Force, which is a big favorite
around here. In a number of other films. I think
he was in the Line of Fire in a very
small role. So he's been on the show not too
long ago. We've mentioned him, yes for sure. And then
his romantic lead in this movie is played by.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
Hell, a woman known to gen X as the first
time you were allowed to see breasts in English class.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
That's correct, that Robo and Juliet.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Fortunately, I mean, look, I don't mean to be crass
about it, but that is quite literally that is that
is how gen X got to know her, was you know,
from her Romeo and Juliet and we all watched that
in high school. It's like, how are we gonna get
a kid kids to read a play, Well, let's just
have them watch it.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
And yeah, I mean, when you think about it, Romeo
and Juliet is just a play about two middle schoolers
that fuck once and then kill themselves. Like it's it's
kind of a trashy play, like it's it's been like
the flowery language. And I think over the years we've
we've put it on a pedestal. But that's a fucking
trashy story. I mean, it seems like the kind of

(23:28):
thing today that would be directed by like Larry Clark,
you know what I mean. Like, it just seems like
it would have been a Larry Clark movie if it
was made today.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Oh wait, Larry Clark's Romeo and Juliet.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
I don't. I don't want it at all to be Oh.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Oh now you put it in my head. Now it's
just there hanging out living rent free. Larry Clark's Romeo
and Juliet.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yep, those those two leads are definitely kids. Look, I'm
not saying that anyone should subject themselves to a Larry
Clark Romeo and Juliet. I'm just saying maybe it's time
to ignowledge that that's a trashy fucking play. Stargrove.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
Join us next week for more Shakespeare hot takes.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Welcome back to doth Protest too Much, where we do
nothing but complain about plays from six hundred fucking years ago.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
Also, we don't know how said turies work four hundred
more centuries. Again, we don't know.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
I don't know when they were written. I don't know
when Sir Francis Bacon actually wrote this shit. Oh yeah,
I said it, Shakespeare hot take.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
When he invented bacon, he.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Invented That's why. That's why I subscribe to the theory
that there was no Shakespeare. It was all Sir Francis Bacon,
because I'm just such a lover of Bacon. So to me,
that is the that is the real genius, mastermind of
this whole thing. So once again, Shakespeare hot take. What
were we talking about? Turkey Shoot?

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Turkey Shoot.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
So we are introduced in this movie to our three leads,
the two we've mentioned, uh, and then a third named
Rita played by Linda Stoner, who who are being sent
to this re education camp. And we're introduced sort of
through this foggy kind of flashback sequence where they're all
passed out in the back of this truck. But then
we see a flashback of how each of them came

(25:13):
to be at this camp. Poor Olivia Hussey was just
trying to run her shop and some rebel came crashing into, like, hey,
what the fuck's going on, and they assumed she was
a sympathizer. And then poor Rita is in this camp
because somebody called her a slut or a prostitute and
she wasn't, but just because of the accusation, she's here.

(25:33):
The only real actual political dissident in this group is
Steve Railsback as Paul, who is like a pirate radio host,
is out there like trying to spread the truth, and
the three of them end up in this camp run
by thatcher but also kind of run by this giant
mustachioed guard Ritter played by the incredible Roger Ward. Because

(25:56):
you can't have an ausplitation movie without what Cargill Roger work,
without a fucking Ozzie bully. Osplitation movies do bullies better
than any fucking country on this planet, and I love
Roger Ward. In this movie, there's a scene like when
they first get to the camp where he just grabs

(26:16):
this poor female inmate and makes her recite the mantra,
and the whole time he's throwing punches like shadow boxing,
right at her face. And the guy is already built
and looks like like a boxer from the turn of
the century, the turn of the twentieth fucking century, and
he's just like throwing these punches right near her nose
and trying to like throw her off her game. It

(26:37):
is fucking wild, but it's the tip of the iceberg
in terms of the insanity of this movie. But right
off the bat where we understand what kind of place
we're in.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
And so yeah, it's it's just about them kind of
learning the ropes of this camp. Now, Steve Rousback's character.
Railsback's character, as we're told, is sort of the Steve
McQueen of nineteen ninety five dystopia. He's had multiple previous
escapes and he's a guy that, like, I will not
be broken. Like there's a couple of moments of this
movie that I half expected to hear the theme song

(27:11):
from The Great Escape start playing.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
You know that that is a that's an element of it.
I also was getting. I also get Casablanca vibes off that,
Oh sure, because Paul Heinrid's character in Casablanca gets a
similar like speech to exactly that. Let's you know enough

(27:34):
about this plot. You keep like trying to talk about
this like there's a plot.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Sorry, we need to, we need to.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
We just need to talk about the movie at this
point because there's a big thing that happened before we
started this. You and I both had we both have
loved this film. You know, this is a film we've
talked about positively together for years. That's one of the
reasons we've thought we covered it. But we both re
examined it and found new love of this movie. Yes,

(28:01):
rewatching it, and I have a brand new appreciation for
this movie on two different fronts. And I'm dying to
know what your reappreciate, reappraisal of this movie has gotten you.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
I mean, it may be the most relevant osplitation movie
to twenty twenty five that I've ever seen. I mean,
not just because of the increasingly oppressive political climate as
America kangaroo hops into fascism, but also just like very
the very specific elements of the dystopia, like, for example,

(28:38):
pregnancy being forbidden and homosexuality is a capital crime. These
are things that are said in the movie, and it's
just nice.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
Pregnancy is forbidden in the camp because deviants are not
allowed to reproduce, and these are deviants, and homosexuality is
a crime punishable by death right right.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
So it just again, when you think about the world
that we currently live in, especially in America, when you
think about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, when you
think about the complete decimation of LBGTQ rights, like it,
just like all of these little things that make up
the pastiche of this particular nineteen ninety five dystopia just

(29:19):
hit different. And I will say this card Hill. At
least in the nineteen ninety five dystopia, if the guy
running the announcements is to be believed, the men who
cause the illegal pregnancies within the camp are castrated, so
they are actually held accountable for their part in it.
It's almost as if it's almost as if, even in

(29:42):
this nineteen ninety five dystopia, it's a little bit more
progressive than the actual world we currently live in, at
least on that level. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I found
it to be tremendously relevant and not not only because
of these particular themes and because of the political climate

(30:03):
we live in, but when you start thinking about the
fact that we're talking about this movie and not too
long ago, what was it, the third or fourth season
of Squid Games just came out, which you know, this
movie feels like a great flick to watch after you're
binging the latest season of squid Gap. Like that kind
of oppression is very much on the mind of the

(30:23):
zeitgeist right now, and it just it really does alter
the way that, you know, we we reappraise this particular movie.
So what what were your thoughts revisiting it in twenty
twenty five.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
Well, I found it really fascinating.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
It's a movie that when I first discovered it, and
I discovered it purely by accident, it was literally just uh,
a VHS tape in a pile of VHS a friend
had given me that he had bought uh from a closed,
closing video store and it was he was like, oh,
these are all just eighties nine sense Cargill will love this,

(31:01):
and of course I fucking did, and you know, went
through all those various tapes and this was one of them,
and that's how I discovered a skate two thousand, I
was like, oh, Brian Ridgers Smith. I love Brian trender Smith.
Uh and you know, but I always felt the movie
was dated, especially for when it was made, Like there's
something it does not look and feel like a movie

(31:23):
from nineteen eighty two. It looks like a film from
before that, and so it always felt like very cheap
to me. Revisiting it, I went down two different rabbit
holes with it. I know that Tarantino has long considered
it one of his favorites of Brian Trenchard Smith, and
he has long since credited Brian Trenchard Smith with you know,

(31:47):
being a huge inspiration for Grindhouse. But I also saw
more killed Bill in this than Grindhouse. This time. This
is one hundred percent of movie in which Brian Trenchard
Smith is mashing all of his influences together into a
single film, all the films that made him him. He
is borrowing themes, he's borrowing ideas, and most importantly, what

(32:10):
I really got this time is he's borrowing shots. And
there are four movies that I just like went up
like red flags when I was watching it and listening
to it, because the score is also interesting in its
own right, and we'll get there, yep, because it's so
different than what you get in not only from that

(32:32):
era but this era. But there were four films that
I was like, Oh, these are the movies that he's
drawing from. He's drawing from Dirty Dozen, He's drawing heavily
from Enter the Dragon. There's literally an Enter the Dragon
shot and scene here that really feels very like I'm
doing my Enter the Dragon shot. He's got a little

(32:56):
bit of there's there's a whole big feel of Dark
of the Sun in this, which is a film we
talked about a long time ago.

Speaker 5 (33:03):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
And then there's a lot of Leone just all over this.
Like spaghetti westerns. There's this great shot towards the end
of the movie that it's like, oh my god, I
love when spaghetti westerns do this. I wish more movies
would do it, where where Roger Ward puts his machete
down into the sand and then goes to have a
fight with Steve Rail's back.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
And the machette in the foreground.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yeah, the machete stays in the foreground while we watched
the fight in the background like, oh, this is delicious, which.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
By the way, I think is the other Robert Evans book,
The machete stays in the foreground, the joke for twelve people. Sorry,
that's right, and.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
All twelve of them just laughed. But but yeah, But
so you see these influences all over You feel the
most dangerous game love. You get a little bit of
that Casa Blanca background, that or Steve McQueen background, whichever,
or both of them merged together. Like he's like, oh
what if Paul Heinried and Steve McQueen are the same
guy and it's Steve Rail's back. You know, his influences

(34:02):
are all over this and stuffed in. We even get
the fucking wolf Man.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
Okay stop, no no no, no, no, no no no,
we are not gonna cruise pass biz cash Werewolf Okay.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
Oh no no, We're gonna get there. I'm just tipping
that off of like, all of these things are here
in this movie. There's all sorts of crazy stuff, but
you just feel the influences of the film here. But
most importantly, the reason why this film felt so dated
to me when I first discovered it in like two
thousand and five, two thousand and six was because it's

(34:34):
shot like a huge film from nineteen sixty eight, the
films that influenced Brian and that made him want to
make movies, and he was making his movie that looked
like those movies, which at the time was only separated
by fourteen fifteen years. The movies that he's really drawing,
you know, some movies like and the Dragon only ten

(34:55):
years that he's drawing from, and so these are very
modern films to him. But that by the time, you know,
I discover it, I'm like, oh, this movie feels really
dated now looking at it through this lens of you know,
having seen how cinematography has evolved over the years. I
see that his shot structure, his lens choice, his cinematographer

(35:16):
does such a great job of making the movie look
and feel like a big movie from the late sixties
early seventies. Yeah, but it's a nineteen eighties movie that
includes slasher elements. So for a lot of people it
just felt dated. And now when I look at it,
I see how classy and how well crafted the look

(35:37):
of this movie is. And just to kind of get
that feel, he plays with the soundscape doing the same
thing because the opening and the ending of the film
have this big operatic it sounds like the dirty doesn't
like it's you know, you've got the You've got the
whole banded bomb bomb boo, and it's very big and bombasta.

(36:00):
And then the rest of the score is entirely electronic
and playing around with odd instruments and instrumentation and feels
very futuristic. So you get that, hey, by the way,
these are Nazis in a camp. When we're in the camp,
we get that big, bombastic while we're on the chase
and as other things are going on. It is the future,

(36:21):
and we have this heavy synth score and it's not
synth in a box. It's a very cool we're playing
around and experimenting with since in an era where everyone
on the cutting edge is experimenting with these sounds. And
so it's a very cutting edge soundtrack in this very
retro film. And it just when I was able to

(36:44):
contextualize the time and place that this movie was shot in.
It is so a movie out of time that is
so much bigger and better than not only I gave
it credit for, but I think that anyone has ever
given this movie credit for outside of probably Guarantina.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
So you looked at it through the lens of the past,
that I looked at it through the lens of the present,
and both of us ended up with a new appreciation
for the movie.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Yeah, and of course I noticed all that that you
saw as well, Like I was like, shif this is
this is fucking out. This is if Alligator Alcatraz had
a section for the wealthy, because much better accommodations than
you expect there. Uh and uh it's you know, as

(37:32):
the one thing you could wag your finger out and go, oh,
that's so, that is so cute, that is so that
is so sweet that you think fascists would make sure
everybody would have a single bed and have a few
feet between them and a nice little trunk to keep
their their clothes in, and that they weren't stacked three
high in a place that smells of sewage and that
floods because we didn't bother to do a survey when

(37:54):
we built the place. We just kind of threw money
at it.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
So, yeah, it was. That's the one thing it gets
wrong is that, hey, in a future, fascism not so roomy.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
It's because even in the eighties we could not fathom
the humanity free excess of privatized prisons like we did.
We could not extrapolate the future of privatizing prisons. Yeah. Again,
some of these things you watched and you're like, man,
I kind of. I mean, if the choice is between
the hell hole we live in and the hell whole
of this nineteen ninety five dystopia, like, it may feel

(38:31):
like a slight lateral move, but it's a little better.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Thirty two seconds you manipulated, well, my dear, like part
of your body.

Speaker 6 (38:40):
It is my own design.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yes, a very nice piece, perhaps just a trifle large
in the ball.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
It's been my experience, Charles. It is less the size
of one's gun that comes well the skill with which
it's used. One of the other things I do really
love about this film that really hit me this time
is the fact that everybody is there in the camp
because they were accused of being devians. Many of them

(39:07):
are not deviants, oh yeah, but everyone that comes to
the island that's rich is a deviant and actively a
deviate participate in a deviancy that we are told is deviancy,
because deviancy is okay if you're wealthy. We are told
homosexuality is a sin and we get an evil lesbian

(39:27):
who molests her victim before murdering her.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
I believe that actress Carmen Duncan in the documentary Not
Quite Hollywood, described her character as a carnivorous lesbian.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Yeah. And by the way, the movie isn't throwing its
shade at at the LGBT community. That is not is
it is actually quite the opposite. They're showcasing that these
things are not okay for the poor, that the wealthy
can do whatever they want, and the wealthy can go
to excess of being truly despicably evil and have everything

(40:03):
that's considered dediancy and still be totally okay and get
to hunt on a private island. Yeah, but who would
ever cover up, you know, the evil things that rich
people do on a private island. It just this film
seems so out of place, and you know, not so
far from reality.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
There's a secretary character who's sort of the wanna be
camp master in this movie, and at one point he's
trying out a new gun and thatcher tells him, oh,
just pick a random inmate and shoot them, and he does,
like just as they're marching by.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Now it is a stun gun. So it's not like
he's murdering someone. But yes, it's like the yeah, shoot
anyone you.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Like, It's just fucking It's one of Again, we're gonna
talk about all the insanity of this movie, but I
just want to back up for a second to throw
my praise in for this score. I am in love
with this synth score by Brian May. No, not that
Brian may.

Speaker 3 (40:56):
Well, and we say that every time. In fact, Brian
may is one of those right composers that doesn't get
the love he deserves, because there's another composer named Brian
may who is composing at least one film, actually two
around the same time.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. The other one was in a band
called I don't know, King or something, I don't know,
some some.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
Popish, some British Thatcher band, Yes.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Queen Thatcher. I believe that is what it was called.
Uh No. But the score that Brian may composes for
this is almost experimental synth, which I really love about it.
I even love the moments in this score where it
sounds like Goblin trying to do the interstitial music for
Pee Wee's Playhouse, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (41:40):
Like that's a good way to describe that it's.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Not even really music. It's just like these weird ping
ponging soundscapes, but they're so unsettling, and when you pair
that with the shit that you're actually seeing for real
in the movie, it's kind of insane. But I love

(42:07):
every bit of that.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
It's a great score, so good after these messages, we'll
be right back.

Speaker 7 (42:13):
Critics are calling Hard Target one action, a rocket powered
roller coaster, a super charged blast of the fireworks, with
rep taking amazing.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Stuck as Phil to Hazza you tell me.

Speaker 7 (42:29):
Legendary director John wu Is a movie magician, and Jean
Claude van dam is the number one action hero in
movies today.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
Obviously not someone we should underestimate.

Speaker 7 (42:39):
Hard Target Righted are now play get theaters everywhere.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Much like the movie, I feel like this episode is
going to be frontloaded with sort of the satirical medicine,
and then when we get to the dessert, it's just
going to be us running down all of the most
insane movement moments in the movie and furthering Cargill's point
that you can and see Brian Trinchard Smith's influences on
his sleeve in the film. I love the fact that

(43:07):
he is so focused on celebrating and homaging the things
that made him a film fan. He doesn't even give
a shit if it makes sense. He doesn't give a
shit if it works into the reality of the movie
or not it's going to be there. For example, I'm
guessing he's probably a pretty big fan of Universal monster

(43:28):
movies because there's an honest to god wolfman in this film,
and the only explanation that we're that there's an attempt
to give is oh, I picked this guy up at
a circus. That does not explain it. I'm sorry, Nope,
that does not explain how you have a business casual
werewolf on your payroll.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
He did not say circus. He's a freak ship.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Just you know what, Cargil, I'm still gonna push back
against that. I'm still gonna push back against that, because
clearly this is a guy who was bit on the
moors by a business casual werewolf. Like, I don't understand
what's happening here, but I love this character whose name
is alf A Lph. And every time they said it,

(44:12):
I was like, that is not alf This is the eighties,
and that is not alf Because that guy is not
eating cats. He's just being a dog.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
This is the one part of the movie I think
that did not age well. Disagreement and I'll get there.
I love the concept. I love most of the execution.
I think that for nineteen eighty two, of all things
in the era of Rob Bouteen, fucking like living it

(44:41):
up and you know, doing some of the best work
ever done. I feel that it looked. The makeup work
looks a little shoddy. I think the eyes look great
in the close ups. I think some of the fur
looks really bad, TV dated, and otherwise, I think the
whole concept of the character is, you know, you've got

(45:03):
all these rich, you know, elite weirdos, and like the
guy who's running around with alf was asked, oh, I
bet you brought something you know equally you know, over overkill,
you know, overdone, and he's like, oh, yes, I did.
And then he shows up not with the Vazuka, not
with a machine gun, but with a fucking werewolf to

(45:26):
kill his prey, and then like, yes, yes, all of
that please. I wish, you know, BTS had a little
more money to get a better looking werewolf that could
still look cool today, because you know, this movie was
made a year after American Werewolf in London, and come on,
my dude.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
No no, no, no, no, no no no, it was made before.
This is what I'm going to say. There is no
way in hell that anyone on this planet could have
predicted what Rick Baker was going to do in American
Werewolf in London. And this movie was made in like
late nineteen eighty one, started making the rotation in Australia
in the UK, and eighty two didn't get to the
States till eighty three. So it's just one of those

(46:05):
unfortunate like falling right in the perfect like crack of
time that yeah, by the time audience is in America,
they went boring, Like I get that, but this movie
had no idea. There's no way they could have predicted.
There's no okay when you.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
Think, all I'm saying is I wish they were better. Fine,
and otherwise I love everything else about Elt.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
I mean, he's fucking death. Like, they don't just put
a were wolf in this movie. They bifurcate a werewolf
in this movie with a god dip. Yeah, I guess
I'm burying this other lead. He gets bifurcated by it.
Honest to god, kill dozer. There's a fucking kill dozer
in this movie to go along with the werewolf.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Yes, there is, because there's a whole host of weird
future vehicles in this that are kind of red.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
If you could take a word cloud from my brain
of my favorite things, and then from that word cloud
write a screenplay, it would be turkey shoot. Like. Literally,
everything I'm saying that's in this movie feels like it
was plucked from my list of what is best in life?

Speaker 3 (47:11):
What is best in life? Olivia Hussey, shower.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Scenes, Olivia Hussey shower scenes, exploding crossbow bolts, business casual, werewolves, killdozers,
machete fights like.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
Oh, and by the way, something that needs to be mentioned.
There's a great scene in this I swear to god,
I think one of the other most dangerous game knockoffs
borrowed from.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Which one.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Well, there is the scene in which Olivia Hussey is high.
Oh no, no, no, I'm sorry now, Olivia Hussey. It is.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Stone Linda Stoner playing Rita.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
Yes, yeah, Linda Stoner goes to hide and as she's hiding,
she finds four bodies down in uh oh wait no,
that is Olivia Hussey.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Isn't it? Yes, it is, and you're you're thinking that's
a running Man.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
That is that is absolutely the scene from Running Man.
And I was like, oh, oh, this is absolutely where
Running Man got that scene and where we because And
it's a such great subtle exposition because we don't know
what's happened to previous people who have done this, but

(48:30):
we find them down there in a in a trench
and we know that's what happened to them. This is
where they the last four went and and it's just
a great little moment where it's like, oh, you're not
getting off this island.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Yeah, But here's the thing. Cargill and I think this
is a casualty of the original script being kind of
stripped down fifteen pages, reworked and then stripped down. There's
a revelation when Olivia Hussey and Steve Railsback get their
like you know they're being hunted, right, They get to
the edge of the island and they're like, oh my god,

(49:04):
it's an island. They lied to us. No one ever
mentioned that. Like what they're told is if you survive
for a certain amount of time, then they will let
you go. At no point are they misled into thinking
that there's like an escape route on the island. So
it's just interesting that that's played as a big reveal,
like almost on par with like the Planet of the Apes.

(49:25):
You know, you blew it up, damn you wall to hell.
But at the same time you're going, did did they
ever tell them it wasn't an island? And the answer
is no, because what they're told is just survive for
a certain period of time and you'll be let you'll
be released. Now that makes the finding of the bodies
still a relevant revelation. But the line that rails back
has of oh my god, it's an island just feels

(49:48):
completely out of nowhere, And I feel like that had
to be something that was like cut from a different version.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
And in terms of you know, look, we love this movie.
We are keeping a lot of praise it. It's not Shakespeare.
There is a moment of that line where it's like
you find the shore and you assume you have to
be on an island, like you don't know what a
beach is.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
No, I don't understand. If there's a shore, it has
to be an I mean that's.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
It just was a moment of logic where you were like, oh, hey,
that doesn't jibe with this, and I'm like, I don't
know how he knows. That's just a bit of exposition.
It's like, oh, look water, we're on an island.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Also, have you seen Australia on a map recently? Just
want to ask this quest.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
A couple of times.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Okay, it is a one desmall lying island.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Yeah, but this may not be taking place in Australia,
despite the fact that they killed those ers, says Austrak
on it.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
It certainly does. I guess they missed that one and
they're attempt to obvius scate.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
Well, Like the thing is is, there's things you notice
now because we have home viewing in a way that
didn't exist when they were making these movies. Like Jazz existed,
but nobody expected movies to live their life on VHS
in the early eighties, and they didn't expect that there
would ever be resolution to read shit like that. So

(51:12):
you're not supposed to be looking at what it says
on the kill Dozer. You're supposed to be watching what
the kill dozers doing, because nobody expected you to see
this movie like twelve times in your lifetime and start
reading it and then talk about it on whatever a
podcast is.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
So no, but it's it's true, like they couldn't predict that.
Either they could predict Rick Baker or junk food cinema.
And I understand that, but I do on that point
want to go back and say that I think the
only reason that we ever thought this movie looked cheap
is because we were watching it on VHS. Once you

(51:47):
see this movie in any better format, you understand how
expertly this movie is shot and how expensive it's trying
to make you think it was. And that's something I
definitely appreciate about movies like this, where they don't care,
you know, the actual budget that they're working with. They
don't care that they lost, you know, a lot of

(52:08):
money kind of at the beginning of production to different problems.
They're going to shoot this movie like it's their entry
for the Academy Awards. And John McLean, the cinematographer, I
just have to shout him out, like he really did
shoot the hell out of this movie. Oh yeah, make
full use of the beautiful Australian vistas, which is always
one of the best parts of watching oz ploitation. When

(52:28):
they're trying to convince you this isn't Australia, is that
they're shooting these landscapes and I'm like, yeah, that doesn't
exist in America, that that is absolutely Australia. But we're
just gonna pretend not to notice that. That's fine. Yeah,
beautiful looking movie, Cargil. I feel like I just want
to go down like a list of some of my

(52:50):
favorite insanity in this movie.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
You want to just like jump into gasoline soccer or
where are we going again again?

Speaker 2 (53:00):
The squid game thing, right, like when they make a
game out of executing this prisoner that attempted to escape
at the beginning of the movie, where they call it
Thatcher's ball game and they're just kicking these these two
that look like medicine balls attached by a rope and
there's gasoline everywhere, and then it's all just a fasac
because they just set the guy on fire. Like I
was getting a real squid game vibe from that. The

(53:23):
fact that you know the character that's sort of this
this carnivorous lesbian as she described herself, Jennifer is Field
stripping a rifle while blindfolded when we first meet her
in the movie, and then throughout the rest of the movie,
she's hunting on a horse in like a full you know,
fox Catcher regalia. Like that's incredible. You know, we mentioned

(53:44):
the wolf Boy. We haven't mentioned this really horrible, greasy,
slimy character in the movie who's another guard named Red
played by Gus Mercurio speaking of Shakespeare, sounds like a
character from Romeo and Juliet. At one point, he's trying
to assault Olivia Hussey and she zips his dick up

(54:04):
into his pants and it's just like, you feel like
a like a real celebratory moment there. But what I
keep thinking about in that scene is the fact that
Olivia Hussey, probably because of her experience working on that
Romeo and Juliet and the fact that the director was
at ZEPHYRELLI, wasn't had to get a special permission to

(54:26):
include the nudity in that movie, and probably how that
followed her around for a long time. When it came
to doing this film, she politely declined to do any
topless scenes. And there's a moment in the movie where
they use a body double and you know, basically presented
as if they're Olivia Hussey's breast and Olivia Hussey said
an interview years later that when she finally saw the movie,

(54:47):
she was so appalled by the body double they got
because she was like, man, I'm I have a way
better body than that body double. I should have just
fucking done it myself.

Speaker 3 (54:59):
I was like that, that's the stones on that woman.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
I know, right, we just lost our everything last year. Unfortunately,
she was truly, truly amazing.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
And one of the most beautiful actresses ever live.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
True story. True story. The people that are engaged in
this hunt of the poor inmates who are forced to
take part in this Turkey shoot are Paul Steve Railsback, Chris,
Olivia Hussey, a character named Dodge who's played by John
Lay who is also one of the guys chasing the
kids in BMX Bandits, so he's got some real ausie

(55:33):
bully experience. And then this guy Griff, and then as
well Rita, so that the five of them are the
ones that are forced to take to take part in
the Turkey shoot. There's a moment where Griff, who turns
out to be fucking John Rambo, like, you do not
want to draw first blood with this guy, because he'll
make you pay for it. For sure, He'll give you
a war you won't believe. And at one point there's

(55:55):
a spiked battering ram trap in the woods, like we
have fucking ewoks involved. What is happening here? I'm sorry,
I didn't realize Camp Thatcher is situated along the goddamn
caravan of courage.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
Yub nub yub fucking nub motherfucker a yub nub atomy
e yowah a yubb and Dubba dubba.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Wow. I I'm oh, you didn't know.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
I grew up with the soundtrack.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Oh no, no, no, I knew, you knew the lyrics. I
just forget. I think I forced myself to forget on
a regular basis. And then it just comes screaming back
to me in e Walkee's And.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
By the way, you mentioned John Lea early and we
blew past him. John Lay's in Mad fucking Max.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
Yes he is with Roger Ward, like.

Speaker 3 (56:46):
These guys are these guys are the Australian fucking bullies.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
That is entirely correct, And there's so much overlap, Like
every single time I would look at someone's IMDb from this,
they were also in you know the cars that eight
Paris so they were also in uh, Harlequin, they were
also in like like literally the overlap is insane, absolutely insane.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
Yeah, no, osflotation was awesome.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
And by the way, you may be turning your nose
up at the idea that an ewok might come sauntering
out of these woods, but let me remind you that
there's a business casual werewolf in.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
This film, business casual.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
So yeah, he's wearing like a nice suit. At one point,
he's wearing a top hat like. I made a meme
out of it earlier today where I took a snapshot
of him with the hat on and I said, good day, milady,
because it literally looks like that meme, except that it's
a fucking dressed up werewolf.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Okay, here's the thing. I captured a screen grab from
this as well.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
What did you do, Cargo? What did you do? Ray?

Speaker 3 (57:47):
Oh, there's a moment where there's ten minutes left in
the movie and all hell's about to break loose, and
we have a closeup of a pilot switching to the there,
I swear to God, switching their arms from medium to hard,
and that's when the movie goes hard as they flipped
the switch and all of a sudden, after they flipped

(58:09):
the switch, all the machine guns that are are out.
All of a sudden, there's one hundred more guards working
at that camp than there were prisoners. He went from
having like ten guards to having like fifty, and just
bodies start going off. We get the We get the
most satisfying kill in the fucking movie, which is a

(58:31):
machine gun just absolutely annihilating the Greg Abbott character.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Turning thatcher into Campbell's chunky soup.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
Oh my god, it's beautiful. It's such a hey, you
know what, We're not gonna do this in slow emotion.
He's just gonna go chunk, chunk, chunk, and you're gonna
be like the fuck. And then he's gone, He's out
of the movie.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
It looks like the Ballistics Dummy and an episode of
MythBusters when they really screw.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
Up like this is exactly what it looks like.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
That thing gets annihilated and Cargo. I have to say,
we have described movies so many times as this movie
flips the switch and it goes hard. I never thought
that statement could be empirically proven in a film.

Speaker 3 (59:09):
I took a picture of the moment they switched to hard,
just in case I need to tell somebody how hard
they're going.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
And that's the thing. Man. At one point I watched
it again today and I kept noting that, like, wow,
there's only fifteen minutes left in this movie, and a
lot of the things I've listed haven't happened yet. This
movie has no breaks once it flips that switch and
goes hard. This is like the fucking bus in Speed.
There are no goddamn breaks.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
No it is. You've got the forty five minutes up front,
which is just a classic concentration camp movie, and you
know it, Owes, you know it, you know Owes bits
to stalag seventeen and The Great Escape. You can't get
away from those comparisons, because that's deliberately there. And then

(59:56):
all of a sudden, when we are in the Most
Dangerous Game movie, it is just the most dangerous game
and also the bold choice they make to split up
the characters so we're not with a group of people
trying to survive together. Everybody's on their own. It's a
fucking slasher movie with four fucking slashers running around, each
with their own deeply fucked up way to kill people.

(01:00:19):
After these messages, we'll be right.

Speaker 6 (01:00:21):
Back Donald's file to fish is real fish filet served
with our own blended sauce, our famous French fries, our
finest quality Tasmanian potatoes. And right now, when you order
fill to fish into large server French fries, we'll give
you this special fish and fries bonus cut for a
free coke or coffee or Sunday on your following visit.

(01:00:42):
So hurry now for a fish and fries bonus offer.

Speaker 5 (01:00:47):
There's nothing finer.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Come on in, And I gotta say this. One thing
this movie does tremendously well is satisfying deaths for the
horrible people. It has a established Oh yes, like we've
mentioned the Campbell's chunky sup. We mentioned that werewolf boy
Alf gets bifurcated by a kill dozer. We haven't mentioned
yet and I'm sorry we haven't done this.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
The character head or explosive arrow head.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Uh, both of those are horror websites. I think.

Speaker 7 (01:01:17):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Tito played by Michael Petrovitch in this movie, who is
sporting at Eddie Munster. He is just like full on
rockin' that Widow's peak and at one point he's the
guy that employs the bizcash werewolf and at one point,
Steve Railsback just sneaks up behind him and perfectly dissects
that widow's peak with a machete. And it's beautiful and

(01:01:39):
you don't even fucking see it in the Amazon version.
I'm just gonna warn you one more time.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
Yeah, no, no, no, And and the beauty of him
going from him a few seconds before with this tackle,
and the delight in his eyes as he's just wildly
shooting up the jungle trying to kill Olivia Hussey with
a machine gun, and then the look of absolute disappointment
on his face. He has a machete through his head.
He just looks. He looks like a kid who who

(01:02:05):
just found out he's not getting a puppy for Christmas,
but instead it's a machete to the head. And it's
the last moment he's in the movie, and he's very
sad about it, and it's glorious.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
It's so good. And by the way, I haven't even
mentioned this the bizcash Werewolf alf in this movie. The
way he kills, the way that he actually dispatches Dodge,
you would think he muls him, he rips him apart, No,
he bans him, he picks him. Up and breaks his
back on his knee, and I'm just like you, why

(01:02:38):
would you need a werewolf for this kind of kill? Like,
why couldn't you just get like a professional wrestler or something, which,
by the way, there are two of in this movie.
But like, I don't understand, Like it's really like fishing
with dynamite having a werewolf break someone's back, right, am
I crazy about? Is this this a crazy thought I'm
having that maybe if you're gonna hire a werewolf, let

(01:02:58):
that werewolf rip people the shreds instead of just bringing
their back and leaving them there.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
It starts off with him choosing which toe to rip
off and then eat, that's true, and then makes him
jog through the woods on a on a fucked up
foot and says, not the big toe because it'll slow
him down too much. And they just run him out
until he's bored, and he's like, Okay, we've tortured him
and beat him up, enough do it? And I don't know, Man,

(01:03:25):
the more money I made making Hollywood movies, the more
I think, can I just hire a werewolf? And then
you know, when somebody piss me off, werewolf do your thing?

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
It will definitely be your assistant who lasts the longest.
But I also, I.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Mean, can you just like give a little like clap,
like can you do the rich person? And then your
werewolf comes out and tears somebody apart or or breaks
them over their back.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
I mean, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you
it wouldn't be awesome to hire a werewolf cargo. What
I am saying is that this death sequence would be
described by Australian music legend and former Minute Work front
men call Hey as just over kill, That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
Or or described by Joe Baltaki, film critic for the
affiliated Delphia Daily News, who's called it a vomitous offering
unfit for human consumption.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Now you're just reading junk food cinema iTunes reviews, and
I don't appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
I mean, they're not wrong, but he was wrong about
this this movie fucking rules and calling it vomitous and
unfit for human consumption means maybe you were a little
on the right of that. Maybe you were a little
you thought it was a little too woke.

Speaker 7 (01:04:40):
Joe tiny and nine and these works should be burned
on the ground and the ashes sign salt.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Are you sure you weren't reviewing a tub of vegemite,
because I would agree with that statement.

Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
Hey, I like vegamite, No, you don't.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Nobody likes vegemite. You like taco bell, Dude.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
When I was when I was a true story, when
I worked at Camp.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
U Blood Camp Thatcher.

Speaker 3 (01:05:02):
That famous camp that I had a horror horror movie
scenario in that I've told you about.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
Oh yes, of course.

Speaker 3 (01:05:07):
My two roommates were both front They were Australian foreign
exchange students, and there was a whole thing that allowed
you to come over and work in the United States
or go to Australia and work there in a summer
camp where you could then go out on the weekends
and experience America, you know. So I hung out with
Australians and I'm like, what the fuck is vegemite? Because

(01:05:29):
this is pre internet, so I have no idea what
vegemite is, and they introduced me, and I dug it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
I feel like, that's even sadder than you knowing all
the words to Yup Nub.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
That I like, Like, I don't know what makes Cargil
more pathetic the fact that he knows all the words
to the Ewok celebration song as it's actually called, or
that he likes vegemite. You know what, I'll take that criticism, sir.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Did you just try to well actually shame me by
telling me you know the actual name of that song.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
I didn't try.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
I did.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
There's other people out there nodding along, going uh huh.
Brian doesn't know what that's called. He thinks it's called
yub nub.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
You know what, you have your yub nub and your vegetman,
it's no lopton neck. Okay, okay, fair enough, fair enough,
and you you enjoy your vegemite and your your fucking
Ewok celebration songs. I'll be over here doing Tim Tam
slams and experiencing Australian culture the right way, motherfucker.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
I mean, you can get Tim TAM's in the UK.
I don't know what makes that Australian.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
The fact that I've said it is. Look, look, it's
not important. What is important is that Jennifer also has
a very satisfying Chekhov's exploding crossbow bolt is a new
entry in the encyclopedia of Chekhov. Throughout this entire movie,
she is firing these things, and then at the end
of the film, one gets stuck in her neck and

(01:06:53):
she also explodes and falls on the ground like a
thunderbird's puppet who got its strings cut. Just fucking credible, glorious,
just really good. Oh and we can't, we cannot, we
cannot in this episode without talking about Roger Ward's fate
in this movie where he's having this great fight with
Steve Railsback and they're just beating the shit out of
each other, and then he gets a hold of a

(01:07:13):
gun and he's turned the tables and it's no longer
a fair fight. And Olivia Hussey, who's just kind of
been watching from the sidelines this whole time, realizes that
Steve's in trouble and she comes running out with a machete,
and as.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Running out with a machete, grabbing the great machete that
has been placed in the foreground of that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Shot, Off's machete.

Speaker 3 (01:07:32):
Check Off's machete.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Baby, Oh my god, And then he sets up This
movie is the fire.

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):
Set up and payoff, set up and payoff. Also sidebar,
it also has one of the most realistic things I've
ever seen in a fucking movie, Surprisingly for a movie
that is so unrealistic. Otherwise, they teach Olivia Hussy how

(01:08:01):
to shoot the machine gun, she just does it like
somebody who really does not want to touch this thing.
Most of the time, it's like, how do you use
I don't know how to use a gun? Here, you
just do this cheat and pull the trigger. Boom, and
then they kill like twelve people, and it's like, see
how easy that is. She's just like he's like, just
point it and pull the trigger, and she's just like
ah ah. And then you get the classic nineteen eighties

(01:08:24):
bullets spray across the ground and guys, bloodlessleep fall on
the ground dead because you shot near them. And it
was a machine gun. So if you shoot near someone
in an eighties movie with a machine gun, they just
all fall like.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
An episode of the Gi Joe cartoon.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
Yes, so that part what we cut do is unrealistic.
Where there's a great shot where they're driving the buggy
across the camp and she's just like has one hand
on it and the other hand is like behind her, like, ah,
as long as I only touch it with one hand,
I'm not as guilty and murdering all these people. And
she looks so uncomfortable and it's delightful and realistic, and

(01:08:58):
she's like, and it's not Olivia Hussy doesn't know how
to do it. It's her character and it's so well done,
and it's kind of like, yeah, that that tracks. I
know those people.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
By the way, it's not wrong if you only touch
it with one hand is actually the title of the
Larry Clark Romeo and Juliet.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
There it is. That's what we call it. Callback yes, sir.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
And speaking of not having the requisite number of hands,
she comes running up with Chekhov's machete, and just as
Roger Ward sets up to fire at Steve railsback, she
hacks off both of his hands in one fell swoop.
The greatest part of this kill is that I don't
even know if it's a kit of this dismemberment is
that when they were filming, she very nearly took off

(01:09:42):
Roger Ward's hands for real, because Brian Trenchard Smith decided
to yell the thing every director calls a thousand times
a day at the most inopportune time possible. And if
she's raising up this machete and they're gonna reset for
the next angle, he what did he yell God, and
she took that to mean swing the machete, and he

(01:10:05):
just got his hands out of the way before she
brought it down. She very nearly actually took Roger Ward's
hands off.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
There's a classic there's a classic scene from a seventies
comedy show that is exactly that, that predates that's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
That is amazing. Yeah, and then we get this giant
assault on the camp this movie again from about the
time the hunt begins, so many people are dispatched. It's
almost like a Jason Vorhei structure. Like the scenes go
from one kill to the next. They're like kill kill
kill kill kill kill, kill, kill kill kill kill, assault done.
Like it's a runaway train by the end of this movie.

(01:10:41):
And I fucking love it. I love that. Like I said,
it front loads its message so that we you know,
we we almost like we we sit through the timeshare
presentation and then the rest of the movie is the
theme park we got to go to for free. Like
it's it's incredible. Yeah, But in that message at the beginning,
I feel like there's a lot of things that have
aged in a very unfortunate manner. In watching it in

(01:11:04):
twenty twenty five. But it's it it it's things that
need to be addressed and need to be confronted. And
it's just interesting that it's Turkey Shoot that in twenty
twenty five preciently is confronting a lot of these things. Yeah, yeah, Oh,
I love this movie. I'm so glad we got to
talk about it. I fucking love it. I hope you
do not watch it on Amazon, but I hope that

(01:11:26):
if you haven't seen Turkey Shoot, if you have.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
Watched it on Amazon, you can rent it there. What
we're warning you against is Prime, the prime version that's
free streaming. Pay attention to it. If it says it
is eighty two minutes long, you are watching the wrong version.

Speaker 2 (01:11:42):
That is correct.

Speaker 8 (01:11:43):
It became clear to me that action, with the universal
currency of the movie market and action, you know, transcended
all language barriers. A good punch up play is just
as well in Hong Kong, Australia, Argentina, everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
And that brings us to the junk food pairing. And
for this one, cargil I went with a bacon wrapped
turkey leg dubbed the Swanson in Parks and rec and
a gag this meat on meat AsSalt is now a
reality and was actually just recently offered at the Texas
State Fair. Because this whole thing is turkey, which is
the film's eponymous white meat bird. The only way it

(01:12:24):
qualifies as junk food is when it's deep fried into
this massive meat seption. And therefore, I feel like you
have to get specifically a bacon wrapped turkey leg to
watch turkey shoot.

Speaker 3 (01:12:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
Sure, if you fucking say the word vegamite right now,
I'm going to lose my shh.

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
Look, man, I was buying bread from a man in Brussels.
His name was Roger Ward. He was six foot three
and full of muscles, and I said, do you speak
my language? He just smiled, Fu, give me a vegemite sandwich.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
I'm about to chunder. Uh, that's what's about to happen.
I'm definitely about to under.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
I think if I get with anything but a vegemite sandwich,
I have done a great deservice.

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
And to our listeners, I said, to the manner, you're
trying to bait me. He just smiled and said, vegemite
sandwiches is junk food. Perry.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
That's because he's a masturbator.

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):
That's very true. Also, that's the that's the hamlet to
the lyric Clark hamlet I think is called Masturbater. Thank
you all for joining us as we escape two thousand
with Turkey. Shoot. I'm so excited we finally crossed this
one off the list. Despite I think by the end
of the show we'll have covered the entire uvra of
Brian Trinchard Smith from like nineteen seventy eight to nineteen
ninety and I'm okay with all of that. But if

(01:13:41):
you would like more junk food Cinema, you can find
us on your favorite podcastcher eleven years of this show,
Jesus f in Christ, you can find there. You can
also follow us on social media. And if you really
like the show, I mean you really like the show,
like it as much as Cargo seems to like that
Vita meat of vegemin or whatever the fuck, you can
go to Patreon dot com s Last Junk Food Cinema
and financially support the show so I don't have to

(01:14:01):
eat that cargil. Where can people find you in your
Emmy nominated shit on the internet.

Speaker 3 (01:14:07):
Oh, you can find my Emmy nominated film The Gorge
on Apple Plus. You can find me and my buddy
Joe Hill gracing the pages of Uncanny X Men seventeen
for some reason. You can find my latest book, All
the Ash We Leave Behind, available from Subterranean Press, coming
soon on audio. If that's your thing, uh, and you

(01:14:27):
can find uh you can pre order my next appearance
in a thing Uh the Uh. It's the End of
the World, the End of the World as you know it,
the Stephen King Anthology set in the stand universe. You
can find my story wrong fucking Place, wrong fucking time,
called Terrific by Stephen King himself. Feather m gut. I

(01:14:48):
can die now. Uh, but uh, yeah, that's where you
can find my shit.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
Wow. That is Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:14:55):
You could also find me on Blue Sky. That's the
overquargil that blue guy dot social I'm having I'm having
a moment.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
You sure are ta ta You sure are all right? Folks.
As we wrap up here, never forget that revolution begins
with the misfits, according to H. G. Wells, and of
course by misfit, he's likely he means BMX bandits. Great,
that's that's the misfits.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
He's referendum.

Speaker 6 (01:15:19):
Down left.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
I'm not saying the traveling down like mist rhymes ma