Disasters in the Making 05-08-25 It’s a no raids-trip with “Damnation Alley” tonight!

Episode Transcript

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The following program contains court language and adult themes.

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The Midnight Night, Find your Owner, many nice game those
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Speaker 2 (03:06):
Good Evening. K l r end. This is Thursday night,
which means it's your early introduction to the weekend. This
is Disasters in the Make, and how's everybody doing on
Brad Schlager getting ready to take you down the road,
as you just heard on an epic adventure. So we're
told we are getting ready to guide you through the

(03:28):
back alleyways of dark and ugly Hollywood with bad films.
But I'm not behind the wheel by myself because I
got a co pilot from ScreenRant dot Com. It's Paul Young.
What's going on, Paul?

Speaker 6 (03:41):
What us up? My friend? How are you tonight?

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Oh? Well, I got my passport updated. I think we
got a fuel tank that's filled. We're getting ready to
just strike out here. It's summer. It's time for a
road trip movie.

Speaker 6 (03:56):
Huh would you consider this to be a road trip?

Speaker 2 (04:01):
I don't know what else to consider it, to be honest.

Speaker 6 (04:03):
They're never really on the road, you know.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
It's technically no, not a quote road trip. But the
movie we're talking about really is nothing else. So just
to introduce what we do here for the uninitiated and unfamiliar.
Each each episode, Paul and I try to find a
horrible offering from Hollywood, didn't have it tie into something

(04:27):
going on in the news, going on in theaters, or
something in our world. And so when we were kicking
it around, well.

Speaker 6 (04:35):
Usually suggestion, well we usually do Mother's Day because that's
this weekend, So happy Mother's Day at all you mothers.
We could have done a Samuel L. Jackson film because
of all his mother efforts, but I don't know if
we were to pulled that off.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Didn't want to sully our mothers this weekend, however that
might meta probably suffered enough at our hands through our
lifetimes that they don't just to augment that.

Speaker 6 (05:01):
So I know, and I got two of them.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Well there you go. It's uh, you've made two people
happy by not honoring it on this program. Is the
way this works out. So taking things around, Paul had
the idea that well, maybe with all of the talk
of tariffs and especially the way we've angered Canada, and
especially the way that automobiles for some reason seem to

(05:29):
be the most affected by the tariffs that have yet
to go into place, we figured we look at something
car related and then it just hit me, Damn Nation Alley.
This is a movie that's almost entirely known these days
by its road vehicle and nothing else. It's a few

(05:52):
people that I've mentioned is too this week that they're like, oh,
that's the thing with that cool ass car truck or whatever.
That is exactly you see it? Like I think, so
I want to say, yes, hardly anybody knew who was
in it. It was just one of those movies that
everybody that knows about it has one and only one recollection,

(06:14):
and that is a badass vehicle and that's about it.

Speaker 6 (06:18):
The Landmaster one and two, even though they only made
one of them for the film. When you I think
I may have seen this movie, like very very early
on in my movie watching career. Okay, I probably rented
it or it came out on you know, USA up
all night, way back up in the nineties.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
But I can tell you my history with this. I
know exactly when I saw not exactly, but I know how,
and that is in the early days of HBO, because
when you know, for some reason, my parents, who don't
watch movies, were among the first people to get cable
television and HBO was the first thing and we used

(07:03):
to get and this is back in the day, a
monthly movie guide from HBO, and it had all the
films in it, the premier dates, it had a poster.
It was a very visual thing and I collected these
things because they were just so damn cool. But in
the early days of HBO, you know, they would get
first run or I guess technically second run as they

(07:26):
come out of theaters, but they still had to fill
their airtime with other stuff. So there was a lot
of seventies drive in quality movies first available on HBO.
This would be one of them, and I remember watching
it back then it was like, oh, man, this truck
is cool, and in my neophyte cinematic mind, that's all

(07:47):
that was needed for a cool movie.

Speaker 6 (07:50):
Well, it was designed by Dean Jeffries, so that would
make sense. I mean back in the sixties through the set,
most of the seventies and maybe even to the early eighties.
He designed a lot of the really uh recognizable to
this day. And he did the Black Beauty from Green Hornet.

(08:10):
He did the trolley from Huframed Roger Rabbit, and the
Dune Buggies from Diamonds or Forever. Of course, he also
did the what was it, the oh the Monkey's Mobile
really okay, Yeah, he did the Monkeys Mobile and he
did all five cars from Death Rates two thousand, so

(08:31):
you were very familiar with his handiwork.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, he was, Uh, he had a he had a
vibrant career and probably the best guy for this particular construction.
Because as as we're gonna get into here, you know,
we are disasters into making. We're brilliant much going to
focus on the in the making aspect of this film
because there's not a whole lot else to it. I mean,

(08:54):
everybody remembers the truck and not much else, and that's
for good reason. This movie's about the truck and not
much else.

Speaker 6 (09:02):
And it's a it's an actual vehicle. I think I
think somebody bought it when Jeane Winfield.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
I guess, uh, yeah, it's still on the I don't know.
They have like I guess, cinematic vehicle tours that go
around the country. You know, they have events where you know,
the old batmoll Beile will be there or such, and
this is one of those.

Speaker 6 (09:25):
Well it just sold like at auction or something for
one point nine three million dollars one point nine three
million dollars in twenty four, Like this is still moving about.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, and this is what's amazing. Back when they made
the movie, this thing cost like two hundred and seventy
thousand dollars to create three hundred and.

Speaker 6 (09:45):
Fifty k in nineteen seventy five.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, and they estimate in today's dollars it's about one
point five to two mili.

Speaker 6 (09:53):
That's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
And this and it's not just for the camera. This
thing works now. If you've never seen the vehicle before,
we put it up on our Twitter page and promote it.
This is a truck that's got twelve wheels. It's got
four hubs on which each hub has three wheels in
triangle fashion, and those three actually rotate as well.

Speaker 6 (10:20):
So instead of supposed to help it climb rocks.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
And he said it did. I saw a video just
this afternoon. I ran over it and he was talking
about the construction and what they were doing with it.
He said this thing had no shocks at all. But
he said it would go fifty miles an hour and
come across boulders and because of this rotating wheel construction,

(10:47):
they would roll over and then the truck would can't
a leaver because this thing is sectioned in the center.

Speaker 6 (10:54):
The steering wheel did not stare the wheels. It stared
the mid section of the vehicle.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, basically, instead of steering, it would just point the
vehicle and that's how it would turn. And this thing worked.
So he said they'd be out in the middle of
the scrub scrub lands and find boulders and such and
wouldn't slow down and this thing would just go right
over the boulders without a problem. He said, if you're
inside of it, you wouldn't know the difference.

Speaker 6 (11:18):
Because now the thing I couldn't figure out is the
top wheels. So it had two wheels on the bottom,
so it was there was always eight wheels touching and
four wheels at the top of the pyramid. But the
wheels at the top of the pyramid were always spinning.
They weren't touching. The wheels weren't touching like a set
of gears. Now they would roll and I don't know

(11:39):
where it didn't have a rotating axle, So I don't
know how he pulled that off where it didn't have
didn't have six axles.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
No, I think it had probably four independent ones. But
they showed there were a couple of camera angles where
we'd be mounted at the rear and while this is
going forward. You saw the activity of the three wheels
do one of those rotations under power.

Speaker 6 (12:05):
I mean it was unique. I'm given that it was
super unique.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, And he said this thing was operational, and after
the movie was made, actually they repurposed this for a
number of other things. He said. It was in a
bunch of commercials and a couple other movies. They used
it for in a.

Speaker 6 (12:22):
Different a white snake video, music video.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
It's possible, Yeah, I believe it was.

Speaker 6 (12:33):
So.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, this was a ton of effort went into that quiet.

Speaker 6 (12:40):
It was quiet. Right.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Okay, that makes even a little more sense, I know.

Speaker 6 (12:45):
And okay, so here, let me let me read to
you some of the things this giant Landmaster from Damnation
Alley showed up in. So. It was in a an
Amaco commercial, The Wild and the by Quiet Riot was
a music video Highway to Heaven for an episode called
Merry Christmas from Grandpa. I need to see that episode

(13:08):
to see how they tied this thing into it. Something
called Get a Life, the TV show Get a Life.
It was in a time traveling movie called Apex. It
was in the pre ride video at the Sony movie
Glide Theater for Dino Island. Okay, and apparently you've seen

(13:32):
Battle Angel Alida. Yes, all right, So the original manga,
it was apparently in that at some point they included
it as drawn. That's nuts. How Highway to Heaven is
the weirdest part is that's the weirdest one there.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, that one bears some investigation.

Speaker 6 (13:52):
Think, we need Grandpa to get something really interesting for Christmas,
but it's going to be a dream. And what we're
going to need is you know what I saw something
in nineteen seventy five with George the part get me
that I want the Landmaster in my TV show. Well, yeah,

(14:13):
so basically that's about an angel, so we're gonna need
it to be the Landmaster obviously.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah, this vehicle is pretty much the biggest star of
the film. Let's just put it that way. Not that
it was lacking for stars, just that nobody else remembered
anyone else in this. So one of the things I
love about Hollywood is just how they get so much
wrong and manage to somehow come out ahead. Anyway. So

(14:42):
this was actually based on a novella that was written
back in nineteen sixty nine by the name of Damnation Alley,
So twentieth Century Fox optioned the rights to it, and
from that point forward, twentieth Century Fox did every single
thing possible to screw this movie up.

Speaker 6 (15:01):
And they tried to put it up. Did they have
the They had this and Star Wars to market and promote,
and they put all their money into this.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, they actually thought. They both came out in seventy
seven and Fox was thinking, damn, Nationality was going to
be their big movie of the year against the other release,
which is Star Wars. You heard me correct, This was
going to be bigger.

Speaker 6 (15:29):
Well. And the best part was the original author from
this thought that the original script was fantastic because it
closely followed. But then somebody said, hey, we need more
special effects, so they dont more money into it and
pushed the release time back, and that all the special
effects they added were just like making the sky glow.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yeah, like that's like, I don't like the garbage sky effects.
There was one time I noticed this. It was probably
almost in the third act. They kept trying to portray
a dad. The sky was constantly filled with the Aurora
borealis because this is the after effect of World War three,
and you're just seeing in the sky these lines that

(16:13):
are waving, and I looked at that for a good
second or two before I realized that was actually video
of surf at the beach, like little trickling waves that came.
But they were supposed to be radioactive clouds.

Speaker 6 (16:27):
You know how they formed the color. They took him
a laser and shined it against various objects and materials
and then filmed that and then added it keyed it
in on a blue screen later. That's what you wasted
all your extra money on. That doesn't make any sense.
And the best part is that there was an original

(16:48):
director for this movie and they were going to he
dropped out because he said it's impossible to film the
special effects. What were the original special effects written then
for this film that they couldn't do? That Star Wars
pull managed to pull off because I want to see
those special effects.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yes, And this is also where it goes screwy. In
post production, there were going to be a lot of
scenes that were effects laden, and they needed to finish
the movie, and the studio was pulling money from them
to give it to the Star Wars people, all while
operating that this movie was going to be their big

(17:27):
money maker. This is what I'm saying is when they
do everything incorrectly and still come out ahead somehow. This
is the magic of Hollywood.

Speaker 6 (17:37):
Well, I mean, and like you said, it's got some
named actors, and I mean Jan Michael Vincent old Stringfellow
Hawk from Airwolf, though he didn't really make his name
until the eighties. Then he got George Prepard, who obviously
had been, you know, a staple and in the industry
for a few decades. Paul Winfield, you know, the late
Paul Winfield, and a very young Jackie Earl Haley.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah. I think this was his second movie after Bad
News Bearers.

Speaker 6 (18:03):
Yeah, you know, and so you got him then, and
then you add on the director. You got Jack Smite
in there, you know. I don't know if you've ever
watched the Airport movies, not the not the airplane movies,
but the airport movies, right, I think there was an Airport,
and then there was Airport seventy nineteen seventy five, and
nineteen seventy seven. It was like a trilogy.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
And then and then seventy nine I think was The Concord.

Speaker 6 (18:28):
Yeah, and then he did Midway. I don't know if
you ever watched Midway very good movie. So it's got
there's enough talent behind this thing to have made it decent.
But my goodness, gracious that there's nothing on screen to
like watch.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Not much, not much. And this is where the studio
started screwing with things. Right from the start. They were
renaming it. So they got away from dam Nationality the book,
gave it another title. Then they changed that title, and
then they decided, you know what, let's go with Damn
Nation Alley after all. So they did that, and then

(19:06):
they bagged the original script you go back to the
source material for the title, and then wash that entire
script away that the original author loved to go with
another script. And then the movie I don't know the
rough cut. The initial cut was about two hours or

(19:27):
so a little over two hours, yeah, And then the
director got occupied with other projects because the studio kept
having delays, and then we got to fix this. We
got to go here, do that. We got to take
the money away from your special effects. So the director
had to go away and do some other work. So
the studio just said, you know, well, we're going to
recut this all the way down to ninety minutes.

Speaker 6 (19:51):
It took forty four minutes of footage out of this thing.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
There's like complete characters excised from the film, and they
said that it was because the time. I'm laughing about
this because as I will get into it very quickly
with Paul here, they had a lot of room for
stuff in this movie because it's just there's not much there,

(20:15):
and what is there. A lot of it is disjointed
and doesn't make sense, but it's okay, we got a
badass struck to ride in and it looks cool.

Speaker 6 (20:23):
So it honestly felt like a early two thousand's Asylum
movie where they they pat it with just a bunch
of b footage and just the camera not moving on
on somebody as they react to something else that the
that the viewer can't see. There's several scenes where Tanner

(20:48):
and Janis you know, uh, Jan Michael Vincent and Dominique
Sondra they're just they're like reacting to something in front
of them, but we never see what they're reacting to,
and the camera just linked on him like a like
a scene from Family Guy. It's just like far too
long to the point of uncomfortableness, and you're like, what

(21:08):
are they doing? He's touching his face, he's just he's
grimacing and shaking his head. What are you looking at?
But I don't know what you're looking at. What are
you reacting to?

Speaker 2 (21:19):
So so, yeah, they cut a lot of crucial and
vital things out of the film. And here's the storyline.
And we've got a group of people that work at
a missile facility in California. While they're there, world War
three breaks out. The entire country, for the most part,

(21:43):
is laid to waste, with the exception of Albany, New York.
You heard me, correct, That's what I just said. And
so they hit upon the idea that, well, the country's
a wasteland, we need to drive through it, and they do.

Speaker 6 (22:02):
They set up so this is where they're cutting. All
that footage doesn't make sense because it changes the story
they had already filmed. So they're supposed to be this
animosity between Tanner and Denton, George Papard's character and Jan
Michael Vincent, there's supposed to be all this this animosity,
to the point as they're going down the elevator to

(22:24):
go get in the place to monitor the missile silos,
He's like, tomorrow, I'm asking for a transfer or have
you have you replaced? I just don't feel like we're
a good team. We don't work well together. Then they
work well together. They're like the whole rest of the film.
And there's another not exactly anger going on. No, you'll know,

(22:45):
you don't get any of that.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
It's every so often George Papar gets annoyed.

Speaker 6 (22:50):
Maybe and this was cut. There was some stuff that
happens where there's a breakdown in the military command after
the missiles go off. H that's cut from the movie.
They're scene where Paul Winfield's character gets eaten alive by
mutant cockroaches. That's right, eaten alive by mutant cockroaches. There's
a he confronts him and they have like a physical

(23:12):
confrontation because he blames uh prepared for his friend's death.
There's there was this love triangle between him the woman
they found living by herself in Vegas and Janis and Tanner,
and they have a confrontation about that constantly, Like there's
there's all this animosity is supposed to be built up
and talked about throughout the script, and they cut all

(23:33):
of it out, so and now their relationship doesn't make
any sense, Like at.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
All, yeah, it's And the thing is this, I want
to know what they cut out because what they left
in is not much. So this begins with the two
men going into a facility. They have to show their
badges in ID and get verified. They do this five times. Okay,

(24:04):
go on ahead, go through this room, and then go
in a room and they have to show their idea again,
and the guy that show the idea is like, okay,
go in the elevator. Goes in the elevator, next stop,
show your ID. They do this over and over. It's
like one time would have done it. Guys could have
saved five minutes of film and put some good stuff
in now. So then they finally get into the realm

(24:26):
where they do their job, which is managing missile silos remotely,
and they don't really establish with any sense of drama
that World War III has broken out. We just kind
of watch them go through the motions of launching missiles
without realizing the gravity of it all. It's like, you

(24:49):
got silo twelve on three one, two, Okay, done, good job,
we did that. Hey we're gonna hit this now. We
don't get any sense that, holy crap, the world's about then.

Speaker 6 (25:00):
It's just it's two people control the fate of the world.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
It's basically them flipp and switches, turning keys, looking at
each other and timing things out. Okay, my turn.

Speaker 6 (25:10):
And it's supposed to be the Soviet Union. The Soviet
Union is supposed to be attacking us. This is that's
what you know all through the Cold War, you know,
through the seventies and eighties, that was you know, the
fear that they played on and so but the missiles
are coming from Canada.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, we see this on screen and they well kind
of show basically we just see lit up lines on
a map and they're descending down from Canada, which is
probably more pertinent today than it was in seventy seven.
But yeah, that was the impression. It wasn't animated colored

(25:47):
arcs coming from Moscow or Siberia. Basically we got attacked
by Ontario and Edmonton from what I can tell. Yeah,
so Canada, Canada hooked up with the eltsin or something
back in the day, what the hell's going on? Or
would probably brushing that back then they got Terra. Yeah,
it's a euar of sit there and charge us for

(26:08):
milk pumb the crap.

Speaker 6 (26:10):
Ont of you and everything is super cold. Uh, you
can tell they didn't put any budget into the production
version of creating the room that they're in. It's all
just a bunch of old flashing lights. And the budget
for this movie was ridiculously low when it came to
doing like actual special effects, which is weird. Like there's

(26:31):
a scene I don't know if you noticed this, but
inside the Landmaster for Pard leans over and types in
the uh like he doesn't how to steer it, and
so he's like, okay, the Landmaster will take it there
by copilot and he types his into a Texas instrument calculator.
It's just a Texas instruments. Yeah, it's just a calculator.
He just instead of hitting enter, he just types in

(26:52):
one three, one four, two zero six or something like.
You can see the commas coming into it. We tied
it in. I'm just like, wouldn't it bit easier to
just not film that portion of it? Just we can
hear him type of numbers. We don't need to see
the numbers put up onto the screen.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, it's really odd what they decided to keep and
what they decided to trash Plea, So.

Speaker 6 (27:17):
They keep Jan Vincent They keep him getting coffee off
of a stove, but not actually anything happening on the
other room where the missiles are being launched, and who's
launching them?

Speaker 2 (27:30):
No, And then I guess global destruction wasn't enough for us.
We have to have very localized as well. At one point,
a stack of Playboy magazines have been procured and given
to an individual working in the facility, and we get

(27:53):
a scene of him in his bunk. He's got a
centerfold taped above him on the bed's bottom stack of
these magazines behind him as he's smoking in bed, falls asleep,
cigarette drops on top of miss October and I'm still
trying to piece this together.

Speaker 6 (28:13):
We and then the whole place explodes.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
We see the magazine smolder and then flame on the magazine,
and then we cut to an exterior shot where the
entire building just explodes. Jimmugael, Vincent Papart and another buddy
of theirs barely make it out.

Speaker 6 (28:31):
Now you can't overlook how he got those magazines to
begin with. It said, what's it? There's no timeline, given right,
they don't start about the timeline afterwards? Yea later you
hear you hear Papara talk about it. It's like two years later,
it's been two years since the bombs went off, that
kind of stuff, but you would think that it had
just happened. And then everybody's just kind of hanging out.

(28:53):
You got Paul Winfield painting a mural on the side
of one of the bomb doors like that gets you
down down the bottom, and and Tanner comes riding on
a motorcycle with that's a real woman on that motorcycle
at the beginning, there's no way that's a fake woman.
And he's in the desert dodge and giant scorpions now

(29:15):
you know they were originally when a film and they
scored Now the scorpions are real scorpions, and all they
did was superimpose them onto the desert and then they
try to make it real by him like kicking at
him and stuff.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
It's it's really in the motorcycle around.

Speaker 6 (29:29):
It's really lazy eighty special effects done in the seventies
and this is around the same time or after they
did Clash of the Titans when they did you know,
full full on stop animation that looks amazing.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, this definitely had a feel of those nuclear monster
movies from the fifties.

Speaker 6 (29:48):
Yes, it was terrible.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
There was like no shortage of them, you know, the
giant iguana and things like that.

Speaker 6 (29:53):
But we did one. We just we covered one of
the movies, The Knight of the Loopine or.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Non the Rabbit Loopus Us one of the Lepus Lepis
under the leves.

Speaker 6 (30:05):
We covered that a few years ago. It's it has
that same feel, except just worse for some reason because
it's not in black and white, and they are here's
the here's the weird part. They didn't need to do
it like that. They originally had animatronic scorpions that they
were filming, and they said it didn't look realistic enough.
I feel like maybe their standards are not where they

(30:27):
need their standards to be.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
That was the part that threw me. It's like, wait,
you built the scorpions, why not go with them? And
did it look real enough? So let's shoot a real
one and put it on screened. In the larger.

Speaker 6 (30:41):
The scene with the with the Madagascar man eating cockroaches,
at some point they just had a mat covered in
fake insects and we're just pulling it with a wire
across the floor to make it look like they were
moving in packs.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, they never really established that the roades were larger thing,
just that there was a bunch of them. So the
scorpions got big. But the roach is just multiplied, I guess,
like rabbits, but only the scorpions.

Speaker 6 (31:09):
And like there was like what two scorpions at the beginning,
and then it took him like three or four minutes
to get through the desert and he's dodging seventeen or
eighteen scorpions. I'm like where they all come from.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
And now we're talking about this when he's riding his
motorcycle through the scorpions quote unquote, at one point he
goes down and pushes the woman off and.

Speaker 6 (31:34):
It's a real woman, is it not? That's a real woman.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Question, don't I don't know, because no, it's it's an
actual actress on the back of his motorcycle. Because when
the scorpion goes in for the actress, it is clearly
a dummy, like it is blatantly a dummy, like the
like the hair falls off. It looks like a crash
test dummy. And he cuts through and he gets free

(32:01):
while they attacked the dummy, and Paul Winfield says to
him something that didn't sound like, Oh damn, man, that
was cold. You got that girl left out that He
was just like, oh, I see what you did there,
yacause that's why I thought he'd had a dummy on
the back of the motorcycle to distract the scorpions and
get away.

Speaker 6 (32:20):
But it was a dummy at the end, That's what
I'm saying. Paul Winfield was like losing his mind to
the heat of the desert or something. But then they
never established him losing his eat of the desert ever. Again,
like it's it's never addressed.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
I don't what happened to that. Yeah, either they went
cheap on the girl or they had a girl right
initially even though it was supposed to be a dummy
all along. You really don't know, And honestly, I don't
think it affects things either way, because it's stupid whichever
result you go with.

Speaker 6 (32:52):
Now. I don't know if you know about this portion
of the story, but at some point during the filming,
Michael Jan Michael Vincent became drunk and got befriended by
some local Native Americans who gave him a bunch of payote,
And then there was a three day delay and film
him because he became intoxicated and couldn't be found right.

(33:15):
I don't know if you saw that.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah, he was off having his desert vision or something.

Speaker 6 (33:20):
I feel like maybe he was on the payote.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
During this movie as well, or the screenwriter the viewers.

Speaker 6 (33:29):
Maybe the payote would have helped us understand the slightly
more like maybe Winfield was on Cactus payote, nuclear payote
that was helped him see what he thought was a
woman turned into a mannequin. But why is he coming
back with a mannequin? That's what He's got? A stack
full of playboys and a mannequin. I don't like where

(33:49):
this is going.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, it sounds like a bad Bacheler party set up here.

Speaker 6 (33:55):
Yeah, and they it's never addressed again, Like he went
out for supplies. Is that where supposed to think? Is
that the military has sent him out for supplies and
the best one guy and the best They can't come
back with as a stack of playboys and a mannequin.
Maybe it's either he wasn't looking or that he didn't

(34:17):
know what to go looking for.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, a lot of it's unclear, and more importantly doesn't
really apply to the rest of the film anyway, So.

Speaker 6 (34:28):
There's very little in this movie that applies to anything else.
In this movie, there's no callbacks, there's like.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
The setup, and the motivation really isn't there. So the
playboys lead to the building exploding and the survivor's team together,
what are we going to do? Well, there's one building
that didn't blow up, and we see motor bar or whatever,
motor pool if you want to call it that, and
a very large door slowly starts opening in dramatic fashion.

(35:00):
If this is going to be the Landmaster, see Paul,
guess what it was? The Landmaster scene?

Speaker 6 (35:04):
The Landmaster scene.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
I mean, they make this dramatic entrance for the vehicle
that was on the poster. We were just waiting for it.
So here it comes, and there's two of them. Hey,
how about that? I didn't really.

Speaker 6 (35:18):
Awesome, except they only built one.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah, and well there's a problem here too. So we've
got papardon Jan Michael Vincent in one winfield and their
other buddy is in the second one and there. Now
what these Landmasters are for I'm unclear of, especially given
that everybody hears supposedly from the Air Force. So naturally

(35:47):
they constructed million dollar vehicles in the desert for what reason.
But they just decide, well, we got them, we may
as well use them. Let's go on a road trip.
George Papar keeps hearing this radio transmission. It's automatic. It's
a radio one. It's just every so often it comes
out and makes announcements if anybody's out there yet. We're

(36:09):
in Albany. So he's convinced Albany is some kind of sanctuary.

Speaker 6 (36:16):
But he has not. He has nothing to go on, right, nothing.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
It's an automatic, Like I said, it's just a it's
a repeated thirty second transmission, which would sound to me
like somebody flipped the switch and then everybody died. But
he's convinced this is Eden in the dystopian aftermath of
World War three. So they're going to drive from California

(36:44):
to Albany. Oh okay, I'm not sure why, but they do,
and all kinds of well, no, not all kinds, A
couple of adventures, I guess. I mean, they traversed the

(37:05):
entire countryside. I did not see this vehicle stop once
for fuel.

Speaker 6 (37:10):
Every time they did stop for fuel, the fuel was
empty or they had to had. This thing gets good
gas mittage.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
I'm just gonna say, this thing is huge. It's going
to chew up the gallons, is all I'm saying. And
damn if it doesn't take them all the way, so
they hit the road or road side technically, because there's
really not a lot of asphalt to be found out here.
It is all wasteland. Thank god they've got the landmasters.

Speaker 6 (37:44):
And I don't understand where they have two. If you've
got to limited supply of fuel, what do you want
to build one and then store all the fuel from
the second one and the first one so that you
could have extra fuel.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Well, now, Paul, there you go making sense again.

Speaker 6 (37:59):
And this thing water in it. We never see him
stop to eat, but they've always got some sort of
mra with.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Him, and they always talk about having supplies.

Speaker 6 (38:08):
Yeah, he's like, yeah, we can take a shower. All
three of us can take a shower once a week.
But where's all this water coming from? You were in
a desert.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
But and the name of the movie too cracks me up,
because the rationale is this that in order for them
to get to Albiting the pathway to cross the country,
there's one particular way to get through the radiation wasteland,

(38:40):
and that is called Damnation Alley. One. I have no
idea how George Papark knows about this because two how
there was no such thing until World War three broke out.
So he's making it sound like this is a well

(39:02):
established route sixty six through radiation that'll get you there safely.
It's like, how do you know this? It just happened,
But somehow they know it, and they have the coordinates
to punch into the adding machine and the dashboard of
this truck, sorry land Master.

Speaker 6 (39:20):
So where do they start? They start somewhere in California.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Obviously it was what Carl right somewhere, you know, Carlsbad,
near the Mojave Desert. They said, So, yeah, they're basically
quarter to a quarter across this country. They're making the
big trip. But apparently Damnation Alley has either formed or

(39:45):
been established after the nuclear fallout. So they're in the
Mojave Desert and then as they embark, a storm breaks
out and starts affecting the vehicles. The second Landmaster crashes
and rolls over and it kills the one guy, Perry,

(40:09):
and as they go back to try to rescue him.
I think this is along Salt Lake City, is what
they said. And this is when they try to they
try to rescue the rest of them, and the killer
cockroach you showed.

Speaker 6 (40:27):
Up, I can't even make I'm on Google Maps right now,
and I'm starting in the Mojave Desert, which is in
the southern eastern part of California, and I've got a
path drawn to Albany, and Google wants to take you
through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Salt Lake City is

(40:48):
a straight line up from the Mohave, just about to
get up to Salt Lake City, Utah. That is, I
can't even make it go that way on purpose. There's
there's no way they took this route. That's twenty six
hundred miles as the crow flies.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Okay, but Paul, you're not factoring in a desiccated, radiation
poisoned wasteland.

Speaker 6 (41:13):
I suppose. But like you're in the military, right, you've
got access to maps. If you were going to go
to Albany, why wouldn't you take the shortest path possible.
Why would you go up to Salt Lake City and
then cut through the Nebraskas.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
And I got on I got one better for you.
The attack takes place with the roaches in Salt Lake City.
The next stop for them is Las Vegas, which is
south of where they are and just next door to
where they were in California.

Speaker 6 (41:49):
Well, then the Vegas Vegas was first. They go up
towards Vegas first, because that's where they pick up Channis.
She's at Circus Circus.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Yeah, but I thought they got the girl after the
roach attack.

Speaker 6 (42:00):
She's riding on the bike on the back of him
at George's.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Or Okay, Okay's riding.

Speaker 6 (42:05):
She's riding with a dude on the back of the motorcycle,
and they.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
I got I got radiation amnesia going on them. So
forgive me, I apologize.

Speaker 6 (42:12):
I will say going towards Vegas does make take them
up towards Salt Lake City, And I guess they really
wanted to film a scene in Circus Circus, except that
didn't look like anything like the inside of Circus Circus.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
No. It looked like the entire Vegas strip was blasted
into sand and there was like five buildings remaining, I think.

Speaker 6 (42:32):
And she's the only person living by herself for two years.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Yeah, so this just stop in Vegas.

Speaker 6 (42:40):
Circus Circus was the best you could do.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
But they just they just randomly stopped there. And it
wasn't you know, I'm thinking to get supplies, get food,
get all the needs. No, they start playing with the
slot machines.

Speaker 6 (42:53):
And they were the nickel slots. They weren't even like
the dollar slots or the quarters. They were playing nickel
slots the whole time.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Yeah, and they're winning, and so they keep feeding the
machines and they're putting the hat there and they're getting
the buckets of It's like I thought we were on
the verge of death, but we got we got time
for this. Huh. We can we can be slot jockeys
for an afternoon, okay.

Speaker 6 (43:14):
And like George, for part is like indignant about the
whole situation, and he doesn't want to partake because he's
too you know, he's in his air Force gear the
whole time, Like he never changed his clothes. He's in
his air Force gear the whole time. So he's been new,
you know, too uppity to play slots until he does.
Where's the electricity coming from?

Speaker 2 (43:36):
He caught the bug and then he was right in
the middle of it. I'm well, there's a lot of
those kind of questions aren't there, you know, like, how
is this working, how is this operational? How do you
have that? And you can't ask these questions during this movie.
You're just not allowed to. It will impact your viewing

(43:56):
and enjoyment, if that's possible. So we were yeah, I said,
so they pick up the girl. You know, she comes
out and she hugs everybody, but then doesn't want to
hug Jan Michael Vincent. What was that all about?

Speaker 6 (44:14):
She had a cigarette in her hand. She couldn't be
she couldn't she couldn't be bothered to drop the cigarette.
And when she ran down to hug everybody, he's like,
he's like, hey, baby, pass it on or keep it
going or said something stupid right, Well, she's.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
Like she's like, oh my gosh, people are alive. And
she gives a bear hug to George Papart and then
she goes over hugs everybody else. And when she comes
up to him and she's like oh and yeah and hide,
he's like, all what about me? Or she's like like
do we have a history? Here? Was this is where
I get the feelings something was left on the cutting
room floor. Either she would do that and then he

(44:53):
would look at Papard and go, oh you sort of well, bitch,
you did it again. Nothing. It's just like she's nah,
I got three hugs. I'm good. It's all ahead, Amy.

Speaker 6 (45:04):
I don't hug anybody else.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Okay, yeah, the the young hot guy is the one
you don't want to hug. M got it. So the
part that I don't understand as far as the drama
or interest in this whole enterprise is we see the
land the second Landmaster go asunder and boom. You know,

(45:31):
it's useless. The rest of the movie, they sell this
thing as an indestructible, indefatigable machine. Whatever you throw at it,
it's going to deal with. It's like, no, we saw one.
Just go ask over teacups and it's no good anymore.
You got to pick something here. I mean, it would

(45:53):
have made sense maybe if like there was an earthquake
and it fell off a cliff or something, but no,
the thing just rolled over. One guy died and then
it was like, well, crap, that thing's done, And.

Speaker 6 (46:01):
How much storage space is in this thing? They keep
that motorcycle in the back of it like an RV
the whole time, but then they're also put and the
walls are solid. When you look at the inside the
Landmaster from the outside, the walls are solid. There's no no,
but they're they're sleeping in there somewhere. Where are they sleeping.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah, there's sleeping quarters. There's a shower. Clearly, there's a
ton of storage for food for weeks.

Speaker 6 (46:28):
Now to mention, the.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Back of it drops down for the motorcycle to drive.

Speaker 6 (46:31):
He's got rockets and got rockets on top and mortars
in it. They're storing live munitions inside this thinge like
it's an actual tank.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Yeah, it's. I mean, I would say roughly this thing
is what thirty thirty five feet in length, maybe forty
at best. But it's got the storage capacity that's three times.

Speaker 6 (46:52):
Thirty five feet long and twelve feet high.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
But yeah, it's it's got water for a five month trip,
store all the food and everything else that you need.
No problem. Fuel. Yeah, we gotta filled tank that's gonna
take us to the other coast and back. No problem.
This is what we're dealing with, so and and Yeah.

(47:21):
This is basically the rest of the movie. They just
make random stops here and there, and they meet random people,
and then they go to the next random stop.

Speaker 6 (47:34):
And they're occasionally they'll they'll pick they pick up Jackie
Jackie ear Olhley's kid, Billy, his name is Billy. They
pick him up and he's just kind of by himself
as an orphan teenage orphans.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Yeah, we all right, so we picked the gallup in Vegas.
We then go to Salt Lake City, lose the second
truck and encounter roaches and such, lose half our friends.
We're not going to react though, We're not gonna be
sad or affected by this. We got we got things
to do. Like, uh, I know, they're driving down the

(48:11):
road and they just see this kid's head pop up
in a window of a dilapidated shack. So they stop
and you know, the kid runs away. There's this extended
chasing through the scrub brush of them chasing the kid down.
It's like why what, Like they're desperate to catch this
kid that doesn't want.

Speaker 6 (48:32):
To be They're in the Diamond Crater. Is that what
it's called.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
It's the Yeah, it's the big meteor crater out there
in the West. That's where they filmed a lot of
this And it's really just that it basically it's scrub
landscape and let's watch this massive truck tear ass through
it all, which is kind of cool. I'll give you that,

(48:59):
it's not that. So they picked the kid up. They
finally they basically pin him down. They bring him back
to the house and say, okay, you can either come
with us or we can give you supplies. What how
much do you just got all kinds of supplies? And

(49:19):
I guess, okay, we have extra and the kids like,
all right, I'll go. But he makes a here's the
bargain with him. He's like, I'll go on one condition.
You gotta let me drive.

Speaker 6 (49:29):
Yeah, teach me how to ride your motorcycle.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
It's like, you're not really negotiating from the point of strength.
We're saving your life.

Speaker 6 (49:38):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
He's pretty you're under need to position a strong arm. Ust.

Speaker 6 (49:41):
Well, little David was pretty good with a rock. He
could sling a rock pretty He was pretty deadly accurate
with that. Right. He hit Jan Michael Vincent in the
chest twice from like across the across. He would have
made a good TikTok star just doing random stuff with
a rock.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Later, he clocks a guy at like thirty feet right
in the million, like, dude, perfectly. I mean, they make
it seem like he was out in the scrub for
like years and just became I don't know, a mountain
kid or something. He told some story about his dad
he fell off a ravine and broke both his legs
and died in his arms, and I guess we're supposed

(50:21):
to get weepy about this. But then he's like, all right,
I'll go, but you gotta let me. You gotta teach
me how to drive, and they all knuckle under, like okay, okay, yeah, okay, deal,
what do you think you're in the military. He's twelve,
shut up, but okay, yeah, you can drive our truck,
even though we watch one just roll over when experts

(50:42):
were behind the wheel. I don't think this is a
smart idea. But then again, I've never been out in
desolate post apocalyptic landscape myself, so who am I to
just And.

Speaker 6 (50:52):
What did they do with adding Billy to the story? Right, So,
anytime you pick up a character on a road trip,
you generally add that character into the story in a
meaningful way so that they add another colorful layer to
what's currently happening. Other than that they're literally just dead
weight that you're dragging along and now the audience has

(51:13):
to like keep up with him for no reason. Well
that's what they did with this one. They didn't know
what to do with Billy. They picked him up, they
put him in with this thing. It could have been
a decent dynamics between him and Janice and Tanners starting
a family unit of some you know, an after nuclear
family unit. But instead there's like a two or three
minute scene of George for Parr driving and shaving with

(51:36):
an electric shaver wireless electric shaver, by the way, I'm
not even sure how he charged it in nineteen seventy five,
and Billy just watching him. He's just sitting there watching
him use an electric shaver while he's driving the Landmaster.
I'm like, what was who's the scene for? What? What
did you cut out of this movie that made you
leave this it?

Speaker 2 (51:57):
I mean, it felt like we were going to get
like a teachable moment there. It's like, why are you shaving?
How came you have to? What is this? You know, like,
let this become a mentoring scene, you know. The gruffy
old man continued, Well, let me tell you something, Billy,
when you get to be my no or.

Speaker 6 (52:13):
You could humanize Billy.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
That's it.

Speaker 6 (52:15):
You know, before my dad died, he was going to
teach me how to shave. But I never we never
got the chance humanizing, you know what I mean, like
bring some emotion to it. But they didn't do that
at all.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
No, No, it's just and he's silently shaving and Billy's
watching him. This is about two minutes of screen time
where they had no room for actual characters and had
to cut plot out so we can have a ten
minute credential scene to open the movie. We can have
a protracted missile launch sequence fiasco in which they had

(52:48):
to go with stock footage because again they cut the
special effects out of the budget. Let's go to military
stock footage ICBMs leaving and now we're shaving on the
road for I wonder if this was like a Nerocco
product placement or something.

Speaker 6 (53:04):
I mean, George Pard has a star on the Walk
of Fame, and at no point did he say, like,
I'm gonna question this entire scene. I'm just gonna ask
you why we're doing what we're doing here.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
It's you want me to almost do I have this
right there? There had to have been more cut out
of here. This is where I'm leaning. Is that something
significant or at least I don't know compelling took place here?
And then it just what a way and we ain't

(53:39):
got time.

Speaker 6 (53:39):
For nobody's hair gets any longer.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
Of course not of course, Now what was I'm drawing
a blank here? What was the building they went to
where they were at the facility? Was there on a
roof with the motorcycle and all the cockroach that was.

Speaker 6 (53:58):
A they went looking for some applies. And when they
showed up at that at that uh, that city, he
noticed that the cars were all the car doors were
closed and there were human bones inside picked completely clean.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Right, But where where were they at that point on
the map? I lost track of where It's got to
be past the Salt Lake City. That part I'm not
entirely steem. I mean, it was a it was a
metropolis of some sort. I mean, because there was you know,
the scene at the you know, five story parking garage
and all of that. So there, Yeah, they're basically San

(54:35):
Michael Vince's.

Speaker 6 (54:37):
The mutant, the killer in Salt Lake City.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
Okay, okay, so they were so it was after the depth,
and now they're trying to reconfigure and such. Jan Michael
Vincent is up on the roof in one building the
encounter of the cockroaches. He gets on the radio and says, well,
we got to get out of here. So he rips
a door off, props it up by a window, makes

(55:02):
a motorcycle jump off of this Mick Too ramp.

Speaker 6 (55:06):
And jumps from it, jumps from the department store onto
the roof of a park garage.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
And the two of them go down. And I don't
know if that was Jan Michael Vincent or no, he
did most of his thing, but was that the actress too.

Speaker 6 (55:26):
That actress I'm not sure about, but the for well,
it could have been the actress from the first part
of the film that he knocked up off the motorcycle the.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Dobby Scorpion food right, But yeah, I mean he legitimately
goes down. They lay the bike down and slide get
but they get right back up. I mean, props to them.
That was cool. Uncut scene. So he wipes out and
then gets back on and goes down the ramps, meets
up with the landmaster in a parking garage. We got

(55:55):
to get out of here, and there's roaches everywhere. Some
of them even coating the ramp. But time for a
real badass scene here where they blast the wall. The
landmaster breaks through the cement. This basically was for the
ten year old me in the audience watching. It's like, damn,

(56:16):
that was so cool, and and.

Speaker 6 (56:21):
Cockroaches all over his legs mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
But he's uh, he's tough enough to get through it,
and he can. He can win.

Speaker 6 (56:30):
In Florida, we call them palmetto bugs.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
We also give them names. Oh that's Dave over there.
You just let him, just swat him, he'll go away.
It's fun to watch the tourists and family members freak
out though. My god, they fly well, of course they do.
Like you never saw rugs and Florida. They're big enough
to shoot. Some of them have a licenselate. So we're yeah,

(57:01):
this this literally is our movie. Now we're just driving,
and a lot of scenes on the road, a lot
of scenes in the wasteland kicking up a big cloud
of dust as it's cutting through the rocks and everything else,
a lot of I don't know, drama. And then in
the middle of nowhere and it is literally no, I mean,

(57:25):
it's like barren landscape and then there's a gas station.

Speaker 6 (57:31):
Supposedly there's somewhere and even the West. That's all it
says is in the Midwest. They don't even like label it.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
But I mean, even George Propard is commenting about the
ludicrous nature of this place, like this is literally in
the middle of nowhere, like, well, I'm glad you noticed,
because the audience is just saying, when eleven hell is
this building doing out there? Why is there a gas
station hundreds of miles away from anything? Like this isn't

(58:01):
current day where there's an app and tells people you'll
go down this road twenty miles and you'll find a
gas station. No, this would have been fulled out map
era and I doubt a mom and pop diner in
gas station would show up on any map. Apparently it does.

(58:22):
So they get there, they look around. George Papart says, well,
they gotta have a generator, finds the generator and jam
Michael Vince's like, hey, you're gonna get that thing to run.
He's like, no, what was the significance of this? He

(58:44):
was just dead set on there being one, and then
basically said I knew it wouldn't rourk. But while they're
out there. The boy and the girl go inside the diner,
not to look for food, not to use the bathroom,
get water. I don't know anything to survive. He gets a.

Speaker 6 (59:04):
Sucker out of a jar and she plays the piano.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Gotta play a piano because this is what you do
in the middle of a desolate nuclear barren wasteland. Hey,
they got a piano attitude, and so Paul, it's post apocalyptic.
Then you got to allow for certain musical impactful results.

(59:32):
As you know, world worked right well.

Speaker 6 (59:33):
The place is called Ellen Ellen's Cafe, and apparently Ellen
had a band, like a house band.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
It would seem. And again for who, Because when I
say in the middle of nowhere, like you, it's a
speck on the horizon. When they first noticed this thing,
and there was not no mountains, trees, nothing, It is
grub for hundreds of miles around. Yet they get into

(01:00:03):
the diner. Every single table has empty bottles and plates
on it. Look, this was I don't know the hotspot
of western South Dakota or something. What is going on here?
But they she plays the piano, he gets a sucker

(01:00:24):
and the music brings out I don't know, the hills
have eyes cast. Yeah, of four or five long haired
bearded hillbillies, all with weapons start creating, Hey fired us
some music? What's going on? And they come out rifle.

(01:00:46):
She screams. Everybody runs inside. I'm I'm trying to piece
together exactly what's going on here, because it seems like
they said wouldn't it be great if and never got
a around to why it would be great. So they
encounter him. These guys are clearly unfriendly, and they make

(01:01:09):
a decision that two of the guys are gonna take
j Michael Vincent in prepart to go look at the truck,
that pretty truck out there.

Speaker 6 (01:01:20):
So they go, you're gonna show us how it's used,
and then we're gonna leave this other guy back here
to watch the other two.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
And then the main guy takes the shining to the woman,
tells Jackie or Haley something. He's like, I'm gonna have
some fun time with your mother. Go stand over there
by her. He's like, she ain't my mom, He ain't
my Paul. You can't tell me what to do, and
he jumps out the window. I'm thinking, this is exactly

(01:01:46):
the scenario this guy wanted. I guess, well, clearly he
was going to assault the girl. Now he's all by
the ain't got no audience, ain't got no boy to
worry about. But no, he says, you go tell that
boy right now to get back here. Why you wanted this?

(01:02:09):
But huh. But she just says, uh, you know, billy,
you get back here now. Street lights are on or something.
I don't know what it was. It was as half
heart as could be. Had no effect. So he starts
having his way with her. She screams, And this is
where a rock boy takes over. He gets a rock,

(01:02:32):
comes back inside.

Speaker 6 (01:02:35):
And chunks it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Well, he's gonna mind his back, and he's looking at
the guy saying, now I want another sucker, mister, And
you know the guy should just then go get one.
Get out of my face, don't what this is? Stretched
out for a bit, and then he's like, oh, okay, okay,
here here, And then from across the dinery, he clocks

(01:02:58):
this guy right in the melon, takes him out and
then uh back in the truck, the kid shows up
and says, he told me to come out with you guys.
Then one of the bad guys says, there's not something
right about this and goes in and then Jen Michael
Vincent gets a gun and shoots them. Basically they get

(01:03:20):
the upper handed and wipe these guys out. Why, it's
my question, like that was it? There was no resolution, like, Okay,
finally we can get gas.

Speaker 6 (01:03:34):
Finally can they just they blew the place up instead
of dealing with the guys, and I think everybody was dead, right, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
They were either inside or shot him and stuff. The
main guy was knocked out from the rock. So they
don't go back and work on the generator to get
the pumps operational or everything else. They just turned the
truck and fire and blow the building up. Well, Okay,

(01:04:06):
it's just I'm kind of straining here. It's like, why
did we go through all of this so to have
it amount to nothing? Just it's more screen time getting
burned for this movie where they didn't have room for
vital plot plates. It's just constant. I love these decisions though. Yeah,

(01:04:29):
we we have to cut out this character. We got
to get rid of this entire love triangle aspect. We
all these other scenes have to go so we can
have an abandoned gas station fight scene and blow it up. Okay,
so now we are back on the well not the

(01:04:53):
roads technically, but traveling along and the Landmaster starts having
mechanical issues. Good thing, they're close to Detroit.

Speaker 6 (01:05:07):
Where were they find well, where were they find the
parts in it? Necessary? In Detroit?

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
This is the motor city, is what we call Detroit.
I mean factories, production facilities, Everything mechanical from an automobile
perspective is found in Detroit. Of course we go to
a junkyard for this state of the art, high tech

(01:05:39):
military machine. I don't the decisions here, just I'm baffled
by them, Like, why wouldn't you go to a factory
where everything is brand new, for one thing, and quite
probably more fitting than I don't know, something from a

(01:06:01):
nineteen fifty five Javeler or whatever the heck you're looking for.

Speaker 6 (01:06:04):
Well, I mean, you know how many trucks are on
the road. You're telling me they haven't. They couldn't find
any other trucks, because that's why they built it the
way they did. They couldn't find any other trucks anywhere else.
That had to be a junkyard.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
Yeah, but we've already seen when they were in the
cities that they perfectly operational vehicles, just had skeletons in them. Well,
you're going under the hood anyway, so you don't have
to mess with the interior.

Speaker 6 (01:06:31):
But no, they're how do they even know where a
junk yard was.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
I'm I'm at a loss. It's uh, it's where the
needed parts were for this state of the art military vehicle.

Speaker 6 (01:06:46):
I guess I would feel like the military guys would
know where the military bases are and that they could
go because they you know, they probably grabbed Cummings engine
parts and stuff like that to put this thing together
back in the day. I mean, it's got a Ford
motor in it, so why not go to the military
base where you got the original parts to build this

(01:07:07):
thing and get new parts for it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Exactly? There should be you know, some familiarity at least
where a motor pool at a base would be at
so you can get these things. It's like Junkyard should
be fifth on the list.

Speaker 6 (01:07:26):
But you know what, then they wouldn't have been able
to spend their budget on glowing skies that you only
see at the beginning of the film.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Yeah, the the entire time we're in the Junkyard. The
first thing they do is split up, because that's of
course what you're gonna do. So like Jan Michael Vincent
tells the kid, be careful of all the animals in here,
and he lifts off all these vehicles that are named
after himimals. I see what you did there, JMV. Way
to go, and George Prepard finds the vehicle that has

(01:08:01):
I guess the drive trains are looking for, so he
starts working on it. While they're doing all this, every
single camera angle now is like a Dutch angle. It's
on the ground up, so we could see the swirling
sky of red and green and everything else. And occasionally

(01:08:21):
we cut to an overhead map so we can see
the radiation bands I guess coming down across the United States,
and I guess they detoured off a damn Nation Ala
which is supposed to cut through all this. But again,
it was a mechanical emergency. I'll give him that. So

(01:08:43):
George fa Part is working on this under a vehicle
and a storm starts building up.

Speaker 6 (01:08:50):
He's using a blowtorch too, by the way, a cutting torch,
of course. Well, I mean, you know, I'm not a
licensed mechanic, but I've done some work under my you know,
I've thrown a renter or too. I've never had to
use a cutting torch to remove the transmission.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Yeah, but you've never had a landmaster.

Speaker 6 (01:09:09):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
That is different animal, totally different animal. Your rents are
are useless here with this one.

Speaker 6 (01:09:16):
Paul and I don't have auto cannons on the side of.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
My exactly you need you need in this sunolene torch
to remove anything of mechanical value. But as as they're
out there and they're getting this done, the storm comes up.
Jan Michael Vincent starts panicking. He gathers the kid and
then he goes to the part and said, there's a
storm coming. There's about a forty mile power wind blowing

(01:09:42):
under the truck where he's working. I think he's aware
that there's a storm arriving, if it hasn't already arrived.
But thankfully he's there to warn him. Yeah, pieces of
automobiles blowing up against him because of this. Okay, thanks
for the tip. But they managed to just get the

(01:10:07):
truck repaired and operational. Getting. When I say just, it's
because the storm arrives and basically creates Noah's Arc levels
of flooding.

Speaker 6 (01:10:25):
Now did we did we did we talk about did
we talk about why the world went into chaos after
the nuclear explosions. George Ropart's telling him, well, you know
what happened? He said, Well, the Earth is off of
his axis. Oh yes, the story all the all the

(01:10:47):
rockets turned the Earth onto its axis or changed it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
Well, he's he's telling this to the kid, and the
first thing he says, like, what's an axis? And JMV says, well,
it's basically the middle and parts like oh Joe, yeah, okay, yeah,
the middle. So yeah, he's explaining that the axis has
been shifted because of all the bombs, and he says

(01:11:14):
we're hoping that it will naturally return, and the kid
is as cynical as it comes. He's like, well, no,
why don't you just choose bombs to fix it? Because
things don't fix themselves. I have a hard time arguing
against that. It's like, I think the kid's got a
point here. But even even if the Earth is off

(01:11:37):
its axis, can you explain to me how Detroit becomes
flooded in this fashion? Nuh? The light mean, I don't
mean like it's got to be the greatest. I'm not
talking like there's puddles. I'm not talking like you know,
up to the level of car windows or something. We're

(01:12:00):
talking forty feet or more of water. Because I'm like,
they show slow mo of waves crashing in and everything else,
and the Landmaster is pitching and throwing on the waves
and then it sinks.

Speaker 6 (01:12:15):
For well, they had to show off its water capabilities
because they did say it was amphibious.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
You have to assume where did this all come from.
I don't think the Great Lakes even have that much
water to supply for this.

Speaker 6 (01:12:42):
Well that's because you got to you're not factoring the
axis shift.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
You're right, I'm not have a factor the axis shift.
Just go with it, folks. Detroit's now forty feet underwater.
So the eventually the Landmaster rights itself and rises gradually
to the surface again. And then we see the Landmaster

(01:13:11):
is actually a water master.

Speaker 6 (01:13:15):
And the wheels are just turning. It can't be going
very fast, right.

Speaker 2 (01:13:20):
Not really. But you know it's like we said, each
of the axle bases has the three tires and those rotate. Well,
now they're all rotating full scale, so it's like four
paddle wheels on this thing. It probably can get a
little little bit of ging. You may not be able
to water ski behind it, but I think you're gonna
make progress. And by the way, they had to build

(01:13:43):
a second one for this because in that video of
the designer he said, yeah, the original one weighed so
many tons there was no way it would float. So
they had to mock up a second one on the
quick It's basically just chassis with the wheels and a
shell so it would float enough to shoot these scenes.
So yeah, basically we're looking at the We're looking at

(01:14:05):
the landmaster on what would be one of the great lakes,
I mean Michigan, Ohio, all of the gone underwater, and
we're now chugging along on this thing.

Speaker 6 (01:14:16):
Supposedly it was a mega tsunami. It would have to
be an inland mega tsunami on a lake.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
Okay, you know, radiation, what are you gonna do?

Speaker 6 (01:14:35):
I mean, would have washed all the cockroaches out of there,
out of Salt Lake.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
And there's some kind of recognition that they're saying, now
the Earth has in fact returned to its axis to
it just worked by itself.

Speaker 6 (01:14:53):
There you go, fix it, that's what he says. He is, Well,
how's he gonna fix it? He goes, well, hopefully the
Earth just does can fix itself.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
What Jackie Earl Haley is looking at him. He was like,
oh crap, hein gonna happen. Well it did, so eventually
they do find land, I guess, and they're all camping
out kind of in cool fashion. They're just like they're

(01:15:23):
just out there. The girl's doing her thing, the kids
out in the lake swimming. JMV Is working on the motorcycle,
and Papard's got a radio set up with a television
antenna of course, and doing his thing, and all of
a sudden they hear something come across the radio and

(01:15:45):
it's not the repeated recording that they heard previously, so
they some woman is broadcasting. She's like, from now on
at twelve o'clock, we're gonna be announcing what's going on
news weather on the fives. And they're all getting excited
and start racing over to the radio now to listen.

(01:16:09):
He's able to also communicate like it's a two way radio.

Speaker 6 (01:16:15):
With the detail and it's it's a taco box. It's
a tackle that their prop was a tackle box. There
was a green tackle box with the They didn't even
take the hinge off, they just stuck another piece of
equipment on the side of it turning into a radio.

Speaker 2 (01:16:30):
Yeah, it's like, we'll put a speaker on that on
that plano.

Speaker 6 (01:16:35):
And he had a TV antenna just stuck into the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
Yeah, it was definitely a television aerial. But okay, So
they all get excited and he's like, hey, hey, can
you hear us there? We want to find you and
she's like, well, who the hell is this? She wasn't
that mean, but it was, you know, and he explained,
I'm with the military, I'm a commander, I got this guy,
I got a woman, I got a kid. And she's like, okay,

(01:17:02):
you know, well, you know, we got society here or something.
And it says to her, can you locate where we are?

Speaker 6 (01:17:08):
And she goes, yeah, I got your reading coming up here.

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
You're like on a radio. She's like, well, yeah, you're
broadcasting here. We're eighteen clicks away or something or other.
And they figure out, oh, uh, that way, Like I
don't know, she said, we're like one hundred and eighty

(01:17:32):
degrees from where you're at, about twenty miles away, and
he's like, all right, I'll do a reverse heading of
three sixty jan Michael Vincent's like, yeah, you guys do that.
I'm getting on my motorcycle and I'm going there.

Speaker 6 (01:17:44):
Yeah, I'm just going to start riding. Come on, Billy,
get on my get on my motorcycle, shirtless and let's go.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
And he does this while they're trying to talk on
the radio, so he's rubbing his engine while Potpart is
on the mic, and it was like, dude, and you're
just like five minutes waiting new I gotta beat cheeks
and get out of here. And finally he cuts out
and George mcpart for the I guess this is again

(01:18:13):
we're missing all the animosity. But he's like, all right,
one of our guys is showing up. But hey, don't
hold it against us. He doesn't represent the.

Speaker 6 (01:18:22):
Yeah. But and that's again that's never played. They've never
brought to Fruition. They don't. They don't go anywhere else
with that. The end of the movie is like forty
five seconds away from that line, and it just shows
them on the motorcycle pulling up to to like all
these people coming out from Albany farmland and like cheering

(01:18:44):
them on as they drive up. Adam, there's gonna been
more mountain men. They don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
And the thing that's funny is he pulls away on
the motorcycle from their spot. He's got no bearing, no heading,
no compass, nothing. He just boom and he gets on
a he comes up to a highway and I just
had to laugh. Understand, we're in desolation here. People don't
exist anymore. He looks over his shoulder like four times

(01:19:11):
before he changes lanes in case there's traffic.

Speaker 6 (01:19:17):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:19:18):
But now he's on a road and it's winding. He's
like cutting curves and all this stuff. He's like, how
do you know where the hell you're going? And boom
he shows up. A couple of people greet him on
the road, and then a swarm comes out of the
landscape to all greet them in hero fashion, slow motion
hero finale, I suppose you want to call it. They

(01:19:42):
made it to Albody and that's the movie.

Speaker 6 (01:19:49):
I guess, like, like, that's such a weird ending, even
for the seventies.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
I mean, so you got to Albody, what then, or
you know, what did you accomplish outside of there's people? Okay?
I guess like Albany has been unaffected. There's no floods,
there's no radiation.

Speaker 6 (01:20:09):
The roads look nice and the grass is cut.

Speaker 2 (01:20:12):
Yeah, they had trees, they had roads, fences.

Speaker 6 (01:20:15):
Every it looks like they're dressed and bathed.

Speaker 2 (01:20:20):
I guess Albany was about the largest city that would
not be targeted in a nuclear blast, so we're that
we're going with, and also can evade cataclysmic flooding that
took place a few hundred miles down the map. I'm

(01:20:41):
really trying to go with the logic here. I'm trying
to follow their their ration. It's not working for me.
I'm sorry. If Detroit's underwater, relatively certain Albany would be affected.
They're pretty close to one of the Great Lakes too
over there, but maybe.

Speaker 6 (01:20:56):
Not, I guess not.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
I gotta check elevations.

Speaker 6 (01:21:02):
And they don't give you a chance to even fully
understand or realizing it, Like it would almost be better
had they had just let them show up and pull
into Albany and it'd be a completely completely big ghost town,
you know, like nobody there. And then as they get
out of the vehicle, people start to slowly come out

(01:21:23):
of the different homes and houses to greet them, and
that's when they realize that they're safe and that they've
made it to their destination. See now you're talking about okay,
that makes sense now instead of hey, just right off
where we're You know, it didn't. Nothing ended it make
sense at all.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
I still don't know why Albany was a target because
it wasn't until they were almost there that this new
radio transmission came up, So you were still chasing a
recording this whole time when jam V rides in, the

(01:22:05):
only communication they ever had with anybody in Albany just
took place a couple of minutes ago, so there would
be no reason for this heroic welcome, like you finally
made it after all this time. He's like, no, who
the hell are you? The only person that would know
they were coming and was the woman on the radio,
So we get this heroes welcome for no damn reason.

(01:22:27):
We're in Albany for no damn reason, and everybody in
Albany has survived perfectly for no damn reason.

Speaker 6 (01:22:36):
It's that doesn't need to be a reason.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
I'm just happy they made it across this cataclysmic pose
apocalyptic radioactive landscape. I going with the happy ending here.

Speaker 6 (01:22:52):
Yeah, I suppose. I guess that's what they wanted to do, so.

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):
All I can say is this The land mass was
pretty badass.

Speaker 6 (01:23:02):
It was super cool.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
There.

Speaker 6 (01:23:04):
You got my son's looking for a new car. If
he had that, I wouldn't be mad.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
You would if he was using your guest credit card.

Speaker 6 (01:23:13):
Either that of the monkey mobile.

Speaker 2 (01:23:17):
Yeah, now you're onto something, of course that would probably
you know, the insurance on that thing. Holy crimp.

Speaker 6 (01:23:24):
Just so then Florida.

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
Absolutely, But yeah, that's that's our movie. We we had
World War three Playboy magazines blew up a military facility.
They got two badass trucks out of the motor pool,
they crashed one and they made it the almony.

Speaker 6 (01:23:48):
Done. What else you're looking for?

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
It sounds like an elevator's pitch, and that was actually
the script. I want to see the director's cut with
the other forty minutes material that they got rid of,
because something tells me there's another movie in there.

Speaker 6 (01:24:04):
Somewhere forty four minutes as an entire TV show episode.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
Yeah, I mean that's that's a significant drop in content
right there. You know, you basically got rid of one
third to one happier film almost. It's it seems significant
to me, especially given a movie that didn't have a
lot of significance. World blows up, we drive through the wasteland.

(01:24:33):
I think you got room for more materials all I'm saying,
but I'll say this still still kind of a cool
movie to watch, just just for the vehicle alone.

Speaker 6 (01:24:47):
I mean, it's not as good as Night Rider or
the A Team or even the Monkey Mobile. It's not
as good as the Pink Panthers car. You've seen that, right,
You've seen the Pink Panthers car.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
You're starting to offend me here, Come on, Landmaster is
pretty bad.

Speaker 6 (01:25:05):
I don't know if it's as good as the Time
Cops car.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
Oh that that was just a slid. You know what
we should do is have like one of.

Speaker 6 (01:25:15):
Those things where you rate the different vehicles against each other,
and so you'd have to put the Landmaster up against say,
the trucks from Monster Trucks.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
You want a movie vehicle bracket, movie vehicle bracket. Yes,
we could probably get cock that. We'd take a little
time to put it together, but I think I can
probably tell you at least what would make the final four,
and that would have Batman's Tumblr.

Speaker 6 (01:25:48):
Batman's Tumblr versus Grandpa's Dragula.

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
Well to see, now you're just going for sentimentality.

Speaker 6 (01:25:58):
Have you not seen the Dragula, Oh yeah, I have.
I think it's awesome. It's the casket with pipes on it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:07):
I think uh, Paul Revere and the Raiders had something
similar to it was like it was like a glass
casket coffin and they made it into a hot rod.
The real wheels were all souped up and all that
from the sixties and seventies.

Speaker 6 (01:26:20):
Yeah, and it has to be it has to be
a vehicle that is not exist in the real world.
So you couldn't take like the Dodge Challenger from Fast
and the Furious or any of the cars from Fast
and Furious. But you could include the submarine from Fast.

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
And the Furious. Well now, yeah, I don't know what
that was.

Speaker 6 (01:26:40):
Or a Pontiac Fiero that you can include the Pontiac
Viero that gets shot into space from Fast and the Fears.
That could be included.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):
Why would that be included because that was an actual vehicle.

Speaker 6 (01:26:52):
What what is it? No, they modified it to go
into space.

Speaker 2 (01:26:59):
So almost like the game. It has like James fond
Lotus that went underwater.

Speaker 6 (01:27:05):
It has a stick shift and it and he's in
the Tyree Tyrese is steering it. He's like moving the
wheel in space like that's somehow like it's a jet
ski like like the front wheels and started it. That's
what we need to do. How many how many teams
are in the Does it start with sixty four and
move his way down during March madness?

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
Yeah? They may have even expanded it now the sixty
six or because they have like a play in where
a couple of straggle teams play each other for a
final spots.

Speaker 6 (01:27:36):
I bet you we could find sixty four outrageous movie
vehicles and work our way down through them.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
Could happen? Could happen? I kind of like the batpod too,
that big fat tire motorcycle. Yeah, that one.

Speaker 6 (01:27:53):
That thing's pretty sweet. If I put it up, if
I put it up against the A Team van, what
you're gonna do? Lose? That's what you're gonna do.

Speaker 2 (01:28:02):
Yeah, But again that's a that's a real world. That
was just a van. Would cool tires or.

Speaker 6 (01:28:10):
The coyote, the coyote from Hardcastle McCormick.

Speaker 8 (01:28:15):
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, right, you're yeah,
you're stretching, But yeah, I think that probably be an
early round exit right there.

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
Maybe I think the tumblr would have to be a
one number one seed.

Speaker 6 (01:28:31):
It was a Coyote X. It was a custom built
sports car so you could use it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):
And then you got doctor Frankenstein's from Death Race. Yeah,
I mean you could have some fun with this. I
could see that. Well, all right, that would be damn
nationaley I'm uh, I'm gonna say, check it out. It's
just cool to watch his vehicle thunder through the landscape
as long as you don't think too much. And hey,

(01:29:00):
as I think we prove each in every episode. Thinking
in our movies is not the good thing to do
to enjoy them. That's our job.

Speaker 6 (01:29:07):
We do. Wagon, the Duke Wagon, the speaker truck from
Mad Max Fury Road. The dou Wagon. That's what it's called.
It's called the dou Wagon.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
I think Paul's not going to sleep tonight.

Speaker 6 (01:29:21):
I'm gonna be looking for do you know what I'm
talking about. It's got flamethrowers on it and giant speakers.
It's called the dou Yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (01:29:28):
And you need someone playing the guitar on it.

Speaker 6 (01:29:30):
Heck yeah, son, I mean that's that's that's Elite eight.

Speaker 2 (01:29:35):
Balls Paul's going down a rabbit hole in bed tonight.
I'm sure of it. For real. The phone's gonna be
going off at doing the morning. Hey what about this one?
All right? Well, Paul, then why don't you tell people
where they can find more of your content.

Speaker 6 (01:29:52):
Screen ran dot com. I got some older stuff still
floating around there that's not very political. If you want
to read your entertainment news without politics and Twitter, occasionally
I'll throw something on there about me fishing at the
moment or board games. Maybe you like board games.

Speaker 2 (01:30:11):
You gotta sell this a little harder, Brokay, he's at
movie Paul, That's where you'll find him.

Speaker 6 (01:30:17):
I got to search for it. I like people to
work for it. It feels better when you work for it,
when you.

Speaker 2 (01:30:22):
Get your cultivating mystery. Is that what you're doing? Correct?
All right? As for myself, you can see me daily
over at Townhall dot com. I've got a media column there.
It's called Rift from the Headlines. Also on the front
page of Red State, where I've also got a twice
weekly podcast there is called Liable Sources, covering more of

(01:30:42):
than mayhem in the outmoded media, and you can hear
more of me here at kale RN. Next Thursday, it's
going to be me and Ortie Packer going through the
vital entertainment information on the culture Shift. And every Tuesday
I'm here at eight and a half with the ever
effervescent Aggie Reagan on the Cocktail Lounge where we discuss

(01:31:03):
all types of cultural entertainment, sports and frivolous items just
to distract you and entertain you away from the mayhem.
And if you need more of me than that, let's
face it, you do if you head over to shitter.
I am at Martini Shark. All right, Paul and I.
Now we've got two weeks in front of us to
come up with another gem to just belch out in

(01:31:25):
front of you for your entertainment purposes here at Disasters
in the Making,