Flop House 2024 BoCo TEASER!

Dan McCoy

[0:00] Hey there, it's Dan, reminding you that the Flophouse simply could not happen without the support of listeners like you.

[0:06] We provide the nonsense for your ears while you're commuting or doing laundry or performing life-saving brain surgery,

[0:12] and you provide the funding that keeps us pumping out the show week after week.

[0:16] It's a symbiotic relationship, so won't you be the Venoms to our Eddie Brock and go to MaximumFun.org slash join and become a sustaining member?

[0:25] As a small thank you at the $5 a month level, you'll get access to MaxFun's back catalog of bonus content, including years of Flophouse material.

[0:34] Here's a free taste of just one of this year's bonus episodes.

Elliott Kalan

[0:38] Dan, what do we do on this podcast about bad movies?

Dan McCoy

[0:40] This is a podcast where we talk about a bad movie.

[0:44] This one was 1997 Spawn, and boy is it 1997 bottled, distilled and bottled up, and given back to me years later.

[0:55] In a form that I can say, I didn't like this at the time, but now I'm kind of nostalgic for it.

Elliott Kalan

[1:01] Nostalgia truly is the sweetest balm that takes the crap of yesteryear and turns it into the delicacy of today.

[1:09] Only for the people who knew it was crap originally, though.

[1:13] Yeah.

[1:13] Yeah, it's as if Red Bull aged like wine.

[1:17] How do you know it doesn't?

[1:19] Gotta try.

[1:20] All right.

[1:20] Find me some 100-year-old Red Bull.

[1:23] I said that like I was the host of Family Feud.

[1:26] Show me 100-year-old Red Bull.

[1:28] Red Bull.

[1:29] Sorry, zero people said that.

[1:32] Most of them knew it's not a thing that exists.

[1:34] Yeah, most of them.

[1:36] It's exciting that we're in Los Angeles because we're about to tell you a story about the war between heaven and hell,

[1:42] as represented through some of the worst CGI ever put forth in a movie.

[1:48] Shall we talk about this movie, Spawn?

[1:49] Let's talk about Spawn.

[1:50] Before we talk about the movie, Spawn, I want to talk to you about the...

[1:53] So who here is familiar with the comic book, Spawn?

[1:56] All right.

[1:57] Okay, not bad.

[1:58] Spawn created by Todd McFarlane, one of the founders of Image Comics.

[2:02] The story of a guy who goes to hell and comes back with a cape so big it blots out the sun.

Stuart Wellington

[2:08] I mean, I kind of like, I feel like modern superhero design is so keyed around not having capes that he's like,

[2:14] what if he was more cape than character capes?

Elliott Kalan

[2:18] I feel like he kind of helped kill capes because he used up all the material.

[2:21] When they design more heroes, they're like, I wish I could put a cape on him, but I can't.

[2:24] So I guess...

Dan McCoy

[2:25] Spawn wasn't here yesterday.

Elliott Kalan

[2:27] Clean me out.

[2:28] Excuse me, do you have any red cape material?

[2:31] Sorry, Spawn's here.

[2:31] Oh, don't have a tale to tell you.

Dan McCoy

[2:34] This guy with some living change bought it all up.

Elliott Kalan

[2:37] I kept saying, is that enough cape?

[2:39] And he kept saying, more cape.

Stuart Wellington

[2:41] Yeah, I was standing next to his table and like, say when, and he just didn't.

Elliott Kalan

[2:49] Yeah.

[2:50] So let's talk about it.

[2:51] Okay, the movie starts as every good movie does, with a voiceover over CGI flames,

[2:56] as we are told the story of how the Lord of Hell, Malabolgia,

[2:59] a character who has a design that didn't look great in the comics and looks even worse in a film,

[3:05] has set, all the demons in this are either, are super weirdly shaped.

[3:09] There's really only two of them.

[3:10] Malabolgia has a huge pot belly and a big head of red hair,

[3:13] and a long jaw that goes out way farther in the bottom than the top.

Dan McCoy

[3:17] Yeah, I mean, it, I mean, I kind of liked the way it looked in the comic.

[3:22] As silly as it was, like, it works in a way there that it doesn't work here.

[3:26] Yeah.

[3:26] But it did feel like Todd McFarlane was like, what's going to be really scary is

[3:29] if all of the proportions are really weird and like, they don't like,

[3:34] what if his jaw didn't match the top of his jaw?

[3:37] Yeah.

[3:37] It would just make it hard to bite things, I guess.

Stuart Wellington

[3:39] Yeah, he looks like a hyena man.

[3:40] The, I guess, here's some fun facts from special effects mastermind Steve Kostansky.

[3:45] He says, first, the 3D model they used was originally for American Werewolf in Paris.

[3:51] Oh.

[3:52] And, oh yeah, it's pretty good news you can use.

[3:55] And also that they originally made like a rod puppet that they just ended up scrapping and not using.

[4:01] But I have a picture on my phone of that, so I can show it to you after the show.

[4:04] Wow, cool.

[4:04] I can see it.

[4:04] You can show it individually to everyone here after the show.

Elliott Kalan

[4:07] Yeah, come up to Dan, and I'll send it to him, and then he'll show you.

[4:10] If you know the password, I guess.

[4:11] Yeah.

[4:12] Yeah, let's airdrop it to all of you.

[4:14] Yeah.

[4:15] Yeah.

[4:16] Just turn your security off.

[4:17] Oh, man.

[4:18] Anyway, making Malibuja even scarier is that they could not get his mouth

[4:22] to animate properly for talking, I guess.

[4:24] So he just opens his mouth, and the voice of Frank Welker, Dr. Claw.

[4:28] Yeah, Dr. Claw.

[4:29] Yeah.

[4:29] Frank Welker's done a lot of voices, but he's doing the Dr. Claw voice here.

[4:32] Yeah.

[4:32] He's the leader of hell.

[4:32] He got his doctorate, right?

Stuart Wellington

[4:34] He got his doctorate.

[4:35] He's not just Mr. Claw.

Elliott Kalan

[4:36] Yeah, he's a medical doctor, actually.

[4:38] But his doctorate is in English literature.

[4:39] That's the thing.

[4:40] Yeah.

[4:41] So here's the thing.

[4:42] You have to imagine that Inspector Gadget was in a battle with the devil all that time.

Dan McCoy

[4:48] That's all for that teaser, but I wanted to let you know that we'll be dropping at least three more bonus

[4:52] episodes throughout the year, focusing on the flopography of schlockmeister Graydon Clark,

[4:57] whom you may remember as the director of the mutant cat film Uninvited that we covered in our first episode

[5:02] with Gillian Flynn.

[5:03] First, we're going to tackle Joysticks, a trashy 80s sex comedy set in the most sensual location of all,

[5:09] a video arcade, with an iconic performance from future White Lotus star John Grease as King Vidiot.

[5:17] Then we'll discuss one of the two movies both released in 1990 about the Lombada.

[5:22] This one, The Forbidden Dance.

[5:24] This is the one with future Mulholland Drive star Laura Herring as an Amazon princess who comes to America to use the power of sexy dance to save the rainforest.

[5:33] And then we're going to cover Star Games, the only one of the three I haven't seen,

[5:37] but it features a late-life performance from Tony Curtis,

[5:41] and the video box has some kind of sad clown in like a space triangle, like he's trapped in the phantom zone.

[5:46] So I'm very excited to see what is up with that clown.

[5:50] On top of that, no guarantees just yet, but I hear rumblings from Stuart

[5:54] that he wants to run another campaign of his popular Flop Tales actual play RPG series,

[6:01] which you can only hear in our bonus episodes.

[6:04] And just to give you a taste of some of the bonuses we put out in previous years,

[6:08] there's our Bratz DVD commentary,

[6:10] our Cats DVD commentary,

[6:12] a Country Bears commentary,

[6:14] a live Battlefield Earth show,

[6:16] a couple of crossovers with the Greatest Generation podcast,

[6:19] we did some bad TV episodes on stuff like Small Wonder,

[6:23] Rubik the Amazing Cube,

[6:24] Studio 60,

[6:25] we did a whole episode that was just Radio Zork,

[6:28] look, I cannot list them all,

[6:30] but if you want access to this library,

[6:32] and more importantly,

[6:33] want to keep the show you've loved and or tolerated going all these years,

[6:38] head to MaximumFun.org

[6:41] slash donate

[6:42] to become a member at the $5 or more level.

[6:45] And to all our listeners,

[6:46] whether you support the show financially,

[6:48] or can't quite swing it right now,

[6:50] thank you so much for listening.

[6:53] We quite literally do it because of you.

[6:55] Thanks.

Flop House 2024 BoCo TEASER!

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