Episode #391 - Critters, with Steven Kostanski

[0:00] On this episode we discuss Critters the second best movie featuring Critters

[0:30] Hey everyone and welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy. Hey, it means you were

[0:39] willing to. Okay, that's who that was. I'm Elliot Kalin. No jokes. And we are

[0:45] joined by a very special guest today. I'm so excited that he's here. Let me

[0:49] lay out these credits. Writer, director of Psycho Goreman and Manborg. Co-writer,

[0:54] co-director of The Void and Father's Day. Director of Leprechaun Returns. And he's

[1:01] the FX artist who melted Nicolas Cage's face in Mandy. And he's also a buddy of

[1:06] mine. That's the best credit you can ever have. Steve Kostansky. Thank you.

[1:10] Hey guys. Thanks very much for having me. It's an honor to be here. I mean I

[1:15] don't know why you said ah when you said that's the best credit you could ever

[1:18] have because really when you think about it he's complimenting himself. Yes. I don't know. I feel like

[1:24] friendship is the greatest gift of all and I appreciate it. That's why we're friends.

[1:30] Specifically his friendship is the greatest gift of all. That's what Stu says. Yeah. Hey, what Stu says goes.

[1:36] Yeah, it's Stu's rules. My therapist is all about helping me establish Stu's

[1:42] rules aka boundaries aka stools. What's healthy? Stools. Stools, stools. Yeah. Stools, stools. They're healthy.

[1:50] They're firm but not too firm. It's everything you need in a stool. Stools, stools. They're cool, not for fools. They're appropriately long. Slide out easy. Find them in school.

[2:00] Mm-hmm. Oh wow. So what are we doing this here podcast, Dan? This is mostly a double entendre podcast but it is also a podcast. Guys, how has there never been a James Bond

[2:10] a James Bond lady named double entendre? How has that not been the name of a

[2:15] character? I mean it must have been on the fucking whiteboard for one of the

[2:18] Austin Powers sequels, right? Yeah, you're right. Probably, probably. And they just

[2:23] didn't get to it. They're like, fuck. Okay, next one for Austin Powers. There never was a next one.

[2:27] It's gonna get a reboot. Yeah, like a legacy sequel where it's

[2:33] like not a sequel of the second or third one but the first one only. So they can bring back Liz Hurley. No, they're gonna do the thing.

[2:42] First, they're gonna do the thing where it's Austin Powers Jr. and it's a kid

[2:46] prequel character. People are gonna fucking hate it. Yeah, a real James Bond Jr. scenario. Exactly.

[2:52] Yeah, James Bond Jr. of course was James Bond's nephew so the junior aspect is a strange thing.

[2:57] Yeah, it's a mystery. It's because James Bond famously was celibate, right? James Bond's

[3:04] brother's wife is like, I would like to name our son James Bond Jr. and her husband's like, I don't

[3:12] feel comfortable with that. I'm not sure I understand what's going on.

[3:17] Just go with it. And the kid had a drinking problem too, right? In James Bond Jr., yeah,

[3:23] he also had a drinking problem. Yeah, and he was horrified by the things he'd seen and the

[3:27] things he'd done. Well, I was about to explain the show and none of these things are related

[3:32] really to the... Well, this is mostly a James Bond Jr. kind of retcon podcast where we do a

[3:38] reboot of James Bond Jr. Just a deep dive into James Bond Jr. Yeah, that's what I came here for.

[3:45] More of a digression podcast into the things, you know, we sort of remember. Now,

[3:51] here's the only reason I wish James Bond Jr. had been more successful because then it could have

[3:55] gotten silly. It would have gotten Pappy Bond, the old man James Bond, would tag along for

[4:00] adventures. Yeah, it was not a secret agent. He would just go with them on adventures. That's

[4:04] my guess, but we never got to see that. And then there'd be like a super gritty old man Bond thing

[4:09] where like it's like super like x-rated and shit and you see his dog. Yeah, yeah. Like Logan. And

[4:16] I was going to say we'd go in the other direction. Do you see his dog and Logan? No, you don't.

[4:21] They couldn't. He was so dehydrated. He looked like a little raisin.

[4:25] Is that what happens when you're dehydrated? Yeah, raisins up.

[4:29] Is it like on the pool, though? So wait a minute. Temperature thing.

[4:36] That male anatomy is like one of those like water snake tubes that kids can play with.

[4:41] Yes. Uh-huh. I mean, I guess in a certain sense, it's true since it's filled with bladders of

[4:47] liquid blood. Your bladders in the shower bladder is a term that can be used for like,

[4:54] like, you know, you use a bladder and like special effects for anything.

[4:57] Oh, I know. I know. I know. I want to hear Dan James playing special effects to Steve

[5:04] because Dan's a little bit more. There's not key bladders in anyway. Oh, that's how they work.

[5:10] Well, we've gotten Dan. Dan, tell him what a squib is. Make sure he knows what a squib is.

[5:16] Yeah, I wasn't telling him what it was. I was telling you who seemed to be confused about my

[5:20] usage of the word bladder. Mm hmm. Anyway, you know that sometimes the blood in movies is fake.

[5:26] Uh-huh. Only sometimes. Only sometimes. Yeah, like the old time fake blood. It was made out

[5:33] of Robert. It was Robert Caro syrup. That's syrup made out of the blood of Robert Caro.

[5:38] Yeah. Oh, Robert Caro, of course, one of America's great biographers.

[5:42] Thank you for giving us due respect at the end of that.

[5:46] I guess he's listening. He's about to get pissed. I didn't want him to get mad.

[5:49] And so he'd be yelling at his wife, Ina. Ina, I need to write a

[5:52] angry letter to the Flaw Powers. Robert. He's got a heavy accent.

[5:55] Get back to writing about LBJ. Don't waste time with us.

[5:59] Please. So what do we do on this podcast, Dan? Wait, I just want to say, if Robert Caro,

[6:02] if you are listening, please stop listening and finish that last book on LBJ. I want to

[6:05] read it so badly. And I want you to finish it before you can no longer write books.

[6:09] Dan, what do we do on this podcast, as Stu said?

[6:12] This is a podcast where, well, normally we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it. In this case,

[6:17] we watch a movie that I think I think it's fair to say ahead of time. I don't know where everyone's

[6:23] going to land on this reviewing, but we all have affection for this movie of some kind.

[6:28] It's called Critters. We're watching it because of a contest winner who has been tweeting at us

[6:34] under the handle Do Critters Next for years and finally got their dream by winning a Flaw Powers

[6:42] contest and forcing our hand, forcing us to Do Critters Next, which is now.

[6:46] This Twitter critter finally got their dream. I can only assume this Twitter

[6:50] critter also used the same handle for his OnlyFans account that he messaged his various

[6:55] performers. So, yeah, we watched the movie Critters from the 80s.

[7:00] Yeah, from 1986 specifically. Let's narrow it down. It didn't get released every year.

[7:07] Dee Wallace, that kid who became Scott Grimes.

[7:12] The way you say that, Dan, it makes it sound like Dee Wallace was the kid who became Scott Grimes.

[7:17] Those are two separate people.

[7:20] Dee Wallace continuing her scream queen.

[7:23] A scream queen.

[7:24] Just a distraught 80s mom.

[7:26] Kind of like scream mom performances. That's what I was saying, like scream mom.

[7:29] Yeah.

[7:29] Scream mom style of character.

[7:31] Yeah.

[7:31] What a good idea for a TV show.

[7:33] Scream mom.

[7:36] So we mentioned that this movie came out in 1986 and it's time for Stewart to make a little bit

[7:40] of online on-air apology because a few episodes ago, I mentioned that the Iron Maiden album

[7:46] Somewhere in Time came out in 1987. It actually came out in 1986 as some very,

[7:52] let's say, helpful people on the internet were reminding me.

[7:55] They're totally cool dudes. Everybody's cool.

[7:58] Not annoying.

[7:59] To be fair to them, Stu, you did create a unique injustice in the world.

[8:05] A huge injustice fight misnumbering the year of that Iron Maiden album.

[8:10] Yeah.

[8:10] Well, they were all very cool. Chill about it. Cool dudes.

[8:14] Okay.

[8:16] Now, I want to say something about Critters to return to the subject.

[8:20] Wait, before we do that, I will say.

[8:21] Well, Dan just pulled out his phone, so buckle up.

[8:23] I also want to apologize for an Iron Maiden-related mistake I made on a different podcast.

[8:27] On our sister maximum fun podcast, Be Potting You, I mentioned that Iron Maiden had written

[8:32] a song about the TV show The Prisoner.

[8:33] As a genuinely helpful person on Twitter who was very polite about it

[8:36] reminded me they had two songs, at least, about The Prisoner, the TV show.

[8:40] Wait, there's two?

[8:41] There's The Prisoner and there's Back in the Village.

[8:43] And I had forgotten The Prisoner.

[8:44] I'd only remembered Back in the Village.

[8:46] But anyway.

[8:46] Inside us all, there are two Iron Maiden songs about The Prisoner.

[8:50] One good.

[8:51] They're both pretty good, actually.

[8:52] Yeah.

[8:53] No, I just wanted to say that the director of Critters, Stephen Herrick,

[8:57] has kind of an interesting career because he came out of the gate strong with Critters.

[9:01] Yeah.

[9:02] Bill and Ted's excellent adventure.

[9:04] Uh, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.

[9:07] Wow.

[9:07] Getting weaker, but often still memorable.

[9:11] Still a classic.

[9:12] I don't know if I'd say classic, but a fondly memorable film.

[9:14] I can't stress this enough.

[9:16] In Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, that babysitter dies in like the first five minutes.

[9:20] Yeah.

[9:20] That's incredible.

[9:21] Cut to the chase and the chase being the chase across the River Styx.

[9:25] I don't know.

[9:25] Well, but that's the thing is I really appreciate when a movie does that.

[9:28] For instance, while watching Critters, I was like, and we'll get this when we turn on the movie,

[9:32] they spend a lot of time hiding what the Critters look like.

[9:35] When the poster just shows a Critter standing right there.

[9:38] And that was a weird move.

[9:39] It's edging, dude.

[9:40] And I just love that in Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead,

[9:42] they're like, you know, the babysitter's going to die.

[9:45] Let's just get it over with.

[9:46] Yeah, like in Drive My Car.

[9:47] This dude's in a car like immediately.

[9:49] Boom.

[9:51] Quickly wrap up the filmography portion.

[9:54] It's in golden eye.

[9:55] James Bond just shoves that gold right in his eye in the first scene.

[9:59] Uh, the.

[10:00] Mighty Ducks a big hit, the Disney Chris O'Donnell Three Musketeers lesser, but then a bid for

[10:08] respectability with Mr. Holland's Opus, a lot of people fond of that, 101 Dalmatians

[10:14] was a big hit.

[10:16] To have done Critters and Mr. Holland's Opus in one career, it's like Wes Craven doing

[10:20] Nightmare on Elm Street and also that Violin of the Heart movie or whatever, it's called

[10:24] Music of the Heart, you know the one I'm talking about, with the violins.

[10:27] And it's got Shocker in it too.

[10:35] Post 101 Dalmatians, a bit of a downturn, you got Holy Man, Rockstar, and Man of the

[10:42] House all one after another, so that kind of seemed to have killed off his sort of major

[10:48] motion picture career.

[10:51] And unfortunately, Rockstar I think killed off, for a while at least, the chance of getting

[10:55] a real biopic about Judas Priest, which is too bad, because that's something I'd love

[10:58] to see.

[10:59] Now, yeah, I mean, I feel like this, well, as we go through the movie, I'm sure we'll

[11:04] mention some of the cast, I mean, we got Billy Zane, we have Lynn Shea, who's been in like,

[11:09] I think she's been in the most movies out of anyone in this movie.

[11:13] Well, because it's a New Line Cinema movie, so obviously, Bob Shea's going to put her

[11:17] in there.

[11:18] And the thing is, you know it's a New Line Cinema movie because, at least the version

[11:22] I watched, you get both New Line logos, the current one, and the old one, yeah, that was

[11:28] nice.

[11:29] The one I watched just had the old one, and, oh, I love that logo, it's so spooky.

[11:33] You're watching like a steelbook or something, right?

[11:37] I got my friend Pierce to stream it last night, so we could all watch it and chat while watching

[11:41] it, so I guess he found a copy of those, just the original logo, which is the best New Line

[11:46] logo.

[11:47] Now, Steve, before we get into the plot of the movie, do you have any particular attachment

[11:52] to Critters?

[11:53] Did you have Critters dolls growing up?

[11:56] What's up?

[11:57] I mean, it's the same attachment that I have to like, any other small monster movie from

[12:01] that era.

[12:02] I mean, it came out the year I was born, so, I wasn't...

[12:06] Like, Ghoulies, Munchies, Gremlins...

[12:09] Yeah, all that stuff, it all was just kind of like orbiting around me in the video store

[12:13] growing up as a kid.

[12:14] I remember my friend Kieran pushing it on me, and being like, oh, you're gonna love

[12:19] this movie, and he was really hyping up the Bounty Hunters subplot, being like, that's

[12:27] something you'd be into, and yeah, I just remember as a kid watching it, and being really

[12:34] confused why they were leaning so hard into that one song for the first half of the movie,

[12:38] and I think...

[12:39] What is it?

[12:40] Power of the Night?

[12:41] Power of the Night?

[12:43] And upon re-watch, still kind of a baffling choice.

[12:45] I love it.

[12:46] I can't get enough.

[12:47] Yum, yum, yum.

[12:48] It seems like they're trying very hard to make a hit song out of this movie.

[12:52] But what's crazy, though, is that they push it so hard for the first, like, 30 minutes,

[12:58] where it's even to the point where D-Walse is watching the music video on the TV.

[13:02] They're building it up like he is the...

[13:05] Johnny Steele is the biggest star in the world, and then nobody recognizes him until the kid,

[13:09] and it's like, well, what was the point of that even, then?

[13:13] And then also, they drop it, and then pick up the actual, like, Critter's theme part

[13:18] way through the movie.

[13:19] Yeah, yeah.

[13:20] And then the movie ends with that, so it's almost like they had, like, a falling out

[13:23] with that Power of the Night song part way through, and we're like, you know what, we're

[13:26] not even gonna put you in the credits, because we don't like you anymore.

[13:29] It's a very weird choice.

[13:30] It's a leitmotif for when the bounty hunters leave, they no longer play Power of the Night,

[13:36] because that is the...

[13:37] That song represents the bounty hunters.

[13:39] Ah, yeah, yeah.

[13:40] Very...

[13:41] Yeah, very vulgar.

[13:43] That tracks.

[13:44] We should mention, this is part of the craze of 80s small monsters.

[13:47] It was the Reagan era, big government and big monster were out, small government and

[13:51] small monster was in.

[13:53] We know how Reagan pushed the, you know, he deregulated monsters, and then all these smaller

[13:57] monsters to proliferate.

[13:58] Slip in, yeah, slip in.

[13:59] People wanted these small monsters.

[14:00] And I think it's very funny that, so, like, this movie came out two years after Gremlins.

[14:05] Everyone is like, this is a ripoff of Gremlins.

[14:06] And the makers of the film are like, we had this script before Gremlins came out, but

[14:09] the script is essentially, it's basically the story of what E.T. was originally going

[14:14] to be, when it was still called Watch the Skies.

[14:16] So the Dee Wallace connection is very funny to me there, because it's like, it's more

[14:19] a ripoff of the unproduced script for the early version of E.T. than it is a Gremlins

[14:24] ripoff.

[14:25] Yeah.

[14:26] Well, and they've also used that excuse for Ghoulies as well, because I believe, did that

[14:29] come out, like, around the same time as Gremlins, or maybe just after?

[14:32] But people label it as a ripoff, but actually, it was written before, apparently.

[14:37] It's also one of those things that's such a, it's not a real excuse, because it's not

[14:40] like when a movie is released, that's the first time anyone hears about it.

[14:43] Like, movie makers know what kinds of movies are being made, and if they know a big company

[14:47] is making a movie about a certain topic, they may suddenly take interest in a script that

[14:51] maybe they weren't that interested in before.

[14:52] Well, that's the other thing, like, it may not have been a ripoff, but it can still be

[14:55] a cash-in if they're like, oh, we have this unproduced script that is a bunch of little

[15:01] monsters in a small town.

[15:02] Speaking of which-

[15:03] Now, little monsters, ironically, the monsters are not that little.

[15:06] No.

[15:07] They're human-sized.

[15:08] They're human-sized monsters.

[15:09] They're Howie Mandel-sized.

[15:10] They're taller than the human character who's a child.

[15:12] I just wanted to say, because Munchies has been invoked twice, I found that the daughter

[15:18] character, the teen daughter of that actress, was also in Munchies, so she has two, you

[15:24] know, two of these small monsters.

[15:26] Yeah, she's-

[15:27] Hits under her belt.

[15:28] She's a pro, yeah.

[15:29] Hits might be a little strong for Munchies, but-

[15:30] She was in Munchies the month that, or Munchie, because they're two different movies.

[15:34] Yeah, because they're very different.

[15:35] I think Munchies, Munchie is the cute one, right?

[15:39] Munchie is the-

[15:40] I mean, cute is an interesting way to describe it.

[15:42] Well, it's supposed to be cute.

[15:43] He flies around on a pizza, it's pretty cute.

[15:45] Munchie is the one with, it's what, Dom DeLuise doing the voice?

[15:48] Yeah.

[15:49] Yeah.

[15:50] Oh, yeah.

[15:51] She's in the Harvey Korman one.

[15:52] Munchies.

[15:53] Yeah, yeah, the one where it's the little monster's looking up a lady's skirt right

[15:56] on the box.

[15:57] Yeah.

[15:58] The monster-

[15:59] They're like high tops.

[16:00] The monsters in these posters, they're always doing things that are, except for Gremlins,

[16:02] but the Gremlins do amazing stuff.

[16:04] The monsters are always doing things that are so much more goofy and movement-based

[16:08] than they actually do in the films.

[16:10] Except for Critters, which is just, he's just like doing a star pose, right?

[16:14] He's just standing there looking amazing.

[16:16] He's just like, I'm a Critter, gotta love me.

[16:18] Looking incredible.

[16:19] Ladies.

[16:20] Yeah, you see every inch of him.

[16:21] And it's amazing.

[16:22] Talking about the look of the Critters, I just want to say, is it, Steven, maybe you

[16:27] know, is it Chiodo Brothers?

[16:29] How is that pronounced?

[16:30] I believe it's Chiodo Brothers, yeah.

[16:33] So they, you know, known amongst cult film favorites for Killer Clowns from Outer Space,

[16:39] but they designed the Critters, the Krites, and supposedly they're supposed to be like

[16:46] the Tasmanian Devil from Looney Tunes was kind of the inspiration for the-

[16:51] Tracks.

[16:52] I mean, I will give them a lot of credit for their kind of like in-world way of making

[16:59] the move with them balling up and like basically turning into a sonic ball and ripping around

[17:04] because it's such an easy way to just get them from point A to point B, literally just

[17:09] throwing a fur ball like down a hallway.

[17:12] It's such a brilliant production solution, yeah, that you don't have to try to make a

[17:15] puppet walk anywhere.

[17:17] It's very hard to make a puppet walk and not look like Tilda Swinton in old man makeup

[17:21] in Suspiria.

[17:24] It's a funny coincidence that we're talking about this movie right now because I am literally

[17:29] in the thick of building so many puppets and trying to figure out this exact thing.

[17:34] And so watching Critters last night, I was like, oh yeah, they like really don't-

[17:37] Just make them all balls.

[17:38] Yeah, or just, yeah, I was thinking like maybe I'll make the guys ball up and shoot around

[17:44] because yeah, making a puppet walk is, it is a very frustrating thing.

[17:48] Especially because you're working on a Popples movie, right?

[17:50] So they should just ball up into little balls, you know?

[17:52] You would think that, yeah, but it really made-

[17:55] We're talking about these little aliens, sorry to cut you off Steve, but I think we need

[17:59] to go into outer space.

[18:00] Yes, this movie begins in outer space.

[18:02] Well, I guess we're going, that was a very abrupt entry into the summary segment.

[18:06] Oh, I love it.

[18:07] Stuart was tired of all our shenanigans.

[18:08] Too many shenanigans, not enough plot.

[18:10] That's what I always say.

[18:13] That's why you've walked out of so many Terrence Malick movies.

[18:15] Too many shenanigans, not enough plot.

[18:16] Too many shenanigans, yep.

[18:18] Yeah, so we open on a maximum security prison asteroid.

[18:22] We overhear communications that there are some new prisoners being transferred.

[18:29] It is eight Krites who immediately cause an explosion and they escape.

[18:36] I'd like to take a moment to say there's supposed to be 10 Krites, but apparently they just

[18:39] killed two along the way because they were eating too much stuff, which is interesting

[18:46] to me in this intergalactic prison system where I guess you're just allowed to kill

[18:51] just like our prison system.

[18:52] I mean, they're on an asteroid.

[18:53] The big question of the whole movie is why are they bothering to take the critters to

[18:58] a prison?

[19:00] Because the solution to the rest of it is just to blow them up.

[19:02] Yeah, they seem to be treated more like invasive pests than sentient beings.

[19:07] The mythos around them is very hazy where sometimes they seem to have personality and

[19:12] are treated like sentient beings and then yeah, other times they're like bugs that need

[19:16] to be exterminated.

[19:17] I mean, they get subtitles so they can talk to one another.

[19:21] So anyway, I don't know whatever this intergalactic federation is, but they also seem to be criminals

[19:28] in my moral.

[19:31] And they hire bounty hunters.

[19:32] They don't seem to have actual guards or a police force.

[19:36] That was their first solution was bringing the bounty hunters.

[19:40] So I want to admit something that this movie, it's been so long since I saw it as a kid

[19:44] that I might as well have not even seen it.

[19:45] I remember it so little.

[19:48] And so I had no memory of the prison warden and how bonkers that costume looks and how

[19:53] great it looks.

[19:54] And I was like, hold on a second, I forgot this was in here.

[19:58] This whole opening to me, I just.

[20:00] want to say is like probably the my favorite part of the movie.

[20:03] I would argue probably the best executed sequence in the movie.

[20:06] It really starts strong and it checks all the boxes of things that I want

[20:11] in a movie which is like weird intergalactic

[20:14] like universe building like we're coming into a story

[20:19] like part way through where they're escaping we don't really see like how

[20:22] they get there and also having an establishing shot of the

[20:25] asteroid with a really cartoony like prison door shutting sound

[20:29] over top like basically when that happened I was like okay you have my

[20:32] attention critters here we go and then when the

[20:35] warden comes out and it's like a I would say like a like mojo without

[20:39] legs yeah kind of yeah like mojo like like a

[20:41] like a the an embryonic dolphin man in a chair

[20:44] and the chair is part of its body like it yeah it's a fantastic design

[20:49] uh yeah so and here's the thing wait I should point this out the critters

[20:53] super hairy this guy super smooth and hairless that's called

[20:57] that's called dynamics that's when you juxtapose two different textures yeah

[21:00] dynamics this is beautifully done hair is chaos and smoothness is justice

[21:04] that's what the movie's saying the uh the crates escape in the

[21:07] fastest ship good it's a good logo for a like an oppressive alien race in

[21:11] yeah yeah that's like post-apocalyptic uh

[21:15] like graffiti sprayed on the walls yeah uh where you're like wow this is really

[21:19] extensive normally graffiti is just like one word all crazy style

[21:24] okay just bubble letters yeah but they've got a whole ideology behind this

[21:27] graffiti yeah uh so the warden who we've already talked

[21:30] about who looks amazing uh brings in a pair of bounty hunters and

[21:34] these bounty hunters look super cool they got like cool

[21:37] leather dusters and these weird long extendo guns that hang from their hips

[21:41] and they are like weird blanks like their faces are like

[21:45] like blank uh like rubber masks because they're sort of blank men yeah

[21:50] because they're shit wait a minute because they're

[21:53] shapeshifters um they're like uh what's it no face and

[21:57] dick tracy exactly like no face and dick tracy thank you but they also like glow

[22:01] a little bit which is cool i like that effect

[22:03] um and they are given the mission to kill the krites before the krites can

[22:07] feed and spread and uh we uh we later on see these uh

[22:12] they get uh the bounty hunters have their own ship

[22:15] and the warden is like oh yeah one thing i forgot to tell you

[22:18] uh don't cause as much destruction as last time and uh

[22:22] they're heading to this planet earth here you can learn about it and so the

[22:25] bounty hunters watch uh footage of earth and

[22:30] one of them uh happens upon the music video by

[22:33] popular recording artist johnny steel the power of the night music video

[22:37] fixates and then uh we have this great sequence of the

[22:41] the bounty hunter transforming his face like melting and reforming

[22:45] to form an exact likeness of johnny steel

[22:49] uh played by uh an actor who i only know him from what like

[22:53] uh he was like michael douglas's major domo in the movie

[22:57] chorus line uh and uh yeah he's got that like

[23:02] that like hair metal kind of femme uh energy that but he's also like the

[23:07] baddest dude in the universe which i really like i really key into it's

[23:11] probably why i like anime so much so that's so that's like a real

[23:15] sephiroth guy oh yeah he's got anime hair for sure

[23:19] yeah that's that's terence man and he's mostly he's mostly a broadway performer

[23:23] like he played rum tum tugger and cats on broadway

[23:25] oh well i mean i guess it wasn't that reason but the adams family broadway

[23:29] show and he's a he's he's been a lot of broadway shows

[23:32] yeah and he's also been a big top peewee so like there's that too but

[23:35] you know show him some goddamn i think he's great i like him a lot

[23:40] uh all right i forgot i'm looking up now i forgot he was in solar babies also

[23:44] there you go okay so uh we then we get this amazing title card

[23:49] of like uh like a neon critters logo with like

[23:53] bites or claw marks on it it's great i feel like so many

[23:56] uh like retro nostalgic attempts to like capture this vibe

[24:00] do not capture correctly this is perfect i love it

[24:04] great title card yeah meanwhile on earth we're in grover's bend

[24:08] uh kansas uh where things move a little bit slower

[24:12] and people with dan's background think a little bit better

[24:16] but let me tell you about the honey we make

[24:20] pure clover honey made from the clovers out of

[24:24] old mrs anson's farm uh-huh here at grover's bends we believe that

[24:30] honey is a way of life and uh-huh to bring our damn bees back we have to

[24:36] murder you no no the bee is killing me will bring

[24:39] back your damn honey you can taste all the murder in every

[24:43] bite you know what now that i'm dead the honey

[24:47] is better uh yeah so we are introduced to the

[24:51] brown family the uh the father is jay he's a

[24:55] traditional farmer kind of an asshole kind of a jerk to everybody

[24:59] um helen is the housewife that's d wallace right

[25:02] uh the eldest daughter is april she's a bit boy crazy and recently started

[25:07] steve the dork from new york played by billy zane

[25:10] yeah this is billy zane really uh shockingly small part in this in this

[25:17] film but pretty charming for the little bit

[25:20] that he's in it yeah and he's although his hair is wild

[25:23] in this movie yeah he's got that weird rat tail thing

[25:27] on the back and as i as a as a bald man now do you think he

[25:31] looks back on that wild hair fondly and wishes

[25:34] oh i thought i thought you were gonna say that he looks back and be like when

[25:37] i had it i wasted it oh that's what i thought i didn't know

[25:39] what i had i i didn't use it properly there's he doesn't

[25:42] get too much to do in this which is weird because

[25:45] so she he plays her like boyfriend and she is

[25:50] she really wants to sleep with him and he's a little like anxious about it

[25:54] but it feels like knowing billy zane's persona

[25:56] as an actor not in real life i assume but like he should be a creepy guy who's

[26:00] trying to like seduce her with his fancy new york car

[26:04] and everything right but instead and that gives just us a reason to root when

[26:07] the critters bite his fingers off yeah but instead

[26:10] they like he's just kind of a he's just kind of a

[26:13] almost realistically anxious and uncertain of himself guy

[26:16] and there's a part where he's sitting eating dinner with the family and he's

[26:19] like oh well this is the this is the best food

[26:22] i've ever tasted and it's so funny to me because it's like

[26:25] it's such an over-the-top lee insincere compliment and you can tell he's not

[26:29] being smarmy or slimy about it he just has no idea what to say in this

[26:32] moment it goes to a compliment that is just way too big uh yeah this this corn

[26:37] on the cob you served me in this farmhouse in kansas this has got to be

[26:39] one of the best foods in the history of the world

[26:42] swedish ambrosia better fit for the gods of olympus ma'am

[26:45] well it's weird that they even push it as far as to have that little beat

[26:48] where he's in the barn and he was like climbing up to that like top level in

[26:52] the barn and he sneezes and then announces like oh i'm i'm

[26:56] allergic to hay like it's just such a like weird

[26:59] like added bit of character to him that you wouldn't expect that makes him seem

[27:04] vulnerable in a way that that character should not be

[27:07] you'd expect that hay fever to pay off in the end with it like protecting him

[27:11] from the crates oh yeah he sneezes and it blows a

[27:14] crite away or or it gives away or they're hiding

[27:16] from the crates and he sneezes and it gives away their location but instead

[27:19] it's just a it's just a really one-off joke and

[27:21] it's like did billy zane just ad-lib that on set

[27:24] possibly probably yeah it makes sense well i like that's one of the things i

[27:27] like about this movie though is like it's mean-spirited in one way in the

[27:30] sense that it has a lot of fun unleashing you know evil little critters

[27:35] on this small town but it's not mean-spirited in

[27:38] any other way you know like it's like only a couple people

[27:42] end up dying in this movie it's mostly just you know it's like

[27:46] it's a retro throwback in a similar way i mean i can see why i mean it's not

[27:49] even a retro throwback it just is beyond yeah it's just from the time it

[27:54] was made well but no no i mean like beyond the

[27:58] small monster similarities to gremlins it has

[28:02] that same feeling of like drawing on older

[28:06] horror traditions like a creature feature from like the 50s or something

[28:11] i mean i'd even go as far as to say that gremlins is a more mean-spirited movie

[28:14] than this which was a knock on at the time although i love gremlins obviously

[28:17] it's yeah i mean obviously because it's fantastic

[28:19] but they but like gremlins feels harsher than critters does which is weird

[28:23] that the big budget where's that kind of where's that whole santa claus story

[28:26] that's the same and there's nothing as when they're

[28:29] destroying the critters there's nothing as gruesome as the

[28:32] microwave scene in gremlins like mixer scene or whatever it's blender

[28:35] and gremlins like or when you see stripe melting at the end

[28:39] and you're like what the fuck like this is disgusting

[28:42] like is that what happens to me when i die

[28:46] that i have to stay inside all the time and just play video games and never see

[28:49] the sunlight that's my side of it anyway yeah critters

[28:52] is like weirdly tame i yeah yeah like as a kid i

[28:56] remember being more intense but watching it this time it's like oh

[28:59] it really isn't like like there's no big showpiece of like

[29:03] gore effects or anything it's like just a little bit of blood

[29:06] and not much else really the greatest thing they save that for the sequel i

[29:11] think the sequel is a little more excitement and invention in a strange

[29:14] way the goriest the goriest scene in it is when

[29:17] the bounty hunter's face is turning into johnny steeles because

[29:20] yeah his face essentially melt down to the skull and then fill with

[29:24] muscle goop and things like that that that's the i'm surprised i didn't

[29:27] remember that from a kid for me because i could

[29:29] could have seen that really horrifying me as a kid when the rest of the movie is

[29:33] just not that rough in a good way horrifying you

[29:36] because you're like i'll never make anything as awesome as this

[29:38] uh sequence yeah i'm okay wait this is what plastic surgery is sign me up yeah

[29:44] melt my whole face off and then put the new one on

[29:46] and so the and then the uh the youngest child in the brown family is brad he's a

[29:51] real goonie uh you know he makes his own

[29:54] fireworks he doesn't uh he doesn't want to go to school that

[29:58] sort of thing and of course my favorite

[30:00] the family's Chewy the cat.

[30:03] Chewy the cat, who they put in peril a lot and

[30:05] then repeatedly remind the audience, no, no, Chewy's okay.

[30:10] I think I counted three instances of there being concerned about Chewy and

[30:14] then making a point of showing somebody pick up Chewy and be like,

[30:18] Chewy's fine, guys, it's okay.

[30:20] It works.

[30:21] I appreciate that.

[30:22] As a cat owner, a cat lover, I was like, I can't remember Critters.

[30:26] Is the cat gonna have something bad happen to it?

[30:29] I don't like it.

[30:31] I don't like, it's, look, I get it, guys.

[30:34] Don't tweet at me about how I should be upset about all the humans that die in

[30:38] horror movies and like- Do people tweet why about that?

[30:41] Be upset about all the humans that die in real life.

[30:43] Don't worry about the horror movie humans.

[30:44] Well, but- Yeah, that's true.

[30:45] I just feel like any time that anyone expresses a sensitivity to animal

[30:50] cruelty in a film or television show, someone always shows up to be like,

[30:55] but humans are, you don't have a problem, it's all fake.

[30:58] And I'm like, yeah, I know, whatever.

[31:01] Don't tell me how to feel, what triggers me, what's your problem?

[31:06] You really took down that straw man, Dan, I'm proud of you.

[31:08] You gave him a- He made the shit out of it.

[31:10] I would say a straw man would imply- He said, how about a little fire,

[31:13] Scarecrow, and then- Yeah, no, I would say that a straw man would imply

[31:17] an entirely made up person that I'm inventing for the sake of winning an

[31:21] argument, whereas this is just a composite character- He's not the New York Times.

[31:24] If you will, this is- It's like a disclaimer at the end of a biopic.

[31:29] You know, this is like a lot of people mixed together.

[31:31] It's a composite.

[31:32] Now, if it helps at all to take some of the heat off of Dan,

[31:36] people dying in a movie, that affects me, yeah.

[31:39] Animals dying, sure.

[31:40] But if someone leaves a faucet running in a movie, I cannot deal with it.

[31:44] I am sorry.

[31:45] You better cut to another scene,

[31:46] because I cannot be there while water is running in the background.

[31:48] There's that shot where Timothee Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name,

[31:52] like, opens up the fridge and then partially closes it, and

[31:55] the shot just lingers on this open door, and I'm like, what is going on?

[32:00] Stop.

[32:01] That triggers me hard.

[32:02] It triggers me deeply, yeah.

[32:04] Yeah, because you're a dad.

[32:05] Yeah, exactly.

[32:06] That's the kind of real-life situation I've got to deal with every damn day.

[32:09] Yeah, yeah.

[32:10] Wow, Elliot's getting up.

[32:11] Elliot's leaving.

[32:13] Elliot came back.

[32:14] Okay, we're podcasting again.

[32:15] That was a quick transfer.

[32:19] And then we also have kind of another de facto member of the family, and

[32:22] that's Charlie, who's kind of like a local drunk who works as a farmhand for

[32:27] the Browns.

[32:28] And that morning, he is sleeping off a drunk in the drunk tank

[32:35] in the local police station, and he- And who's the sheriff?

[32:38] Who plays the sheriff?

[32:39] Is it what, Emmett Walsh?

[32:41] Emmett Walsh, who is clearly the biggest star in the movie.

[32:45] He's not in it a lot, and they save him for kind of big moments.

[32:49] And it's just very exciting to see a movie where Emmett Walsh is the big name,

[32:52] that they have to really shepherd and ration how they're going to use him.

[32:56] Do you think when he showed up on set, he's like, so

[32:58] am I going to be playing one of the critters?

[33:00] And they're like, no.

[33:01] I was really practicing getting into one of those Krait costumes.

[33:06] I just took a big comforter, like a big furry comforter off of my bed, and

[33:10] I just wrapped it up in me and practiced rolling around on the floor.

[33:13] Am I going to have to do that a lot?

[33:15] I got a little bruised, but I'm game for it.

[33:17] I mean, we don't know.

[33:18] He could have been in that big critter suit at the end.

[33:20] Spoiler alert, there's a big critter.

[33:22] Yeah, yeah, it's similar, again, to Tilda Swinton being the old main spirit.

[33:26] Yeah, yeah.

[33:28] It doesn't need to be, yeah, exactly.

[33:30] Okay, so- Yeah, they asked if they could make a big critter.

[33:33] They didn't ask if they should make a big critter, yeah.

[33:36] Okay, so yeah, that night, I mean, we get a bunch of character establishing stuff.

[33:43] Well, we also get a very, sorry, not to cut you off, but

[33:46] I want to point out there's a very stressful moment of them

[33:50] blowing up a Y-Wing spray-painted silver that I did not enjoy watching.

[33:56] Because I felt like- That's a classic toy that they're exploding.

[33:59] I just wanted to play with that Y-Wing, so.

[34:02] And we learned something important- Did you feel the same way about the stuffed

[34:04] E.T. doll that gets ripped up later on, or no?

[34:07] A little less.

[34:08] It was more about the Y-Wing.

[34:11] Fair.

[34:12] E.T., I can take it or leave it, to be honest.

[34:14] It's a hot take on E.T. from Steven Codd there, but yeah.

[34:17] So we learned that Charlie is a drinking problem because he thinks that aliens are invading.

[34:23] He also is a former, was going to be a major league pitcher.

[34:27] Luckily, both drinking and pitching pay off in the end for him.

[34:30] And Brad- And just as he did for Ted Danson in Cheers.

[34:35] That's right.

[34:36] Well, he wasn't a pitcher in that, I guess, but-

[34:38] Wasn't he?

[34:39] He was a relief pitcher.

[34:40] Yeah.

[34:41] He was a pitcher.

[34:42] It's the same thing.

[34:43] He was a relief pitcher because he gets messages through his tooth fillings that he thinks

[34:45] are aliens talking to him, right?

[34:47] So my question is, why did the dad hire him as a farmhand?

[34:52] I wanted there to be some moment that explained an obligation to hire him, but I didn't really

[34:57] see that being one.

[34:58] I think, yeah, it just seemed like a general pity, except for he also doesn't seem to really

[35:02] like Charlie.

[35:03] Well, he doesn't like anyone.

[35:04] Yeah.

[35:05] He doesn't like him, and Charlie, when we see him messing around, blowing shit up, it's

[35:13] like, I don't know, it seems like a pretty useless guy to have around your farm.

[35:17] Especially considering he's effectively like the hero of the Critters series, the franchise.

[35:22] He shows up in the other movies.

[35:24] Well, it's a redemption arc.

[35:25] It's like Hoosiers.

[35:26] Yeah.

[35:27] Like he overcomes.

[35:28] Yeah.

[35:29] Yeah.

[35:30] So what kind of monsters were Hoosiers?

[35:31] What kind of little monsters were Hoosiers?

[35:32] Oh, man.

[35:33] I'll tell you what kind of monsters.

[35:34] As a Hoosier, I prefer you to guard your tongue, sir.

[35:40] I think that Charlie is hired because they need a farm hand, and also the farmer wants

[35:45] better for his kids than he had.

[35:47] He doesn't want them to grow up to be farmers.

[35:49] Right.

[35:50] They keep him around as a bad example.

[35:52] Exactly.

[35:53] He wants someone to look down on.

[35:54] Yeah.

[35:55] So they can say, you're better than this.

[35:56] You're better than this.

[35:57] Expect more.

[35:58] Yeah.

[35:59] Okay.

[36:00] Yeah.

[36:01] That tracks.

[36:02] Mm-hmm.

[36:03] Yeah.

[36:04] So we get a little bit of character stuff, and then that night, the Critters land their

[36:07] spaceship in the pasture behind the Browns' farm.

[36:12] They eat one of the cows, and then they also eat a passing police patrolman and drag him

[36:17] under his car.

[36:18] Now, there's a...

[36:19] Still, at this point, we have not seen the Critters at all.

[36:21] You've not seen Critter?

[36:22] And that happens about a half hour into the movie.

[36:25] They really set up the family for a while.

[36:28] A wonderfully long 85-minute movie.

[36:31] Yeah.

[36:32] It is...

[36:33] So we're almost halfway through the movie before the Critters have done much of anything.

[36:36] Perfect.

[36:37] Yeah.

[36:38] No.

[36:39] I looked at...

[36:40] I think that the first time we get a good look at a Critter is something like 36 minutes

[36:47] in, which...

[36:48] Mm-hmm.

[36:49] Yeah.

[36:50] It's less than 90 minutes.

[36:51] So that's like over a third of the way through before our titular monsters show.

[36:56] Unless, of course, you walked into the theater or looked at the VHS box, in which case you

[37:00] saw the Critter immediately before the movie started.

[37:02] Yeah.

[37:03] Yeah.

[37:04] But Steve, what do you say?

[37:05] I've clocked this time and have realized every time I've watched this movie, I drift part

[37:11] way through wherever my mind wanders because it is such a weirdly structured movie.

[37:17] On this re-watch, I was comparing it to Halloween and how that has two parallel storylines that

[37:24] ultimately collide at the end.

[37:25] You've got Laurie and her story, and then Dr. Loomis and Myers.

[37:32] It all meets and all works together.

[37:35] But in Critters, I feel like the bounty hunters just messing around doing their own thing

[37:40] and the family on their own doing their own thing.

[37:42] There's this huge sequence in the house, and then we're cutting to the bounty hunters messing

[37:47] things up.

[37:48] Yeah.

[37:49] The bounty hunters are almost more of a comedy runner than they are an actual subplot.

[37:52] Yeah.

[37:53] Yeah.

[37:54] And I realize...

[37:55] They open a place and go, give us the Krites.

[37:56] Don't explain what a Krite is.

[37:57] Mm-hmm.

[37:58] Blow things up and then leave.

[37:59] Mm-hmm.

[38:00] Multiple times.

[38:01] Yeah.

[38:02] It's like a joke comedic for these small-town yokel types.

[38:04] Yeah.

[38:05] Oh, it's not Halloween.

[38:06] They say that, which I'm like, oh, thank goodness.

[38:08] The line you have to have.

[38:10] But I realize when the kid hops into the car with them later in the movie and they're gonna

[38:16] go after the Krites, at that moment, it really felt like, oh, this is the movie that I want

[38:23] to watch.

[38:24] Yeah.

[38:25] And it's like, why didn't that happen 25, 30 minutes into the movie where it's like,

[38:29] we have our stories meet up and that's the central conceit.

[38:34] Or push it all back and have them not meet till the very, very end.

[38:38] It's just, I've really bumped on the structuring of this.

[38:42] I think that because people peg blockbusters, the beginning of the big blockbusters to the

[38:49] late 70s and into the 80s, I think it's always a surprise to me when I go back and watch

[38:54] those movies, kind of how slowly paced they are compared to just how much space there's

[38:59] between lines of dialogue, how much time they take unfolding plots.

[39:04] And it reminds me of the last time I watched Carrie with somebody where they're like, oh,

[39:10] there's not a lot of horror stuff in this movie because most of the movie is just high

[39:14] school stuff until the prom at the end.

[39:17] And it feels like when that works really well, like in a movie like Carrie, I feel like it

[39:21] gives you this rich kind of like character world that gets torn apart, but in Critters,

[39:27] they're trying for it, but it's like not, they do an okay job of it, but they don't

[39:30] quite get all the way there to where I'm loving being with these characters.

[39:34] So there's a part of me that's like, come on, let's get the bounty hunters in here.

[39:36] Like, let's get the Critters.

[39:37] Come on, what's going on?

[39:38] I don't feel like it's ratcheting up the tension really in any way, either, like, whereas something

[39:43] like Carrie, I feel like it is like slowly building and building to a big climax.

[39:49] Yeah, I just kept hitting these moments where I was like, what are they even doing right

[39:54] now?

[39:55] Like, what's the driving force in the story at this moment?

[39:58] I definitely had trouble keeping...

[40:00] of where everybody in the Critters were

[40:02] and what they were doing at certain points.

[40:04] Yeah.

[40:05] Yeah, it got muddled.

[40:06] I do respect this movie for sort of like

[40:08] taking the time to try and develop things,

[40:11] but it is, yeah, I, you know,

[40:15] maybe 10 minutes too much of that.

[40:17] Like a more ideal version of this is like-

[40:19] 75 minutes long is what Dan says.

[40:21] Yeah, full moon.

[40:22] I think in Poltergeist,

[40:23] in Poltergeist you get such a quick

[40:26] and solid feeling of like place

[40:28] and like this, you know, suburban cul-de-sac.

[40:31] And I don't know, I don't know that Critters

[40:34] gives you all that much for the time it takes.

[40:36] I will say though, I do enjoy this more.

[40:38] Maybe it's just because it's nostalgic for me

[40:40] than what the modern version of this,

[40:41] I assume would be where it would be like five minutes in,

[40:44] everybody's dead except for the kid.

[40:46] Yeah.

[40:47] He's with the bounty hunters

[40:48] and then the story gets incredibly complicated

[40:51] and huge in scale until suddenly it's like,

[40:54] well, the Critters are,

[40:55] they're getting into the anti-matter negatron.

[40:57] We've got to shut down the bootleg drive

[40:59] and you're the only one who can get to it.

[41:01] But meanwhile, like the way that at the end

[41:03] of the first Black Panther movie,

[41:04] I was like, there's too much stuff going on right now.

[41:06] There's too many things going on.

[41:07] I can't keep track of them all.

[41:09] Well, and I think specifically for little monster movies,

[41:11] there needs to be a cozy element to it

[41:13] where the plot itself feels kind of small and contained.

[41:17] And I do think a modern version would blow out of that

[41:22] and go into space way too quickly.

[41:26] Do you think that like, because they're little,

[41:28] the threat has to be that kind of intimate small scale

[41:31] as opposed to a giant monster movie,

[41:33] you need it to be on a big,

[41:35] like Godzilla can't attack a house.

[41:37] You know, like Godzilla has to attack a city.

[41:39] But can Critters attack Godzilla?

[41:42] All right, now we're talking.

[41:44] Let's hear about it.

[41:46] Well, I mean, if they combine into that ball, they could.

[41:48] That would be a good ball and two.

[41:50] Part of the pleasures of what you're talking about

[41:52] is like they're small enough

[41:53] that they can like infiltrate a space.

[41:55] You see a small town as it slowly gets infiltrated

[41:59] by Critters or Gremlins or let's say some spiders

[42:03] and arachnophobia or whatever, you know?

[42:05] Yeah.

[42:07] But.

[42:08] So should we talk about the plot some more?

[42:10] Yeah, sure, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah.

[42:11] So the bounty hunters arrive.

[42:13] One of the bounty hunters is having trouble morphing

[42:16] until he finds the dead.

[42:17] But everyone's morphing these days.

[42:18] Yeah, he finds.

[42:19] Another damn reference to a video

[42:21] that we used to watch in the writer's room

[42:23] at the Daily Show of an impressionist

[42:25] act from 15 years ago, at least.

[42:28] It's just stuck in my head so much as like.

[42:31] Every time I hear the word morph,

[42:33] that's what I think of is that line.

[42:34] Everybody's morphing these days.

[42:35] What a clumsy way of introducing,

[42:37] I'm going to do some impressions now.

[42:41] Yeah, so this one bounty hunter,

[42:44] he morphs into the dead policeman.

[42:46] He also later on morphs into a,

[42:48] it seems like he has no control over this morphing.

[42:50] Yeah.

[42:51] Can we just go back to that dead policeman real quick?

[42:53] Did you guys clock that that was Neelix from Voyager?

[42:56] I did not.

[42:57] Oh, I knew I recognized him.

[42:58] Oh, cool.

[42:59] And I couldn't remember who it was.

[43:00] Okay.

[43:01] It was his voice for me.

[43:02] I was like, huh, I know that.

[43:04] I could see an annoying character in my head.

[43:08] I was like this, I know who this guy is.

[43:10] And then yeah, as he was getting dragged under the car,

[43:12] I was like, all right, it's Neelix, of course.

[43:14] That's right.

[43:15] So Stuart, you're thinking that he can't control it.

[43:17] I registered it as like, maybe he was indecisive.

[43:20] Like he's just like, oh, I like this body better.

[43:23] Well, they seem to be saying early on that like,

[43:25] they had to like jive with the thing

[43:27] that they were morphing into.

[43:29] And so the first one he-

[43:30] Like Johnny Steele, yeah.

[43:31] Johnny Steele, he just felt it.

[43:32] He jives so hard with Johnny Steele.

[43:33] Yeah, he was like, oh God,

[43:35] that's what I always wanted to be is Johnny Steele.

[43:37] And it was like, this guy was,

[43:39] it was in a weird way of like,

[43:41] it's love at first sight over and over again

[43:43] with different forms that he can be taking.

[43:46] But yeah, he's like unstable.

[43:47] And obviously, fans of the second Critters movie

[43:50] will remember the amazing morphing scene

[43:53] where the bounty hunter morphs

[43:53] into the Playboy centerfold

[43:55] and complete with giant staple in her stomach,

[44:00] which is hilarious.

[44:01] Which is a good way to turn just a boob shot into a joke.

[44:06] Yep.

[44:07] Yeah, modern screenwriters learn from that.

[44:09] Learn from that, dude.

[44:10] Turn a boob shot into a rib shot.

[44:13] Okay, so the, let's say the bounty hunters

[44:18] take over the police cruiser.

[44:20] Now they're tooling around town.

[44:22] They end up getting into chaos in various places.

[44:24] And we'll touch on that as the movie progresses.

[44:26] The Critters bite through the power and phone lines

[44:28] back at the farm.

[44:30] Then they ambush Jay when he's goes down to the cellar

[44:32] to check on things, ruining that bowling shirt of his.

[44:37] We get a lot of shots of this bowling shirt.

[44:39] He and his bowling team,

[44:40] like they make a point of saying

[44:41] that his bowling shirt is clean and ready.

[44:44] We see, we get multiple shots

[44:46] of his other bowling team members.

[44:48] It's basically a Ghostbusters logo,

[44:50] but with a pin instead of a ghost.

[44:52] Mm-hmm, yep.

[44:53] Which, by the way, if anyone wants to buy me that,

[44:55] just send it to the bar.

[44:56] I'll wear that shit.

[44:58] Okay.

[45:00] You're just getting closer and closer to that OnlyFans.

[45:02] Yeah.

[45:03] But I only accept Critters merchandise.

[45:07] Buy me Critters merchandise.

[45:08] I'll wear it online.

[45:09] You can tell me what to do with it.

[45:12] Only screen-used Critters merch.

[45:13] I'll take my shoes off while wearing it.

[45:14] Screen-used?

[45:15] No replicas, please.

[45:17] So we, yeah, we see, yeah.

[45:19] This is kind of the first time we really see the Critters.

[45:22] They mainly attack by jumping

[45:24] and like biting the neck and shoulder.

[45:26] I think that's probably because it's easiest

[45:28] to hold the puppet right there.

[45:30] Yes.

[45:31] Well, yeah, because you can just have a guy

[45:32] standing behind going like that.

[45:33] Yeah, and it's great.

[45:35] We also learned that they have a ranged attack.

[45:38] They can fire spines or darts

[45:40] that have some kind of a toxic paralytic element

[45:44] from their backs.

[45:45] That's great.

[45:46] It means that they can compete in the close combat phase

[45:48] as well as the ranged attack phase.

[45:50] It's very important.

[45:51] Okay.

[45:52] Now what would be the,

[45:53] what would they have to,

[45:54] what's their ability modifier for that?

[45:57] Well, so of course,

[45:59] there would be an amazing scout unit

[46:00] in Warhammer 40,000.

[46:02] They would easily have,

[46:03] I feel like based on their accuracy,

[46:05] that's at least hitting on a three plus.

[46:07] Okay.

[46:08] Close combat, they got a lot of attacks,

[46:10] maybe only hit on a four plus,

[46:11] because they miss a lot.

[46:13] Don't have much of an armor save, obviously,

[46:15] but maybe they have some kind of like a ward save

[46:17] based on how quickly they can turn into a ball

[46:19] and roll away.

[46:20] They probably also have the ability

[46:22] to retreat and charge in the same phase.

[46:24] Dave, do you have any other feedback about?

[46:26] No, I was just-

[46:26] Yeah, Dan, I want to get your take on this.

[46:29] Thanks for answering, Stu.

[46:30] This question really was for Dan.

[46:31] I, so I went into my email

[46:35] and was looking at how I could pick up the pottery

[46:37] that Audrey and I made for our pottery class,

[46:39] our three pottery class we did.

[46:41] Like a critter shaped piece of pottery?

[46:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[46:45] Cool.

[46:47] Yeah, so the Browns, the Bounty Boys,

[46:51] the Bounty Hunters show up at the church.

[46:52] The Bounty Boys.

[46:53] They cause some chaos.

[46:54] It's really funny,

[46:55] because it's like they just show up in places,

[46:57] immediately start blowing crap up.

[46:59] It's pretty awesome.

[47:01] And they blow up most of the church and then drive away.

[47:04] The Browns-

[47:05] Quick question about the Bounty Hunters,

[47:07] their guns, those like the tubes on the end of their guns,

[47:11] extend what, like a few inches when they get ready to shoot?

[47:15] What do you think that accomplishes?

[47:17] That's a good question.

[47:18] I mean, that's the sort of thing that like,

[47:20] when I was a kid and watching this movie,

[47:21] I'm like, oh shit, he's extended the barrel.

[47:23] It's probably more powerful now.

[47:25] Yeah, yeah.

[47:26] I remember thinking that as a kid for sure,

[47:28] but watching it now, it's like,

[47:29] oh, I guess it's just-

[47:31] Just an erection metaphor.

[47:31] A little added bit of flair.

[47:33] Yeah, just a little something

[47:34] to make them look more outer space, futurey.

[47:36] You know?

[47:38] So up in the hayloft,

[47:42] April and Steve are getting it on.

[47:45] A Vaudeville review, up in the hayloft.

[47:48] Starring the Ritz brothers.

[47:49] All of Grandmama's favorite songs.

[47:52] Surely you remember.

[47:56] Whisk in the milk.

[47:58] Horse in the stable and I got mine.

[48:01] And of course, Bobby's got a dirty face.

[48:08] So none of that happens, instead-

[48:11] What movie was I watching?

[48:13] Yeah, no, I was watching Critters, 1986.

[48:15] So April and Steve are getting it on in the hayloft.

[48:19] Critters attack and kill Steve.

[48:20] And honestly, guys, you know, if I was gonna go,

[48:22] that's how I'd wanna go, right?

[48:23] In the sack and then eaten by critters.

[48:26] Having an allergy attack to hay, yeah.

[48:28] Yeah, feeling unsure of myself

[48:30] as I potentially lose my virginity to a girl,

[48:33] even though I'm from the big city

[48:34] and I feel like I shouldn't be experiencing one.

[48:36] And I'm having a hay fever attack

[48:38] and then a monster bites off my fingers

[48:40] and then kills the rest of me.

[48:41] Yeah, yeah, that's the way I'd wanna go, yeah.

[48:42] I do, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[48:43] Bites off my fingers while I am changing

[48:45] the cassette tape on the radio

[48:47] that's set up in the hayloft, yeah.

[48:49] I mean, he did just have the best meal he's ever had.

[48:53] So that helps.

[48:55] With a wonderful, delicious, filling meal in my tummy

[48:58] as I roll around in the hayloft, yeah.

[49:01] That's why the critters go right for his tummy

[49:03] if you didn't notice.

[49:03] It's because they're trying to get that delicious meal.

[49:05] And he's like, go for my tongue first.

[49:07] I don't want to taste anything else.

[49:10] That's why he was so hesitant to have,

[49:11] to kiss or go to other bases with April.

[49:15] Yeah, because it would erase the taste

[49:16] of what were they eating for dinner?

[49:17] I know the corn on the cob, there was something else.

[49:19] There was some mashed potatoes, I believe.

[49:21] Yeah, mashed potatoes.

[49:22] This feels like a starch-heavy family, yeah.

[49:25] Living on the farm, you need a lot of energy.

[49:27] There's a lot of big calories.

[49:29] Yeah, that's what you don't understand.

[49:30] You get these, like, country breakfasts

[49:31] at Denny's or whatnot.

[49:33] Those people were out there in the fields,

[49:35] you know, working all day.

[49:37] They needed, like, two biscuits.

[49:39] Like 10,000 calories.

[49:40] Yeah, you needed all the energy

[49:41] to blow up those Y-wings,

[49:42] or else you weren't gonna get through the day, yeah.

[49:44] Exactly.

[49:46] So April screams while her boyfriend's being eaten,

[49:48] and then Brad shows up and feeds the offending critter

[49:53] a, like, a M-80 or something, a homemade M-80,

[49:57] and then blows it up and it dies.

[50:00] In a silly way, because it eats it, and then they wait, and then it goes, poomp, and its

[50:06] mouth kind of goes out a little bit, and then smoke comes out of it, and then it falls over.

[50:09] It's also a silly movie.

[50:11] The critter tipping over the way that it did, I think, was my favorite Cripe moment in the

[50:17] movie.

[50:18] It was very charming, how it's just clearly a static puppet being tipped over.

[50:22] I feel like my two favorite moments were that for Genuine, and then also just for the chutzpah

[50:29] of it, when the critters start getting blown up, and one of them says something, and the

[50:32] subtitle just says, fuck, and they just start running away.

[50:34] Yeah, they're like, they got weapons, and then it gets shot with a shotgun.

[50:38] Oh, it was great.

[50:39] No, I did really enjoy the understatement of this critter being blown up.

[50:45] Like, in a different movie, yeah, it would be a full explosion, but here it's like a

[50:50] comical puff of smoke, and then they just sort of tip over.

[50:55] So after kind of taking stock of their situation, the Browns decide to make a run for it, but

[51:01] the critters have disabled all the vehicles, which is ironic, since Charlie just fixed

[51:05] the carburetor in one of them, and they also destroy Steve's new sports car.

[51:11] They destroy all the vehicles, so they end up having to fight their way back to the farmhouse.

[51:15] This is where we see the critters' method of chasing them is basically just rolling

[51:20] along the ground, which I got to say, I think it's pretty impressive that the movie manages

[51:24] to make that kind of tense, maybe scary.

[51:28] It's surprisingly effective.

[51:30] These should not be scary monsters when you can't see their mouths full of teeth, but

[51:35] they do manage to pull it off.

[51:37] The one thing that would be the scariest is if four or five critters attacked one person

[51:41] at one time.

[51:42] They can't do this, because there's only so many puppets you can hold to your body and

[51:45] pretend they're attacking you.

[51:46] But they do a good job with making it, at least up until this point, before the movie

[51:50] started to feel repetitive.

[51:53] Up to this point, I was like, yeah, they're doing a good job of making me kind of, this

[51:57] feels like a real menace.

[51:58] It feels like a threat to these people.

[51:59] Yeah, so Jay gets bitten again.

[52:02] He's basically out of action in this.

[52:05] He's the heavy.

[52:06] He's the bullet sponge.

[52:07] He's taken all the damage.

[52:08] He can't help anymore.

[52:09] Helen blows one of the critters away.

[52:11] We get a bunch of laughs.

[52:12] It's great.

[52:13] They kind of barricade themselves in the farmhouse.

[52:16] The bounty hunters then show up at the bowling alley, which it was a big bowling tournament

[52:20] night, I guess.

[52:21] Everybody's really excited.

[52:22] We get a bunch of laughs.

[52:23] There's a fight.

[52:24] There's a little bit of a bar fight.

[52:26] Charlie's there.

[52:27] One of the bounty hunters turns into Charlie.

[52:30] It's great.

[52:31] Let's see.

[52:32] The crites kind of lay siege to the farmhouse.

[52:35] They force the family to retreat upstairs.

[52:37] Helen gets shot with one of those poison darts, and she is not feeling good.

[52:42] We get a couple of gags here.

[52:45] A ceiling fan falls and bonks one of the critters on the head.

[52:50] One of them catches on fire and has to jump into a toilet, thinking that's going to save

[52:53] him.

[52:54] I don't think that's going to work, my friend.

[52:57] In another film, the monster would bite someone's butt.

[53:02] This movie, the critter just takes refuge in a toilet and then is immediately shot in

[53:09] the toilet.

[53:10] You think one of the bounty hunters should have gone in the house to be like, oh, man,

[53:13] I've got to take a wicked dump.

[53:14] I've got to lay some prisoners off at the asteroid prison.

[53:18] Hold on a sec.

[53:19] The thing that brings this to my mind is my friend, Rich Duncan, in the comedy world.

[53:26] He went to Earlham as well, Earlham College, before he was on the show years ago.

[53:32] Where did he go to college before he was in the comedy world?

[53:35] Anyway.

[53:36] Since you said in the comedy world, he went to Earlham College.

[53:38] OK.

[53:39] But the point is, I mentioned critters.

[53:42] Look, I'm just putting Dan through my communication skills seminar.

[53:47] Much like Inspector Clouseau and Cato, I attack Dan's communication skills randomly whenever

[53:52] necessary, just to keep him on his toes.

[53:55] Yeah.

[53:56] Well, I had tweeted about critters.

[53:59] It was a little critter Twitter.

[54:02] And he was like, is this a movie where someone gets...

[54:08] I had avoided it in the past, because I thought that this would be a movie where, you know,

[54:13] a monster hides in a toilet and bites someone's butt or something.

[54:16] I'm like, no, no, you've got yourself a ghouli there, my friend.

[54:19] Even in ghoulies, it doesn't actually happen.

[54:21] It just isn't in the poster.

[54:22] No, because that was shot after the fact.

[54:25] I believe it was like, wasn't it after the initial release of ghoulies, people were complaining

[54:29] that there wasn't a shot of a ghoulie in a toilet in the movie.

[54:33] So they went back, shot a nice animated shot of that, and then dropped it in.

[54:37] And then it says they'll get you in the end, and it's sticking out of a toilet.

[54:40] Maybe I'm the asshole.

[54:41] And I assumed it meant that a ghoulie was going to bite someone in the butt.

[54:44] It seemed like all the clues were there.

[54:45] Yeah, it was the Ana de Armas lawsuit of its day.

[54:49] A bunch of fans.

[54:50] You haven't heard about this?

[54:52] No, I didn't hear about that.

[54:55] People sued.

[54:56] Which movie was it?

[54:57] It had Ana de Armas in the trailer.

[54:59] And then, of course, as often happens, the trailer is not based on a final version of

[55:05] the film.

[55:06] Ana de Armas was not in it.

[55:08] And the fans of Ana de Armas sued that you saw this movie under false pretenses.

[55:16] And they won, my friend.

[55:18] They won, setting a weird precedent for the future.

[55:21] What possible damages could they have claimed on that?

[55:24] Well, the damages, I guess, of buying the ticket.

[55:26] Buying one ticket?

[55:27] This is, you know, it's a, what do you call it?

[55:31] A simple...

[55:32] Well, yeah, this becomes the premise of...

[55:35] Class action suit.

[55:36] Yeah.

[55:37] It's a civil action, too.

[55:38] Ana de Armas rising.

[55:39] You know?

[55:40] I'm just saying, as a class action suit, I'm sure they all got five cents, whoever entered

[55:45] into this Ana de Armas.

[55:47] But you know what?

[55:48] Still, it's the principle of it.

[55:49] It's the principle.

[55:50] They've taught Hollywood that they cannot be fucked around with when it comes to the

[55:53] promise of Ana de Armas.

[55:56] This sets a good precedent, though.

[55:57] Does this mean that I can now sue for renting Highlander Endgame because I watched the trailer

[56:04] and it had a bunch of wacky special effects in it that aren't in the actual movie?

[56:08] Because they were shot specifically for the movie.

[56:10] My guess is that the Statue of Limitations has probably run out on that one, but maybe

[56:15] not.

[56:16] Yeah, I'm gonna go for it.

[56:18] Dan's giving me some confidence.

[56:20] Is that the one with Mario Van Peebles in it?

[56:22] No, that's three.

[56:23] The Sorcerer.

[56:24] Or The Final Dimension.

[56:25] The Final Dimension, yeah.

[56:26] I feel like I remember that trailer a lot, because I just remember the narration saying,

[56:31] his name is Kane, and I'm like, I'm in.

[56:34] Oh, yeah.

[56:35] That's the one where, like, yesterday, he, like, turns a truck invisible or there's an

[56:39] illusion truck.

[56:40] Yeah.

[56:41] Yeah.

[56:42] He's a he's a magic man.

[56:43] He, like, gets split in half and his bottom half runs away and then comes back.

[56:46] You gotta understand, Steve.

[56:47] Try to understand.

[56:49] Try to try.

[56:51] He's a magic man.

[56:52] All right.

[56:53] Well, now that that's done, it was yesterday.

[56:54] I remember the Danny Boyle movie about the Beatles not being here.

[56:57] The movie came out yesterday?

[56:58] How did they have time to file the lawsuit if it was just yesterday?

[57:02] Oh, boy.

[57:03] Wow.

[57:04] They were fast.

[57:05] The listener knows what I'm saying.

[57:06] Who is he going to play in that movie?

[57:10] Someone who is not integral to the plot, apparently.

[57:12] I guess, yeah.

[57:13] That kind of thing, I mean, that happens from like the I it reminds me of the story of the

[57:18] movie Dangerous Minds, where Indio Garcia was in that movie and they just removed his

[57:22] plot entirely.

[57:24] I guess they did it early enough that they didn't advertise it as an Indio Garcia joint,

[57:28] you know.

[57:29] Interesting.

[57:30] Okay.

[57:31] So Jay and Helen are too injured to escape.

[57:33] So Brad decides to go for help.

[57:36] But there's a when he goes over to his bike, there's a critter just standing there and

[57:42] then pushes his bike over.

[57:44] It's hilarious.

[57:48] And then he witnesses one of the critters is growing to a much larger size that probably

[57:52] won't come into play later.

[57:54] And now no reason is ever given for that.

[57:57] Right.

[57:58] Or did I just miss it?

[57:59] Well, they made a lot.

[58:00] Yeah.

[58:01] They're eating a lot.

[58:02] That's not how eating works.

[58:03] I mean, maybe, maybe just for all the critters, my nutritionist would say, otherwise, nutritious

[58:09] like stew.

[58:10] You're not eating enough to grow three more feet in within minutes.

[58:13] Yeah.

[58:14] I'm sorry.

[58:15] These weird little alien balls don't fit to your normal human logic.

[58:18] Right.

[58:19] You're right.

[58:20] It's better when they don't explain.

[58:22] OK, so Brad runs into the street and he bumps into the bounty hunters who were riding around

[58:28] in a police cruiser and he convinces them to come back to the farm and help him save

[58:32] his family.

[58:33] Now, this is when this is OK.

[58:34] He is the first person.

[58:35] Well, now, this movie has gotten away up to this point with the fact that every species

[58:40] in the universe speaks English except for the critters that the bounty hunters speak

[58:44] English.

[58:45] The prison warden speaks English.

[58:46] Everyone who works the prison speaks English that they.

[58:49] And yet somehow when they say Galactic Common, they say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, basic that

[58:57] they this this is the first character, Brad, who recognizes that this bounty hunter looks

[59:04] like a famous musician or pieces together that crites might be critters and therefore

[59:09] a thing that they are looking for that he can ask them questions about.

[59:13] And up to this moment, it's like the who's on first routine where everyone is going out

[59:16] of their way to avoid asking questions that might shed light on any scenario.

[59:20] I believe that what happens is he comes in.

[59:22] He's like, you know, he's like, you got to help me.

[59:25] You got to help.

[59:26] He doesn't know that these are aliens.

[59:27] It's like there's all these critters.

[59:28] Yeah.

[59:29] He says critters and they go like they say crites because they know they know that like

[59:32] this is they're they're here for the critters.

[59:34] So finally, there's someone who is mentioning.

[59:37] But I think it's also it's a coincidence of them being called crites, which sounds like

[59:42] critters.

[59:43] That breaks the illusion for me that English is galactic basic and everyone speaks it.

[59:47] It's just not too easy for me.

[59:49] Yeah.

[59:50] I mean, I think it's also to show that the kid is the real hero and that adults are dumb.

[59:55] Yeah.

[59:56] Which as a child watching this movie, I'm like, this makes perfect sense.

[1:00:00] The one sympathetic moment really for the dad is when Brad is like, I've got to go.

[1:00:03] I've got to go help the family.

[1:00:05] And you can tell the dad is like proud of Brad for doing this.

[1:00:08] And he says, okay, do it.

[1:00:09] And he doesn't say I'm proud of you or I love you because like, that's the

[1:00:12] thing a wuss would say, I guess, but you can tell the pride in his eyes.

[1:00:15] That's good work by, uh, Billy Greenbush in that moment, I think communicating.

[1:00:19] So the, the family decides to fight their way out of the barricaded bedroom.

[1:00:23] They blow up one of the critters again.

[1:00:24] It's hilarious.

[1:00:25] Uh, they take another shot of the critter and it rolls away.

[1:00:29] Incredibly once the movie decides the critters have to go, they

[1:00:31] are incredibly easy to destroy.

[1:00:33] Great.

[1:00:33] I love it.

[1:00:34] Uh, she takes a shot and one of the critters rolls away and she's like,

[1:00:38] uh, the mom is like, can I have another shell?

[1:00:40] And he's like, we're all out.

[1:00:41] And I'm like, you gotta come on.

[1:00:43] You have to let me know how much ammo is left.

[1:00:45] It's like, I'm playing a fucking video game.

[1:00:48] Uh, so she goes, or, uh, you know, the, uh, just what they're like about to make

[1:00:52] a last stand at like the top of the stairs, there's critters coming up the

[1:00:55] stairs when the front of the house explodes, the bounty hunters have arrived.

[1:00:59] They start blowing them all away.

[1:01:01] It's great.

[1:01:03] Uh, they, the family escapes, the sheriff shows up, uh, Brad runs back

[1:01:07] inside to go save Chewy, the cat, which I totally understand.

[1:01:11] And I would do the same thing.

[1:01:12] At this point, the bounty hunters are like going room to room.

[1:01:15] They go into the bathroom.

[1:01:16] They blow up the critter in the toilet.

[1:01:18] It's hilarious.

[1:01:19] Uh, Brad goes to find Chewy, the cat.

[1:01:22] I don't know.

[1:01:23] Hilarious.

[1:01:24] It seems like some sort of someone's butt could have gotten bitten or something.

[1:01:28] Yeah, let it go.

[1:01:30] No, no.

[1:01:30] Let's stay on this for at least one more minute.

[1:01:33] Is there a movie where a monster comes out of the toilet and bites a person's butt?

[1:01:38] Like does that actually, actually accomplish it?

[1:01:41] Cause there's a snake that comes out of the toilet in the hard ticket to Hawaii,

[1:01:44] but, and there's a snake that comes out of a toilet in snakes in a plane,

[1:01:47] but it bites a guy's dick.

[1:01:49] It doesn't bite his butt.

[1:01:50] Yeah.

[1:01:51] What does he say when he realized there was a snake?

[1:01:54] I believe I'm quoting when he says, ah, get off my dick.

[1:01:59] Which is my favorite line in that whole movie.

[1:02:00] Cause it's like, that is a very understated reaction to a snake biting your

[1:02:04] penis.

[1:02:04] Yeah.

[1:02:04] This guy's pretty chill actually.

[1:02:06] This is not his first time getting a snake on his penis.

[1:02:08] He is tired.

[1:02:09] He is tired of these motherfucking snakes biting his motherfucking penis.

[1:02:12] This is the mummy three of snake penis bites.

[1:02:14] Now in dream catchers, do the aliens go up through the toilet in that?

[1:02:18] Am I remembering that correct?

[1:02:19] Oh yeah.

[1:02:20] Weasels.

[1:02:20] Yeah.

[1:02:21] One does go into a guy trapped in the toilet.

[1:02:25] Okay.

[1:02:25] And isn't, isn't climbing into a guy's butt to control his body.

[1:02:29] Isn't that the, that counts as biting, right?

[1:02:33] Well, let's hear some more about the situation.

[1:02:36] I mean, I feel like if the shit weasel dream catcher that counts,

[1:02:39] that's the same as a incidental biting going on,

[1:02:43] like whether or not biting is the main activity.

[1:02:45] There's some biting that happens in the process of getting to get up there.

[1:02:49] Is it possible that the old, I think now out now gotten rid of copper

[1:02:54] tone label is the most accurate rendition of a monster biting someone in the butt.

[1:02:59] I mean, that's just a dog pulling the back of a girl's bathing suit down,

[1:03:03] but it seems more accurate than a dog performing.

[1:03:07] Some kind of assault is truly a monster.

[1:03:11] That is a bad dog.

[1:03:12] Let's just say that's a bad dog.

[1:03:13] Yeah.

[1:03:15] All dogs may go to heaven, but it's a technicality.

[1:03:18] It's only because the mystery of the Lord's forgiveness.

[1:03:21] There's nothing to do with a dog.

[1:03:23] Yeah.

[1:03:25] John Calvin's dog was like, I wish that God hadn't decided when you were born

[1:03:29] that you were already one of the elect because you certainly shouldn't go to

[1:03:32] heaven for pulling that bathing suit.

[1:03:34] So most of the, the bounty hunters kill off most of the critters, except for a big

[1:03:38] old critter that beats up Brad a little bit and then gets scared off, it escapes.

[1:03:44] And in the process of running away, it manages to snare April and take April with

[1:03:49] it.

[1:03:49] Now, what, why is this large critter not merely eating this girl?

[1:03:56] Like to get even bigger with every, yeah.

[1:03:59] Like there's a, this is the one point at which call happens.

[1:04:04] And the only reason, the only reasons I can think of are upsetting reasons.

[1:04:09] So I guess I shouldn't dwell on it, but it just seems odd.

[1:04:12] Sorry.

[1:04:12] I'm just quickly adding this to the goofs section of critters.

[1:04:16] I am DB.

[1:04:17] The real reason is because this is the motivation for act three.

[1:04:21] Yeah.

[1:04:22] Saving of April by Brad.

[1:04:24] Uh, but also to have like a snack later, like they're, they're about to go on a

[1:04:28] little spaceship ride.

[1:04:28] They want some meat later.

[1:04:29] Probably full already.

[1:04:31] He's not hungry right now, but he knows he's going to be hungry later.

[1:04:33] So he's just, I don't know.

[1:04:34] That's the thing.

[1:04:34] The bigger you get, the hungrier you're going to get Elliot.

[1:04:36] It's that's how, you know, so if you're the smaller you get, the less hungry you

[1:04:40] can get.

[1:04:41] So if I'm the size of a, of a thimble, I'll never have to eat again.

[1:04:44] Never have to eat again.

[1:04:46] I think they cover that in ant man, quantum mania.

[1:04:48] Right.

[1:04:48] Uh, okay.

[1:04:50] Uh, Dan said that as if he said it very professionally, but just a touch of a

[1:04:58] sassy neighbor in this, in a sitcom, just a touch, a little bit of disdain.

[1:05:02] Just for the big critter.

[1:05:04] And a couple of his buddies take drag April back to the spaceship.

[1:05:07] They're going to get out of here.

[1:05:08] They're taking too much heat from these bounty boys.

[1:05:11] So they, uh, they fire up the ship, Charlie, uh, uh, Brad runs, uh, runs

[1:05:17] after them.

[1:05:17] He bumps into Charlie, the two of them go find the alien ship.

[1:05:21] They climb aboard.

[1:05:22] They wake up April.

[1:05:23] They get her off.

[1:05:24] They drop a pipe bomb on lit, uh, on the critter ship.

[1:05:29] They escape.

[1:05:30] Charlie then uses his pitching and his drunkenness to make a fire bomb that he

[1:05:36] perfectly checks through the closing hatchway, which then catches fire, sets

[1:05:41] fire to the pipe bomb.

[1:05:43] The, uh, fleeing ship then explodes.

[1:05:46] Uh,

[1:05:46] first, but not until the ship just out of spite shoots lasers to blow up the

[1:05:50] farmhouse and you, and you hear, and am I wrong that you can hear the aliens

[1:05:57] laughing right after they did it?

[1:05:58] They laugh.

[1:05:59] Yeah.

[1:05:59] Critters like that's part of the joy of them.

[1:06:02] It's such a throwaway gag.

[1:06:04] Then it's crazy that it's the biggest effect in the entire movie.

[1:06:08] Yeah, that's the thing they commit to.

[1:06:10] It's like, yeah, just them blowing up the house.

[1:06:11] But I love it.

[1:06:12] Cause it's the critters just doing it out of, out of anger, like, or just to be

[1:06:16] dense.

[1:06:16] There's no reason for them to do it, but you're right.

[1:06:18] It's a huge explosion.

[1:06:19] They blow up the whole house.

[1:06:20] It's great.

[1:06:20] Legit.

[1:06:21] And they, uh, repurpose it a little bit when they blow up the critter ship too.

[1:06:26] There's a, there's that first shot where it's like clearly a composite explosion.

[1:06:31] I think it cuts to a reaction.

[1:06:32] And then it comes back and it's like the tail end of the house exploding.

[1:06:37] Like they just really want to get their mileage out of that, that house explosion.

[1:06:42] Do they do something similar in one of the phantasm movies where like the same

[1:06:45] house explosion is two different houses.

[1:06:47] So that one, it's the same house they blew up once, but they had one scene playing

[1:06:51] out on one side and another scene playing out on the other side and it doubled as

[1:06:55] two houses.

[1:06:55] So they had tall man doing one thing on one side and then Mike and Reggie on the

[1:07:00] other side, uh, to get the most out of one house explosion.

[1:07:04] Wow.

[1:07:06] There's your phantasm facts from Steve.

[1:07:10] I can't wait for that to be a regular part of the flop house.

[1:07:12] I'm brought to you by tall boys.

[1:07:14] When the tall man wants to relax, he reaches for a tall boy.

[1:07:18] Uh, so the bounty hunters who are friends with, uh, the family now give

[1:07:23] Brad a little space gizmo.

[1:07:25] Uh, Charlie wanders off from gremlins though.

[1:07:28] No, I mean, who knows where gizmos from?

[1:07:32] I guess we'll find out when the gremlins TV show eventually premieres on HBO max.

[1:07:35] So the, uh, the gizmo starts to bleep and, uh, Brad pushes the button and then we

[1:07:42] see the house rebuild itself.

[1:07:45] Uh, like, uh, it's basically just played backwards, but it's great.

[1:07:48] It's great.

[1:07:49] Now this really doesn't make any sense.

[1:07:51] Cause he hands it to him and says, call me like it's a communicator.

[1:07:55] Then it starts beeping.

[1:07:56] And when he presses it, it brings the house back together.

[1:07:58] It's just, I guess it's magical realism.

[1:08:00] I guess this is when Gabriel Garcia Marquez was brought onto the set

[1:08:03] at the last minute script rewrites.

[1:08:05] Did you guys also clock how like distraught Dee Wallace seemed

[1:08:09] about the house being blown up?

[1:08:10] Like, didn't like, she seemed just really torn up about it.

[1:08:15] It's like, I would just be happy to be alive.

[1:08:17] I think at that point, like that's a whole house.

[1:08:22] Yeah.

[1:08:22] But like she's been through a tough night.

[1:08:24] She's still got critter venom in her veins.

[1:08:26] Yeah.

[1:08:26] She's probably an extra emotional from the drugs, whatever those are.

[1:08:30] But she's okay.

[1:08:31] And that's, yeah.

[1:08:32] Chewy gets sucked up into the house as well.

[1:08:34] And then we find Chewy is actually in the mailbox.

[1:08:37] It's adorable.

[1:08:39] And you're like, Oh, at least the nightmare is over camera pans over to the barn.

[1:08:43] We got critter eggs and then the critters giggle and the movie.

[1:08:47] So question, do we set up critter eggs at any point leading

[1:08:52] up to that moment in the movie?

[1:08:53] It is, it is never mentioned that critters lay eggs.

[1:08:56] So those could be any eggs.

[1:08:57] And the critters are just laughing in about something else.

[1:08:59] Well, that was my, my thinking was they did that shot of the eggs.

[1:09:04] They left it as is.

[1:09:05] And they realized like, Oh, we haven't set up these eggs.

[1:09:07] Let's put a critter laugh over top to really make sure the audience

[1:09:11] knows what we're looking at.

[1:09:12] The movie is very likely.

[1:09:14] It's a good, like summary of like my issue, I think with this movie where it's like,

[1:09:20] they don't really know what they want to do with the critters specifically.

[1:09:24] And I feel like it's part of like the movie's tone issues and making the

[1:09:29] critters funny at one point and then kind of scary at another, making them

[1:09:34] capable, but then also making them like feral creatures, it just seemed like a

[1:09:39] lot of jumping around and a lot of sure.

[1:09:41] There was a lot of like too many cooks in the kitchen, throwing ideas into a pot

[1:09:45] and being like, let's just make them all the things.

[1:09:48] And so, you know what, we're there already.

[1:09:52] So let's get into the final judgments of whether we thought it was a good, bad

[1:09:55] movie, a bad, bad movie, a movie.

[1:09:58] We kind of like, look, I'm.

[1:10:00] I'm a simple man, and if you give me a movie with a bunch of small monster puppets running

[1:10:08] around, I'm basically going to be happy.

[1:10:10] I think that Critters, there's a reason it has endured as much as it has.

[1:10:18] There's like, there were, you know, this kind of thing, to some degree was a dime a dozen,

[1:10:23] but there were a couple that pushed through because they had a little extra charm.

[1:10:27] And I would say Critters has a little extra charm.

[1:10:29] It is a little extra charm.

[1:10:33] Critters 2 is probably the stronger Critters movie.

[1:10:36] Without question.

[1:10:37] 100%.

[1:10:38] But, I mean, there's a lot, a lot is said about the work of Mick Garris because he's

[1:10:42] done a lot of up and down things, but like you can tell when he, when he, Critters 2

[1:10:46] I remember much better when I was younger, I think it's because he brings another level

[1:10:50] to it that the first Critters doesn't.

[1:10:52] Yeah, there's a little more gleefulness to what's going on.

[1:10:56] But anyway, I, I, you know, I like this movie is what I have to say.

[1:11:00] Who else wants to weigh in?

[1:11:01] Yeah.

[1:11:02] I mean, I, I clearly like Critters.

[1:11:04] I, I don't know, there's, there's something about how this, like this movie does have

[1:11:10] a lot going on and it doesn't quite know what it wants to be.

[1:11:13] But I think that for me as part of the charm, it's short, it feels kind of like the perfect

[1:11:18] like VHS movie, like this, like short little thing, you get some little monsters, a couple

[1:11:23] of gags, you get some, you know, like, I don't know, a lot of performers who you were

[1:11:30] like, oh yeah, I know them from something else.

[1:11:31] I don't know.

[1:11:32] Yeah.

[1:11:33] Thumbs up.

[1:11:34] And all the bounty hunter crap.

[1:11:35] Like, I love all that stuff.

[1:11:36] I love all the monster effects.

[1:11:37] It's a lot of fun.

[1:11:38] Yeah.

[1:11:39] I, it's a movie I kind of like, but I have to admit it is while watching it and while

[1:11:44] thinking about afterwards, I just keep thinking about even if it's not a gremlins rip off

[1:11:48] or, you know, whatever it, there's so much in it that I feel like gremlins does better

[1:11:54] in terms of the tone of it being both funny and scary, the monsters being kind of intelligent,

[1:11:59] but also kind of beasts that, that are just driven by their, you know, appetites and setting

[1:12:05] up the hat, the town and the family.

[1:12:06] Now again, this is no, it's no insult to critters to say that it is not as good as a movie that

[1:12:11] Joe Dante and Steven Spielberg worked on, you know, but that the, that, and that has,

[1:12:18] I think probably still what the best puppet creatures I can think of in a, in a movie.

[1:12:23] Seriously.

[1:12:24] So those in gremlins and gremlins too.

[1:12:25] Uh, so there's part of me that's like watching it and being like, Oh, this is making me really

[1:12:28] want to watch gremlins.

[1:12:29] But that being said, I agree that it's like a, it's like a really good kind of like eighties

[1:12:33] VHS movie.

[1:12:34] Like it's a movie that if you're at that stage in your life where I was when I was renting

[1:12:38] eighties VHS is when you're like an adolescent or a teen or something.

[1:12:41] And you've already watched tremors a hundred times.

[1:12:45] You've watched tremors.

[1:12:46] You watch gremlins for some reason you watch ghoulies before critters, which is weird.

[1:12:50] I don't know why you would do that, but uh, that it's, you know, it's totally fine.

[1:12:53] It's super short.

[1:12:54] Uh, I wish that they just, it's just, there's a, there's a bunch of things in the movie

[1:12:58] I wish they did more with like the bounty hunters.

[1:13:00] I kept being like, Oh boy, these bounty hunters and they just don't kind of do a lot with

[1:13:05] them.

[1:13:06] But again, critters to kind of, it's, it's worth skipping critters to go straight to

[1:13:09] critters too.

[1:13:10] You know?

[1:13:11] I mean, I'm realizing that I was flagging a bunch of issues with this movie as we're

[1:13:16] talking about it and uh, don't want it to seem like I don't like this movie cause I

[1:13:21] do actually really enjoy it and I have a lot of nostalgia for it.

[1:13:25] Uh, I do find it like a bit meandering at times and the like, yeah, I get hung up on

[1:13:31] like the logic of the critters.

[1:13:33] Um, but, and like what Elliot was saying, it's like, it's hard not to compare it to

[1:13:39] uh, like gremlins or better movies.

[1:13:42] So that definitely like, uh, gives marks against it, but I still kind of liked it and yeah,

[1:13:50] loved watching it as a kid.

[1:13:51] The bounty hunters kick ass, that opening scene, uh, is amazing and it's everything

[1:13:56] I like.

[1:13:57] Um, and the critter effects are great too.

[1:14:00] So yeah, the movie, I think in a weird way it suffers because the opening scene promises

[1:14:05] so much.

[1:14:06] Yes.

[1:14:07] I think it over promises for sure.

[1:14:09] You think like, oh, we're going to come back to this weird, smooth, uh, floating man, uh,

[1:14:14] and this like prison asteroid and it gets, the movie gets very small very quickly, uh,

[1:14:19] which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[1:14:21] Do you think the movie would have been improved if the bounty hunters were like routinely

[1:14:24] checking in with a hologram of that smooth guy and like, I mean like giving him like

[1:14:30] bad reports and he's getting angrier and angrier.

[1:14:33] I mean, I do like that idea.

[1:14:35] I think it would have helped and, and yeah, like we're all basically saying the same thing

[1:14:39] that, uh, critters too, uh, I think is this superior execution of this premise.

[1:14:45] So I would definitely recommend that one first, but if you got a beat up old VHS tape of critters

[1:14:52] to put on an old CRT TV, uh, that is, that sounds like a good night to me.

[1:14:57] I was having, I was having a conversation with my wife and my oldest son about sequels

[1:15:02] that are better than the original movies and I didn't bring up critters and now I'm

[1:15:06] going to have to, and then I'm going to have to explain what critters is to them.

[1:15:09] Call them up right now.

[1:15:10] Okay, hold on.

[1:15:11] While we're recording.

[1:15:12] Let me get them into the room.

[1:15:13] Sammy, come in.

[1:15:14] Daddy has a lesson for you.

[1:15:17] It's time for you to learn about the crites.

[1:15:19] Stop crying.

[1:15:20] I don't want you to learn about the crites on the playground or on the streets.

[1:15:22] I want to be the one to tell you about crites so you know all the right words.

[1:15:25] Oh, I hope they've got the bread bowl.

[1:15:32] Have you seen the bread bowl at this place?

[1:15:34] Good evening.

[1:15:35] Welcome to Maximum Fun.

[1:15:36] Have you been here before?

[1:15:37] It's her first time.

[1:15:39] Very good.

[1:15:40] Might I recommend our special, please?

[1:15:42] Can I interest you in the Max Fun Drive?

[1:15:44] I'm told they're cooking up something quite extraordinary this year.

[1:15:48] I've heard about this with limited time.

[1:15:51] Thank you.

[1:15:52] Gifts for new and upgrading members.

[1:15:53] That's right.

[1:15:54] We'll take it.

[1:15:55] How would you like your episode?

[1:15:57] Can I get them excellent with new Boco on the side?

[1:16:00] Oh, are there live stream events?

[1:16:02] Absolutely.

[1:16:03] You know, if you're interested in events, Meetup Day is returning.

[1:16:06] What?

[1:16:07] Oh, you're going to love Meetup Day.

[1:16:09] It's the best.

[1:16:10] OK, let me make sure I have everything.

[1:16:12] Max Fun Drive 2023 with limited time.

[1:16:14] Thank you.

[1:16:15] Gifts, live stream events, Meetup Day, excellent episodes and of course, new bonus content.

[1:16:21] Sounds perfect.

[1:16:22] Great.

[1:16:23] We'll get it started and it'll be ready in two weeks.

[1:16:24] March 20th.

[1:16:25] Oh, can we also get a couple of waters?

[1:16:28] Of course.

[1:16:30] Where am I on Maximum Fun?

[1:16:32] What do you want?

[1:16:33] A podcast miniseries about the prisoner.

[1:16:36] Whose side are you on?

[1:16:38] That would be telling.

[1:16:39] But, OK, I'm on my own side.

[1:16:40] It's one of my favorite ever TV shows.

[1:16:43] We want a podcast on it.

[1:16:44] A prisoner podcast.

[1:16:46] You won't get it by hook or by crook.

[1:16:48] We will.

[1:16:49] Who are you?

[1:16:50] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[1:16:51] Who is number one?

[1:16:52] Jesse Thorne.

[1:16:53] But you are John Hodgman.

[1:16:55] I am not a prisoner podcaster.

[1:16:58] I am a free man.

[1:17:00] Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

[1:17:04] OK, OK, are you all right?

[1:17:07] OK, I'll watch it.

[1:17:08] All four episodes of B Podding you are out now.

[1:17:13] Before we move on, I just want to mention that Maximum Fun Drive, max fund drive is

[1:17:20] coming up at the end of this month.

[1:17:22] It will be what the time when Max Fund listeners get to show their support for their favorite

[1:17:28] shows in the form of money.

[1:17:30] Yeah, the money that keeps particularly me and Elliot afloat during this time when perhaps

[1:17:36] we don't have the normal career that we have been relying on for a while.

[1:17:40] I cannot emphasize enough.

[1:17:42] Your pledged dollars keep a roof over my head.

[1:17:44] Yeah. And a song in my heart.

[1:17:46] And that song goes, hey, get ready for Max Fun Drive.

[1:17:49] Dan's got an announcement right now.

[1:17:51] Yeah. So that'll be the last couple of weeks of March.

[1:17:54] And we're going to do a few special things for Max Fun Drive and we'll have more

[1:17:59] announcements about that coming up.

[1:18:00] But right now I am mentioning it to get you guys to write in to the Flophouse podcast

[1:18:08] at Gmail dot com.

[1:18:09] If you want us to recommend a personalized movie for you, a personalized movie

[1:18:17] recommendation from the Flophouse is what is on offer.

[1:18:20] What you have to do is email the Flophouse podcast at Gmail dot com and just tell us a

[1:18:26] couple of what you think might be pertinent facts about yourself and your tastes.

[1:18:31] Don't go overboard.

[1:18:33] Maybe try to keep it to like three to five bullet points.

[1:18:37] And then we will recommend movies.

[1:18:41] We'll compete with one another.

[1:18:42] In fact, to recommend some movies for a few of those listeners who write it, we probably

[1:18:48] can't accommodate everyone who might be interested.

[1:18:51] But this will be one of our main is we'll do personalized recommendations for you, the

[1:18:56] listeners.

[1:18:59] And I want to say we're going to be saying this a lot during the Max Fun Drive, but thank

[1:19:02] you ahead of time to all of our pledgers.

[1:19:05] Thank you during the time because you're pledging throughout the year with your money that

[1:19:10] supports us. But thank you ahead of time for those who will be joining or upgrading.

[1:19:14] We'll talk to you more about it during Max Fun Drive and we'll be saying thank you a lot

[1:19:17] because it really means a lot to us.

[1:19:18] And while we are in large, large, large, overwhelmingly large part supported by

[1:19:24] listeners like you, we also have a couple of sponsors, one of which I will tell you a

[1:19:30] little bit right now. You've probably heard about micro dosing.

[1:19:33] If not, just just know that all sorts of people are micro dosing daily to feel healthier

[1:19:38] and perform better. Our show today is sponsored by Micro Dose Gummies.

[1:19:42] Micro Dose Gummies deliver perfect entry level doses of THC that help you feel just the

[1:19:47] right amount of good.

[1:19:48] You know, if you don't have experience with THC, sometimes edibles can be overwhelming.

[1:19:52] These are calculated to be just, you know, enough to make you feel a little looser, more

[1:19:58] pleasant, maybe chill.

[1:20:00] out, I find that for me, it's good that it, I don't know, I just feel more flexible on

[1:20:07] them.

[1:20:08] I can sometimes be a guy who gets grumpy when things change and it takes me a while to turn

[1:20:15] my ship around and yet, when I have a microdose coming, I feel just a little more open to

[1:20:21] the world.

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[1:20:28] and use code FLOP, that's F-L-O-P, to get free shipping and 30% off your first order.

[1:20:34] Links can be found in the show's description, but again, that is microdose.com, code FLOP.

[1:20:39] Elliot, I believe you have a little more Flophouse-specific business for the listeners.

[1:20:45] You better believe it.

[1:20:46] Thanks for finishing that sentence.

[1:20:47] I wasn't sure if you were done yet or if it was just a pause.

[1:20:51] We have a live show coming up.

[1:20:52] I've been saying it on episodes and I'm going to keep saying it until it happens, then maybe

[1:20:55] I'll keep saying it afterwards.

[1:20:56] We'll be appearing before your very eyes if you live in Brooklyn, New York and you

[1:21:00] are at the Bell House in Brooklyn, Sunday, April 2nd, 7.30 p.m.

[1:21:04] You don't have to live in Brooklyn.

[1:21:06] You just have to be in Brooklyn at the Bell House when we're there and you will see us

[1:21:10] in person.

[1:21:11] Our first live show of the year, we'll be talking about, that's right, Battlefield Earth,

[1:21:16] a longtime fan-requested favorite, the John Travolta, Forrest Whitaker, Aliens with Nose

[1:21:20] Rings and Dreadlocks epic mess that really ruined a lot of careers for a while.

[1:21:25] So that's Sunday, April 2nd, 7.30 p.m. at the Bell House in Brooklyn.

[1:21:29] It's going to be a lot of fun.

[1:21:30] We're going to be doing new PowerPoint presentations beforehand.

[1:21:32] You can come ask questions and have them answered.

[1:21:34] As always, we'll be sticking around afterwards to sign merchandise and take pictures or whatever

[1:21:38] people want to do.

[1:21:39] This is your chance to breathe the same air, and I promise we're not sick, so it's okay

[1:21:45] to breathe that air, as the Flophouse guys and just have a good time.

[1:21:50] It's time to have fun again.

[1:21:51] America, let's have fun again.

[1:21:53] Let's just have fun and we're going to have fun.

[1:21:54] We can promise you fun.

[1:21:55] We can't promise you that you will leave this show smarter or more enlightened, but we can

[1:22:00] promise that you'll have had a good time.

[1:22:01] So that's Sunday, April 2nd, 7.30 p.m. at the Bell House.

[1:22:04] If you want to buy your tickets ahead of time, and I recommend it because these shows almost

[1:22:07] always sold out, that's TheBellHouseNY.com, TheBellHouseNY.com.

[1:22:13] We hope to do more live shows this year, but this is the only one we have on the calendar

[1:22:17] at the moment.

[1:22:18] So if you'd like to see us live, you should come to this show, and I thank you.

[1:22:22] Daniel?

[1:22:23] All right.

[1:22:24] Well, let's move on to some letters from listeners.

[1:22:26] Letters.

[1:22:27] Listeners like you, maybe, if one of these letters is from you.

[1:22:32] This one-

[1:22:33] Only way to find out, write in and tell us, did Dan read one of your letters?

[1:22:35] Knowing our backlog of letters, you'll find out in a few months, or rather, we'll find

[1:22:39] out.

[1:22:40] You'll know right away when you hear Dan say it, but when you send the message to us, it'll

[1:22:43] take a while for us to read it online.

[1:22:45] Dan will probably see your letter, put it in a bucket somewhere on his computer, forget

[1:22:49] about it, and then pick it at the last minute before we read it.

[1:22:53] Yeah.

[1:22:54] Nothing could be clearer than that.

[1:22:55] So this is from Matt, last name withheld, who writes, hey, floppy boys, love what you

[1:23:02] do on the pod.

[1:23:03] Been thinking recently, for no reason, about movie or book titles and how a bad one can

[1:23:09] distract or even detract from the overall experience.

[1:23:12] Like what's eating Gilbert great?

[1:23:14] Live, die, repeat, slash, edge of tomorrow, take your pick.

[1:23:18] Or Cinderella Man.

[1:23:20] I also have a few title pet peeves that are grinding my gears.

[1:23:23] Uh-oh.

[1:23:24] Specifically, the use of gerunds.

[1:23:25] You gotta get those gears looked at.

[1:23:27] The use of gerunds as the first word, Finding Forrester, Dating Private Ryan, Driving Miss

[1:23:34] Daisy.

[1:23:37] Also the use of the word combo the good in the title, i.e. the good doctor, the good

[1:23:42] wife, the good bad movie, et cetera.

[1:23:44] Not the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which is a fantastic title and a great movie.

[1:23:48] Although, based on those other names, does that mean that like, because normally when

[1:23:52] they say something's the good, it's like an implication that they're actually not that

[1:23:55] good.

[1:23:56] Like the good son.

[1:23:57] Yeah.

[1:23:58] Do you think the good, the bad, and the ugly, they actually mean the bad, the bad, and the

[1:24:00] ugly?

[1:24:01] Or the bad, the good, and the beautiful.

[1:24:02] Oh, interesting.

[1:24:03] Yeah.

[1:24:04] And finally.

[1:24:05] Although there is a movie called The Bad and the Beautiful, does that movie mean the good

[1:24:08] and the ugly?

[1:24:09] I gotta watch these movies again.

[1:24:11] Hold on.

[1:24:12] And finally, I'm also tired of movie titles having the same title as parts of the same

[1:24:16] franchise, i.e. Halloween, 79, and 2018, Scream, 1996 and 2022, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Take

[1:24:25] Your Pick, and even Rambo slash John Rambo or Rocky slash Rocky Balboa.

[1:24:29] Would The Fast and the Furious and Fast and Furious fall under that rule also?

[1:24:33] Yeah, I believe so.

[1:24:34] Yes.

[1:24:35] Yes.

[1:24:36] Yeah.

[1:24:37] Like, just put a number behind it or add the word Requiem or some shit and come up with

[1:24:41] a cooler title.

[1:24:42] Protocol.

[1:24:43] There's no, there's no, we're going to get to, I'm going to, I'm going to tell you, I

[1:24:46] guess, what, what word I don't like in titles, but the word Requiem I always find hilarious

[1:24:50] because it never really means what, like, it's just that we try to class it up in some

[1:24:53] way.

[1:24:54] Yeah.

[1:24:55] Sounds fancy.

[1:24:56] Yeah.

[1:24:57] Class up those predators.

[1:24:58] You might as well just call it Alien vs. Predator Overture or something like that, you know?

[1:25:03] Well, Requiem is a, is a, specifically a mourning, like a song for the dead.

[1:25:09] But how does that play other than the fact that they kill people?

[1:25:11] How does that play?

[1:25:12] Is it the alien vs. the species?

[1:25:13] No, that's how it plays.

[1:25:14] No, it's like Requiem.

[1:25:15] Yeah.

[1:25:16] Fast and Furious Requiem.

[1:25:17] You know, is Requiem for a Dream.

[1:25:19] No, Requiem for a Dream is a title that makes sense, Dan.

[1:25:22] No, I know, but at least in the, anyway.

[1:25:25] I don't like it either.

[1:25:26] What about Covenants?

[1:25:27] Can we throw a Covenant to the end titles?

[1:25:28] I'm just saying, it makes a little more sense than Overture, which would be like, okay,

[1:25:31] this is the thing that's going to happen before any of the story happens.

[1:25:34] Yeah, because it's the prologue.

[1:25:35] It's the, it's the prequel.

[1:25:36] Yeah.

[1:25:37] Yeah.

[1:25:39] Fast and Furious Requiem.

[1:25:40] Okay.

[1:25:41] Did you hear about the Morgans Requiem?

[1:25:43] Yeah.

[1:25:44] Wondering if you guys have any title pet peeves or bad titles for good movies that come to

[1:25:47] mind.

[1:25:48] Keep up the good work.

[1:25:49] Floppy ears.

[1:25:50] Matt.

[1:25:51] I, you know, like mine actually was said in the letter, I, the, the weird gerund thing.

[1:25:55] We didn't even talk about, uh, you, you got your, uh, what saving Silverman and you're

[1:26:01] feeling Minnesota, feeling Minnesota.

[1:26:03] What a dumb title.

[1:26:04] What does that mean?

[1:26:05] That I'm feeling.

[1:26:06] Never having seen it.

[1:26:07] Is it, uh, an attitude that I have?

[1:26:11] Like I'm feeling kind of Minnesota today.

[1:26:12] Or is it telling me, is it about feeling tight five on Minnesota and just feeling the ground?

[1:26:21] I mean, who's with me?

[1:26:23] Who here works out?

[1:26:24] You still, you look like you work out.

[1:26:25] Oh yeah.

[1:26:26] I noticed that at the gym.

[1:26:27] There's a feeling Minnesota's always playing on those little TVs.

[1:26:31] I don't know about that.

[1:26:32] The gerund thing doesn't bother me that much.

[1:26:33] I like being John Malkovich as a title.

[1:26:35] I like saving private Ryan as a title.

[1:26:37] Like I like that.

[1:26:38] It is what they're, what they're doing is they're telling you this story.

[1:26:41] You're going to, you're going to experience it.

[1:26:43] It isn't something that happened and it's over and we, and it's history.

[1:26:46] This is something that is alive.

[1:26:47] This is a living thing.

[1:26:48] You picked a couple of the better examples of it.

[1:26:52] I think that I guess, but I guess that you do point out that the problem with something

[1:26:54] like feeling Minnesota is more the meaninglessness of it than the inherent quality of the articles

[1:27:03] of speech.

[1:27:04] Exactly.

[1:27:05] It's a little bit of a roller coaster when really that movie should have been called

[1:27:06] who's the man now, dog, uh, you got anything Stewart or, I mean, I hate it anytime they

[1:27:14] try and, uh, put in a name for comedic effect.

[1:27:18] Like I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry.

[1:27:21] Uh, but I, I guess I just hate that name cause that movie sucks.

[1:27:25] Uh, I'm, I'm a big, this is after B after defending gerunds, this might seem hypocritical,

[1:27:31] but I'm a really, I'm tired of the word rise in movie titles.

[1:27:36] That was going to be mine.

[1:27:37] That's what I was going to bring up.

[1:27:38] I feel it's a word that's so much.

[1:27:39] Yeah.

[1:27:40] And it often means nothing.

[1:27:41] It's not really explicit.

[1:27:42] It does not the thing.

[1:27:43] Are you telling rise of Taj?

[1:27:44] Yeah.

[1:27:45] Are you telling me in the previous movie or that whenever a sequel has rise in it and

[1:27:53] it's like, so the last time was not when they rose to promise like that, like the dark night

[1:27:58] rises is not a star.

[1:28:00] I feel like that kicked it off to me that, that, that kicked off and that was the worst

[1:28:03] one.

[1:28:04] But like that GHO, the rise of Cobra is about the downfall of Cobra and the rise of Skywalker

[1:28:08] is a meaningless phrase.

[1:28:10] Like it's a, there's only one movie where I like the title rise and that's the David

[1:28:14] LaChapelle dance documentary rise about the history of crumping, uh, where you just see

[1:28:18] a lot of crump and clown dancing.

[1:28:19] But uh, the challenge accepted, I'm going to find a title that is a rise of the plan

[1:28:24] of the apes.

[1:28:25] That one of them.

[1:28:26] That's one of them.

[1:28:27] But it also doesn't.

[1:28:28] Yeah.

[1:28:29] The rise of the plan of the plan of the apes I think comes before rise the plan of the

[1:28:31] apes.

[1:28:32] Yeah.

[1:28:33] Yeah.

[1:28:34] Wait, I thought it was rise.

[1:28:35] Dawn war.

[1:28:36] Yes.

[1:28:37] Yes.

[1:28:38] Which is kind of wild.

[1:28:39] That's a wild choice.

[1:28:40] Don't think that would happen first.

[1:28:42] Then.

[1:28:43] Yeah.

[1:28:44] Rise should be Dawn and Dawn should be right.

[1:28:45] It's just, it's that it's a word that is used without much paying attention to the meaning

[1:28:48] of the word rise.

[1:28:49] It feels like a, like last minute decision made by a bunch of studio execs sitting around

[1:28:55] a board, like especially dark night rises where they're like, okay, dark night.

[1:28:59] We did this cool thing where we came up with a title that wasn't just Batman.

[1:29:03] And so, you know, they're all riding high on that and they're like, well, we need to

[1:29:06] do that again.

[1:29:07] But how do we do it?

[1:29:08] And it's like, you know, Friday at four o'clock and they got to deliver something.

[1:29:12] So they're like, well, let's just do dark night again and throw rises.

[1:29:15] How are people going to know it's a Batman movie if it doesn't have Batman or dark night

[1:29:18] in the title?

[1:29:19] I mean, the fact that it's the same star and the same director and he's in a bat costume.

[1:29:22] I mean, how are people going to know?

[1:29:24] Yeah.

[1:29:26] I discovered a title from 2022, which is rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles colon

[1:29:31] the movie.

[1:29:32] I guess there was maybe some preexisting material called Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

[1:29:40] that they're going off of or like, I don't know, but it's also part of it is it is a

[1:29:48] it is a, you know, the original title was just Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

[1:29:52] So somewhere along the line, someone came along, came.

[1:29:55] No, no, no.

[1:29:56] That's the official title.

[1:29:57] The one with the movie.

[1:30:00] Yeah, okay. I'm not arguing with you.

[1:30:02] It's okay.

[1:30:04] Dan, I'm not going to see you because

[1:30:06] Amanda Armis wasn't in the title the first time.

[1:30:08] Throw the movie in there

[1:30:10] to make it clear to everyone.

[1:30:12] As we talked about on the podcast before, the same thing happened

[1:30:14] to Hot Dog.

[1:30:16] We can't have people showing up at the theater expecting to buy

[1:30:18] hot dogs and get free hot dogs.

[1:30:20] Yeah, yeah.

[1:30:22] I will say, that's the thing that I miss

[1:30:24] is having stuff being designated

[1:30:26] as the motion picture or the movie.

[1:30:28] I don't know.

[1:30:30] It's just classy.

[1:30:32] We need more of it.

[1:30:34] It's also funny how

[1:30:36] the numeral

[1:30:38] using a Roman numeral at the end of a title

[1:30:40] was also a way to class it up.

[1:30:42] Then they were like,

[1:30:44] we'll just use a number.

[1:30:46] We're not even going to use numbers anymore.

[1:30:48] Maybe we'll stick the number in a word.

[1:30:50] It's like, you had something so beautiful.

[1:30:52] You could have used those Roman numerals forever.

[1:30:54] Phantasm IV Oblivion

[1:30:56] Exactly.

[1:30:58] The Super Bowl understands.

[1:31:00] They're like, how do we class up this thing where a bunch of guys just slam into each other

[1:31:02] and get real brain injuries that

[1:31:04] destroy their lives forever.

[1:31:06] We'll just put a Roman numeral on it.

[1:31:08] Oh yeah, classy. Great. Now it's an American institution.

[1:31:10] I just have one more thing about that letter.

[1:31:12] It's funny that they mention

[1:31:14] What's Eating Gilbert Grape because I was just

[1:31:16] complaining about that title yesterday.

[1:31:18] I find it very annoying.

[1:31:20] I don't know why. I've never seen the movie.

[1:31:22] You expect it's going to be

[1:31:24] that a ghoulie is going to jump out of the toilet

[1:31:26] and take a bite out of them.

[1:31:28] I'm sure it doesn't deliver on that.

[1:31:30] It wasn't until years later

[1:31:32] that my full hatred

[1:31:34] of the title Good Will Hunting bloomed

[1:31:36] because at the time I just sort of accepted

[1:31:38] it and then somewhere along

[1:31:40] the line I'm like, wait a minute. No, wait.

[1:31:42] His name is Will Hunting.

[1:31:44] And he's good.

[1:31:46] And he's good.

[1:31:48] But he's also hunting for goodwill.

[1:31:50] This movie won

[1:31:52] a fucking Oscar for best screenplay.

[1:31:54] It didn't win the Oscar for best title.

[1:31:56] I know, but they

[1:31:58] made the decision to write that screenplay

[1:32:00] and then put that title on it.

[1:32:02] Dan, can I ask you a question?

[1:32:04] It doesn't count as a challenge though.

[1:32:06] That's the thing because it's his name.

[1:32:08] I was just asking Dan if he likes apples

[1:32:10] and then I was going to hold up

[1:32:12] a poster that says

[1:32:14] Academy Award winning for title

[1:32:16] Good Will Hunting.

[1:32:18] And I'd say, how do you like these apples?

[1:32:20] I don't really like

[1:32:22] normal apples all that much as fruit goes.

[1:32:24] I don't like those particular

[1:32:26] apples either.

[1:32:28] The answer would have been no, I don't like those apples.

[1:32:30] I haven't seen Good Will Hunting since I saw it

[1:32:32] in the theaters when it came out, but I remember it being a very good movie.

[1:32:34] I liked it just fine.

[1:32:36] I thought it was good.

[1:32:38] But I just, you know, years later

[1:32:40] I'm like, what a fucking stupid title.

[1:32:42] It is a dumb title, but can you consider it was the

[1:32:44] directorial debut of Stevie Van Zandt.

[1:32:46] He's got this amazing career as a musician

[1:32:48] and then he decides to make a... hold on, let me do some research.

[1:32:50] Oh, never mind.

[1:32:52] I see what you're doing.

[1:32:54] Sorry, I spelled differently and pronounced differently.

[1:32:56] Yeah, it is

[1:32:58] a totally different name.

[1:33:00] So, one more letter

[1:33:02] from listeners, a specific listener.

[1:33:04] All the listeners

[1:33:06] sent together for a class action letter

[1:33:08] named Tony.

[1:33:10] One of the spellings from Tony, Tony, Tony.

[1:33:12] I'll let you decide which one.

[1:33:14] A letter from a Mr.

[1:33:16] Tony T. Tiger.

[1:33:18] Tony writes,

[1:33:20] Hey Peaches, I recently discovered your

[1:33:22] podcast and have been working my way through the

[1:33:24] back catalog in between new episodes.

[1:33:26] Thank you for listening.

[1:33:28] Anywho, here's my entry for the Freeform contest

[1:33:30] described in episode 20

[1:33:32] 10,000 B.C.

[1:33:34] I told my mom

[1:33:36] about the Flophouse and we listened to the first

[1:33:38] episode together. When I asked her what

[1:33:40] she thought, she said, I hope the levels get better

[1:33:42] because I couldn't hear that one guy.

[1:33:44] I told her that the levels do eventually get better

[1:33:46] but she seemed skeptical.

[1:33:48] I'm not sure that the Flophouse has gained another loyal listener

[1:33:50] but you can add one more

[1:33:52] listen to episode one.

[1:33:54] Thank you for your consideration.

[1:33:56] R.O.C.K. in the USA.

[1:33:58] Now I can only assume that back in those days we were

[1:34:00] encouraging people to listen

[1:34:02] to those episodes. Now I would like to discourage

[1:34:04] them.

[1:34:06] We were stupider.

[1:34:08] Elliot wasn't on the show.

[1:34:10] Yeah, which meant you guys were much stupider.

[1:34:12] You wouldn't have to reassure your mom

[1:34:14] that the sound would get better if you just

[1:34:16] played her one from a recent...

[1:34:18] Maybe his mom is a big fan of stealth.

[1:34:20] That's why.

[1:34:22] We shouldn't make gender pronouns

[1:34:24] assumptions anyway

[1:34:26] but it is Tony with an I

[1:34:28] so I don't...

[1:34:30] I solved the mystery that I said

[1:34:32] before.

[1:34:34] I'm sorry, it's too late for me to guess

[1:34:36] and win the contest.

[1:34:38] Elliot, if you win the contest

[1:34:40] you get to decide what movie

[1:34:42] we cover on The Flophouse.

[1:34:44] Oh wow, that's amazing.

[1:34:46] Stealth, have we done that one?

[1:34:48] I guess I'll go listen to it.

[1:34:50] This is just a word of advice.

[1:34:52] If you want to share The Flophouse

[1:34:54] with somebody, I would say please do.

[1:34:56] Please help spread the word.

[1:34:58] We've been doing this for a long time but we're going to keep doing it

[1:35:00] so you might as well help us out with it.

[1:35:02] And we live in fear of it

[1:35:04] tanking because by now

[1:35:06] it's an important part of our income.

[1:35:08] Very much so.

[1:35:10] Let's not deny that.

[1:35:12] Stewart is now

[1:35:14] in a real turnaround.

[1:35:16] I'm doing my heel turn

[1:35:18] in this episode.

[1:35:20] I'm in Thrive mode.

[1:35:22] Thriving Vice Magnate

[1:35:24] Stewart Wellington doesn't need a podcast anymore.

[1:35:28] Now that he's made a deal with the Columbians.

[1:35:30] I just keep chasing my magazine

[1:35:32] dreams over here.

[1:35:34] Trying to get bigger and

[1:35:36] wider.

[1:35:38] Ever since you saw Younger, you've wanted to get into the publishing

[1:35:40] world, right?

[1:35:42] Yeah, that's what that movie's about. Magazine dreams.

[1:35:44] Oh, okay. That's the thing we do

[1:35:46] after letters. We make recommendations

[1:35:48] to movies that we've seen.

[1:35:50] Usually recently.

[1:35:52] Doesn't have to be. I'm going to say one that I saw

[1:35:54] recently though. I was

[1:35:56] in the

[1:35:58] Manhattan.

[1:36:00] You know,

[1:36:02] sometimes when you have a

[1:36:04] multiple schedule and you

[1:36:06] live in New York,

[1:36:08] New York City is made up of five

[1:36:10] boroughs, guys.

[1:36:12] A bunch of stories. A bunch of people

[1:36:14] whining about whenever they have to go to a different

[1:36:16] borough. That's me in this story.

[1:36:18] Me, who lives in Brooklyn,

[1:36:20] having to go into Manhattan for a couple of

[1:36:22] doctor's appointments. I built

[1:36:24] a whole day around it, which included

[1:36:26] some free time.

[1:36:28] Time to kill. It's going to take you a

[1:36:30] few hours on your horse to get to

[1:36:32] time to kill.

[1:36:36] I'm recommending no time to die.

[1:36:38] No, I am recommending

[1:36:40] I went to the draft house

[1:36:42] lower Manhattan and I saw

[1:36:44] a rep screening of

[1:36:46] Twin Peaks, Fire Walk With Me, a movie

[1:36:48] that I rejected

[1:36:50] when it first was out,

[1:36:52] as many people did who wanted

[1:36:54] more of the Twin Peaks they'd seen

[1:36:56] on their televisions and not this

[1:36:58] horrifying

[1:37:00] sadness. Yeah, you wanted more of the

[1:37:02] James Hurley goes off on his own and gets in a murder

[1:37:04] mystery, right? Exactly. We all wanted that.

[1:37:06] But it's

[1:37:08] a movie that now, I mean, certainly with

[1:37:10] the return and also just with time

[1:37:12] and knowing what to expect out of it,

[1:37:14] I don't have the same preconceived

[1:37:16] notion, problems

[1:37:18] with it. I can see it for what it

[1:37:20] is, which is a movie that

[1:37:22] I'll be honest, there's stuff in it I still am not

[1:37:24] as wild about as other Lynch movies. I think it goes

[1:37:26] a little hard into

[1:37:28] his tendency for like,

[1:37:30] let's just throw some

[1:37:32] stuff on here that's not going to be

[1:37:34] explained at the beginning of the movie.

[1:37:36] But I do think that

[1:37:38] it's a movie that really

[1:37:40] centers the character of Laura,

[1:37:42] gives Cheryl Lee

[1:37:44] a lot to play. It's a very

[1:37:46] sad movie about horrific

[1:37:48] drama, so it's not like a movie that's

[1:37:50] fun to watch, but it is

[1:37:52] interesting how it takes

[1:37:54] this character from Twin Peaks

[1:37:56] who prior to this was just sort of

[1:37:58] a motivating factor, kind of the

[1:38:00] stereotypical dead girl that

[1:38:02] picks everything off and puts her at the center of her

[1:38:04] own story and

[1:38:06] gives some sort of catharsis to that

[1:38:08] and, you know,

[1:38:10] there was utter silence in the theater after

[1:38:12] it ended.

[1:38:14] You were expecting people to

[1:38:16] cheer and toss

[1:38:18] homemade confetti.

[1:38:20] Na, na, na, na!

[1:38:24] Merry Christmas, you wonderful

[1:38:26] old Twin Peaks firewalker.

[1:38:28] Kind of in the middle of my

[1:38:30] personal, like, lynch rankings, but

[1:38:32] still, I mean, he's a genius, so

[1:38:34] that's still saying something.

[1:38:36] What's the bottom of your lynch rankings?

[1:38:38] Well, I mean,

[1:38:40] I don't think it's fair to Inland

[1:38:42] Empire, which I didn't

[1:38:44] really give a fair shake. I just kind of was

[1:38:46] like, I can't watch this. I turned it off.

[1:38:48] Maybe if I saw it in the theater,

[1:38:50] I would like it better.

[1:38:52] But, you know, I know that

[1:38:54] you love

[1:38:56] Wild at Heart. I cannot

[1:38:58] get through Wild at Heart.

[1:39:00] I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it only won the

[1:39:02] Palme d'Or, I mean.

[1:39:04] I have to agree with

[1:39:06] the can.

[1:39:08] They've never got it wrong, Dan.

[1:39:10] I mean, like, Titane won the Palme d'Or, right?

[1:39:12] And that was one that didn't quite work for me.

[1:39:14] So, I get it. I know you loved it.

[1:39:16] I guess I'm talking to babies on this podcast.

[1:39:18] This is the segment where we

[1:39:20] shit on movies that Stewart loves and the

[1:39:22] Cannes Film Festival also loved.

[1:39:24] Our guest is Owen Gleiberman, and he's here to

[1:39:26] complain about Bones and all.

[1:39:30] Hey, I'm going to recommend

[1:39:32] another Sloppy Gore Fest.

[1:39:34] That's right, I'm going to recommend

[1:39:36] Sloppy Gore Fest sounds like a

[1:39:38] horror movie host for kids.

[1:39:40] Yeah, Sloppy Gore Fest. I'm recommending

[1:39:42] a movie from 1995 titled

[1:39:44] Before Sunrise.

[1:39:48] Written and directed by

[1:39:50] Richard Linklater, starring Ethan Hawke and

[1:39:52] Julie Delphi.

[1:39:54] Wall-to-wall blood on that one.

[1:39:56] Sloppy, strap on your barf bags.

[1:39:58] Yeah, it's a movie that

[1:40:00] Don't worry, we have a nurse in the lobby for tonight's screening of Before Sunrise.

[1:40:06] If your hands get too weak from vomiting, you'd want them strapped on.

[1:40:11] Yeah, yeah.

[1:40:12] Well, you don't want to get barf on your hands.

[1:40:14] If your hands aren't on the inside of the bag, you'll hold the bag for a certain amount

[1:40:19] of time.

[1:40:20] Wait, what?

[1:40:21] Wait, you're going to have to draw your barf bag design for me before I back it, because

[1:40:26] this is our episode of Shark Tank.

[1:40:28] Wow.

[1:40:29] Yeah, so I'm going to recommend this movie.

[1:40:32] It's a movie that I missed years ago.

[1:40:35] And I don't know why, like, I feel like Richard Linklater is one of the best at doing just

[1:40:40] like hangout movies.

[1:40:41] And I feel like this is no different.

[1:40:44] It really captures the feel of being like young and in love and in Vienna, which I was

[1:40:50] living in Vienna around the time of this movie.

[1:40:53] And yeah, it's great.

[1:40:54] I loved it.

[1:40:57] I recommend if you, you know, you're kind of a romantic or you just want to see young

[1:41:02] Ethan Hawke.

[1:41:03] Yeah.

[1:41:04] Who wouldn't want to see that?

[1:41:05] I don't know.

[1:41:06] Old Ethan Hawke.

[1:41:07] Give me an answer.

[1:41:08] I need to know.

[1:41:09] I need to know.

[1:41:10] Maybe old Ethan Hawke would look at it and be like, oh, my lost youth.

[1:41:12] That makes sense.

[1:41:13] Because I have pictures of young Ethan Hawke.

[1:41:14] I've just enough for everyone in the United States except for one person.

[1:41:16] So I need to figure out who to not send one to.

[1:41:18] Oh, yeah.

[1:41:19] I mean, he probably already has a bunch of them, too.

[1:41:20] Yeah, yeah.

[1:41:21] Probably his family has some.

[1:41:22] Yeah.

[1:41:23] That makes sense.

[1:41:24] Anyway, I'm going to recommend a movie, too.

[1:41:25] Yeah, I'm going to recommend another, another, another, another, another, another, another

[1:41:30] Splatterfest.

[1:41:31] Yeah.

[1:41:32] I'm going to recommend the movie Girlfriends from 1978.

[1:41:36] This is a kind of slice of life, you know, street level view comedy drama directed by

[1:41:42] Claudia Weil, written by Vicky Plon.

[1:41:45] And there's a it stars Melanie Maren as a a young woman who is at that point in her

[1:41:50] life where she needs to start kind of taking her life seriously and figuring out what she

[1:41:55] was doing.

[1:41:56] She wants to be a photographer.

[1:41:57] She's mostly a bar mitzvah and wedding photographer because she can't get her career together.

[1:42:02] Her roommate has just left her in order to get married.

[1:42:05] And she has to face the fact that what does she want in her life?

[1:42:08] Does she want to be by herself or does she want to be with other people?

[1:42:10] And I really liked a lot.

[1:42:12] It's a very I was mentioning it to a friend of mine and she described it as being kind

[1:42:16] of like Francis Ha for that time period, which I think it's very similar.

[1:42:20] It is a similar sort of episodic structure.

[1:42:23] And there's a lot of actors in small roles that are like Eli Wallach is in it.

[1:42:27] He's really good.

[1:42:28] Young Christopher Guest and young Bob Balaban show up.

[1:42:31] So if you ever want to see Bob Balaban as like the hunky young husband of a character

[1:42:35] like I do, yeah, something you don't get to see too much.

[1:42:38] And I thought it was just it's both a kind of gentle and sweet movie, but also a real

[1:42:45] feeling movie and took me back to periods in my life when I was younger where it's like,

[1:42:50] oh, yeah, when I was newly married and my friends would come over who were not married,

[1:42:54] like the kind of those the awkwardness of those moments that I hadn't thought about

[1:42:58] in a long time that our lives were different now and it's just it's really good.

[1:43:03] And it's on the Criterion channel right now.

[1:43:05] If you're listening to this during a time when it's still on the Criterion channel.

[1:43:08] So go ahead and try it out.

[1:43:10] Or it's also on HBO Max in their Criterion section.

[1:43:13] Try it out on HBO Max so that HBO Max doesn't cut it from their service.

[1:43:16] Or maybe it's when you watch it, they cut it from your service because they have to

[1:43:19] pay for it.

[1:43:20] I'm not sure.

[1:43:21] Anyway.

[1:43:22] Anyhoo.

[1:43:23] So that's Girlfriends.

[1:43:24] Steven.

[1:43:25] Wow.

[1:43:26] Three very classy recommendations.

[1:43:28] I'm going to have to disrupt this by recommending Ghoulies 3, Ghoulies Go to College.

[1:43:36] I don't know if you guys have ever heard of 2B, but it is the ultimate streaming service

[1:43:44] that is basically a late 90s, early 2000s video store in streaming form.

[1:43:49] So Ghoulies Go to College is readily available on there.

[1:43:52] I mean, it's definitely a movie of its time.

[1:43:57] A lot of stuff in it that probably wouldn't fly now.

[1:43:59] I mean, it's typical, like, college hijinks.

[1:44:04] People pulling pranks on each other, though in this movie they're called yanks.

[1:44:07] So that was a very clever bit of world building that they do.

[1:44:12] Crank yanked?

[1:44:13] Because that could explain why.

[1:44:14] What about manks?

[1:44:15] Are any yanks yanked?

[1:44:16] Is the mank crank yanked?

[1:44:17] I think a mank comes out of the toilet at one point.

[1:44:23] You know, this is also a classy, you know, it's a classy movie because it's got Kevin

[1:44:28] McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Smashers as the professor who brings those ghoulies

[1:44:32] back.

[1:44:33] Yeah.

[1:44:34] Well, and he was just like the quintessential bad guy, like kind of comedy bad guy in that

[1:44:40] era.

[1:44:41] Right.

[1:44:42] I don't know.

[1:44:43] I just think it's a super fun movie.

[1:44:44] It's directed by John Buechler, who did Jason, what was it, Part 7?

[1:44:52] Was it New Blood?

[1:44:53] Ooh, Part 7 is a fave of mine.

[1:44:55] Yeah.

[1:44:56] So he's an effects artist turned director.

[1:44:59] And yeah, I'm like really deep in the little monster genre right now because of this movie

[1:45:05] I'm prepping.

[1:45:06] And so, yeah, I've been watching basically everything that's available.

[1:45:09] And I've watched ghoulies go to college a few times now.

[1:45:12] It is thoroughly entertaining.

[1:45:15] It's a fun ride.

[1:45:17] Lots of laughs.

[1:45:18] Lots of fun creatures.

[1:45:20] Highly recommend it.

[1:45:21] Now, speaking of being an effects artist director, is there anything you would like to plug before

[1:45:26] we all go away?

[1:45:27] I mean, I wouldn't mind forever.

[1:45:32] I have not officially announced this movie yet.

[1:45:35] So maybe this will be like kind of a soft announcement right here.

[1:45:39] Some hot news for you guys.

[1:45:41] Yeah, this is like when Lin-Manuel Miranda was on My Brother, My Brother.

[1:45:46] I mean, it was like, yeah, I'm working on this thing about rapping presidents.

[1:45:48] And they're like, good luck, dude.

[1:45:51] Yeah, exactly.

[1:45:53] And so, yeah, I'm in prep right now on another feature film.

[1:45:58] It's called Frankie Frico.

[1:46:00] And it's basically like, picture it to you this way.

[1:46:06] Have you ever watched a late 80s, early 90s erotic thriller and thought, I wish this had

[1:46:12] more ghoulies in it?

[1:46:14] And that's the movie.

[1:46:15] Yes, I can say yes.

[1:46:16] I think what you just described is what Dan fervently wished for as a child every night

[1:46:20] as he prayed to God before going to bed.

[1:46:23] So yeah, it's basically a guy yuppie in his house being terrorized by little monsters

[1:46:28] for 80 minutes.

[1:46:29] It's very much my love letter to the exact kind of movie we've been talking about today.

[1:46:35] So yeah, this timed out perfectly.

[1:46:38] You showed me some of the concept work on this.

[1:46:41] Oh, yeah.

[1:46:42] It looks incredible.

[1:46:45] There's some pretty wild creatures in this.

[1:46:47] There's some, yeah, full creature suits.

[1:46:49] I'm deep in teaching myself animatronics right now because how I approach making movies is

[1:46:56] I just kind of dive in headfirst and I'm like, oh, yeah, I'll figure this out.

[1:47:00] And now I'm stuck with the task of figuring it out.

[1:47:03] So, yeah, we'll see how it pans out.

[1:47:06] But I'm very excited.

[1:47:07] I'm looking forward to seeing it.

[1:47:08] Go to camera April 3rd.

[1:47:09] Yeah, that's so great.

[1:47:11] Obviously, you haven't recommended you.

[1:47:13] You haven't plugged it.

[1:47:15] But obviously, everyone should go watch Psycho Goreman, not just because Steve made it.

[1:47:19] It's great, but also because I have a very small vocal role in it.

[1:47:22] And you guys love me, right?

[1:47:23] You want to support me and support me.

[1:47:26] And I mean, OK, and like, who knows?

[1:47:30] Maybe I'll enlist your guys vocal talents in this project if you're supporting us.

[1:47:36] I mean, OK, so the thing that's great about this podcast is that it's on the Maximum Fun

[1:47:42] Network.

[1:47:43] Oh, and very soon we're going to be doing our pledge drive.

[1:47:46] The Max Fun Drive is coming up.

[1:47:48] Get excited, folks, because we are excited, too.

[1:47:50] We got some cool stuff planned.

[1:47:53] Do we?

[1:47:54] Oh, yeah.

[1:47:55] Obviously, this show is going to be heavily edited and made perfect and great sounding

[1:47:58] by Alexander Smith.

[1:47:59] He's the best.

[1:48:00] You can find him doing a variety of different things under the name Howell Tawdy.

[1:48:04] Some of them legal.

[1:48:06] Some of them questionable.

[1:48:07] Yeah, yeah.

[1:48:08] I don't endorse everything he does.

[1:48:11] For the Flophouse, I've been Stuart Wellington.

[1:48:13] I've been Dan McCoy.

[1:48:14] Happy to not be doing this part of it.

[1:48:16] I'm the rise of Elliot Kalin.

[1:48:18] And I'm Steve Kostansky, remembering to say his name at the end of the podcast, like he

[1:48:23] told you by Dan.

[1:48:24] Nailed it.

[1:48:25] Right.

[1:48:26] Nailed it.

[1:48:27] Nothing but name.

[1:48:28] I. And just to let you know, Steve, we record the zoom video as well because we use it to

[1:48:39] like do promotional clips.

[1:48:41] I'm assuming you're OK with that.

[1:48:42] Yeah.

[1:48:43] Yeah.

[1:48:44] Well, I was going to ask, am I allowed to get a screenshot of this?

[1:48:47] Yeah.

[1:48:48] Yeah.

[1:48:49] Oh, please.

[1:48:50] You know what?

[1:48:51] Times are dark.

[1:48:52] I can look at this and feel good.

[1:48:53] I know exactly what Elliot's going to do.

[1:48:54] Yeah.

[1:48:55] Just me and my best friends.

[1:48:56] And Dan knows what I'm going to say, which is, please just let us know so that because

[1:48:58] Dan has a habit of tweeting out screenshots where I'm like this.

[1:49:02] Well, no, Dan and Stu are both like.

[1:49:06] In your defense, that's kind of out of your face always.

[1:49:09] Because I'm talking most of the time.

[1:49:11] Yeah, exactly.

[1:49:12] I'm talking most of the time.

[1:49:13] So Dan knows to take a picture during the 90 percent of the podcast.

[1:49:15] That's me.

[1:49:16] I'm never.

[1:49:17] I've already told him several times.

[1:49:18] I'm sorry.

[1:49:19] And I won't do it anymore.

[1:49:20] And yet.

[1:49:21] So now I'm making sure that our guest, our esteemed guest, understands that that's my

[1:49:26] writer for any photograph.

[1:49:28] Yeah.

[1:49:29] So I could just do it right now.

[1:49:30] Yeah.

[1:49:31] Like three, two, one.

[1:49:32] Nice.

[1:49:33] Perfect.

[1:49:34] Maximumfund.org.

[1:49:35] Comedy and culture.

[1:49:36] Artist owned.

Episode #391 - Critters, with Steven Kostanski

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