The Flop House: Episode #94 - Conan the Barbarian

[0:00] In this episode, we discuss Conan the Barbarian, because Krom demanded it.

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

[0:35] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:36] And my name is Elliot Kalin, and that's who I am.

[0:39] Yep.

[0:39] Back from the, uh...

[0:41] Abyss.

[0:42] Guys, I'm really hungover today, so can you take it easy, you know?

[0:46] We'll do our best.

[0:47] You guys do most of the talking.

[0:49] We didn't do anything yet. It seems like very preemptive to...

[0:52] I'm just letting you know, take it easy on me, no jokes at my expense, but make most of the jokes, and I'll just hang out.

[0:58] What about jokes at the expense of the hat you're wearing right now?

[1:01] No, you can make...

[1:02] Wait, no, that's still against me, though.

[1:04] No, no, is the hat hung over?

[1:05] No, no, no, just me.

[1:07] I'm wearing a hat because it keeps my brains in my head

[1:10] instead of making out my ears.

[1:11] I read a story about a guy who had to do that

[1:14] because he was attacked by a bear.

[1:16] Wait, what?

[1:17] He was attacked by a bear,

[1:18] and he had to hold his hat really tight on his head

[1:20] to keep his brains from falling out.

[1:22] He survived, though.

[1:23] It was a bear with one of those skull saws.

[1:27] Yeah, the bear was tree-panning him.

[1:28] to open up his third eye

[1:30] and it went a little out of control

[1:32] and the bear ran away

[1:33] because he had a record

[1:34] and he didn't want to get picked up

[1:35] one more time.

[1:35] The bear subscribes

[1:36] to some really out there

[1:37] new age...

[1:38] Yeah, the Fortean Times.

[1:40] Did it work, though?

[1:41] No.

[1:43] Okay.

[1:43] His third eye remained closed.

[1:44] In fact, it was more closed

[1:46] and that's why he founded the band

[1:47] Third Eye Blind.

[1:48] Oh, okay.

[1:49] Interesting anecdote.

[1:50] They had some hits.

[1:51] Mm-hmm.

[1:51] So that was a bit of nonsense

[1:55] to start us off.

[1:55] That was VH1 Storytellers.

[1:58] No, Storytellers is where they tell their own story, right?

[2:01] That was my story.

[2:03] Take off mask, reveal I'm the guy from Third Eye Blind, don't know his name, so let's just call him James Smogan.

[2:09] Let's call him Blindy.

[2:11] Blindy McThirdeye.

[2:13] I mean, that name is like a prophecy.

[2:17] Yeah.

[2:18] Like the movie The Prophecy.

[2:20] Or the other movie The Prophecy.

[2:21] Prophecy 2.

[2:22] Or Prophecy.

[2:23] Yeah.

[2:24] A movie.

[2:27] yeah so we talk about movies so what are we doing today dan you're the host hosted in general what

[2:32] we do at this show is we watch a movie perhaps a bad movie and then we discuss it i mean usually

[2:38] it's bad though it's either i mean that's poor financially or well it's a flop stewart we don't

[2:43] prejudge but we assume that the things that we see thanks for probably well and the disappointment

[2:49] today was we were going to watch one that we thought we might enjoy and and spoiler alert

[2:55] Spoiler alert, didn't live up to our expectations.

[2:57] We watched a movie called Conan.

[3:01] Can't Stop.

[3:02] The Barbarian.

[3:03] Oh.

[3:03] Yeah, Conan the Barbarian, 2011.

[3:06] Conan the Barbarian, I wish it was called Conan the Barbarian, 2011.

[3:09] And it was like basically Beastmaster 2, and he just was in our modern day times.

[3:13] Yeah, like in the Masters of the Universe movie.

[3:16] Yeah.

[3:17] Well, the weird thing about the Masters of the Universe movie is that it was a Fourth World New Gods script

[3:23] that basically just got turned into a Masters of the Universe movie.

[3:27] So is that weird or just a fun fact?

[3:30] Well, if you watch Masters of the Universe now

[3:32] and if you're familiar with Jack Kirby's New Gods comics that DC did,

[3:36] you'll notice that the characters make much more sense as those characters,

[3:39] that He-Man is Orion, Skeletor is Darkseid.

[3:42] That's why laser beams come out of Skeletor's eyes, that kind of stuff.

[3:45] And where does Courtney Cox fit into all this?

[3:48] She was picked out of a crowd by Bruce Springsteen to dance with him on a stage.

[3:51] Thank you.

[3:53] and we have him to thank for her career.

[3:58] Yep, that's for sure.

[3:59] So, but Conan, you were a steward.

[4:02] I was pretty excited.

[4:04] You're a big Conaniac.

[4:05] You're a Conehead.

[4:07] That's what they call fans of Conan.

[4:09] No, I'm a big fan of the movie Conan the Barbarian.

[4:16] 2011.

[4:17] Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[4:20] I'm going to come to that in my own time.

[4:22] the John Milius

[4:23] is that how you say his name?

[4:24] John Milius

[4:24] Arnold Schwarzenegger

[4:26] Jimmy Earl Jones

[4:27] and Dino De Laurentiis

[4:30] yeah

[4:30] Schlockmaster extraordinaire

[4:33] well he also made

[4:34] a number of good movies

[4:35] no it's true

[4:36] he produced

[4:37] La Strada

[4:38] for crying out loud

[4:39] and he

[4:39] and also

[4:40] the

[4:41] the Robert Howard stories

[4:44] the original basis

[4:46] yeah yeah

[4:46] of the character

[4:47] I like all that stuff

[4:48] so I went into

[4:51] this movie

[4:52] with no expectations or personal feelings on the matter.

[4:55] It wasn't like you had a deep investment already

[4:59] in your preconceived notions of the character.

[5:01] Yeah, it's not like I saw the trailers for this movie

[5:04] and complained loudly to everyone within listening distance

[5:08] or if I was on the subway platform looking at a poster

[5:11] that somebody had scribbled boobs on.

[5:13] And I would complain to them that it didn't look right.

[5:15] So before we get into your deep personal attachment,

[5:18] Elliot, maybe you could quickly sum up this movie.

[5:21] I bet you could do it in about 30 seconds.

[5:23] Much quicker than in the last couple ones.

[5:25] So we open in ancient Hyboria where Morgan Freeman, surprisingly, I don't know how they landed him.

[5:31] Like that's probably a third of the budget, narrates that this is a long time ago.

[5:35] I think it has about 30 seconds worth of work in the whole film.

[5:37] Yeah, basically.

[5:38] A long time ago in a world far, far away, there was, it's a lot of warring tribes.

[5:44] There was a magic mask that this guy used to rule the world.

[5:47] All the tribes ganged up to stop him, and the mask was shattered, and everyone was given a piece of the mask.

[5:52] It's basically the same story as the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring, right?

[5:55] And so there's an evil warlord who's going around looking for the pieces of the mask.

[6:01] We end up in Cimmeria, the northern wastes, where there's a barbarian group of people.

[6:07] Ron Perlman seems to be their leader slash wise man, and his son is Conan, who at first you think is going to be kind of like a clumsy boob.

[6:16] But then you see he single-handedly kills three opposing tribesmen while keeping an egg in his mouth.

[6:23] Yeah, and they're grown men.

[6:25] Yeah.

[6:25] Like grown animal men, and he just totally destroys them.

[6:28] And so he's all badass from childhood.

[6:31] And as you said, apparently the proof of who's a badass in this universe is the same as a home ec class in high school.

[6:38] Oh, yeah, that they can keep an egg around for a day and not break it.

[6:41] Yeah.

[6:41] They're ready for parenthood now and smashing open the heads of guys who look like last of the Mohegans guys.

[6:47] Yep.

[6:48] Those are Mohegans, by the way.

[6:50] Oh, okay, Mohegans.

[6:51] Mohegans, like Mohegan son?

[6:53] Yeah.

[6:53] So he values there.

[6:56] The bad guy and his army come in and kill everybody in the village.

[7:01] They torture Ron Perlman, the dad, and take the piece of the mask.

[7:05] In a really long, mumbly scene.

[7:07] Everyone mumbles in this movie.

[7:09] It's like a mumblecore sword and sorcery.

[7:11] Or they have crazy accents.

[7:13] Yeah, or they have crazy accents, or their teeth are full of sharp pieces of metal,

[7:17] so you can't really hear them talk very well.

[7:19] Or one guy has his nose cut off, so he has a weird voice.

[7:22] And it's a real shame, because the sparkling dialogue is really the delight of this film.

[7:27] Well, Tom Stoppard was brought in to do an uncredited rewrite.

[7:30] Oh, really?

[7:30] Yeah, so that's why there was all that stuff about relativity and fractal science

[7:35] and English poetry of the late 19th century.

[7:38] Wow.

[7:39] The more you know, Stuart.

[7:41] Sorkin-esque.

[7:41] Yeah, Sorkin-esque, exactly.

[7:43] A lot of walking talks in his movie.

[7:44] Yeah, middle brow.

[7:46] Everybody on their A-game.

[7:48] So Conan's whole tribe is destroyed, but he escapes.

[7:52] For some reason, they just let him live.

[7:54] They let him live, I think, out of respect for his feistiness.

[7:57] Yeah.

[7:57] He vows revenge.

[8:00] We cut to, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years later.

[8:04] He's a grown man played by Khal Drogo.

[8:06] Yeah, yeah.

[8:07] With super pecs and not a very good actor.

[8:10] And he and his black friends free slaves who are topless women and ride around on a party boat.

[8:16] Conan then hears word that this evil warlord with an enormous army who is going around destroying every kingdom in the world, Conan has no idea who he is.

[8:28] Never heard of him.

[8:29] But he hears of his name and goes on a quest for revenge.

[8:32] Along the way, he picks up a lady monk played by – what's her name?

[8:35] Rachel Nichols.

[8:36] Rachel Nichols of G.I. Joe, The Rise of Cobra, who is the last in a line of descendants going back to some crazy magic priesthood, and the villain needs the full mask and her pure blood to bring back his witch wife, who will then give him the power to control the world.

[8:56] and so conan and them run around a lot his uh the bad guy's daughter is rose mcgowan who's kind of

[9:01] an evil witch with no hair on her forehead and sharp nail talons eyebrows or eyebrows and talons

[9:07] like the lady death strike or freddy and um they just kind of fight and run around and fight each

[9:12] other and in the end uh they fight and then conan uh wins he puts on the magical mask that does

[9:19] literally nothing and then dies the bad guy puts on the magical mask fights conan for a while he

[9:24] He starts calling the spirit of his dead witch wife into the body of Rachel Nichols

[9:28] and then brags to Conan for a long time, and then Conan knocks him off a bridge.

[9:33] Yep, he brags to him just long enough for Conan to knock him off a bridge.

[9:36] And the whole fortress falls apart, and they leave.

[9:40] Also, along the way, Conan and Rachel Nichols totally do it.

[9:43] Or Rachel Nichols' body double.

[9:46] Rachel Nichols' body double, because according to Wikipedia, she will not do nudity in movies.

[9:50] Who found out that fun fact?

[9:54] I looked it up because Dan was like, surely she doesn't have a known nudity clause.

[9:58] Why doesn't she just get naked in movies?

[9:59] Well, I mean, she's known to be such a fine thespian who would never do something like pose in, say, a men's magazine or basically rely on—

[10:10] A lad mag, is what you're saying.

[10:12] Yeah, rely on a cleavage-bearing top in all of her roles.

[10:16] In every movie she's ever made.

[10:18] So, you know, I just—in this movie, it seemed—

[10:22] I will mention that there was a battle between Conan and an army of sandmen who do a lot of flips and stuff.

[10:28] Sand people, if you will.

[10:29] And they're not sand people.

[10:30] Those are Tusken Raiders.

[10:31] They ride single file to hide their numbers.

[10:33] On Banthas.

[10:34] On Banthas.

[10:35] But they are scared away by the call of the, what, Kray Dragon?

[10:39] What is it called?

[10:40] Yeah, something like that.

[10:41] And there's also a part with a tentacle monster who decides to basically ignore Conan and kill all of Conan's enemies.

[10:49] Well, they're old buddies from back in the day.

[10:52] Him and the tentacle monster?

[10:53] Yeah.

[10:53] Him and Tenti?

[10:54] That was the bad guy's first mistake.

[10:56] The bad guy summons a tentacle monster,

[10:58] I'm guessing because he's been bored

[11:00] sitting down in the dungeon by himself all day.

[11:02] And then, yeah, most of the action,

[11:04] most of the scene is shots of either the tentacles killing bad guys

[11:08] or just shots of the one bad guy smiling and laughing.

[11:12] You don't really know that Conan's there for a while.

[11:15] There's a bunch of hench monsters,

[11:17] Like, kind of grotesque guys who, you see them all in the beginning in the village, and Conan kind of swears revenge on each of them, but, like, most of them don't even get names, and you barely see them.

[11:28] Like, they should be kind of the bosses to each level, but they just kind of come and go as they please.

[11:32] Well, there was Nose-less, and there was Toothy.

[11:35] Nose-less, Toothy, Toothy was Remo, he was the only one, I think, who got a name and a personality.

[11:41] it was uh big black guy and big monster man yeah and uh rose mcgowan lady death strike yeah i think

[11:51] that's it yeah and then the the head bad guy whose name i'll lose me lord yeah mumbly man

[11:59] uh so stewart yes let's get back to you okay because you clearly have a real personal connection

[12:07] with the material.

[12:08] You are part Sumerian, is that right?

[12:11] I really don't like talking about my background.

[12:14] I mean, I know you can't hint at yourself.

[12:17] You're not religious.

[12:19] You don't practice worshiping Krom,

[12:23] but you do ethnically and culturally identify?

[12:26] I don't necessarily believe all the spiritual mumbo jumbo,

[12:31] but I do, you know, I kind of like the rituals of it all.

[12:34] Oh, I will mention this movie started on a really high note.

[12:37] There's a battle going on, and Conan's mother is pregnant, and she's stabbed in the belly with a sword.

[12:42] And so Conan's father, he's like, oh, no, what am I going to do?

[12:45] And she goes, I want to see my son before I die.

[12:47] So he basically gives her a cesarean section on the battlefield, and she names him Conan and then dies.

[12:53] And then I guess in the middle of a battle, Ron Perlman just holds his baby up.

[12:56] But that's because Conan is battle-born.

[12:59] He's born on the battlefield.

[13:01] It should have been called a Conanian section, right?

[13:06] No.

[13:06] They could still say C-section, yeah.

[13:08] But, I mean, it happened pre-Caesar, right?

[13:11] I mean, there are a lot of places where there's just kind of pillars and togas,

[13:15] so I don't know if it was before or after Caesar.

[13:17] This could be post-apocalyptic.

[13:19] And a lot of styrofoam boulders.

[13:20] This could be, it would be a very different movie, but the same movie,

[13:23] if it just opened with, like, a computer readout that said, like,

[13:26] Earth, 2245 A.D.

[13:29] Yeah.

[13:31] After the disaster, you know, or something like that.

[13:35] You can still do Morgan Freeman and do the narration.

[13:37] Yeah.

[13:38] After the nuclear blast, Earth became a wasteland.

[13:42] That's not a Morgan Freeman.

[13:43] Aliens and monsters roamed the Earth.

[13:46] Morgan Freeman has a Scottish accent.

[13:48] One man had to take the wasteland and tame it.

[13:53] Who's the man now, Conan?

[13:56] Okay, now you've really tipped your hand there.

[13:59] I found the cure for Conan, but I lost it.

[14:02] It's kind of like you lose your keys.

[14:05] Yeah, like, you know, like you lose your keys.

[14:07] Oh, Sean Connery.

[14:09] Highlander 2, The Quickening.

[14:12] He just advertises other movies in the middle of his movie.

[14:16] He was in that.

[14:17] Welcome to Entrapment.

[14:21] If you want to see another movie with me,

[14:23] why not go watch League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

[14:26] If you want to see me in a flop, see me in a real flop.

[14:30] Zardoz.

[14:35] I'm just going to run around in a diaper for the whole movie.

[14:38] I got a mustache and a red diaper and a gun.

[14:41] What more do you need?

[14:42] And boots that go up to my knees.

[14:44] There's a floating stone head in that film, for God's sake.

[14:47] For God's sakes, what more do you need to see it?

[14:49] There's a whole sequence where I just sit there in a cave with my wife

[14:53] and we turn into skeletons.

[14:54] What do I have to tell you to get you to see this movie?

[14:58] I would love it if that was the trailer for Zarda.

[15:02] Just him describing it.

[15:04] There is some crazy shit in this film.

[15:07] We wear masks and rape people.

[15:09] It turns out it's the Wizard of Oz in the end.

[15:12] If I described it, you can't even believe it.

[15:15] You have to see it.

[15:16] There's all sorts of psychic shit with these women.

[15:18] I don't even know what was going on.

[15:20] But I'm in like a cocoon or something.

[15:23] You've got to see this.

[15:24] It's amazing.

[15:25] When does it come out?

[15:27] Look it up.

[15:28] Oh, this will blow your mind.

[15:32] Who's the Zardoz now, dog?

[15:35] It's the way he's doing a trailer for a movie he made a long time ago.

[15:39] I know, this is for the re-release of Zardoz, yeah.

[15:42] If you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself.

[15:46] Yeah, for Zardoz 3D.

[15:48] Zardoz 3D.

[15:50] You'll think that the giant stone head is just flying out of the screen at you.

[15:54] It's amazing.

[15:55] This is more and more like a Sean Cosby.

[15:59] Have a jello pudding pop.

[16:02] When you see Zardoz.

[16:04] We're shot on Kodak film.

[16:09] Okay, so none of this happened in Conan.

[16:13] No, I wish it had.

[16:15] Sean Connery just wanders the wasteland advertising his old movies.

[16:20] But it takes place in a different universe or something, right?

[16:23] Because there's no Hyperborea...

[16:26] Not that I know of.

[16:28] England or something.

[16:29] Well, it's very possible that that period of time was just lost to history.

[16:33] Lost to the mists.

[16:34] Yeah.

[16:35] Yeah.

[16:35] As I understand it, mists get in the way of a lot of this.

[16:40] They do, because you get addicted to it, and it's like, you don't even really see much.

[16:43] It's just these computer-generated kind of still images, but you want to click through it and find out the answer to the puzzle.

[16:48] Yeah, okay.

[16:49] Like, mist really gets in the way.

[16:50] Yeah.

[16:51] You should just get the strategy guide and just go through it point by point.

[16:55] It's really long.

[16:56] Save you some time.

[16:57] It's a long game.

[16:58] And the strategy guide looks like a phone book.

[17:01] Oh, well, it is a phone book.

[17:02] You can call people who have finished the game, and they can tell you what to do next.

[17:06] Give you all the tricks.

[17:06] The tricks and tips of the missed pros.

[17:09] I'm laughing.

[17:11] Mysterians, they call themselves.

[17:12] I'm laughing less because it's funny and more because it is stupid.

[17:15] But anyway, thanks for the judgment.

[17:19] That's really unnecessary.

[17:20] This was a safe place.

[17:21] So I guess that was a bad, bad tangent is what you're saying?

[17:24] Yep.

[17:24] Frightfully unfunny?

[17:26] Oh, good, bad tangent.

[17:26] Oh, okay.

[17:28] So Conan the Barbarian.

[17:29] So Stuart, what did you think?

[17:30] Stuart, you were, yeah.

[17:31] No, but I was trying to lead you into a little discussion.

[17:34] He was trying to force you to talk.

[17:35] Much like you asked at the beginning of the show,

[17:38] don't make me talk too much.

[17:39] Dan was forcing you to talk.

[17:41] As someone who...

[17:42] He was expressly ignoring your wishes.

[17:45] As someone who is sort of bored through half of the original movie

[17:48] and has never read the books.

[17:49] Okay.

[17:50] I need you to guide me.

[17:52] That's you, okay.

[17:52] Well, the...

[17:55] He's your Padawan learner.

[17:56] The things I like about the movie, obviously, the soundtrack's great.

[18:00] The original, you're saying?

[18:01] The original, yeah.

[18:02] And, I don't know, it feels kind of, it feels more like it's taking place in a different world.

[18:08] You were saying during this movie, while we were watching it, there's an exotic quality to the old movie.

[18:12] Yeah, I mean, the first, what, half hour of the movie has maybe, like, four lines of dialogue.

[18:19] And they're all, Zardoz!

[18:21] Which is really weird.

[18:25] In the old movie, you get the feeling that the guy who made the movie, John Milius,

[18:29] really kind of believes the philosophy of these characters.

[18:32] Yeah.

[18:33] Kind of like force and violence as a way of justice.

[18:36] Well, because he is a legendary crazy person.

[18:40] He's a crazy gun nut.

[18:41] Yeah.

[18:41] And on part of like the setting up of the bad guys in the beginning of the original film,

[18:48] they do a much better job of kind of creating characters out of nothing.

[18:51] Like, hey, this guy's got a hammer.

[18:54] This guy's got a mustache and then steals the sword.

[18:56] This guy's James Earl Jones.

[18:57] What's he doing here?

[18:58] And like, I don't know, you get the sense of

[19:03] there's a kind of strangeness and weirdness to these characters.

[19:07] You don't have a voiceover in the beginning saying,

[19:10] in the olden days of Hyperborea, then this happened.

[19:14] And they don't, this movie really rams it down your throat

[19:17] as soon as possible that this is this revenge story

[19:22] where Conan's only goal is to get revenge for his dead father.

[19:26] And that's never really been the character.

[19:29] Obviously, he takes revenge when he can.

[19:32] Like, who wouldn't?

[19:35] Yeah, I mean, it's right there.

[19:37] It's like a t-ball.

[19:38] But he has a lust for life in the stories.

[19:40] And for winches.

[19:42] Yeah, so he's looking to steal babe's hearts.

[19:45] Like things you turn?

[19:47] A lust for winches.

[19:49] Yeah, he fucks winches is what I'm saying.

[19:51] How did you design this pulley system?

[19:52] I've got to know.

[19:53] You just take the middle screw thing out of them and, you know.

[19:56] Whoa, Dan knows way too much about having sex with winches.

[19:59] You just fuck that winch.

[20:01] You give that winch.

[20:03] Sorry, I'm very sorry I took us down this road.

[20:06] I didn't realize it would end in horror.

[20:08] You give that winch a good rogering, eh, Stu?

[20:10] Okay, so you were saying Conan the character.

[20:13] The Conan character is not, I find at least,

[20:16] the focus is not the revenge aspect.

[20:18] Obviously, he takes it when he can,

[20:20] But more he's just this larger-than-life, almost animal, base lusts.

[20:26] He's a fantasy figure.

[20:26] Yeah, and I don't feel they really grabbed that in this remake.

[20:32] It seems like he's mainly there to boringly go after the guys who killed his dad,

[20:38] who had their own revenge interests at heart.

[20:40] And there's really no sense of revenge as a pointless exercise.

[20:45] I don't know.

[20:47] There's also, I feel that if they had had a better actor in the lead,

[20:50] Maybe he could have gotten across more of that personality of like kind of the mercenary out for himself who he's like your fantasy figure of like what you could do in a world like this where there is no law and where you have the abilities and the strength.

[21:04] And instead he just kind of felt like a kind of a third rate, you know, Schwarzenegger.

[21:10] Yeah.

[21:11] But except for the topless pirate party at the beginning of the movie.

[21:15] That was pretty great.

[21:16] There's really nothing in the movie as written that would even lend itself to that.

[21:20] Because it really is just a revenge.

[21:21] Because he's so single-mindedly focused on revenge.

[21:24] Yeah.

[21:24] They could have made some of his motives less clear.

[21:28] They could have made it so that he thought he was actually going to try and sell this magical monk lady back to the guy.

[21:33] Yeah.

[21:34] Or at least make her feel like he was going to actually trade her life for money.

[21:39] Or even give him some side adventures.

[21:41] When you look at a movie like fucking The Princess Bride has more of a sense of like characters on an epic adventure who get mixed up in different things and maybe their motives aren't all pure.

[21:51] And this – you'd think Conan the Barbarian would be a lot darker and bigger in scope than The Princess Bride.

[21:57] Well, and I think one of the things that helps with Princess Bride is that you get an actual sense of geography with it.

[22:05] Yes.

[22:05] They're traveling through a specific area, and then they move to a different specific area instead of everything.

[22:10] Like, this movie, they show these different cities, and they give every city a name, but they all are interchangeable, and apparently, like, as you said, maybe a couple hours ride from each other.

[22:21] It takes no time to get anywhere.

[22:23] It's like this ancient world where everything's either a forest, a coast, or a desert, and they're all within, like, three hours of each other.

[22:31] Yeah.

[22:32] You know, and you have these enormous—

[22:34] Unlike Star Wars, where every planet is either a forest, a desert, or an ice planet.

[22:41] But, like, they're totally different worlds that different scenes take place on, and you have a made-up bullshit science fiction reason why you can travel quickly between them.

[22:49] Right. Yeah.

[22:49] And you don't know. Maybe the other side of Endor looked totally different.

[22:52] I just think it's funny that, like—

[22:53] He only showed a tiny bit of Hoth.

[22:54] I just think that's the funny thing about Star Wars.

[22:56] It's just like every planet has one kind of ecosystem.

[22:58] But like in our solar system,

[23:01] like Earth is unique in that it has multiple ecosystems.

[23:03] Yeah.

[23:04] Like the surface of Mars is pretty much the same all over.

[23:07] Yeah, it looks like Tatooine.

[23:09] Yeah, exactly.

[23:10] And the surface of Neptune, for instance,

[23:13] or the moons of Jupiter are just like Hoth.

[23:16] In a way, Star Wars is very accurate.

[23:19] Yeah.

[23:20] There are Tauntauns.

[23:23] It's crawling with wampas.

[23:24] Mars is full of Jawas and Ponda Babas.

[23:28] Not to mention your Dr. Evazons.

[23:30] And your Sarlaccs.

[23:32] And don't forget the dark helmets with his Schwartz abilities.

[23:35] No, that's a different thing.

[23:37] Wait, what?

[23:38] No, you're thinking of something else.

[23:40] Okay, well, we'll talk about this later.

[23:41] You got your barfs.

[23:42] And your pizzas the hut.

[23:44] Pizzas the hut.

[23:46] Okay, thanks for clarifying the fucking plural of pizza the hut.

[23:50] You got your yogurts.

[23:53] And your Jewish princesses.

[23:55] And your whatever that robot that Joan Rivers is the voice of is called.

[24:00] I'm glad that just saying things that exist in a movie makes us laugh.

[24:05] When that movie is Spaceballs, you remember all the great jokes that are in Spaceballs and how much they make you laugh.

[24:12] But yeah, the geography of this world just feels very haphazard and not real.

[24:19] There's no sense of, like, that they really traveled on this quest because they just kind of walk around.

[24:24] And if you're going to make all the effort to name, like, not only name the cities, but, like, put it up on the screen, we have no idea where these places are.

[24:33] They make no effort to actually give you a sense of the geography of it.

[24:36] And they're all running through Roman columns or forests or desert.

[24:40] Yeah.

[24:42] You want it to be like a fantasy book where you can flip back to the front where they got the little map.

[24:47] To check out the fucking sweet map.

[24:48] exactly with like a little cartoon mermaid drawn in the corner where are they going now i get it

[24:55] they gotta they gotta go through this uh those tree symbols to get to those mountains they gotta

[24:59] go through the weeping forest to get to the mountains of foreboding says this map isn't a

[25:04] scale i don't know who to trust anymore i guess what i'm saying is they didn't put very much level

[25:11] of nuance or anything into the script or movie.

[25:16] Yeah, well, everything just kind of rambled along

[25:19] until they needed something to happen.

[25:21] It did kind of feel like a Conan the Barbarian movie

[25:24] made by people who weren't that familiar with Conan the Barbarian

[25:27] and were just like, yeah, we kind of get it.

[25:30] Like, he's a long-haired guy with a sword

[25:31] and then he fights some other guys

[25:32] and they're wearing, like, outfits from Waterworld.

[25:34] Somebody stole his dad's sword, he wants that thing back

[25:37] and he wants to kill him with it.

[25:39] He probably has, like, a magic ring that he can use

[25:41] to make giant green fists or something.

[25:43] I don't know.

[25:43] And it's weird to some degree because...

[25:46] I'm a dead, dying, skinless guy.

[25:47] If you look at the Wikipedia page,

[25:50] they talk about how this went through

[25:51] seven years of development

[25:54] and they were really determined

[25:56] they're going to make an R-rated Conan movie.

[25:58] It was certainly R-rated.

[26:00] There's blood all over.

[26:01] No, and that's one of the things I did like about it

[26:03] is they did make an effort to make it

[26:05] to not make it less brutal.

[26:09] that that that was not part of the the thing like it was indeed brutal we got a friday we're not

[26:15] friday the 13th sorry pg the pg the 13th this up but uh but it seems like in all that time

[26:24] developing it they could have figured out like okay what is this conan thing well it also needs

[26:30] more and topless slave women not just in the beginning not just in one scene yeah you don't

[26:34] want to get out you don't want to get your guys all worked up and then not give them more slave

[26:38] they could have thrown those in later on well it sounds like from the wikipedia entry it makes

[26:42] it sound like around they were working on a script at one studio for a long time and then

[26:46] the rights moved to a different studio and at a certain point they just threw out the old version

[26:51] and just wrote whatever and maybe they kept like one element or two elements we need a conan movie

[26:56] right now it's time to do a conan for the 21st century america is hungering for another conan

[27:01] so and there's a lot of stupid bullshit like making up this magical skull mask that the bad

[27:09] guy's trying to get and he gets it and then he puts the virgin blood on there or whatever it's

[27:13] not virgin it's not virgin blood because she we saw her totally it's totally banging with conan

[27:17] yeah he totally put his sword in her forge yeah as they as it was the fire of the ice that made

[27:24] his tempered his steel both holy shit we learned in the beginning that the the magic of the mystery

[27:30] of steel is that it takes both fire and ice

[27:32] to make it strong. This is Never Brought

[27:34] Up Again.

[27:34] One of the mysteries of Pittsburgh.

[27:37] It takes both fire and ice

[27:39] to make a hoagie.

[27:41] Or do they call them grinders there?

[27:43] I don't know. That's even one of the things...

[27:45] It's one of the mysteries. A cheesesteak, let's say.

[27:47] One of the only bits of dialogue

[27:49] in the original movie, in the first

[27:52] half hour, is Conan's

[27:54] dad explaining the riddle of steel

[27:56] to him.

[27:56] And that's

[27:58] that's this awesome like memorable moment and yet they just kind of they not only change it

[28:03] but they make it something stupid they yeah it's very perfunctory it's a very perfunctory movie

[28:07] you do get like for every neat moment like someone getting their hands cut off

[28:11] or ron perlman having hot sand guys flipping around or molten uh metal being poured into

[28:18] ron perlman's beard it's like uh there's a lot of just it's like they couldn't even be bothered

[28:24] you know

[28:25] I mean there was

[28:25] there was a scene

[28:26] where like a horseman

[28:27] is going through an arch

[28:28] and Conan

[28:29] pulls up a huge big chain

[28:31] and punches the horse

[28:32] in the face with it

[28:33] that was pretty great

[28:34] that was pretty good

[28:35] and you know

[28:36] there's

[28:37] I'm sure there are other

[28:38] good parts

[28:38] but I'm forgetting them now

[28:39] I like the bit where the

[28:40] where they freed all the slaves

[28:42] and the

[28:42] and they were topless women

[28:43] yeah there was topless women

[28:45] and the one male slave

[28:45] was like

[28:46] you destroyed all our food

[28:48] and Conan's

[28:50] there's like

[28:50] Conan's answer to that is

[28:52] we'll have a party

[28:54] and they do

[28:56] so what

[28:57] so let's dance

[28:58] I like that version

[29:00] of Conan

[29:00] where he just goes around

[29:01] to different places

[29:02] and like frees people

[29:03] and they have a party

[29:04] that's

[29:05] then that feels more

[29:06] like the old Conan

[29:06] like he was all about

[29:07] they could have given us

[29:08] 20-30 minutes of that

[29:10] easy

[29:10] and I would have enjoyed it

[29:11] it makes you wish

[29:13] that they had just

[29:13] if they cut out all the

[29:14] bad guy stomping around

[29:16] speechifying about

[29:17] how he's gonna bring

[29:18] his dead wife

[29:19] back to life

[29:20] or something

[29:20] yeah

[29:21] and then weird

[29:21] eyebrowless Rose McGowan

[29:23] being like

[29:23] oh i feel her spirit in me she does a lot of just standing like walking around in the background of

[29:30] shots you know like a little sway swanning about as dan described it was her jokester from the

[29:35] dark knight yeah this was gonna be she was gonna revolutionize the way we thought of conan the

[29:40] barbarian villains yeah and then jokester it was i think the saddest moment was when you said

[29:47] she looks like kind of a rose mcgowan type and dan looked it up on his phone was like oh that

[29:51] is rose mcgowan how far she's fallen from the days of uh what what did she do what planet terror i

[29:58] guess so yeah charmed like doom generation as far as i'm concerned planet terror is the pinnacle of

[30:04] her career yeah you know what i kind of get her mixed up with christina ricci i guess is what it

[30:09] comes down to those uh those dark-eyed brunettes with huge foreheads yeah that's pretty much what

[30:14] it is very pale i believe they're called five heads on wikipedia i'm not familiar with that

[30:20] It means it's one bigger than a forehead.

[30:22] Does Five Head have a Wikipedia page?

[30:25] Yeah, I'm sure it does.

[30:26] Yeah, the Batman villain, Five Head.

[30:27] The man with five heads.

[30:29] What about Five Head Goes West?

[30:29] Five Head Goes West?

[30:32] An American tale, too, you mean?

[30:33] Where the streets are paved with cheese, I guess.

[30:38] Pepper jack out of it.

[30:39] Well, they didn't even have paved streets in the old west.

[30:43] It was a southwestern style.

[30:44] Five Head Goes West.

[30:50] he shoots a seven shooter

[30:52] because it's one more

[30:56] everything's one more

[30:57] because it's one more

[30:58] yeah

[30:58] Polaroid camera

[30:59] he shoots a seven shooter

[31:00] this is just a two horse town

[31:01] this town ain't big enough

[31:04] for the three of us

[31:05] that's a five heads gimmick

[31:09] that's

[31:10] that everything's just one more

[31:12] yeah

[31:12] it's like

[31:13] it's like a terrible

[31:14] like old vaudeville gimmick

[31:15] yeah it is

[31:16] this Domino's pizza

[31:18] better arrive

[31:19] within 31 minutes or less.

[31:21] He'll check it on his pizza tracker.

[31:26] TM.

[31:27] Thanks.

[31:29] We don't want Domino's to sue us

[31:31] because we didn't mention

[31:32] they have a trademark on pizza tracker.

[31:34] We wouldn't want them

[31:37] sending the Noid after us

[31:38] in our dreams.

[31:40] We're going to have to avoid that Noid.

[31:41] So yeah, I was assuming

[31:43] the Noid was a Freddy Krueger type

[31:44] who invades people's dreams

[31:45] when they're thinking about pizza.

[31:46] Is that the case?

[31:49] Here's your pizza, bitch.

[31:50] I don't know, but he's got extreme attitude, that Noid.

[31:56] Well, that's what you would think of a guy wearing sneakers over his feety pajamas.

[32:00] Well, I'm sensing a lot of enthusiasm for Conan,

[32:05] so I think that it's only right and natural that we go straight to Final Judgments.

[32:10] Final Judgments.

[32:11] Now, is this a movie?

[32:13] Secret Flop House Flop Cat appearance.

[32:20] Is this a movie that you think is a bad, bad movie?

[32:24] A movie with no redeeming facets?

[32:25] A good, bad movie?

[32:27] You mean like I spit on your grave?

[32:28] Yeah.

[32:28] Well, maybe.

[32:29] It depends on what your feelings on I spit on your grave are.

[32:32] Okay, well, what about a movie with no redeeming features, so like nothing but trouble?

[32:36] Yes, like that.

[32:37] Okay.

[32:38] A good, bad movie, a movie that you might delight in the humor found in its badness.

[32:44] Such as?

[32:46] You're the rooms, you're trolls too?

[32:49] uh or a movie you kind of liked self-explanatory guys i don't understand what's a movie we might

[32:58] like do we have those do those exist in this world i don't think we've watched one in quite

[33:02] i guess brats gremlins 2 the gremlins 2 is not a movie we kind of like it's a movie we love

[33:07] yeah it's a near perfect film it's a movie that i own on dvd that's not saying that much the bar

[33:15] for you did buy

[33:16] a 10 movie set

[33:17] that was just

[33:18] high school TNA movies

[33:19] in the 1980s.

[33:20] Yeah, well that's

[33:21] that's a lot of nostalgia.

[33:23] Snapshot into

[33:23] Dan's personal life.

[33:24] He owns Gremlins 2.

[33:26] Look, that's me.

[33:27] Dan, don't get too personal, okay?

[33:29] You don't want the listeners

[33:30] to be able to get

[33:30] inside your head.

[33:31] I'm sure that some of our

[33:35] listener mail's

[33:36] coming from the county jail

[33:37] and you're nervous

[33:38] that one of the criminals

[33:40] Dan, how'd you like

[33:41] to play a game?

[33:41] A Gremlins 2 game.

[33:45] see i'm glad that we mixed up jigsaw and freddy krueger is the same basic guy is the answer john

[33:51] glover is that the answer to your question wait what he's from gremlins 2 yeah the actor john

[33:59] glover sure yeah he's uh yeah Danny Glover's brother yeah he's clamp no yeah yeah we get it

[34:05] so what are we doing final judgments thanks for the fucking gremlins 2 trivia not even trivia

[34:10] just named someone who was in it i thought you were doing like a like a beginning here's here's

[34:14] Here's a piece of Jurassic Park trivia.

[34:17] Sam Neill.

[34:18] Yeah?

[34:20] Is that what you were doing, Dan?

[34:22] That's also part of my Memoirs of an Invisible Man trivia.

[34:27] Here's a piece of Memoirs of an Invisible Man trivia.

[34:30] Sam Neill also.

[34:31] Daryl Hannah.

[34:33] I've got some Omen 3 trivia.

[34:38] Sam Neill.

[34:39] Zardots trivia.

[34:42] Sean Connery.

[34:44] Zardox?

[34:44] Yeah, Zardox.

[34:46] Is that the cleaning fluid?

[34:48] That's where the ship with the porthole of time docks.

[34:52] The Zardox.

[34:53] The Zardox.

[34:53] Oh, nice.

[34:54] Flophouse callback.

[34:56] Anyway.

[34:57] Look it up.

[34:58] Stuart, what do you have to say about this movie?

[35:00] Final judgments wise.

[35:01] Frighteningly funny, horrifyingly good, bad, or spookifyingly scary.

[35:06] It's not Shocktober.

[35:07] I would give it, you know, I'd give it a full-on wormy boner, probably.

[35:14] Again.

[35:14] Like a real rager.

[35:16] Wait, how is it wormy and a rager?

[35:19] That's the thing.

[35:20] You've got to figure it out.

[35:20] I mean, it's worm riddled.

[35:23] It's riddled with worms.

[35:24] I didn't know that was what wormy meant all this time.

[35:27] No, I mean, I guess it moved fairly quickly,

[35:32] and it's fairly bloody,

[35:35] and there is like a weird pirate party in the beginning.

[35:38] I mean, it was, I don't know, like it was pretty crappy,

[35:43] but there's a...

[35:44] He's just asking your opinion.

[35:46] It shouldn't be this difficult.

[35:47] No, I just don't want to be pinned down

[35:49] to your tough categories here, Dan.

[35:52] No, it's fine.

[35:52] Does it help, Stuart?

[35:53] Yeah, how do you...

[35:54] I want to see you take it.

[35:55] Does it help, Stuart,

[35:56] to say that I'm hovering between

[35:58] Bad, Bad and I kind of liked it?

[36:01] Like, because there's stuff in it

[36:04] that I enjoyed.

[36:04] I really, I actually thought that, like,

[36:06] for a modern action movie...

[36:09] Wouldn't that make it Good, Bad, then,

[36:10] if it was in between those two?

[36:12] Well, Good Bad, I feel like, is a bad movie that's silly to watch.

[36:15] Yeah, it's enjoyable because it's so bad that it's funny.

[36:18] And this is not that.

[36:19] Whereas I feel like this wavers between things that I genuinely liked

[36:22] and things that I disliked.

[36:24] There's a lot of boring bullshit in the middle of this movie in particular.

[36:27] It has second act drag.

[36:30] For an action movie, I kind of appreciate that this is a modern action movie

[36:35] where no one does crazy fucking Resident Evil bullshit.

[36:39] Everything that happens in this movie seems like just a really muscular guy with a sword and what he would do.

[36:45] Fighting sand demons.

[36:46] Well, I mean, there's fantasy elements, but the actual fighting is...

[36:51] Metro, he never becomes a kung fu master.

[36:53] Yeah, he's just a fucking barbarian.

[36:55] And there's, as...

[36:57] At the gates.

[36:58] As said before, there's a bunch of topless slave girls, and there's sand monsters and tentacle creatures.

[37:06] There's stuff to enjoy.

[37:08] I mean, and I have no particular knowledge of Conan.

[37:10] And a weird mask that has a little anus that sucks up blood.

[37:14] You know what?

[37:16] I'm going to go with you, Dan,

[37:17] and say this is hovering between bad, bad, and kind of liked.

[37:19] And to answer your question, Dan, it does make me feel better.

[37:22] All right.

[37:23] Thanks.

[37:23] So what are you saying, Stuart?

[37:24] I'm saying what you guys are saying.

[37:26] Oh, okay.

[37:26] Because I don't want to be part of the team.

[37:29] This was definitely more enjoyable than most of the movies we've seen lately.

[37:32] Yeah.

[37:32] But it wasn't particularly good,

[37:35] but there were points in it where we were like,

[37:37] whoa, that was fun.

[37:38] Or, yay, a tentacle monster

[37:41] I hope it does stuff

[37:42] Oh, it kind of doesn't

[37:43] It has a lot of potential that it doesn't live up to

[37:46] But it does have that potential

[37:48] I like the giant cave that looked like a skull

[37:51] Yeah, we saw that for like three seconds

[37:53] Alright, so before we move on to letters

[37:55] And the war elephants that carry a land ship

[37:58] You see them in the background for like a second

[38:01] Yeah, part of the army that nobody's heard of

[38:03] That disappears and never has to be fed

[38:06] Maybe it's a magic army

[38:08] Yeah.

[38:09] Maybe it's all the same guy.

[38:11] It was magic.

[38:11] All the one guy, like Army Hammer in that Facebook move.

[38:15] Oh, okay.

[38:16] All right, enough of that.

[38:17] You're right.

[38:19] Why would we bother with ridiculous tangents on the flop house?

[38:24] So before we move into letters, just a brief note.

[38:28] Some thank you to...

[38:30] Some thank you.

[38:32] What?

[38:32] Just a serving of thank you to...

[38:36] serve six to andrew c for his donation to the show thank you thanks the c stands for champion

[38:44] yeah or charity was that the only donation to thank for yes that was the only one all right

[38:50] you don't i don't complain about you know if you want to give they can i'll play the bad cop all

[38:56] right uh in my new hit play bad cop if uh but uh guys we got a lot of letters okay so read them

[39:05] out fucking read them out mailbag man this first one's from george letter time flop house letter

[39:10] time get the letters get them out just read them all stamp them up and send them every day at work

[39:17] letters letters letters letters okay like what he's gonna eat or just it's time for letters

[39:24] well when it's time for lunch i sing like lunch time time to eat lunch and then when we get down

[39:30] to the lunch room i talk out loud my interior monologue about what i'm gonna eat what i'm not

[39:34] gonna eat like oh lasagna i'll take some of this do do do do potatoes no thanks not today

[39:39] just a little taste of what it's like to work with elliot caitlin personal life tidbit you'll

[39:45] realize there are people have worked with me for nine years and i've had dealt with this the entire

[39:49] time doesn't make it better jordan last night with letters says uh this is an email title language

[39:58] and it says i found your show not through the onion av club because i'd never heard of it before

[40:03] but rather through the Something Awful Forum's comedy podcast Megathread.

[40:08] I've listened to every episode.

[40:09] Megathread.

[40:10] Enjoying it immensely and look forward anxiously to each new show.

[40:15] Thank you.

[40:15] Though I must say one thing has bothered me.

[40:18] Well, before we get to that, we appreciate your listening.

[40:21] All right.

[40:22] Well, you may not in a second.

[40:24] Uh-oh.

[40:25] Elliot.

[40:25] Oh, boy.

[40:26] As a professional writer and general pedant,

[40:29] You have heard people use and used yourself the phrase chomping at the bit.

[40:35] This is incorrect.

[40:36] What should it be?

[40:37] The correct phrase is to champ at the bit, not chomp.

[40:41] Like Arthur Champion, our donor for today?

[40:43] Yeah.

[40:44] Though never fear, your forthcoming apology will be accepted and all will be forgiven.

[40:48] There's so many letters.

[40:49] Love the show.

[40:49] So many letters that come in that I assume I'm going to apologize for something.

[40:52] Well, I do not apologize.

[40:54] I believe in the theory of popular use.

[40:57] All right.

[40:59] Is it champing at the bit?

[41:00] It is champing at the bit.

[41:02] What does that mean?

[41:02] It means the same thing as chomping at the bit.

[41:04] Except nobody uses the word champ to mean chomp.

[41:07] That's true.

[41:09] Yeah, you don't tell kids to chomp down their animal crackers

[41:11] or whatever the fuck they eat.

[41:13] You'll be a great father.

[41:15] What do you fucking kids eat?

[41:19] Animal crackers or some bullshit?

[41:20] Here, just shove it down.

[41:21] This is your dinner.

[41:22] Champ it down.

[41:22] I'm using my gifts of precognition to guess that the...

[41:28] You're a cog?

[41:28] Yes.

[41:29] The next couple of letters are going to call out Elliot for more stuff, Stuart for more stuff, and then praise Dan's other non-Flophouse-related efforts again.

[41:38] Possibly is just general handsomeness.

[41:40] I don't think so.

[41:41] Oh, you got skills, too, I guess.

[41:45] The author of the next letter will have their last name withheld.

[41:48] All right, good one.

[41:49] Okay, everybody's getting in on it.

[41:51] The weirding way.

[41:53] This is from Sylvia, last name withheld.

[41:56] And she says, list of complaints.

[41:59] Whoa, whoa, you opened up right with that?

[42:02] Was there anything, was there like, dear floppers, here's my list of complaints?

[42:05] No, no, no, well, that's the title of the email.

[42:07] Oh, okay.

[42:08] Okay, good.

[42:09] Sylvia says.

[42:11] I thought that was like, it was just, list of complaints.

[42:14] One, no greeting, no salutation, no introduction, no hesitation.

[42:20] She says, I'm an OF, original flopper.

[42:23] Nice.

[42:24] I've listened to every podcast, every week since the very beginning.

[42:28] We're sorry.

[42:29] And let me tell you, your success stinks.

[42:31] Number one, what's with these new fans fresh off the AV Club turnip truck?

[42:36] Uh-oh.

[42:37] And do you really have to read every overly clever letter they write you?

[42:40] We'd like to.

[42:42] Number two, how come Dan finally got a job that rewards his talents?

[42:46] The decrease in melancholy sighing is unacceptable.

[42:50] Oh, don't worry. He won't have it long.

[42:51] Number three, Stuart was clearly the sex symbol, and now he's married.

[42:56] It's like you guys don't even care about your female fans.

[42:59] And number four.

[43:01] We call them femans.

[43:02] Number four, no offense to the guest hosts, who are all great,

[43:07] but I want to hear you guys stop going out of town.

[43:10] Please change nothing ever again.

[43:12] The house cat can stay.

[43:14] Sincerely, Sylvia.

[43:15] Oh, you mean our most popular member can stay?

[43:18] Well, Sylvia, we appreciate your listening from the beginning.

[43:21] I worry you have a case of what I call REM-itis, where you love the band until they are popular, and then you begin to despise the band.

[43:30] And I would dispute your characterization of us as popular.

[43:36] And we're not fucking Justin Bieber.

[43:39] Yeah, how do you judge popularity? Is it on the Bieber scale?

[43:43] It is on the Bieber scale, which case we rate negative 1,001.

[43:46] We rate negative Bieber fever.

[43:49] We actually cure Bieber fever.

[43:51] And a lot of the time when we're out of town and can't do the podcast

[43:54] is because we're being flown to places with outbreaks of Bieber fever

[43:57] so that we can lay our hands on people.

[43:59] And we also cure things in addition to laying our hands on people.

[44:02] Laying the hands on, that's just fondling?

[44:07] That's how we get paid for the cure.

[44:08] That's just for funsies.

[44:11] For funsies, yeah.

[44:13] That's just for funsies.

[44:17] So, yeah, I guess we'll stop going out of town.

[44:20] We won't change.

[44:21] I will stay miserable.

[44:23] We should go back to the original setup so Elliot can go away.

[44:26] Oh, no.

[44:26] We'll fly in original podcast member Simon Fisher,

[44:31] a.k.a. Stuart's nemesis.

[44:33] He who shall not be named except just now.

[44:35] Is it true that you defeated Simon in a mirror battle?

[44:41] It was a glass battle.

[44:44] Glass battle with mirror Simon.

[44:46] Did I defeat him?

[44:47] I think I was the one who was defeated in the end.

[44:50] Wow.

[44:51] Yeah.

[44:51] So you have a revenge story of your own.

[44:53] Yeah, I gotta go kill him.

[44:54] It's ongoing.

[44:55] And take my dad's sword.

[44:56] Yeah.

[44:56] This one is titled Werewolf Satanic Scandal.

[45:02] I like it already.

[45:04] Okay.

[45:04] It has a link to a Salon article written by our friend of the show, Rich Duncan.

[45:12] Of the Duncan Hines fortune.

[45:14] About how his book was found at the scene of a satanic stabbing threesome.

[45:20] Really?

[45:21] And this was a big story back at the end of November.

[45:24] We're a little behind in some of these letters.

[45:25] A big story?

[45:25] I've never heard of it.

[45:27] And my job is to make fun of the news.

[45:29] It was big enough on the internet.

[45:30] It was broken by Gawker and then went around the...

[45:35] Like the president didn't comment on it.

[45:37] No.

[45:37] But there's a link to a salon story that Rich wrote,

[45:41] and beneath that, Kristen, last name withheld, writes,

[45:45] weren't these guys on your Skinwalkers episodes?

[45:49] Are you three part of some satanic werewolf stabbing cult?

[45:52] Yes.

[45:53] Have you been slowly and insidiously indoctrinating your listeners

[45:56] with your mournful sighs and penis jokes and words that sound like each other?

[45:59] And if so, what else are you hiding?

[46:02] What are we hiding?

[46:06] But she says if one bad movie fan stabs another during an argument

[46:12] over the merits of big money wrestlers versus the brats

[46:14] and the flophouses pilloried in the press,

[46:16] I will totally stand up for you.

[46:18] Thank you.

[46:18] All the best.

[46:19] Yeah, because clearly Bratz is better than big money rustlers.

[46:23] Yeah, anyone who argues the opposite is crazy.

[46:25] Probably deserves to be stabbed.

[46:27] Wow, I don't know.

[46:28] Hold on, let's legally not say that.

[46:31] Oh, yeah.

[46:31] But we do mean it.

[46:32] This is true.

[46:33] Rich Duncan and Bob Powers' book, The Werewolf's Guide to Life,

[46:37] was found at the scene of a threesome stabbing.

[46:41] Now, what is a threesome stabbing?

[46:43] Well, there's two young ladies.

[46:44] Is it like a daisy chain of stabbing?

[46:45] There's two young ladies.

[46:47] Some sort of stab around?

[46:48] who have some sort of disturbed gothic fixation on your whatnots.

[46:57] Your Muppet whatnots.

[46:59] Lured in a gentleman over the internet for some threesome sex.

[47:05] That was probably difficult.

[47:06] And there was some consensual cutting and stabbing involved,

[47:10] and then it became less consensual.

[47:12] That's a horrifying story.

[47:14] And at the scene, they made a big deal about the fact

[47:17] that The Werewolf's Guide to Life was a book found at the scene

[47:21] without specifying that it was a humor book.

[47:23] A parody humor book and not a guide to stabbing men.

[47:26] Yeah, not actually about people who think they're werewolves

[47:28] and what they should do.

[47:29] Did they comment, like, was there a copy of that Calvin Hobbes

[47:32] homicidal jungle cat book as well?

[47:34] I do know that Rich...

[47:38] We found a copy of Superfudge at the scene of the crime.

[47:40] Rich's main complaint about this, other than being obviously distressed

[47:44] that his book was found

[47:46] in the home of these

[47:47] disturbed ladies

[47:48] is that the free publicity

[47:50] did not add up to

[47:51] any more book sales.

[47:52] That's too bad.

[47:53] Or stabbings.

[47:54] What?

[47:55] I don't think he wanted

[47:56] more stabbings.

[47:56] For the audience,

[47:57] just so you can know,

[47:58] we're not into any satanic stuff.

[47:59] We're satanish stuff.

[48:01] We are into threesomes, however.

[48:03] But just among the three of us,

[48:05] there's a story about it.

[48:06] We read it,

[48:09] burned the story,

[48:10] and then scrubbed out

[48:11] our eyeballs and ear holes.

[48:12] We're never to talk about it again,

[48:14] We put burning Q-tips on our ears, hoping to burn that knowledge out of our brain.

[48:18] Didn't work.

[48:19] If only burned it further into my brain.

[48:21] But we all worship our different gods.

[48:23] As we mentioned, Stuart is Cromish.

[48:25] And I, of course, seek the dark, even shadow of the old, strange ones.

[48:32] And Dan, I think you are what, Scientologist?

[48:37] Someday I'm going to clear both of you.

[48:40] Well, all your Thetans.

[48:42] And someday you're going to be a super successful Hollywood smash.

[48:45] Yeah.

[48:45] So good luck with that.

[48:47] They are.

[48:49] I mean, they've been very successful at hiding my homosexuality so far.

[48:52] That was goal one.

[48:54] Yeah.

[48:55] I probably shouldn't have said that on this podcast.

[48:57] Oh, nobody listens to this.

[48:58] The whole pervazoid thing is just an act.

[49:00] It is a very good act.

[49:02] Yeah.

[49:02] Because believe me, you are the number one pervazoid.

[49:05] Thanks, guys.

[49:06] That's really sweet of you to say.

[49:09] Even a hint of boob gets him drooling.

[49:12] The last hint gets him chomping at the bit.

[49:17] It's a butternut squash soup with just a hint of boob.

[49:22] Enjoy.

[49:24] This is on the house from our chef.

[49:27] I do not like the idea that there's a little boob in my butternut soup.

[49:30] They just dipped it in.

[49:31] Okay, that's fine.

[49:31] I don't want to feel like I'm a cannibal.

[49:33] No, no.

[49:34] But if you were, you would be a fine young cannibal.

[49:37] Thank you.

[49:39] This last one is from Stephen, last name of hell.

[49:43] More of a danimal, to be honest.

[49:44] Danimal.

[49:45] A manimal danimal.

[49:47] Danimal.

[49:48] And it's called Full Century Assault.

[49:51] And it says, dear Flophouse, I'm a big fan of your program.

[49:55] Thanks.

[49:55] But something about your chosen medium leaves me feeling shortchanged.

[49:59] Audio-only podcasts are great for staying on top of current events

[50:03] or learning about the many household uses of apple cider vinegar.

[50:05] Okay.

[50:08] Is that a specific podcast?

[50:09] It's a deep reference.

[50:11] Cider cast.

[50:12] I don't get it.

[50:12] Podcast fans still look at it.

[50:13] Cider cast rules.

[50:14] Cider cast rules.

[50:15] But for something like The Flophouse, I feel like I need more.

[50:18] After all, when L. Ron Hubbard, my...

[50:22] Your chosen messiah.

[50:23] When L. Ron Hubbard published Battlefield Earth,

[50:26] he had the good sense to release the Space Jazz audio accompaniment

[50:30] we've all come to appreciate as an integral part of reading that novel.

[50:34] Wait, so you want a book that goes along with The Flophouse?

[50:36] Well, no, it's coming up.

[50:38] If we have a story, we could send you.

[50:39] So I was wondering if the three of you have signature scents I might queue up during episodes of The Flophouse.

[50:49] Interesting.

[50:50] Similar to the short-lived Febreze cinch stories product.

[50:53] That guy really knows his shitty tie-ins to stories.

[50:56] I am impressed, sir.

[50:59] Very impressed.

[51:00] Perhaps when Stuart talks about boobs, partying hard, or beer, I could light a candle purchase at Pier 1 Imports.

[51:07] Oh, yeah, we talked about that.

[51:08] I think they provide a lot of the sets for Conan the Barbarian.

[51:11] Yeah, a lot of wicker cages.

[51:13] During Elliot's synopses, I could spray some Lancome Magnifique around the room,

[51:19] a perfume endorsed by his longtime friend, Anne Hathaway.

[51:23] Or you could just spray some Wolverine cologne, which Stuart got me once.

[51:27] I mean, as long as it smells like Popeye's chicken, you're probably right on the money.

[51:30] Yeah, that's true.

[51:32] He says any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[51:34] And what smell would it be for Dan?

[51:35] He omitted it, strangely.

[51:37] Oh, he has no smell.

[51:38] Yeah.

[51:39] He's like a non-creature.

[51:43] How does he smell?

[51:43] Terrible.

[51:43] Wait, what?

[51:45] I didn't say he had no nose.

[51:47] That's like that character from that movie we saw that one time.

[51:50] Yeah, Conan.

[51:51] Wait, what?

[51:52] Conan the Barbarian.

[51:54] That character with no nose from the Conan movie.

[51:56] Yeah.

[51:56] So I think Dan's scent would be tears.

[51:59] Tears?

[52:01] Mm-hmm.

[52:01] What does that smell like?

[52:03] Salt and...

[52:03] Salt and disappointment.

[52:05] I like the Sierra, Stuart.

[52:07] Okay.

[52:08] Because...

[52:09] On a gray overcast day.

[52:10] Or maybe it would be like farts.

[52:13] Wait, why?

[52:15] Why?

[52:16] Does he fart a lot, or is it...

[52:17] I'm just trying to liven him up.

[52:19] Come on.

[52:20] He doesn't even have a smell.

[52:21] Give me some Zazz.

[52:22] Zazz him.

[52:23] Yeah.

[52:24] Something this movie kind of needed.

[52:26] So, we did the final judgments.

[52:29] We talked about scent.

[52:31] We have the letter.

[52:32] Check, check.

[52:33] What's next, Daniel?

[52:35] I think the last thing and the only thing left is to recommend some movies,

[52:39] movies that we actually liked.

[52:40] Well, you haven't done a recommendation in a while, right?

[52:43] It's been a little bit because we've had a few things that have gone long,

[52:48] so we've cut out the least popular segment of our podcast.

[52:51] Oh, and we've got to promote our upcoming thingy.

[52:53] Yes, even more important, we've got to promote our upcoming January 20th screening.

[52:57] At 92Y Tribeca in the fashionable Tribeca District of New York.

[53:03] At New York's home for crazy and independent and crazy old movies, we'll be screening 12 Rounds, starring John Cena.

[53:12] And Aidan Gillen.

[53:13] In coordination with the I Love Bad Movies zine.

[53:16] So it'll make the podcast we recorded about the movie 12 Rounds make more sense.

[53:22] Exactly.

[53:22] And we'll be providing running commentary throughout the film.

[53:26] Yeah, it'll be on January 12th.

[53:28] 20th.

[53:28] Sorry, 20th.

[53:29] At 8.

[53:30] Nice one, Dan.

[53:31] January 20th.

[53:32] Friday, January 20th.

[53:34] Friday, January 20th.

[53:36] At 8 o'clock p.m. Eastern Standard Time, New York City.

[53:39] New York City never sleeps.

[53:41] And there was some discussion originally of recording it,

[53:43] but we figured out that that would not be possible.

[53:46] Legally and technically.

[53:47] The only way you can enjoy this is by coming to the actual event.

[53:53] You've got to be there.

[53:53] January 20th, 92i Tribeca.

[53:56] Also, if you are planning a letter filled with complaints,

[53:59] instead of writing that letter, save them in your head

[54:01] and then show up

[54:02] to the event

[54:03] and tell it to us

[54:04] right before we go on

[54:05] so we get really nervous

[54:07] and feel bad

[54:07] throw a whammy at us

[54:08] so we

[54:09] just put us off our game

[54:10] but just ask anyone

[54:12] who was at our

[54:13] Twin Sitters screening

[54:14] it was a total blast

[54:15] and a total hoot

[54:16] this is going to be fun

[54:18] just as much fun

[54:19] if not more so

[54:20] and

[54:22] it's going to be great

[54:23] so I recommend

[54:24] you all come

[54:25] tickets are available now

[54:26] on the 92i Tribeca website

[54:27] buy them up suckers

[54:29] uh don't don't make my mom buy all the tickets again we weren't gonna talk about that whoops

[54:36] so stewart quickly okay 12 rounds i've seen a bunch of movies lately uh i don't know if you

[54:42] recommended this already but i saw james gunn's super with i enjoyed that movie with uh with rain

[54:48] wilson and uh ellen page ellen page uh yeah i thought it was pretty good um i heard kind of

[54:54] mixed reviews but i thought it was fun um a good i guess a another original take on the idea of an

[55:01] average guy being a superhero and uh yeah it's funny kind of kind of darkly so dan uh my wife

[55:09] for christmas gave me a book called hail hail euphoria by roy blunt jr so there's a book

[55:16] podcast and it's about the making of the film stewart okay duck soup the marx brothers film not

[55:22] Not my favorite Marx Brothers film, but certainly one of the finest Marx Brothers films.

[55:28] One of the two finest.

[55:29] And short to boot.

[55:31] A trim 70 minutes long.

[55:34] Are you recommending the movie or the book?

[55:36] I'm recommending, well, I'm recommending both.

[55:39] But you should watch, if you've never seen the Marx Brothers movie, Deck Soup, certainly.

[55:43] See it.

[55:45] For my money, there's maybe nothing funnier than the Marx Brothers at their best.

[55:52] Except for his monies.

[55:53] There's a lot of his money.

[55:54] Oh, there's a lot more money now than there was.

[55:56] But I think that the Marx Brothers are perhaps the finest comedy team ever,

[56:01] and this is one of their finest movies.

[56:04] So if you want to see the top of the top, watch Duck Soup.

[56:10] I will quickly recommend.

[56:12] And I don't think I recommended this one yet on the podcast because we haven't done recommendations in a while, but just in case I have, I apologize.

[56:18] But I did enjoy it, a movie called The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, written and directed by Philip Kaufman in the early 70s, starring Robert Duvall and – what's his name?

[56:29] Uncle Ben from the Spider-Man movies, Cliff Robertson.

[56:31] As Cole Younger and Jesse James, it starts out as kind of like a rollicking 70s romp as these two legendary outlaws are going to go rob a bank.

[56:41] And once they do start the robbery, everything goes horribly wrong.

[56:45] And there's a tone shift, but it's not a crazy tone shift.

[56:49] And the whole movie put together is really likable and really fun

[56:52] and gets really dark in the end,

[56:54] but never so dark that it's not fun and enjoyable.

[56:57] And it's this movie that I wish I had known about a long time ago

[57:00] because I would have watched it and enjoyed it.

[57:02] So, guys, that's our first podcast of 2012.

[57:06] We did it!

[57:07] How many years is this, like a million?

[57:09] A million years, yeah.

[57:11] A million years.

[57:12] And pretty soon we're all going to be dead

[57:13] because of the mines.

[57:14] The mines?

[57:16] The mines?

[57:16] Yeah, are we going to go mining?

[57:17] Yeah.

[57:18] Well, let's make sure not to do that

[57:19] before January 20th

[57:21] when our 12 rounds screening is up.

[57:23] Yep.

[57:23] Okay, I look forward to seeing...

[57:25] Or 13 rounds as Five Head Goes West would say.

[57:27] That's another callback.

[57:29] He did it, goddammit.

[57:30] So funny.

[57:31] Oh, you're a master.

[57:33] You're a master of disaster.

[57:34] So for the Flophouse,

[57:38] I've been Dan McCoy.

[57:39] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[57:40] And I will be Elliot Kaelin January 20th at 92 I Tribeca, 12 rounds.

[57:44] It's going to be good.

[57:45] Good night, everyone.

[57:45] Good night.

[57:46] See you there.

[57:48] That was some nice fan mail from people.

[57:58] It was.

[57:58] I'll write back to that.

[58:00] And, by the way, that trailer was amazing.

[58:02] For Glenn the Flying Robot.

[58:04] Glenn the Flying Robot.

[58:07] As one of our co-workers said when he walked in while we were watching it,

[58:11] it's like real steel, but with piano playing.

[58:12] Okay, everyone.

[58:14] Test, test, test, test.

[58:16] Check.

[58:16] Chiggity-check.

[58:17] Sibilance.

[58:18] Sibilance.

[58:19] Make Dan angry.

[58:20] Angry Dan.

[58:21] Initializing Dan frustration mode.

[58:24] The Dan angry protocol.

[58:26] Execute program run.exe DanMad.

The Flop House: Episode #94 - Conan the Barbarian

Transcript

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