The Flop House: Episode #30 - Bangkok Dangerous

[0:00] In this episode, we get dangerous. Bangkok Dangerous.

[0:31] Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:35] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:36] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:37] We're coming at you from the center of the Internet.

[0:41] Yeah.

[0:42] If I understand Galileo's teachings correctly.

[0:45] The Flophouse is right in the middle.

[0:47] Yeah.

[0:48] Well, he has actually told me, originally suggested that.

[0:52] Yeah. Cosmology of the Internet.

[0:54] Yeah.

[0:55] Wait, they had the Internet back then, Dan?

[0:57] They just called it the Net.

[0:58] Back in the olden days?

[0:59] Yeah.

[1:00] Wait, isn't that a Sandra Bullock movie?

[1:02] You're thinking of Miss Congeniality.

[1:04] Mm-hmm.

[1:05] So, what did we watch tonight, dude?

[1:07] We watched a little film called Bangkok Dangerous.

[1:11] A movie that's so dangerous, it doesn't need any other words in that title.

[1:17] Mm-hmm.

[1:18] To make it like a sentence that's actually a complete thought.

[1:21] Well, there isn't even, I was waiting for the point in the movie where he goes,

[1:24] this isn't just dangerous, this is Bangkok Dangerous.

[1:26] Yeah.

[1:27] Like that's a level of danger.

[1:29] They didn't hit that point, though, right?

[1:31] If it exists, they did not hit it, no.

[1:33] It was great, it was exciting.

[1:35] It starred Nicolas Cage, that's for sure.

[1:37] Oh, did it?

[1:38] And that haircut of his.

[1:39] I don't know, he was the lead character, but I don't know if you could say it starred Nicolas Cage.

[1:43] Nicolas Cage was in front of the camera for most of the film.

[1:46] There was a void at the center of this film.

[1:48] And his name is Nick Cage.

[1:50] Stuart, you did such a great job summing up Step Up 2, The Streets, last time.

[1:55] But I'm going to toss it over to you.

[1:57] I know that Elliot's done a lot of summing up, but I want to hear you sum up Bangkok Dangerous.

[2:02] So, first of all, Elliot, check this summary out.

[2:05] Whoa, you're stepping up to me.

[2:07] Burn.

[2:08] Okay.

[2:09] Mysterizing.

[2:10] So, the movie begins with Nicolas Cage.

[2:11] He's this bounty hunter or like hitman or something with a heart of gold in Prague.

[2:16] And he kills some dude when his alarm rings.

[2:21] And then he kills like his messenger guy.

[2:24] And then he goes to Thailand, to Bangkok specifically.

[2:28] And he lives by certain rules.

[2:30] Yeah, he's got some rules.

[2:31] Like every hitman in a film, he has rules.

[2:34] He's got cool hair.

[2:35] He's got rules like a normal hitman.

[2:37] And then he finds this new messenger guy named Kong.

[2:41] And, you know, he's like never going to attach to your messenger or anybody at all.

[2:46] Of course, he breaks that rule.

[2:48] Almost instantly.

[2:49] Yeah, and he starts teaching Kong the way of the force of being a hitman.

[2:53] And then he falls in love with it.

[2:54] He's like Ghost Dog, the way of the samurai, except for it's the way of Nick Cage as a hitman.

[2:59] Yeah, and the best part about it was when he like, you know, this guy, his messenger gets beaten up.

[3:06] So he shows up to talk to Nicolas Cage and Nicolas Cage, you know, and he's like, hey, teach me or something.

[3:11] And then Nicolas Cage like attacks him with a knife and you're like, whoa, is he going to kill him?

[3:15] But, of course, he doesn't.

[3:16] And he like teaches him how to like avoid getting stabbed with a knife.

[3:19] And then he's like, oh, that was your first lesson.

[3:23] It was really awesome.

[3:25] So he goes on and he kills some dudes.

[3:27] Well, you mentioned the love interest.

[3:28] He has a love interest.

[3:29] Absolutely.

[3:30] He falls in love with this deaf chick.

[3:31] Who works at a pharmacy.

[3:32] At a pharmacy.

[3:33] Yeah, he goes there because he gets his arm scratched really bad from a passing like necklace vendor, I guess.

[3:39] Yes, that's exactly what it was.

[3:42] Who he had a weird moment with.

[3:44] Yeah, it was weird.

[3:45] He was killing someone.

[3:46] He just was staring in the face of this child's necklace vendor.

[3:48] I like to think of her as a personification of Destiny.

[3:51] Oh, okay.

[3:52] I would have said Lost Innocence.

[3:53] No, Destiny.

[3:54] But Destiny works too.

[3:55] And because she's deaf, though, the love interest, she is a weakness for contract killers.

[4:01] Yeah.

[4:02] Who don't speak the same language as her.

[4:03] He claims to be in banking.

[4:05] That's true.

[4:06] Banking dangerous.

[4:07] And he does a pretty good job of following that cover story by not doing anything banking related.

[4:13] And dressing like a slob all the time.

[4:15] But how many jobs does he have to do in Bangkok?

[4:18] He has to do four exactly.

[4:19] The first three are relatively simple except for a little bit of high-speed boat chasing anybody.

[4:25] Yeah, and how does he solve that problem?

[4:27] By chopping off a dude's hand with a boat propeller and then shooting him in the head.

[4:33] Yeah.

[4:34] Okay, so fast forward.

[4:36] The final person he has to kill is the prime minister of Thailand, suckers.

[4:40] Uh-oh.

[4:41] And this is a country where you can be thrown in jail just for insulting the king of Thailand.

[4:45] Yeah, let alone murder a king of Thailand.

[4:48] There's a king and he's more of a figurehead figure.

[4:50] But there's a story.

[4:51] I think it was a Danish guy who recently was thrown in jail for he was drunk and he defaced a poster of the king of Thailand.

[4:57] And they threw him in jail.

[4:59] And the Danish embassy said, nothing we can do.

[5:01] Like that's the law.

[5:02] I don't know this country.

[5:03] Stop talking about a better story than the one I'm talking about.

[5:06] I don't know if you listeners realize this, but Elliot is a genius.

[5:09] I mean, who among us knew that Thailand had a king?

[5:12] He just celebrated his 60th year on the throne not too long ago.

[5:15] I thought Thailand was just a place that made really delicious food.

[5:19] They do that too, my friend.

[5:20] And they had prostitutes.

[5:22] Yes, they also have that.

[5:23] And had a silly named city.

[5:26] Capital, yeah.

[5:27] So, okay, so Bangkok.

[5:29] An erotically named city.

[5:30] If you like getting your cock slammed by something.

[5:34] Like a hammer.

[5:38] You're saying, sorry.

[5:40] Okay, guys.

[5:41] Chill out.

[5:42] I know it's hilarious.

[5:43] So, okay, so he has to kill the prime minister of Bangkok and kill Suprise.

[5:49] He's unable to do it.

[5:51] He accidentally kills a bunch of dudes right in front of his deaf girlfriend who gets like mad and runs away.

[5:58] And then he is unable to kill the president of Thailand or whatever.

[6:04] Well, he chooses not to do it.

[6:07] Well, I guess he is stalling and then they see that he's up with a sniper rifle.

[6:13] He's being really obvious.

[6:15] For somebody who's a professional killer, he's not doing a very good job of hiding himself.

[6:19] No.

[6:20] Which I think could describe his entire performance in this movie.

[6:24] He's a very clearly foreign guy with a really awesome haircut walking around the whole time.

[6:32] There's no one else in Thailand who looks anything close to like him.

[6:35] And they only have like three other American characters who are three tourists who are incidental to an earlier scene.

[6:42] And easily grifted.

[6:43] Very easily grifted.

[6:44] Which you can't say the same thing about his character.

[6:46] No, he was ungriftable.

[6:47] But what's the denouement, Stuart?

[6:49] How does this tangled web resolve itself?

[6:52] The mobsters who he's working for capture his buddy Kong, who is his messenger, who he's grown attached to.

[6:59] And Kong and his girlfriend.

[7:02] Not Nicolas Cage's girlfriend.

[7:04] I don't know what happened to her.

[7:05] Well, they just stopped seeing each other after she sees him kill those guys.

[7:08] She disappeared.

[7:09] Yeah, which I don't believe.

[7:10] I mean, he's really handsome.

[7:12] And they bonded over meeting that elephant.

[7:15] Yeah, absolutely.

[7:16] And elephants are awesome.

[7:18] So he goes and he kills a bunch of mobsters in really cool ways.

[7:23] There's some scenes that evoke moments from the movie Hard Target with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

[7:28] Or the movie Loaded Weapon 1, which I think Elliot brought up.

[7:31] Well, just in that they were shooting things and then streams of stuff were coming out of the cans they had shot.

[7:36] Like in the supermarket shootout scene in the hit parody film Loaded Weapon 1.

[7:40] Absolutely.

[7:41] So moving forward, he then manages to capture the head mobster.

[7:47] He thinks back on his life, thinks about all the bad things.

[7:50] This is Nicolas Cage we're talking about.

[7:51] He thinks back on his life, thinks about all the bad things he did.

[7:54] There's cops all around.

[7:56] He puts his head next to the mobster's head, puts the gun to his temple, and I'm not going to spoil it for you.

[8:02] You need to finish watching this movie because it's great.

[8:05] So what do you think about that, Dan?

[8:08] Yeah, it's pretty good.

[8:09] And now that we've given the listeners an overview, we can dissect a little Bangkok Dangerous.

[8:16] Bangkok DOA.

[8:18] My major problem with this movie is I feel like if there's a hitman movie, in general, if there's a hitman movie,

[8:25] which there are a lot.

[8:26] Can I talk later, by the way, about – I may have talked about this before on the podcast.

[8:30] I don't remember how I am baffled that there are so many hitman movies that get made.

[8:34] Yes, you may.

[8:35] There was even a movie called Hitman.

[8:38] A movie called Hitman, but there's like – there's hitman comedies, hitman romances, hitman adventure films.

[8:44] Like I'm waiting for a hitman jungle film.

[8:46] Well, hitman is a very –

[8:47] Animated films.

[8:48] There's hitman mysteries.

[8:49] It's a very, very common profession.

[8:50] Like Golgol 13.

[8:52] Particularly in this economy, hitman is one of the few growth industries.

[8:56] I will probably never meet a hitman in my life unless I –

[8:59] Hopefully.

[9:00] Hopefully.

[9:01] Hopefully, Elliot.

[9:02] I certainly hope so.

[9:03] Most people will never meet one.

[9:04] They'll never hire one.

[9:05] They'll never know anyone who was hired by one or who hired one or hired –

[9:09] or there is one in my family history, which I won't get into, but that was someone who was hired one.

[9:15] But like I'll never meet one and most people won't either, and yet there are tons of movies about it.

[9:20] Secret agents I can understand.

[9:21] I'll never meet one, but like that's a hero fantasy character.

[9:26] Someone who doesn't just murder people.

[9:28] Yeah, it's a character that you would like fantasize about being.

[9:31] Like, oh, man, I'm going to get beautiful women.

[9:33] I'm going to do awesome secret missions.

[9:35] And I'll save the world while screwing dames.

[9:38] But who really fantasizes about being paid to shoot people possibly from a distance?

[9:43] Aside from like really unhappy 13 or 14-year-old guys.

[9:46] Sociopaths.

[9:48] Well, this is what I was going to say was, you know, Hitman.

[9:51] This is what I'm saying.

[9:52] You would agree that you need to do a little work to make the Hitman a sympathetic character.

[9:58] Yes.

[9:59] And most films do this.

[10:00] in one of two ways. They either make the person that the hit man has to hit someone that is

[10:07] personal to them, that they have some sort of stake in, and they have to make a choice

[10:11] about what they're going to do about this hit, or it becomes like a Hitchcock sort of

[10:17] film where you create sympathy through the fact that this person is on the run. You show

[10:23] a professional that is then being tracked down, and the fact that they have had the

[10:28] tables turned on them is enough to sort of give a little sympathy.

[10:32] Or you do the gross point blank way of making him an emotionally damaged character. Like

[10:38] he does this, but he doesn't enjoy it, and he would be a likable enough guy if he didn't

[10:43] have emotional issues, but you know, and so forth.

[10:46] Whereas this is a movie about a guy who is just a hit man. It's a movie about four guys

[10:53] he's hired to kill who we don't know anything about, and he just kills them one after the

[10:59] other, and there's no real like personal stake he has in any of it. He isn't being chased

[11:05] down by anyone until the very end. I don't understand why we're supposed to care about

[11:10] Nicolas Cage's, you know, what happens to him in this movie at all.

[11:14] It's because he looks sad all the time.

[11:16] But that's the thing. Like in the other movies, the people are sad and then become hit men.

[11:20] Whereas in this, it's like, oh, I've made a bad choice when I became a hit man. I didn't

[11:24] realize my life was going to be so lonely, and I wasn't going to be able to settle down

[11:28] and have a family.

[11:29] I should have listened to my high school guidance counselor when he told me not to become a

[11:34] hit man.

[11:35] Yeah, exactly.

[11:36] Or like a movie where one twin brother is a hit man, and the other one is like a straight

[11:39] arrow cop, and then they have to get together to solve like a galaxy-spanning mystery.

[11:45] Or one is a hit man, and the other is like an accountant, and the hit man gets killed,

[11:55] but the accountant gets mistaken for the hit man, and suddenly he's in over his head in

[12:00] these goofy scenarios.

[12:01] But it turns out the hit man brother who was killed actually isn't killed. He was mainly

[12:05] so he could get closer to his brother, sure.

[12:09] He pretends to be a ghost giving his brother advice.

[12:12] You brought up an interesting thing, the idea of the person who is forced to become

[12:15] a hit man.

[12:16] That reminded me of the Stuart Gordon movie, King of the Ants, where the main character

[12:22] is this guy who's got this really shitty job, and he ends up taking a job to kill somebody,

[12:27] and he ends up totally regretting it.

[12:30] After killing the guy in the most horrible way, he has to kill Ron Livingston, by the

[12:34] way, from Office Space.

[12:35] Oh, why would you want to kill Ron Livingston?

[12:37] He totally regrets ever doing it, and then of course gets tortured for it by George Wendt

[12:44] from Cheers.

[12:46] That was an example of a hit man character where you're like, I can kind of understand

[12:49] this and feel bad for him, even though he shouldn't have done that clearly.

[12:53] Honestly, the only thing I remember about that movie is that Kari Weir is in it, and

[12:58] of all the B-movie starlets, I find her the most attractive.

[13:02] She's got a great ass.

[13:03] Oh, is that it?

[13:04] Bangkok Dangerous, anyway.

[13:06] But yeah, there's no moments where you genuinely feel him, like, you don't feel Nicolas Cage's

[13:11] character feeling bad at any point, or caring.

[13:15] The only emotion we see from him is that he seems to like this deaf girl.

[13:19] He might feel bad.

[13:20] For no apparent reason, and she likes him for no apparent reason.

[13:24] Nicolas Cage might feel bad, but we are left to infer that from him turning a picture of

[13:29] an elephant upside down.

[13:30] And then burning it.

[13:33] Which was identical to the way he burns the pictures of the people he has to kill.

[13:37] That's called good directing.

[13:38] He has a real affinity for Elliotts.

[13:40] For Elliotts, yeah.

[13:41] Weird.

[13:42] That's so strange.

[13:43] Awkward.

[13:44] Ew.

[13:45] And elephants.

[13:46] Hey, whoa.

[13:47] Hey now.

[13:48] Elliotts and elephants.

[13:49] Freudian slip.

[13:50] I don't know what it means, but.

[13:51] You look like an elephant.

[13:53] Thank you?

[13:54] Maybe the most majestic animal there is?

[13:56] Okay.

[13:57] And adorable as a baby.

[13:58] And adorable.

[13:59] Amazingly adorable.

[14:00] They're furry.

[14:02] I think if this movie had been an hour and a half of elephant footage, it would have

[14:04] been a far better movie.

[14:05] And they just called it Elephant.

[14:07] But actually, there's a movie called Elephant already about the Columbine shooting.

[14:10] They called it Elephants.

[14:12] Maybe if they had just shown that clip from the movie The Protector.

[14:16] Operation Dumbo Drop?

[14:17] Yeah.

[14:18] Or The Protector, where the dude, where the bad guy beats up on the baby elephant.

[14:23] If they'd just shown the clip of him throwing the elephant over and over for an hour and

[14:26] a half.

[14:27] I'd probably like it more than this movie.

[14:28] Not to make judgment calls.

[14:29] Too bad Tony Jaa couldn't protect that elephant.

[14:32] The reason that...

[14:33] He did a really shitty job, despite the fact that the movie's called The Protector.

[14:36] The reason that Nicolas Cage really thinks about elephants a lot is because while he's

[14:41] courting the deaf girl, they have a tender moment that involves a baby elephant.

[14:46] That is just wandering around the streets.

[14:48] Yeah.

[14:49] I've never been to Thailand.

[14:50] I know they have elephants there.

[14:51] I don't know if they just wander freely through urban areas.

[14:53] It feels a real connection to elephants.

[14:55] Maybe it's like a bear.

[14:56] Where I grew up, sometimes bears would come down out of the woods looking for food and

[15:01] they'd have to shoo them away.

[15:02] Maybe it was like that with elephants.

[15:03] Where do you...

[15:04] New Jersey.

[15:05] Did you live in a world of the Berenstain Bears?

[15:06] He's talking about New Jersey.

[15:07] Yes.

[15:08] They were Berenstain Bears.

[15:09] Wearing clothing and walking on their hind legs.

[15:11] And hopping on pop.

[15:13] And making a clubhouse where there were no girls allowed.

[15:17] Exactly.

[15:18] Those hop-on-pop bears are kind of like mutant bears after a radioactive bomb or something.

[15:22] The thing is, the early Berenstain Bears are like these charming Dr. Seuss knock-offs.

[15:28] And then the late Berenstain Bears are always like, Berenstain Bears, learn why you should

[15:32] get a flu shot.

[15:34] Why you shouldn't steal pumpkins from people.

[15:36] Yeah.

[15:37] Berenstain Bears just got too preachy.

[15:38] Yeah.

[15:39] What the fuck?

[15:40] It happens to a lot of bears.

[15:41] Yeah.

[15:42] Understandably.

[15:43] So, Bangkok Dangerous.

[15:44] Elliot, you talked a little bit about the editing of this movie and how it was really

[15:48] good, bad?

[15:49] This is a movie that, from a technical standpoint, not just from a, I mean, you were talking

[15:53] about from a creative character motivation standpoint, it's very bad.

[15:56] But from a technical standpoint, it's also very bad.

[16:00] The editing is awful.

[16:02] The shooting is awful.

[16:03] Subpar.

[16:04] The framing.

[16:05] I would say like, not even subpar.

[16:06] Subpar is like, that's just a choice I wouldn't have made.

[16:09] I think it hurts the film.

[16:11] But here it's like, I don't know, it's like worse than the scene in The Rock, the Michael

[16:15] Bay film The Rock, where the good guys get corralled into a room in The Rock and the

[16:20] bad guys are waiting above them and shoot at them.

[16:22] And you just see close-ups of guns going off and close-ups of guys going, ah!

[16:27] And falling down.

[16:28] And then when the smoke clears.

[16:29] It's really putting you in the heart of the action.

[16:30] When the smoke clears, you're like, oh, that's what happened is they got shot.

[16:34] But that is like a picture of coherence next to this movie.

[16:38] The climactic shootout in a warehouse is almost entirely pitch black and you have no idea

[16:42] what the layout of the inside of this building is.

[16:44] You don't know how far away Nicolas Cage is from these people.

[16:47] The boat chasing, you're like, how far apart are these boats?

[16:50] Where are the boats going?

[16:51] You have guys shooting, like the scene where he's a sniper and he gets caught and the police

[16:57] start shooting up at him.

[16:59] It takes you a second.

[17:00] Your brain knows like, oh, I saw him, then I saw guns going off, then I saw a figure

[17:05] in a room, kind of like the one I think he's in, running away from gunshots.

[17:09] He must be getting shot at.

[17:10] But they just don't give you the shots where it's like you don't have to figure it out

[17:14] for yourself.

[17:15] It's just a poorly made movie.

[17:16] Well, there's one scene in the final shootout where I guess there's a grenade involved.

[17:20] Suddenly there's an explosion and you're kind of wondering who brought the grenade to this

[17:24] fight?

[17:25] Why did the grenade go off and Nicolas Cage just gets blown back?

[17:30] Whereas one guy gets blown in half.

[17:31] Here's what I inferred from that.

[17:32] Nicolas Cage has the bad guy pinned up against a door and the bad guy somethings and the

[17:37] Nicolas Cage somethings and then there's somehow a grenade blowing up in the bad guy's

[17:41] belly.

[17:42] So the bad guy gets blown up and Nicolas Cage is okay.

[17:45] And that is one of the best scenes in the movie, even though it makes no sense.

[17:48] It's like the movie Impostor where there's a bomb and the guy's ribcage.

[17:51] I don't remember that movie.

[17:53] Gary Sinise.

[17:54] That sounds great.

[17:55] The thing is...

[17:56] The classic Stuart dismissal of what was just said.

[17:59] Yeah, that's right.

[18:01] Anyway, there's...

[18:02] That's terrific.

[18:04] I've seen better movies where they...

[18:06] Really?

[18:07] Than this one?

[18:08] Surely not.

[18:09] I've seen a few better movies that have played off the arrival of a strange weapon and you

[18:16] go along with it.

[18:17] Like in They Live where Rowdy Piper all of a sudden happens to have a gun on him and

[18:22] you're like, well, I know...

[18:24] Rowdy Piper?

[18:25] I know enough about that character to imagine that he secretes weapons all around his body.

[18:30] It's believable that he might have a weapon we didn't know about before.

[18:33] But in this movie, you're just like, wait, there's a grenade?

[18:35] Who brought that?

[18:37] Why does that guy have that in his pocket?

[18:38] And by the way, when Rowdy Roderick Piper returned to the house of Usher, that was really...

[18:42] That was a tragedy.

[18:43] Rowdy Roderick Usher?

[18:44] Oh my God.

[18:45] Sorry.

[18:46] Now I'm trying to think of a way to do a line from the story The Fall of the House of Roderick

[18:51] Usher of Rowdy Usher.

[18:53] I came here to chew gum and bury my sister alive and I'm all out of gum.

[18:58] There you go.

[19:00] That's for the Poe fanatics in the audience.

[19:01] Yeah.

[19:02] That's for the Poe fanatics in the audience.

[19:03] Now, this is a remake of a movie called Bangkok Dangerous, written and directed by the same

[19:09] guys who wrote and directed this.

[19:10] The Pang Brothers?

[19:11] The Pang Brothers.

[19:12] I have not seen it.

[19:13] In that movie, the hitman is deaf, apparently, or mute.

[19:16] I can't remember which.

[19:17] I think he might be a deaf mute.

[19:20] And in this one, Nicolas Cage...

[19:21] I think that's symbolic.

[19:22] Nicolas Cage merely doesn't talk for most of the movie.

[19:24] I would think being a deaf mute would make being a hitman really challenging.

[19:27] Well, that's why he did it.

[19:29] He wants the challenge.

[19:30] Oh, okay.

[19:31] Yeah.

[19:33] It's one of these things where the idea was in the original, okay, being deaf gives him

[19:38] this pre-international focus.

[19:40] The strange thing is that Nicolas Cage was like, I want to remake this film, but I want

[19:45] to remove anything that's interesting about the main character.

[19:49] Yes.

[19:50] And he was a producer on this film, Nicolas Cage.

[19:52] Yeah.

[19:53] Why wouldn't he want to keep the gimmick of the film intact?

[19:56] Otherwise, it's just a movie about a guy who's a hitman.

[20:00] who has four jobs to do, does the first three successfully, fails the third, and then dies.

[20:06] Oh, dude, spoiler alert, guys.

[20:08] Oh, sorry. Sorry. I guess you don't have to watch Bangkok Dangerous now.

[20:13] You should mail $5 to Dan right now.

[20:16] I'll set up a PayPal account.

[20:18] This is a movie that, like, we've had trouble watching movies in the past before.

[20:21] I'm thinking of specifically 10,000 B.C., where they just don't keep your attention.

[20:25] And this was another one. It just failed to keep your attention.

[20:27] I think this might tie in terms of how bored I was.

[20:30] Possibly. At least 10,000 B.C. had crazy costumes.

[20:35] Like, they were dressed as cavemen. Whatever.

[20:37] I'll tell you that there were two things that I enjoyed in this movie.

[20:40] One was the guy's arm being cut off by a boat propeller, and it was still holding the gun.

[20:47] Yeah.

[20:48] That was pretty good.

[20:49] Very Star Wars-y.

[20:50] And the other was there was a Bangkok nightclub they kept returning to

[20:56] that always had a bunch of Thai girls in different outfits,

[21:01] scanty outfits dancing, like, line dances on the stage.

[21:05] And it was always fun whenever we returned to that nightclub

[21:08] to see what slutty outfit they'd be wearing this time.

[21:11] Yeah, once they were dressed up as doctors.

[21:13] Yeah, it was a very boring movie. For an action movie, it was—

[21:16] There's not a lot of action.

[21:17] There's very little action. It's boring.

[21:19] What's in there is not very good.

[21:20] They managed to make the city of Bangkok seem incredibly dull.

[21:23] For a movie with Nicolas Cage, there's not a lot of hammy acting.

[21:27] Yeah, he is a statue. He is a cigar-store Indian throughout the entire movie.

[21:32] As you said, his hair does most of the acting for him.

[21:34] You know, these guys, the Pang Brothers, I mean, they even have, like, a name for themselves.

[21:38] Yeah, the Pang Brothers.

[21:40] Like, theoretically, guys who like—

[21:42] People who are movie buffs have probably heard of the Pang Brothers.

[21:46] Yeah, probably.

[21:47] I think that they would be able to make a movie that isn't a total turd

[21:50] and isn't completely inept in every regard.

[21:52] By the way, this is the second movie that we've watched of the Flophouse

[21:56] that's done by a Brothers team, along with the Brothers Strauss,

[22:00] who did Alien vs. Predator 2.

[22:02] I missed that one.

[22:03] Which, Alien vs. Predator 2, AVP Requiem, better movie.

[22:07] What made it a Requiem? What was it a Requiem for?

[22:10] Well, it was a funeral mass for—

[22:12] It was a real dirge.

[22:14] I'm looking forward to AVP Aria.

[22:16] Wait, Aria Giovanni's in it?

[22:18] Yes, Aria Giovanni is in it.

[22:20] Porn star Aria Giovanni.

[22:22] Alien vs. Predator 3, Fugue.

[22:25] I think there is a porn movie named Aria, but she's not in it.

[22:28] That's disappointing.

[22:29] It might be an Asia Carrera film.

[22:30] Sure.

[22:31] Anyhoo.

[22:32] She's a member of Mensa.

[22:33] Really?

[22:34] Yeah.

[22:35] I didn't know that.

[22:36] Let her and Gina Davis.

[22:37] Wow, I bet they probably hang out.

[22:39] They do archery together.

[22:42] Yep, archery.

[22:44] There's archery in the movie Friday the 13th.

[22:47] I don't know how you got to that subject.

[22:50] I saw a poster for the remake in the subway when I was walking over here.

[22:54] It seems like, of all the movies to not just do a sequel to,

[22:58] at least even call it Friday the 13th, New Beginnings or something like that.

[23:01] Or part a million, it doesn't care.

[23:03] People will go see it.

[23:04] You don't need to—

[23:05] I'll tell you one thing.

[23:06] I was totally uninterested in the Friday the 13th remake

[23:11] until Rich Duncan, former Flophouse guest co-host Rich Duncan,

[23:16] for a couple of episodes—

[23:17] Good guy.

[23:18] —said—

[23:19] High five.

[23:20] —two words to me from the trailer, and that was topless water skiing.

[23:24] I don't know.

[23:25] That's a pretty good set.

[23:26] I'd watch an hour and a half of that.

[23:27] It's not going to be an hour and a half of topless water skiing.

[23:29] It's going to be an hour and a half of—

[23:30] There's going to be 20 seconds of topless water skiing.

[23:33] I guess if you want an hour and a half of topless water skiing,

[23:35] you should pay for the topless water skiing DVD.

[23:38] Even the real Cancun doesn't have two hours—

[23:40] an hour and a half of topless water skiing in it.

[23:42] Did Rich just lie to me then?

[23:43] Yes.

[23:44] No.

[23:45] Rich called you up and guaranteed an hour and a half of topless water skiing.

[23:49] I directed Friday the 13th, the remake.

[23:52] Oh, that's disappointing.

[23:54] Are they going to do a remake of Nightmare Before Elm Street?

[23:58] The Nightmare Before Elm Street.

[23:59] Jack Skellington has to figure out how to stop this child molester

[24:02] from invading people's dreams.

[24:05] Yeah, I think—

[24:06] She will have a nightmare involving Jack Skellington.

[24:09] I think they actually are.

[24:10] They're working on it.

[24:11] And Robert Englund's not even in it.

[24:14] He's not coming back.

[24:15] I mean, that's—

[24:16] Timothy Olyphant will be Freddy Krueger.

[24:20] But there's so few actors who are associated with a character

[24:24] that I'm disappointed that they wouldn't be playing it,

[24:26] and Robert Englund is one of them.

[24:28] Yeah, that's like making an Evil Dead movie without Bruce Campbell.

[24:32] Yeah.

[24:33] Speaking of Robert Englund, I just watched Zombie Strippers.

[24:36] And in general, I'm not a fan of movies that are sort of trying for camp.

[24:41] However, I will say—

[24:43] Usually featuring Ron Jeremy.

[24:46] No, those are just porno films.

[24:48] What have I been watching?

[24:49] I will say this for Zombie Strippers.

[24:51] This movie isn't funny at all.

[24:52] There's just lots of sex scenes in it.

[24:54] I will say this.

[24:55] With the fat guy.

[24:56] Is that Zombie Strippers delivers on its dual promise of zombies and strippers.

[25:01] Just on that level, it does not shy away from its exploitation.

[25:06] Are we at the recommendation part of this podcast?

[25:08] It's the exact opposite of Naked Lunch is what you're saying.

[25:10] Exactly.

[25:11] As they pointed out on The Simpsons.

[25:13] Two things wrong with that title.

[25:14] So, Elliot, you were talking about Hitman movies.

[25:17] Yes.

[25:18] What's the story there?

[25:19] The story there is—I don't know exactly.

[25:21] It's one of those things where there are a lot of mob movies.

[25:23] I can understand that.

[25:24] Married to the Mob.

[25:25] Married to the Mob, Godfather, Mobsters, Scarface, what have you.

[25:30] My Blue Heaven.

[25:31] A lot of organized crime movies.

[25:32] Goodfellas, Mickey Blue Eyes, and so forth.

[25:36] Johnny Dangerously.

[25:37] Johnny Dangerously, Donnie Roscoe, and so forth.

[25:40] There are a lot of these movies.

[25:43] Mr. Mob.

[25:45] Mr. Mob.

[25:47] Mobbin' Law.

[25:48] Mafia.

[25:50] Mobbin' It Up.

[25:52] Mobbin' Around.

[25:53] Mobbin' Around.

[25:54] Meet the Mobbersons.

[25:57] Honey, I Shrunk the Mob.

[25:59] There are a lot of these mob movies.

[26:01] But I can understand that because there's—

[26:03] the mafia, even though you may never meet somebody in organized crime,

[26:07] at least has a place, if a criminal place, in society.

[26:11] And there's a lot of things.

[26:12] It's based around a corporate structure and a family structure.

[26:15] There's a lot of room for stories there.

[26:17] And there's a lot of things about it that are very relatable,

[26:20] even if you've never been in organized crime.

[26:23] It's all part of the American dream, you know.

[26:25] It's the dark side of the American dream, I like to say.

[26:27] But what really is the dark side of the American dream is Guantanamo Bay.

[26:30] You're always the first to make that parallel, by the way.

[26:33] First time.

[26:34] But, like, there is a—

[26:36] you can feel a psychological connection with those characters

[26:38] in a way that to have so many movies about hitmen—

[26:41] and, you know, a good hitman story, I'm fine with.

[26:44] I don't care.

[26:45] When I was a kid, Boba Fett was my favorite Star Wars character.

[26:47] Whatever, dude.

[26:48] But when—

[26:50] I don't know if he was out—

[26:51] I don't think he had, like, a hit out on Han Solo.

[26:54] I mean, he did.

[26:55] He was more of a bounty hunter.

[26:56] He was a bounty hunter, but he would kill.

[26:57] Yeah, I guess.

[26:58] You have to assume he killed plenty.

[27:00] I mean, it is the Star Wars universe, so probably everyone shot at him first,

[27:02] but he did kill them.

[27:04] Yeah.

[27:05] Then he got eaten by a giant anus in the ground.

[27:07] Yeah, but in the books, he's escaped from that, so it's okay.

[27:10] Thanks, Timothy Zahn.

[27:11] That was the one moment in Return of the Jedi

[27:13] where it felt like David Cronenberg had started directing the film.

[27:16] Wait, there's a giant anus that eats people in the middle of the desert?

[27:20] Just in the ground somewhere?

[27:22] I don't understand.

[27:23] I think it burps after eating both of those.

[27:25] Yes, it does, which implies that it has a stomach and a throat, everything.

[27:30] And it has a sense of comic timing.

[27:34] I want to tell you one thing about that sarlacc.

[27:36] It also burps really fast,

[27:40] considering that it slowly digests over thousands of years.

[27:43] Everything in Return of the Jedi burps after eating.

[27:46] Jabba the Hutt eats a frog, burps.

[27:48] That little thing that sticks out of the desert ground,

[27:50] zaps a bug with its tongue, burps.

[27:52] No, you're talking about Salacious Crumb.

[27:54] Salacious Crumb doesn't burp.

[27:55] He would have used the name.

[27:56] Come on.

[27:57] We were doing Jack Nicholson impressions of...

[28:01] Agriabose, Ice Noodles, they're all there.

[28:03] They're all there.

[28:04] Rancor, probably.

[28:05] Amano Man, Yak Man.

[28:10] I wish I could remember the name of the Rancor Keeper, but I forgot his name.

[28:13] Admiral Ackbar, probably.

[28:15] I don't fucking care.

[28:16] We were doing Jack Nicholson in other roles today.

[28:21] It was like Jack Nicholson in other things.

[28:25] My contribution to that was Jack Nicholson as Bib Fortuna.

[28:30] No Jabba Wonga.

[28:31] You know, that kind of thing.

[28:34] Hey, man.

[28:37] Jabba Nobata.

[28:39] Again, my favorite thing in Return of the Jedi,

[28:41] they create Hutties as a language,

[28:43] and the Hutties phrase for Jedi Mind Trick is Jedi Mind Trick.

[28:47] Hutties does not have a word for mind or for trick.

[28:50] Look.

[28:51] The great mobster race of the universe has no word for trick.

[28:57] That makes sense to me.

[28:58] It's like in France where they're like Le Bleu Jeans.

[29:01] But blue jeans are an invention that was brought to them.

[29:04] It's not a common everyday thing like tricking.

[29:07] Jedis are not common in the Hutt.

[29:09] No, it's not Jedi that I have such an issue with.

[29:11] It's Mind Trick.

[29:12] Oh, I see.

[29:13] So they've never referred to their minds or tricking.

[29:15] Maybe they say Mind Trick because they give no credence to it.

[29:19] They think it's bullshit.

[29:20] They're trying to, like, lessen it in the eyes of their race.

[29:23] Oh, maybe.

[29:24] Anyway, this is off topic.

[29:25] Really?

[29:26] Hit men are just so...

[29:28] We didn't watch Return of the Jedi tonight?

[29:31] Here's my problem.

[29:32] The Ewoks are so technologically primitive.

[29:35] How could they...

[29:36] The Zulu Wars show us that...

[29:38] What I don't understand is how...

[29:39] Really, the Ewoks are the Vietnamese.

[29:41] There's that one moment in that movie where the one Ewok...

[29:44] It was a war of attrition that took a day and a half.

[29:47] That was the problem with the Imperial Army.

[29:49] There's that one moment where the one Ewok looks to the other guy when C-3PO says some bullshit.

[29:54] And the one Ewok looks to his friend and goes,

[29:56] That guy's wise.

[29:57] And you're like, holy shit, he just spoke English for a second.

[30:00] I don't remember that part.

[30:02] You need to watch it again, I promise.

[30:03] I usually stop watching Return of the Jedi after they get away from Jabba's Palace.

[30:06] Yeah, that's the best part.

[30:07] It's like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where the opening sequence is the best sequence in the film.

[30:12] Yeah, except I still like a lot of that movie even though people don't.

[30:16] No, I like it.

[30:17] I actually like it better than Last Crusade.

[30:19] Last Crusade gets a little too goofy for me.

[30:21] I agree.

[30:22] Okay, so Hitman.

[30:23] Hitman.

[30:24] Most Hitman movies feature a guy with a barcode on his neck or something, right?

[30:29] Just the one.

[30:30] Just the one.

[30:31] But Hitman movies also have a gimmick.

[30:33] They almost always get a hot girlfriend too, right?

[30:37] A hot girlfriend and they're amazing at everything.

[30:40] If I saw a movie that was a Hitman movie where, and I'm sure these exist, they're just nothing that come to mind at the moment,

[30:45] that is a realistic movie about this is a shitty job and you do it and you kill people for money

[30:50] but you don't perform amazing kung fu all the time and also sneak into people's rooms

[30:57] and then shoot them through mirrors and things like that.

[30:59] Yeah, these are guys who could probably find a significantly more fulfilling career somewhere else.

[31:03] Yes, but it's this kind of fantasy glorification of Hitman that just confuses,

[31:10] it's not like I'm like this is a sign of the decay of society that we're glorifying these men

[31:15] but it just boggles my mind that this is the, like rather than astronauts for instance.

[31:19] Well, and it's the same thing with like serial killer movies in Hollywood.

[31:24] These serial killers are all fucking geniuses.

[31:27] Yeah, geniuses and super monsters.

[31:30] And they have like moral superiority.

[31:32] They're like I do this to show you what's wrong with your life.

[31:36] You wouldn't understand the things I've shown you.

[31:40] And like the vast majority of them are just repressed masturbators or something.

[31:43] Well, in real life, yeah.

[31:45] But in these movies they're like, they're able to show you the dark side of our culture or something.

[31:50] Even then like at least there's, I mean there's the old trope that is in like Revolutionary Road of like

[31:56] the insane person sees the truth, sees through the illusions of society.

[32:00] And it's a bit much for that person to be a serial killer.

[32:03] But even then that makes more sense to me than like let's make a Hitman movie, dudes.

[32:07] Like here, our hero will be the guy who kills people for money.

[32:11] Well, I've just been really waiting to write this awesome novella about the greatest Hitman ever to live.

[32:16] What's his name?

[32:17] Jack John – wait, John Doe.

[32:20] Okay.

[32:21] John Doe and he kills serial killers.

[32:23] Okay, that's texture.

[32:25] He does it for money.

[32:27] And he only kills these serial killers in the eye of a hurricane.

[32:31] Yep.

[32:32] And he only uses a crossbow.

[32:35] And he has one webbed hand.

[32:37] He has one gimpy hand, yeah.

[32:40] And only other serial killers who don't appreciate their life of serial killing enough.

[32:44] And on the moment of –

[32:45] And his eyes are two different colors.

[32:46] And on the moment of shooting a serial killer, he has an almost orgasmic release where he lives the life of one of our presidents.

[32:55] Just in a flash.

[32:56] Yeah, in a flash.

[32:57] Which one?

[32:58] You'll have to watch the film.

[32:59] It depends.

[33:00] Well, it changes.

[33:01] Oh, wait, I just remembered.

[33:02] Well, that's the other thing.

[33:03] I mentioned before like you see like it's because they want to give the character a distinctive look.

[33:06] But they make them so crazy looking like as to stick out anywhere.

[33:10] And it's like if you want to hire someone to kill somebody, like you pick a guy to blend into crowds.

[33:13] At least Nicolas Cage with just the addition of a hat and a camera could make himself into a member of the press to escape the police.

[33:20] Yeah.

[33:21] That's true.

[33:22] But you have like in the movie Hitman, he's got a barcode on the back of his neck.

[33:25] He's shaved bald.

[33:27] He's Timothy Olyphant who's under normal circumstances is a kind of distinctive looking dude.

[33:32] Well, look, they put the barcode.

[33:34] Everyone would be like, aren't you the guy from Deadwood that we don't like even though he's the center of the show?

[33:37] Aren't you that great guy from The Girl Next Door who's really weird?

[33:41] They put the barcode on the back of Hitman's neck because they just want to speed up the whole process.

[33:46] You want to kill someone, you pull out the scanner.

[33:48] You're like, all right, you're activated.

[33:50] Scan it over.

[33:51] It's like, okay, well, $1,000, great.

[33:54] That's what I'll pay you.

[33:55] So you're saying that the guys who hire Hitman have scanners to see what the price is.

[33:58] Yeah, sure.

[33:59] So if his price goes up, he's got to get a new tattoo of a barcode.

[34:02] Yeah.

[34:03] Well, that's why he has to charge so much because he has to get laser tattoo removal.

[34:09] Wouldn't they put the tattoo in a harder, like a less obvious place?

[34:13] I mean it's on the back of his neck for God's sake.

[34:15] But for a movie, they have to have that image on the poster on the back of his head.

[34:18] So they just forget about it.

[34:20] Wasn't that movie based on a video game?

[34:22] Oh, it might have been.

[34:23] You might be thinking of Max Payne.

[34:24] Maybe Hitman was also.

[34:26] I think it was too, yeah.

[34:27] Well, let's cut this short because we've talked a lot.

[34:30] You might be thinking of Super Mario Brothers with John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins.

[34:33] Yeah, that was really great.

[34:34] And Dennis Hopper.

[34:35] Of course.

[34:37] He's got to be award winner, Dennis Hopper.

[34:38] His descriptions of making that movie are so funny.

[34:41] I think the Onion asked him about it.

[34:43] He was like, I didn't know what was going on.

[34:44] They didn't know what was going on.

[34:46] My son was like, why don't you look like the guy in the game?

[34:48] And he was like, and I was like, that's what he looks like.

[34:54] Dennis Hopper is hilarious.

[34:56] Anyway, let's move on to our final judgments about Bangkok.

[34:59] Final judgments.

[35:03] Nice.

[35:04] So the categories are, for people who haven't listened before, if you exist, the categories are.

[35:12] If there's anyone on God's earth that hasn't heard The Flophouse before,

[35:15] let's explain it on the very off chance that such a thing exists.

[35:18] Maybe there's an alien picking up this transmission.

[35:20] Pause this podcast and download our original, how many have we done?

[35:25] Is it like the 28th or 29th?

[35:27] Ten?

[35:28] Yes, ten.

[35:29] Listen to all those first.

[35:30] You could do a month of pods, listener at home.

[35:33] Anyway.

[35:34] That's good shit.

[35:35] Is this a movie that you would not recommend to anyone?

[35:37] A movie that you would recommend as a good, bad movie?

[35:40] Or a movie that you liked in some way?

[35:42] So, Stuart, what would you say about this movie?

[35:44] You know, this is a movie that I liked a lot.

[35:48] Wait, I'm joking.

[35:51] I had to go in there for a second.

[35:53] No irony.

[35:54] I know.

[35:55] I'm just joking.

[35:56] This movie is not very good.

[35:57] I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

[35:58] I might recommend it to Nicolas Cage.

[36:00] I think he should watch it again and think about his life.

[36:02] It's like a Ludovico procedure.

[36:03] You just got to prop his eyes open.

[36:05] Yeah, I know.

[36:06] This movie is like a one film intervention.

[36:08] Like, Nick, what are you doing?

[36:09] Here, check it out.

[36:10] What's going on, dude?

[36:11] This is the last movie you made.

[36:12] Destiny just turned on the radio.

[36:14] He's not even in that, is he?

[36:16] No.

[36:17] I just made that up.

[36:18] That was the movie that I just remember them hyping the fact that Quentin Tarantino was in it.

[36:23] Because it was right after Pulp Fiction, right?

[36:25] And Quentin Tarantino.

[36:27] You loved him in Reservoir Dogs.

[36:30] If you saw it.

[36:32] You loved the movie you saw that he shot and wrote.

[36:35] And, oh, he has that one small part in it.

[36:37] But this one, he's just actually in.

[36:38] Nancy Travis and Quentin Tarantino in...

[36:40] He plays the guy who turns on the radio.

[36:43] This movie, yeah, I would not recommend it to anyone.

[36:47] However, as a movie that we all watched, talking through a lot of it, it was a very easy movie to talk through.

[36:55] I would recommend it on the level of you do not have to pay any attention to this movie to comprehend what's going on.

[37:00] If you want to watch a movie but don't want to watch a movie, then this is the movie to not watch.

[37:04] If you want visual wallpaper, then this might be the film for you.

[37:07] If you're tired of the Yule log at your parties, then...

[37:11] Once Christmas is over, you're like, hmm, I would like to have something on my television that I don't need to pay attention to.

[37:18] I don't know what I could watch that's non-holiday related.

[37:21] Sure, I want to waste energy.

[37:22] Sure.

[37:23] But how can I do it in such a way that I don't pay attention?

[37:25] Bangkok Dangerous.

[37:28] I think if you're babysitting and you want to keep your kids busy for an hour and a half or so...

[37:33] This will not keep kids busy.

[37:34] This would keep maybe a vegetable busy.

[37:37] Like someone with no...

[37:38] If you are babysitting a child who is a vegetable and you want to keep...

[37:41] If you were babysitting Terri Schiavo and you wanted to shut her up for a second, this would be the movie to show.

[37:46] If you get off on really greasy hair, then you could watch this.

[37:50] If you are watching every single movie Nicolas Cage ever made...

[37:53] Then you would have to watch this.

[37:55] Or a bet or a dare of some kind.

[37:58] That would take a really long time, right?

[38:00] If you were doing it as penance for a sin you've committed, this is the one to watch.

[38:05] Well, it's one of the many that you would have to watch.

[38:07] Well, and I just want to go on the record of saying also I hate this movie and don't recommend it.

[38:11] It's rare that I...

[38:12] Ella hates a strong word.

[38:13] It was just not worth talking about, really.

[38:16] It's rare that I use the phrase shit on a shingle, but if I had to pick a...

[38:20] Really? He said it all the time.

[38:23] It's rare if I had to pick a piece of architectural supplies and a piece of feces to compare this to.

[38:28] It would be shit on a shingle, this one.

[38:30] Only one this year.

[38:31] Everybody...

[38:32] And just for the record.

[38:33] I think that was the product of peer pressure.

[38:35] Just for the record.

[38:36] Dan really didn't like it and then he kind of made both of us not like it.

[38:39] Yeah, because I loved it before Dan did.

[38:40] Yeah, you were talking about how the mise en scene and the color choice was so colorful.

[38:45] Just for the record also, in case anyone gets a bad idea, shit is not a good preservative for shingles.

[38:50] And if you place it on a shingle, it will blow away or get rained off.

[38:53] It's also not a good hors d'oeuvre to put shit on a shingle.

[38:55] Yes, people don't like...

[38:56] All you're going to end up getting is a dirty shingle and some wasted shit.

[39:00] Possibly hepatitis C.

[39:02] Hepatitis C?

[39:05] Yeah.

[39:06] That's Everett G. Robinson, MD.

[39:11] If you're keeping score at home, that's the strangest joke ever to be made on The Flop House.

[39:19] So anyway, let's move on.

[39:22] Before we get into our recommendations, I have a few letters from listeners.

[39:28] Number one, everyone should go to theflophousepodcast.blogspot.com.

[39:34] That's the website.

[39:35] That's our website.

[39:37] What?

[39:38] Because Flophouse super fan, Ksenia...

[39:42] Ksenia.

[39:43] Has done some Netflix lists.

[39:46] What's that?

[39:47] She has put together a list of, number one, all of the movies that we've discussed on The Flop House,

[39:53] in case you want to play along at home.

[39:55] Which you do.

[39:56] What's Netflix?

[39:57] It's a service whereby if you pay money...

[40:00] You can rent DVDs via the mail.

[40:03] Oh, over the net. That's really clever.

[40:06] Sure.

[40:07] Dates back to Galileo's day.

[40:09] And there are also links to lists of all the films that we've recommended.

[40:14] And she says,

[40:15] I know that almost every time I listen to a new episode,

[40:18] you guys mention a movie I've yet to see, slash, have never heard of.

[40:22] I'm sure other listeners feel the same,

[40:24] and will appreciate the ability to scroll through the lists of your old recommendations

[40:28] without having to skim your old episodes with pen and paper at hand.

[40:32] And so that is an awesome service that she has provided.

[40:35] That is fantastic of her.

[40:37] Free of charge, Stuart.

[40:38] Yeah, I was actually glancing at the list,

[40:40] and there's even movies that I recommended as a joker on there.

[40:43] So that's awesome.

[40:45] She was very thorough.

[40:46] Yeah.

[40:47] You'll notice that the movies get much classier once I got on board.

[40:50] Sure, that's true.

[40:51] Classier or more boring.

[40:53] A little bit of both.

[40:54] Who's going to make the call?

[40:55] There's also a link to her personal website on the site,

[40:59] so if you want to check that out.

[41:00] She has a lot of neat stuff on there.

[41:02] Also, I have a line.

[41:05] I have a line.

[41:07] I have a line in a television show.

[41:10] It's an episode of Law and Order.

[41:12] You play the guy who discovers the corpse.

[41:14] So your line is,

[41:15] Yeah, guys, I'll meet you at the, huh?

[41:18] I have a line in the show, What's My Line?,

[41:21] which hasn't been on the air for, I don't know, 50 years.

[41:24] What, 40-some-odd at least?

[41:27] An email here from Eddie, last name withheld.

[41:31] Okay.

[41:32] What ethnicity is that?

[41:33] Hey, Dad.

[41:34] Hey, Dad.

[41:35] Whoa, you're like the nerd in elementary school.

[41:38] I don't want to teach your mom.

[41:43] I've been drinking, ladies and gentlemen.

[41:44] Hey, Dan, it's Eddie from You, Your World, and You,

[41:46] which is a sketch show that I did with a gentleman.

[41:49] That was a very funny sketch show.

[41:50] I've been listening to the back episodes and have recently caught up.

[41:53] I wish I'd started listening sooner.

[41:55] Anyway, again, my roommate just told me about this movie called The Room

[41:59] that's apparently a cult hit for shittiness.

[42:01] Yeah, I've seen it.

[42:02] I have seen it.

[42:03] We watched it at work once.

[42:04] Well, finish the letter, and then I'll tell you about it.

[42:06] He says, Maybe you guys have already heard of it,

[42:08] but I just want to make sure you knew it existed.

[42:10] Is Tommy Wiseau the Edward of our era?

[42:12] Is this the ultimate good-bad movie?

[42:14] And I was going to open the question to you guys.

[42:17] Is this movie too little known to be on the flop house?

[42:23] Is this kicking a dog that has already been kicked several times before,

[42:27] or is it worth checking out?

[42:29] This is a movie, having seen it, it doesn't quite fall in our purview

[42:33] because we tend to avoid movies that are not bigger releases

[42:37] or fairly big releases.

[42:40] It is, however, a movie that I recommend we watch privately,

[42:43] if not for the flop house, because it is hilarious.

[42:45] Okay.

[42:46] It is incredibly poorly made.

[42:47] I do want to watch this movie.

[42:48] You can't get it on Netflix.

[42:50] However, you can get it very cheaply via Amazon,

[42:53] and I was thinking about purchasing it.

[42:55] Oh, that sounds like a nice Saturday night.

[42:57] The only problem with it is it started becoming like –

[43:01] I think there's this theater in LA that still shows it at midnights,

[43:04] and the guy who made it was like,

[43:06] Yeah, well, it was always supposed to be a comedy.

[43:09] It's supposed to be funny.

[43:11] I meant it that way the whole time,

[43:13] and he pretty obviously did not, but it's kind of gotten sullied by that.

[43:17] I have read about this movie.

[43:19] It is an awful movie.

[43:21] It's a cause that has been taken up by many famous comedians

[43:25] as being a great, bad movie to watch.

[43:28] It is hilariously bad.

[43:29] I'm curious to see it.

[43:30] I watch whatever you guys make me watch, so that's cool.

[43:33] We could do it for this one, but it's kind of –

[43:36] It would be harder, almost a little harder to talk about afterwards

[43:39] because there's nothing for the person at home to visualize.

[43:45] She.

[43:46] There's a lot of our listeners are ladies.

[43:48] A lot of Stewart's fans are ladies.

[43:50] There's no one famous in it.

[43:52] The scenes are all characters talking in rooms.

[43:55] It's really phantasmagorical.

[43:57] It's very not phantasmagorical, my friends.

[44:00] It's like The Adventures of Tom Thumb.

[44:03] It's like The Adventures of Tom Thumb mixed with The Yellow Submarine.

[44:06] Oh, my God.

[44:08] With a little dash of Return to Oz.

[44:11] It's like that Stan Winston, Tom Sawyer film.

[44:14] I don't even know that one.

[44:15] The Adventures of Mark Twain.

[44:17] Yeah, so we're going to watch this movie then.

[44:19] Okay.

[44:20] We could.

[44:21] We'll make some plans.

[44:22] Let's do it for kicks sometime.

[44:23] Yeah, and I recommend to the listeners at home, watch it yourself.

[44:25] Maybe we'll do a movie minute about it.

[44:26] This is one that – it's one of those movies that's really low budget

[44:29] and amateurishly made to the point that to discuss it is almost pointless,

[44:34] but to watch it is very funny.

[44:35] Okay.

[44:36] It's like twin sitters.

[44:37] I was just going to say it's like twin sitters in that way.

[44:39] And lastly –

[44:40] The Barbarian Brothers, unfortunately, are not in the room.

[44:42] Oh, that's too bad.

[44:44] In response to the email I read last time,

[44:48] my sister-in-law, Marina, last name withheld,

[44:51] thanks, by the way, for reading that letter on the air.

[44:53] It was fun to listen to your podcast with John, my brother.

[44:57] That's my brother, not Marina, my sister-in-law's brother.

[45:01] There's no weird –

[45:02] When did he do the podcast?

[45:04] No, no.

[45:05] You misunderstand entirely.

[45:07] Listen to the podcast with John, my brother.

[45:09] But John, my brother –

[45:11] You have a brother named John?

[45:12] Sure.

[45:13] No, my sister-in-law's brother that she's married to is named John.

[45:17] Oh, weird.

[45:18] I don't have a brother named John.

[45:19] Who's on first?

[45:20] Yeah, he is.

[45:21] He's a good player.

[45:22] You know, baseball players have crazy names.

[45:24] He's one of the best offensive first baseball players in the league, the baseball league.

[45:28] Anyway, my sister-in-law points out that my brother would never have made the mistake about Karloff.

[45:34] As he pointed out, though, my sister-in-law was thinking of Horton Hears a Who,

[45:40] which was often paired with the Grinch, and that was –

[45:43] Who's he?

[45:44] Hans Conrad?

[45:45] Hans Conrad.

[45:46] Or –

[45:47] It was Hans Conrad.

[45:48] Hans Conrad, yeah.

[45:49] But also –

[45:50] Not Paul Henry?

[45:51] No, not Paul Henry.

[45:52] Or Conrad Veidt?

[45:53] Neither of each.

[45:54] Okay.

[45:55] But in response to our question to tweens about High School Musical, they asked James, my nephew –

[46:03] Sure.

[46:04] – who was in the demographic –

[46:05] Son of John.

[46:06] Yeah.

[46:07] James Johnson.

[46:08] Why do people like High School Musical?

[46:10] And he said, quote, I don't know, I don't like it, I think it is because, pause, I don't know, it's bad.

[46:22] So there you go.

[46:23] That's a very realistic reply.

[46:25] If you're wondering about High School Musical, if you're puzzling it out,

[46:29] that's from someone who is in the age bracket targeted.

[46:34] Finally, I'm able to see it unfettered, my gaze unsullied by my own preconceptions.

[46:40] Yeah.

[46:41] That was great.

[46:42] Don't we talk now about –

[46:43] Don't we talk now about movies we do like?

[46:46] Yeah, recommendation time.

[46:47] Let's do that.

[46:48] Okay, Elliot, go.

[46:49] Go, Elliot, go.

[46:50] Oh, wait, wait.

[46:51] What are we doing right now, Dan?

[46:52] Clarify.

[46:53] No, I'm just saying at this point in the podcast, we prove that we're not miserable jerks who hate everything.

[46:58] No, I love movies.

[46:59] There are some things that we like.

[47:00] Okay, I'm ready to go.

[47:01] Do it to it.

[47:02] Yeah.

[47:03] The other day, I watched this great movie with my buddy Alexander Delicious

[47:07] and we watched a little Clint Eastwood picture called The Beguiled.

[47:12] Oh, I've watched that recently too.

[47:14] 1971.

[47:15] It was great.

[47:16] It is a great movie.

[47:17] There are some really awesome bits in it and it's really –

[47:20] it's basically about this northern Civil War soldier who ends up in this southern girls' school

[47:26] and like slowly kind of in a way like seduces them all

[47:30] and they all end up putting like all their hopes and dreams on him

[47:32] and then when they find out he's been lying to them, they get extra mad.

[47:36] Yeah, a very distressing movie.

[47:37] Yeah, but it's great because it's –

[47:39] Yeah, it's kind of creepy like a horror movie.

[47:41] Like it has everything that's good about Italian horror movies in it

[47:45] and none of the bad stuff and it's really –

[47:47] That's a very good way to put it.

[47:48] Yeah, it's really –

[47:49] and there's just some really hilarious bits.

[47:52] So it's good.

[47:53] Totally recommend it.

[47:54] I would recommend a movie that's in theaters.

[47:57] I would recommend that people go out and see My Bloody Valentine in 3D.

[48:01] I would not recommend that you see it in just regular digital –

[48:05] 2D.

[48:06] Yeah, 2D.

[48:07] Well, technically –

[48:08] Two dimensions.

[48:09] Fuck that.

[48:10] You're seeing it in 4D.

[48:11] Am I?

[48:12] The dimension of time.

[48:14] That's true, Elliot.

[48:16] Continue.

[48:17] What an asshole this guy is, this Elliot.

[48:21] What a dick.

[48:23] Glad he said that like that.

[48:24] It's not a great movie.

[48:26] It's, in fact, your average slasher film but done with a modicum of, like, talent.

[48:32] It's done with good pacing, like a good sense of fun,

[48:35] but there's something about seeing a horror movie in 3D

[48:39] that really gets at, like, sort of the carnival element of seeing a horror film,

[48:44] that sort of amusement, thrills, that novelty feeling.

[48:49] It feels trashier.

[48:51] It feels –

[48:52] You said there's, like, 3D boobs that just pop out of the screen, right?

[48:56] I didn't say it in those words.

[48:58] However, there is a five-minute sequence in which a woman runs around entirely nude.

[49:03] Yeah, it's just fun.

[49:05] That sounds fun.

[49:07] I would say –

[49:08] I assume she's running through a sprinkler.

[49:09] Yep.

[49:10] Through a butter factory.

[49:12] She slips and falls on another nude girl.

[49:15] Yeah.

[49:16] They're wrestling or something.

[49:17] There are a lot of spring sound effects.

[49:20] Sure.

[49:21] Okay, because this is a Hanna-Barbera-scored porn film.

[49:25] Well, it's not necessarily porn at this point.

[49:28] That sounds great.

[49:29] Good job.

[49:30] I like that recommendation.

[49:31] Smell it.

[49:32] What do you got for us?

[49:33] Okay, real quick.

[49:35] I saw a movie called Mock-Up on Moo.

[49:37] It was a very arty, experimental science fiction film,

[49:40] kind of sewn together from tattered pieces of other science fiction films,

[49:44] which was a lot of fun, but you might have trouble finding it.

[49:48] So if you can find it, it's called Mock-Up on Moo.

[49:50] It's worth seeing.

[49:51] You'll feel like it's pointless in the beginning,

[49:54] and then you might get into it.

[49:56] But in an easier film to find that I saw recently,

[50:00] seen before was Silverstreak with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, which is not the funniest

[50:06] movie, but frankly, Gene Wilder is a pretty good action-adventure star in that film.

[50:13] It's supposed to be like, he's a goofy guy caught up in this thing, but he doesn't come

[50:16] off as goofy.

[50:17] He comes off as pretty competent, and at the end, the cops are having a shootout with the

[50:22] bad guy, the late, dearly departed and missed Patrick McGowan.

[50:25] They just hand Gene Wilder a gun, and there's no like, what am I going to do with this thing?

[50:31] He just takes it, and they hand him his bullets, and he starts loading it, and it's this great

[50:34] like, yeah, I guess he'll just take part in the shootout, too.

[50:37] You know what?

[50:38] That's the way I've always felt about Silverstreak, too.

[50:39] I'm like, as a comedy, eh, all right, there's some laughs in it, but as like a sort of Hitchcock

[50:48] pastiche.

[50:49] It's very good.

[50:50] Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

[50:51] And there's also, like Richard Pryor's very good in it, and there's a shot where, and

[50:54] there's also a lot of atmosphere in it, considering it was shot in Canada, not in the United States.

[51:00] It feels like American when they're driving around or taking the train or whatever, but

[51:03] there's a part where he and Richard Pryor are just like driving, and there's just a

[51:08] shot of the road with them driving, and it's kind of like almost haunting music as they

[51:13] drive past these kind of pastoral landscapes, and it's this nice little like Badlands moment

[51:18] in this otherwise like odd couple adventure film, you know, so I liked it a lot, actually.

[51:24] And also, like Richard Keele gets shot with a fucking spear gun, spoiler alert, so.

[51:28] Hey.

[51:29] See, it happened.

[51:30] Richard Keele.

[51:31] He was keeled over.

[51:32] It's got a great cast.

[51:33] Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Patrick McGowan, Richard Keele, Ray Walston, Ned Beatty.

[51:39] There's a lot of great people in it.

[51:41] You know, Stuart, our friend Liz has a signed photo of Richard Keele.

[51:44] I didn't know that.

[51:46] Yeah, that's pretty awesome.

[51:47] I need to meet this friend Liz.

[51:49] Heir to the Keele's fortune.

[51:50] Yeah.

[51:51] The Keele's cosmetic fortune.

[51:53] Here's the patent on the word Keele Hall, which is made up of words.

[51:57] Anyway, but mock-up on Moo, if you get the chance to see it, I would say go for it.

[52:01] But Silverstreak is available in video stores everywhere.

[52:07] Don't take my word for it.

[52:09] Check out Silverstreak at your local library.

[52:11] Is it available on Blu-ray yet?

[52:14] I think it will never be available on Blu-ray.

[52:17] It's in your video store.

[52:20] Silverstreak.

[52:22] You didn't hit the high note at the end, I was kind of disappointed.

[52:25] You win, Franco!

[52:26] Thanks.

[52:27] Yeah, so, this has been a good one.

[52:30] Yeah, it has.

[52:31] Oh, man, so many laughs.

[52:33] We talked about Return of the Jedi, we talked about Hitman.

[52:36] Now Dan can't edit out either of those things.

[52:39] But in the final one...

[52:40] Don't you wish you could live in the Flophouse with us?

[52:43] Yeah.

[52:44] Seriously?

[52:45] If I could drop almost my entire life and me and my girlfriend could live in the Flophouse,

[52:50] this mythical construct, I would do that instantly.

[52:52] If it was like that Stephen King short story where the guy's in that house and people just

[52:56] give him...

[52:57] They slip the money under the door for his living expenses.

[52:59] Yeah, absolutely.

[53:00] Everything's eventual, sure.

[53:01] Yeah.

[53:02] I don't remember what else happens in that story.

[53:03] It's weird.

[53:04] We'll talk about it later.

[53:05] Okay.

[53:06] For now, I'm Dan McCoy.

[53:07] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[53:08] And eternally, I'm Elliot Kaelin.

[53:11] Good night.

[53:12] Yeah.

[53:13] Okay, I gotta pee.

[53:15] You've been holding for like ever.

[53:19] The Flophouse is recorded before a live stream.

[53:22] How are my levels?

[53:23] You look great.

[53:24] I'm looking good.

[53:26] Especially that mustache.

[53:27] Yeah, this...

[53:28] That mustache.

[53:29] I'm pretty drunk, guys.

[53:30] I don't know if I'll be very funny.

[53:31] I thought that was like your fucking spinach.

[53:37] Alright, let's do this thing.

[53:39] Oh, that's...

[53:40] Hey, just like Tango and Cash.

[53:41] Yeah.

[53:42] Let's do this thing.

The Flop House: Episode #30 - Bangkok Dangerous

Transcript

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