0:00

Hello everybody and

0:02

welcome back to

0:04

The Iron List This

0:06

is the podcast where

0:09

we do lists

0:11

here at the

0:13

critically acclaimed network.

0:15

My name is William

0:18

Bibiani. I am a

0:20

film critic. I write for

0:22

the rap. Everybody calls

0:25

me Bibbibs and I

0:28

have COVID. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry.

0:30

Sorry, you're gravelly. And it's also why

0:32

we're recording remotely. I don't want to

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be in the same room with you

0:36

while you're sick. I don't, I don't.

0:38

I understand not wanting to be in

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the same room with me in general. No,

0:42

but I love being in the room with

0:44

you otherwise, and I love recording with you

0:47

in person, and I love the rapport that

0:49

we develop. So if our timing or the

0:51

way we converse seems a little different. It's

0:53

because we're recording remotely. People tell

0:56

us when we make these sort

0:58

of caveats at the beginning of

1:00

a podcast that they can't tell,

1:03

which is very, very sweet, we

1:05

can tell. We know. We have

1:07

recorded literally thousands of podcasts together

1:10

over the last decade and a

1:12

half. We know even when the

1:14

timing is slightly off. We know

1:17

there's a difference. And it drives

1:19

us bats. Oh great now you're calling

1:21

me. Well and I look at we

1:23

have some tea here with me so

1:26

I can kind of cut it out.

1:28

Anyway this is the Iron List this

1:30

is the monthly podcast here the critically

1:33

acclaimed network where our patrons over at

1:35

patreon.com slash critically acclaimed

1:37

network pick a topic and Whitney

1:39

and I present our own

1:41

individual top ten lists of that

1:44

topic. It's kind of an open you

1:46

know. Open door to anything people might

1:48

want to select we pick some

1:50

of our favorites we go through

1:52

old old Old Old options sometimes

1:54

we come up with wacky ones,

1:56

but this time on the iron

1:58

list our patrons and in their

2:01

grand wisdom and in a landslide,

2:03

voted for the best knockoff movies

2:05

ever. And that is a topic

2:07

I don't think people talk about

2:10

enough. Yeah. Well, we do talk

2:12

about it, but usually it's used

2:14

in reviews in a pejorative sense.

2:16

This film resembles this other one

2:18

very closely. It's clearly not very

2:21

creative. It's described as a knockoff.

2:23

Of course. Knockoffs can be many

2:25

things. I do have a few

2:27

parameters that I was sticking to,

2:30

because I can tell you what

2:32

a knockoff isn't. Firstly, a spoof

2:34

or a satire is not, doesn't

2:36

count as a knockoff. That's a

2:39

spoof for a satire. Something that

2:41

is making fun of or sending

2:43

up or making a comedic version

2:45

of a serious genre, that's a...

2:48

form of comedy. Now if I

2:50

can if I can riff on

2:52

that for a second I think

2:54

a knockoff is a movie in

2:56

a general sense that mimics or

2:59

apes or just flat out copies

3:01

a part or even an entire

3:03

plot or a character or some

3:05

other sort of significant concept from

3:08

a existing work usually relatively recent

3:10

work. in an effort to capitalize

3:12

on networks popularity. Now, if you

3:14

are doing this in a satirical

3:17

or spoof sense, what you're doing

3:19

is setting yourself apart from that

3:21

thing. We are making fun of

3:23

that thing that you like. Whereas,

3:26

for example, all of the many

3:28

found footage horror movies that came

3:30

in the immediate wake of paranormal

3:32

activity, you're trying to think you're

3:34

like Apollo. 18s or whatever. Yeah,

3:37

all of that stuff. Yeah, all

3:39

of that stuff. Those are, those

3:41

are, those are, paranormal encounters, stuff

3:43

like that. All of these, these

3:46

types of movies that we're trying

3:48

to basically confuse you into thinking

3:50

it's more of the same. Sometimes

3:52

there's. different enough that they exist

3:55

in their own way that they

3:57

build their own audience and sometimes

3:59

they even develop their own distinct

4:01

subgenres. But they're trying to do

4:03

it in a pretty sincere manner.

4:06

They want you to, if you

4:08

enjoy the previous one, you're going

4:10

to enjoy this. A spoof movie

4:12

exists for people who enjoy the

4:15

original and also the people who

4:17

didn't. Because you're going to make

4:19

fun of it. So you're going

4:21

to make fun of it. So

4:24

it's not the same thing. I

4:26

agree. I don't have spoof movies.

4:28

on my list. I agree that

4:30

that's different. Also, rather clearly anything

4:33

that's a remake or like has

4:35

is credited to the screenwriter of

4:37

the original that's a remake that

4:39

that was been legally cleared that

4:41

counts as an actual remake of

4:44

a thing and a remake is

4:46

not a knockoff and knockoff is

4:48

trying to pull a fast one

4:50

on you. Right. Now there we

4:53

do however fall into a little

4:55

bit of hazy territory. when we

4:57

get into certain filmmakers that are

4:59

known for homage, where they're clearly

5:02

and very openly borrowing a certain

5:04

kind of aesthetic or certain kind

5:06

of characters or certain kind of

5:08

plot points from their favorite movies,

5:11

but in interviews they'll be very

5:13

frank about that. They'll say, oh

5:15

yes, I saw these like eight

5:17

films from like the 60s in

5:19

the 70s and I took pieces

5:22

from each of these, and I

5:24

put them into my movie trying

5:26

to sort of synthesize. a new

5:28

aesthetic out of it. Quentin Tarantino

5:31

is all over this. Yeah, I

5:33

think Quentin Tarantino's movies count as

5:35

knockoffs if he's always very frank

5:37

about the sources that he's borrowing

5:40

from. Some more than others. Or

5:42

are they homage, which is, you

5:44

know, a very fine line to

5:46

tread. I might have some on

5:48

my list that might could be

5:51

defined as homage, but for the

5:53

purposes of this podcast, I'll say

5:55

they're knockoffs. I think. Excuse me.

5:57

I apologize. I think if the

6:00

film and the filmmakers are actively

6:02

saying, hey thanks man, thanks for

6:04

making this movie that we can

6:06

play off of in a friendly

6:09

way, it doesn't really feel like

6:11

a knockoff. Knockoffs feel a little

6:13

bit more mercenary than that. But

6:15

yeah. There's something you said though

6:18

that I think is really really

6:20

important. You said that often when

6:22

we talk about a knockoff. We're

6:24

speaking in a pejorative sense. Oh,

6:26

it's just a knockoff. And well

6:29

I can't say I've never done

6:31

that. I try not to do

6:33

that because I honestly don't think

6:35

knockoff is inherently a pejorative or

6:38

a bad thing. I think it

6:40

is just a thing. I think

6:42

that is just the nature of

6:44

success and the Hollywood industry that

6:47

when one thing is successful, especially

6:49

when it is unexpectedly successful, people

6:51

want to riff on that, play

6:53

with that. Just flat out copy

6:56

it. It is a sort of

6:58

a, there is a sincere form

7:00

of flattery involved, I believe. But

7:02

a lot of knockoffs are really

7:04

good, and indeed a lot of

7:07

movies that we don't think of

7:09

as knockoffs today are in fact

7:11

huge knockoffs, but these knockoffs that

7:13

we now love develop their own

7:16

identity and feel like their own

7:18

separate entity now, and sometimes the

7:20

link to the thing that they

7:22

were originally riffing on. is no

7:25

longer as clear to mainstream audiences.

7:27

They think of it as just

7:29

its own original entity. Whereas if

7:31

you were there at the time,

7:33

everyone was saying, oh, that's just

7:36

a diehard ref. So regardless, we

7:38

are dealing, and I think this

7:40

is 100% true, I think we

7:42

are dealing here with a category

7:45

of iron list where the. the

7:47

rules, the definition is a little

7:49

less rigid than I think we

7:51

would normally like. And so I'm

7:54

gonna give you some slack I

7:56

expect you to give me a

7:58

little bit of slack we can

8:00

challenge and say like I think

8:03

that's pushing it if we really

8:05

want to but generally speaking I

8:07

think we're both more or less

8:09

on the same page and I

8:11

will say this this was actually

8:14

a very very hard one for

8:16

me there are a lot of

8:18

my favorite movies are arguably if

8:20

not technically knockoffs okay so I'm

8:23

gonna have some movies on my

8:25

list that I some people might

8:27

consider bona fide classics and might

8:29

bristle when I refer to them

8:32

as a knockoff. I'm going to

8:34

say this right now. It is

8:36

not a sign of disrespect. It

8:38

is a sign of I know

8:41

where this movie came from and

8:43

I love this movie. These are

8:45

good knockoff movies that are making

8:47

our list. Like we genuinely think

8:49

they're good. But... let's be honest

8:52

here, they wouldn't exist at least

8:54

in their current form or they

8:56

wouldn't have been made in when

8:58

they were made had it not

9:01

been for the previous success or

9:03

notoriety of another earlier film or

9:05

subject matter. So on

9:07

that note before we get going

9:09

I'm going to remind everybody in

9:11

case you're new When we do

9:13

the iron list we do our

9:15

top 10 list we do them

9:18

differently than most other Shows and

9:20

other articles that do top 10

9:22

lists most other ones they do

9:24

it In a ranked order your

9:26

number nine is considered better than

9:28

your number 10. We don't give

9:30

a crap about that We're going

9:32

to just talk about all of

9:34

our movies and as far as

9:36

we're concerned number two through 10

9:38

on our list is a tie

9:40

for second place. These are all

9:42

movies that we love and we

9:44

want to recommend, we want you

9:47

to see, and we're not going

9:49

to get a bug up our

9:51

butt about which one is slightly

9:53

better than another. The only difference

9:55

is that our number one is

9:57

our number one. If we had

9:59

to pick the greatest knockoff movie

10:01

of all time, this is what

10:03

we would pick. Everybody forgetting anything

10:05

Whitney? Are we good? No, I

10:07

think that's good. Okay, as is

10:09

tradition. As is tradition, Whitney kicks

10:11

us off. Whitney, what is the

10:13

first film you want to talk

10:16

about? Okay, well, when we start

10:18

talking about thing, because you're talking

10:20

about we know where films come

10:22

from, and sometimes you can recognize

10:24

a film as sort of like

10:26

imitating or aeping the success of

10:28

something that came almost immediately before

10:30

it. is kind of knocking off

10:32

other older traditions. So there's going

10:34

to be like long strings of

10:36

these things. Sure, sure. So that

10:38

said, I'm going to start with

10:40

a modern American classic. It's one

10:42

of the best phones of the

10:45

2000s. And it came in the

10:47

wake of the Fast and the

10:49

Furious. which was this high octane

10:51

film about sort of a new

10:53

kind of ultra colorful specifically styled

10:55

car culture that was partly inspired

10:57

by real life but was mostly

10:59

made up for the movies and

11:01

it sort of inspired all of

11:03

these sort of ripoffs and riffs

11:05

but of course the best of

11:07

the fast and nefarious knockoffs was

11:09

torque. I love that you picked

11:11

torque. I don't know honestly I'm

11:14

looking at my list right now.

11:16

I don't know why I didn't

11:18

pick Torque. I feel silly. I'm

11:20

gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I

11:22

have plenty of movies I want

11:24

to talk about, so I'm gonna

11:26

leave him be. But man, if

11:28

you, if neither of us had

11:30

remembered Torque, I would have realized

11:32

it like tomorrow, and I would

11:34

have been furious. So, not fast,

11:36

just furious. I'm so glad you

11:38

picked Torque. Torque is, is what

11:41

it is. It was directed by

11:43

Joseph Khan who's one like Emmy's

11:45

for music videos. I think this

11:47

is his only feature No, no,

11:49

no, he did he did that

11:51

movie detention that like time travel

11:53

teen horror movie. Oh, I didn't

11:55

I didn't see detention Yeah, he

11:57

did that. But he did torque

11:59

before he did, before he did

12:01

detention. And torque tried to hit

12:03

all of the beats that the

12:05

Fast and the Furious did. It

12:07

starred, it started like, you know,

12:10

a couple recognizable stars like Ice

12:12

Cube, I think, was their big

12:14

get at the time. But it

12:16

was about sort of Robin Hood's

12:18

style. thieves and criminals who used

12:20

high-octane vehicles to commit their crimes

12:22

and the cops that were on

12:24

their tail. The cop on their

12:26

tails played by Adam Scott from

12:28

Severin's. There's a role in this

12:30

film for Jamie Presley who plays

12:32

sort of like this this mute

12:34

thug and like one of the

12:36

most elaborate revealing jackets you've ever

12:39

seen and there's a scene where

12:41

she and the the other lead

12:43

of the movie played by Mona

12:45

Mazur. get into a motorcycle fight

12:47

where they're on their motorcycles but

12:49

using them as if they're swords

12:51

like banging them into each other

12:53

and wheeling around. They're popping a

12:55

wheelie and punching each other with

12:57

their front wheels. Yeah, well, by

12:59

the way, and Monemoiselle is like

13:01

dressed in blue and she's like

13:03

at the edge of like a

13:05

long like road right in front

13:08

of a bright blue. Pepsi like

13:10

poster and Jamie Presley who does

13:12

speak a little bit in the

13:14

movie Jimmy Presley is at the

13:16

other end and she's like again

13:18

more like green or whatever and

13:20

she's in front of a giant

13:22

Mountain Dew poster and they have

13:24

this it's seriously one of the

13:26

greatest fights in movie history it's

13:28

fucking great the the lead actor

13:30

is a block of wood his

13:32

name is Martin Henderson, but you

13:34

know he's kind of like he

13:37

has protagonist syndrome he's like the

13:39

least interesting character in the movie

13:41

But he's surrounded by all of

13:43

these colorful characters and the film

13:45

is so stylish and so quick

13:47

and so loud and so illogical

13:49

like it's really it's about drugs

13:51

and trying to smuggle drugs and

13:53

rival gangs and how the FBI

13:55

might be in on it and

13:57

it's almost impossible to follow. But

13:59

you follow it once they get

14:01

really to the racing where they're

14:04

racing through forests and running into

14:06

trees and then of course at

14:08

the end the main character gets

14:10

a hand of a car that

14:12

drives so fast. It's a motorcycle.

14:14

It's a motorcycle. Or it's a

14:16

motorcycle. He gets a he gets

14:18

on like super-sooped-up motorcycle and he

14:20

gets on this motorcycle and it

14:22

goes so fast that when he

14:24

drives past parking meters they get

14:26

angry and just explode. It's

14:29

a living cartoon, but there's something so

14:32

pure about it. It just reaches into

14:34

exploitation movie tropes without shame and just

14:36

shovels them right in your face. It's

14:38

like, even the Fast and the Furious

14:41

wasn't doing that. It took the Fast

14:43

and the Furious and just ratchet it

14:45

up, which is wonderful. Well, the irony

14:47

is that I think when Torque came

14:50

out, I think there'd only been one

14:52

or two Fast and Furious movies, and

14:54

they were still relatively grounded. Like they

14:56

were just street crime movies. We're about

14:59

like, oh, and there's a couple of

15:01

racers, and they get involved in some

15:03

crime, there's a big car chase at

15:06

the end, and we got it. Eventually,

15:08

the Fast and Furious movies got as

15:10

crazy as Torque was. But when Torque

15:12

came out, people like sort of dismissed

15:15

it because, well, this isn't Fast and

15:17

furious, this is ridiculous. And I honestly

15:19

feel like if this had been like

15:21

released, if you just like, took it

15:24

off the market... without anyone looking and

15:26

then re-released it in 2012 as like

15:28

torque a fast and furious saga people

15:30

would have lost their god damn minds

15:33

over this movie because all of a

15:35

sudden they were primed for it but

15:37

this was way ahead of its time

15:40

in terms of that kind of over-the-top

15:42

outlandish you know just just cheesy action

15:44

that for whatever reason people are happy

15:46

to let the fast and furious movies

15:49

get away with. But when other movies

15:51

do it, they go, ah, that's ridiculous.

15:53

No, you like it when Vin Diesel

15:55

does it? Why is it okay when

15:58

he does it? I guess up to

16:00

a point, for some reason, like everyone

16:02

was all on board, those Fast and

16:04

Furious movies through the first nine, and

16:07

then the 10th came out, it was

16:09

just as ridiculous as the previous ones,

16:11

and that one tanked for some reason.

16:13

It's like, why that one? Why that

16:16

one? Why that one? Why that one?

16:18

Why that one? Why that one? Why

16:20

that one? Why did this one do

16:23

poorly and the other ones were all

16:25

successful? Not as gung-ho about theaters at

16:27

the time, but I think with anything,

16:29

no matter how popular it is, eventually

16:32

people do start taking it for granted.

16:34

Like there's nothing wrong with it, it

16:36

just hit poochi syndrome, where it's like

16:38

there's nothing wrong with it, it just

16:41

hit poochi syndrome, where it's like there's

16:43

nothing wrong with it, and scratchy, they've

16:45

just been doing it for so long,

16:47

and the furious is itself a knock-off

16:50

of... point break, which I'm sure is

16:52

also taking ideas from other movies. The

16:54

whole premise of point break is there's

16:57

this team of evil bank thieves that

16:59

are also surfers and they live in

17:01

this sort of unique surfer culture and

17:03

it's about the cop who has to

17:06

go undercover and infiltrate them to apprehend

17:08

them. But then of course falls in

17:10

with them and falls in love and

17:12

gets really lured by the lifestyle and

17:15

that's exactly what happened in Fast and

17:17

the Furious with the Paul Walker character.

17:19

He starts out as a cop and

17:21

ends up falling in with the criminals.

17:24

Yeah. I can't think of a specific

17:26

example however of what point break was

17:28

perhaps taking from but I don't certain

17:31

there's like maybe a noir film from

17:33

the 40s that had that there's a

17:35

couple of movies but whenever there started

17:37

to be like a counterculture. kind of

17:40

movement, especially in like the mid-20th century,

17:42

there would be some movie, usually a

17:44

B movie, usually not a very good

17:46

movie, about someone going undercover in that

17:49

world, a square, who goes undercover in

17:51

that world and sees what it's like,

17:53

finds it really alluring, but at the

17:55

end they'll... like yes but it's bad

17:58

for you and this but this would

18:00

be like the over of Ross Hagen

18:02

where you'd see like Wild Rebels where

18:04

he's like he's the good race car

18:07

driver but these are the tough guy

18:09

race car drivers they got to be

18:11

taking down a peg so he's got

18:14

to infiltrate them and show them he's

18:16

cool and they'll have a good time

18:18

race car driver wise but then but

18:20

then they're like yeah but these these

18:23

guys are bad ones it wasn't a

18:25

mighty tradition and I think point

18:27

break elevated it to a pretty

18:29

spectacular degree. And then you're right,

18:32

Fast and Furious just knocked it

18:34

up shamelessly. It's a shameless knockoff.

18:36

It's a good knockoff, actually. I

18:38

didn't make my list. But Fast and

18:40

the Furious is a very good knockoff.

18:42

But this, of course, goes to what

18:45

we were saying about homage, because I

18:47

think some of the screenwriters on the

18:49

Fast and the Furious, David Ayer

18:51

was one of the original screenwriters,

18:53

did say that they were ripping

18:55

off the point break story at some

18:58

point. I remember, I didn't choose it,

19:00

but it's on my runners-up,

19:02

but Sean Cunningham's original

19:04

Friday, the 13th. Right. Sean

19:06

Cunningham has said out loud in

19:09

interviews multiple times that

19:11

he was deliberately ripping

19:13

off Halloween. Right. John

19:15

Carpenter's movie. Yeah. He was

19:17

definitely doing that. If you're

19:19

admitting your source, does that count

19:21

as homage? But if you

19:24

describe what you're doing as a

19:26

ripoff does that count as a ripoff

19:28

I I would argue I would argue

19:30

that just admitting that there is a

19:32

source we know there's a source.

19:35

It's a knockoff. It's it's really

19:37

obvious to the naked eye so

19:39

then admitting it doesn't make it

19:41

not a knockoff Again, I think

19:43

if you're just trying to take

19:45

the thing that worked in another

19:47

film or TV show or whatever

19:49

and you're just doing that

19:51

again and trying to reach the same

19:53

audience and hoping that they'll like it when

19:55

you do it but slightly differently. Yeah, but

19:57

we're going to do it with motorcycles.

20:00

That's still a knockoff. That's still a

20:02

ripoff. You can be open about it

20:04

fine. But like, yeah, it's like Halloween,

20:06

but it's at a summer camp. Yeah,

20:09

that's a Halloween knockoff. We think of

20:11

it as its own thing now because

20:13

it kind of spawned into its own

20:15

wild and wooly, you know, supernatural mythology

20:17

and took its own, you know, eventually

20:20

found its own personality. But initially, yeah,

20:22

that was, that was, that was, that

20:24

was a knockoff of Halloween and a

20:26

little bit of bay of bay of

20:29

bay of blood. So anyway great pick

20:31

though torque if you haven't seen torque

20:33

you will thank us For recommending torque

20:35

you will thank please please see torque

20:38

it will give you nothing but pleasure

20:40

Now my first one I want to

20:42

talk about is when I have a

20:44

very very soft I'm a really really

20:46

big fan of this movie. It is

20:49

a shameless knockoff of at least three

20:51

different movies actually. And you can see

20:53

where each of the pieces came in.

20:55

But the thing that's really great is

20:58

that usually when we think about a

21:00

knockoff, we think about a movie that

21:02

comes like, you know, hot on the

21:04

heels of another movie. You know, like,

21:07

you know, this movie comes out and

21:09

then a year later, this movie comes

21:11

out and that's the knockoff. One of

21:13

the big movies, arguably the biggest movies,

21:15

arguably the biggest movie, that this movie,

21:18

came out after this movie came out

21:20

first for the most part. Because James

21:22

Cameron was making the abyss for so

21:24

long that other movie studios, they knew

21:27

it was supposed to be a big

21:29

movie. It was this huge visual effects.

21:31

It's trafficking. Everyone was talking about it.

21:33

So there were multiple. There were multiple

21:36

knockoffs of the abyss in the works.

21:38

But the abyss took so long to

21:40

make that the knockoffs came out first

21:42

for the most part. And the best

21:44

of those knockoffs is a really really

21:47

great film because they didn't really know

21:49

how to copy the abyss it takes

21:51

place at an underwater sea station, but

21:53

it also like mercilessly riffs on The

21:56

Thing and Alien and this is George

21:58

P. Cosmatis's Leviathan. This

22:00

is on my radar, stop. I

22:02

like Leviathan. Leviathan, fucking rules. Leviathan

22:04

is funny, great. Yeah. Yeah, Leviathan,

22:06

like, Leviathan, and there was Deep

22:09

Star Six came out around the

22:11

same time. Not a great movie,

22:13

great monster though. Really great monster.

22:15

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Both of

22:17

those movies were clearly trying to

22:19

cash in on what James Cameron

22:22

was doing at the Abyss, but

22:24

I think there were also in

22:26

many ways still running high off

22:28

of the alien formula. Ridley Scott's

22:30

Alien, along with John Carpenter's Halloween

22:33

and Emanuel, and like maybe a

22:35

couple others, those are some of

22:37

the most knocked off films of

22:39

all time, like they're the most

22:41

imitated. We don't talk about Emanuel

22:43

often enough now, but yeah, at

22:46

the time, there was a million.

22:48

At the time, and indeed, the

22:50

whole notion of like this sort

22:52

of Euroslee's sex thriller. Or just

22:54

sort of sex film in general.

22:56

Those are that those are gone.

22:59

Like those are just erased from

23:01

history. It's this whole glut of

23:03

Italian Euroslee's sex movies. There's there's

23:05

still the occasional Tinto brass collection

23:07

that comes out on home video.

23:09

Occasionally and you know, they have

23:12

to be names. It has to

23:14

be like Tinto brass or Radley

23:16

Metzger. Just Franco. Yeah. One of

23:18

one of these like notable filmmakers

23:20

that make these sex movies. But

23:23

uh. Yeah, just all of those

23:25

movies just either never made their

23:27

way to video stores or played

23:29

on cable a couple of times

23:31

and then vanished and yet Yeah,

23:33

there's this whole subgenre this whole

23:36

thing that was keeping the industry

23:38

afloat that we don't even talk

23:40

about anymore and I think Emanuel

23:42

was the one that really cracked

23:44

it open, but That's just interesting

23:46

to talk about Emmanuel. Manuel's actually

23:49

not a not that great a

23:51

movie. No, but but but let's

23:53

get back to Leviathan though. So

23:55

Leviathan. Yeah, Leviathan stars Peter Weller.

23:57

I think it's got a really

24:00

good castle. I'm gonna make sure

24:02

I don't forget anybody here. I

24:04

had it up and then I

24:06

was looking up Wild Rebels because

24:08

that's the kind of life that

24:10

I live. Yeah, it's got Peter

24:13

Weller, Richard Crenna, Ernie Hudson, Daniel

24:15

Stern. Stan Winston did the visual

24:17

effects and it's about all these

24:19

guys in their like in an

24:21

underwater sea station doing like research

24:23

and stuff and they find a

24:26

sample, I think it's in like

24:28

a Russian sub of this weird

24:30

organism. That of course attaches itself

24:32

to them and starts mutating them

24:34

and they all turn into monsters

24:37

and stuff and the monsters are

24:39

wild Like the monsters are you

24:41

know John Carpenter's the thing set

24:43

a really high bar. I'll grant

24:45

you Leviathan is like up there

24:47

though like it's worthy at least

24:50

being in the conversation like that

24:52

the thing might be number one,

24:54

but Leviathan might be two or

24:56

three in terms of just surprisingly

24:58

elaborate and convincing wild weird mutating

25:00

violent monster effects and that's kind

25:03

of the whole movie but it

25:05

is an impressive production like the

25:07

set is very big very convincing

25:09

it looks very practical then they

25:11

course it gets flooded and everything

25:14

it feels like a big movie

25:16

like if this could have been

25:18

a movie other movie It's frustrating

25:20

to talk this way because I

25:22

sound like such an old man,

25:24

but you know, this was you

25:27

know, in the days before, prior

25:29

to the phantom menace, when the

25:31

idea of shooting actors against a

25:33

green screen became like super popularized.

25:35

Yeah. Because it was really attack

25:37

of the clones that really pushed

25:40

that forward. But the idea of

25:42

like having to construct a big

25:44

elaborate set for a mid-budget studio

25:46

monster film just make them look.

25:48

Better? Like the spaces look lived

25:50

in, the cinematographers had to be

25:53

more careful about where they placed

25:55

a camera in that physical space,

25:57

and with Leviathan they made the

25:59

grievous error of shooting in Washington.

26:01

which is always a nightmare. And

26:04

yeah, the monster, it looks like

26:06

one of those deep sea angler

26:08

fishes, with like its own bioluminescence,

26:10

but it's like humanoid. It's really

26:12

cool looking. Yeah. Like

26:14

you can look at pictures of the monster

26:17

online and there's like tentacles around there's like

26:19

the big climactic version of the monster But

26:21

it's like constantly mutating and like infecting people

26:24

so there's a whole lot of different weird

26:26

monster effects in it. It's very satisfying. It's

26:28

very gloopy I love a movie that you

26:30

can describe as gloomy If you're gloomy I'm

26:33

on board and that's another practical thing you

26:35

know if if you have this big rubber

26:37

monster with like animatronics or there's a guy

26:40

in a guy in a suit It's going

26:42

to look nice, but it's going to look

26:44

even better if you pour goo on him.

26:46

Well, that's something. It just adds that kind

26:49

of glisten and some texture to it. It

26:51

just looks neat. Any movie where if you

26:53

could ask the director, hey, what was your

26:56

ky jelly budget? And it's not an adult

26:58

movie. Like, like, if I ever get a

27:00

chance to interview Jean-Pierre Jeanet, I am going

27:02

to ask him, what was your ky jelly

27:05

budget on alien resurrectionurection on alien resurrectione? Because

27:07

I know it was not inconsiderable. There was

27:09

like a couple of zeros on that thing.

27:12

Like there's... On the K-way jelly budget, because

27:14

all of those aliens are dripping with it.

27:16

And it... It makes it look cool. I'm

27:18

not going to pretend it doesn't. Anyway, Leviathan,

27:21

if you've never seen it, is absolutely like

27:23

a really fun time and you will watch

27:25

it and you will go, this is from

27:27

the thing. This is from alien. This is

27:30

from aliens. We clearly thought this was going

27:32

to be the abyss, but it doesn't matter.

27:34

It still works. Well, and here's the thing,

27:37

and this is a good segue into my

27:39

next choice. Leviathan was sort of knocking off

27:41

the upcoming... the abyss and you know James

27:43

Cameron's James Cameron he's trying to make it

27:46

as big as possible he's doing these cutting-edge

27:48

special effects and it's taken a long time

27:50

and when it came out I recall a

27:53

lot of people said this is just a

27:55

knockoff of close encounters of the third kind.

27:57

Like it had the same kind of vibe

27:59

to it and it has similar ending with

28:02

the... Are you saying James Cameron's movie was

28:04

felt like a knock off of close encounters?

28:06

That's right. I mean underwater, yeah, a little,

28:09

in the alien part. There's actually most of

28:11

the movie isn't alien stuff, which is hilarious.

28:13

But yeah, I can see that point. Most

28:15

of the movie isn't, but you know, by

28:18

the time it is, it's like, it's like,

28:20

it's like, it's like, it's like, it, it's

28:22

like, it, it, it, it's like, it, it,

28:25

it, it's, it, it, it's, it's, it's, it's,

28:27

it's, it's, it, it, it, it, it, it,

28:29

it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it,

28:31

it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it,

28:34

it, it, it, it James Cameron, however, is

28:36

a little notorious for repeating certain ideas. You

28:38

no doubt recall when Avatar came out, everyone

28:41

just compared it very directly to Dances with

28:43

Wolves, or Feringale the Last Rainforest, always just

28:45

ripping off Dances with Wolves, Dances with Wolves

28:47

in Space. Sure, there are a lot of

28:50

similarities. Dances with Wolves, better film. I remember

28:52

you and I went back and re-watches with

28:54

Wolves, and found it to be... Pretty good.

28:57

Yeah, it holds up better than it might

28:59

think. Yeah. Yeah, we thought it was going

29:01

to be really dated. It's actually no, this

29:03

really effective drama, and it's really respectful, and

29:06

I really like that movie. I like it

29:08

more now than I did when I first

29:10

saw it. But James Cameron

29:13

actually got into some legal trouble when

29:15

he made the Terminator and I love

29:17

the Terminator But James Cameron did get

29:19

into some trouble I didn't think of

29:22

this Harlan Ellison I didn't think of

29:24

this this is a brilliant pick I

29:26

wish I thought of this you're a

29:29

hundred percent right this isn't the terminator

29:31

is a shameless knock off and he

29:33

admitted it That's why he got legal

29:36

trouble. He admitted in like an interview

29:38

in like Starlog. He's like, yeah, I

29:40

just borrowed from like two Harlan Ellison

29:43

outer limits episodes. And then Harlan Ellison

29:45

was like, well, I'm gonna get paid.

29:47

I sure know if he did. And

29:50

Harlan Ellison has always been really sensitive

29:52

about that because a lot of people

29:54

have ripped him off. He's had a

29:57

lot of really cool ideas. And he's

29:59

always been very kind of cagey. He

30:01

showed up at like. Like conventions and

30:03

he knows or interviews whatever he was

30:06

doing it was constantly complaining about his

30:08

ideas were always being knocked off and

30:10

he had this reputation of being a

30:13

grump. Well you would too if your

30:15

ideas are constantly being stolen. But yeah

30:17

he wrote an outer limits episode I

30:20

think it was called Soldier and it

30:22

was really similar to Or

30:24

it was soldier and it was was it? Demon

30:26

with a glass hand. It was those two episodes

30:28

like it's kind of I think Yeah, I forget

30:30

exactly which one had which element off top my

30:33

head But if you look at those two episodes

30:35

and you just sort of mash them together you

30:37

got the Terminator And because they were from the

30:39

same writer. It's extra it's extra egregious Yeah, so

30:41

he just picked two random stories and smushed him.

30:43

It's like two Harlan Ellison stories. So yeah, no

30:45

wonder he was pissed. So yeah, James Cameron took

30:47

these two Harlan Ellison stories. He compared it with

30:49

some nightmares he was having at the time because

30:52

when he was writing it, he was writing it.

30:54

He was writing it. He was writing it. He

30:56

was writing it. He was writing it. He was

30:58

writing a movie. great it is B movie gold

31:00

a robot from the future has escaped a war

31:02

where humans and robots are are killing each other

31:04

but the robots are losing so they've sent a

31:06

robot back in time to kill the mother or

31:08

the woman who would eventually give birth that is

31:11

to their resistance leader in the future war yeah

31:13

so it's about a robot running around trying to

31:15

kill this woman the cool thing about that high

31:17

concept You don't need any special effects to tell

31:19

that story because the robot's disguised as a person

31:21

Yeah, eventually like as the robot takes battle damage

31:23

We see more and more of like the robot

31:25

inside until at the end. It's like a robot

31:28

skeleton attacking them and you know James Cameron was

31:30

working on a budget, but he knew how to

31:32

save it like so the Climax is

31:34

actually some very very

31:36

cool low -budget but very

31:38

very cool visual effects But

31:40

yeah, no, it's a

31:42

great low -budget concept. You're

31:44

right And it's wild to

31:47

think that James Cameron

31:49

used to film that way

31:51

There's probably scenes in

31:53

the Terminator where he was

31:55

just like out on

31:57

the streets of LA shooting

31:59

without permits and stuff

32:01

You know, this is the

32:03

guy who made Avatar.

32:06

It's like in Titanic But

32:08

I love the idea

32:10

that he at one point

32:12

in his career was

32:14

capable of working on the

32:16

cheap And I feel

32:18

like he was also working

32:20

Kind of best when

32:23

he had to be innovative

32:25

like that we had

32:27

to work with limited resources

32:29

So we had this

32:31

great B movie story about

32:33

this killer robot tracking,

32:35

you know chasing down Linda

32:37

Hamilton And also he

32:39

had the good fortune of

32:42

casting Arnold Schwarzenegger This

32:44

Austrian bodybuilder as his killer

32:46

robot. He's a wonderful movie

32:48

monster. He's like Tor Johnson

32:50

he just Was able to

32:52

bring so much menace and

32:55

so much like Robotic terror

32:57

to his very stripped -down

32:59

performance, and you know who

33:01

we almost cast instead It

33:03

was gonna be Lance Henrickson. No, no he

33:05

wanted Lance Henderson. It's I believe it was

33:08

the studio I could be wrong, but there

33:10

was definitely talk about casting O .J. Simpson. Oh

33:13

That's right. That would have been a very different

33:15

movie now robot would have been a very different

33:18

most certainly yeah There were a lot

33:20

of sequels to the Terminator I

33:22

I personally love Terminator 2 just because

33:24

the special effects on that liquid

33:27

metal robot is It really is just

33:29

damn cool is what it is

33:31

The thing is Terminator 2 is kind

33:33

of a knockoff of the Terminator

33:35

if you really watch them back and

33:37

forth It's it's riffing on all

33:39

of the same beat It's practically the

33:41

exact same plot beats The

33:44

difference in Terminator 2 is instead of

33:46

it the mother being the target the

33:48

son has been born now The son

33:50

is the target and the Terminator from

33:52

the first movie has been reprogrammed to

33:55

be a hero to protect The son

33:57

from another robot that's been sent back

34:00

And I really do think it was a

34:02

mistake. Listen, I like Terminator 3 actually. Most

34:04

people don't, but I actually think it works

34:06

as a movie. But the thing with the

34:08

Terminator and one of the reasons it got

34:11

into trouble, everyone wanted to turn to a

34:13

huge franchise. It doesn't work because it was

34:15

always a bootstrap paradox. It's constantly cycling back

34:17

in on itself. It cannot escape itself. So

34:20

the repetition in Terminator 2 kind of makes

34:22

sense. And like, can we break out of

34:24

this permanent cycle in which this is the

34:26

destruction of humanity of humanity its inevitability inevitability?

34:29

It's inevitability. you know the original film

34:31

is about basically two

34:33

men the terminator and Kyle

34:35

Reese fighting over a woman's

34:37

reproductive system basically

34:40

you know it's very it's

34:42

very tight and confined and

34:44

so Yeah once you start trying to

34:46

like expand on that you realize like

34:48

no it kind of only works in

34:50

itself it kind of only works in

34:52

its own like little unit and the

34:54

more and more you try to like

34:56

make it like ah but what if

34:58

what if the war kept going well

35:00

then it doesn't fucking work anymore does

35:02

it? Yeah well I feel like the the smart

35:04

thing to do and if you wanted

35:06

to keep it like just sort of

35:09

a fun beam-making premise you can repeat

35:11

the story sequels do that all the

35:13

time But instead of having it

35:15

follow the events of Terminator 2,

35:17

it's a time travel story, right?

35:19

Right. So or so just send

35:21

the terminator back to earlier in

35:23

history, try to kill the

35:25

Linda Hamilton character's mom. You know,

35:28

have the next one be set in

35:30

old the old West, have one set

35:32

in Roman times. You know, end the

35:34

series when he's finally just killing

35:36

cavemen. I mean that's actually kind

35:38

of cool actually. Terminator versus Caveman? I mean

35:40

shit, that's actually a good idea. Skynets like

35:43

listen, I don't care if I'm never created

35:45

but seriously fuck these humans. Yeah, just go

35:47

back in time to like the first humans

35:50

and just start killing all the cavemen and

35:52

the cavemen fight back and smash them monsters.

35:54

That's actually a really good pitch. It's actually

35:56

a really good pitch. I would totally read

35:59

them watch that. it's like you know

36:01

just send them back through all

36:03

these different points in history go

36:05

further and further back as we

36:07

go can you imagine the terminator

36:09

on like a Napoleonic warship right

36:11

can you imagine the terminator in

36:13

like feudal Japan these would be

36:15

awesome I think this is something

36:17

that they realized and the problem

36:19

with this though is you do

36:21

hit a lot of demission been

36:23

excuse me You do hit a

36:25

lot of diminishing returns if you

36:27

do that too many times. Again,

36:29

people just get used to it

36:31

and take it for granted. Like,

36:33

the reason why, listen, for example,

36:35

the most recent predator movie, prey.

36:37

Pray fucking rules. Pray is just,

36:39

hey, what if predator but in

36:41

the past, that's it. But if

36:43

every predator was like that, it'd

36:45

be cool for a while. But

36:47

then eventually we'd be like, but

36:49

they're all kind of doing the

36:51

same thing, aren't they. you know

36:53

get a little bored eventually but

36:55

I agree there's a lot there's

36:57

a lot of fun things to

36:59

do that they didn't do but

37:01

we should move on I like

37:03

that you picked a movie that

37:05

got into actual legal turmoil over

37:07

the fact that it ripped something

37:09

off because I have one of

37:11

those too I really consider it

37:13

to be one of the best

37:15

movies in its genre and it

37:17

was such a shameless ripoff that

37:19

the director of the original film

37:21

sued successfully to get credit for

37:24

it. I know which one you're

37:26

talking about. It's Sergio Leone's a

37:28

fist full of dollars. Which was

37:30

which was your jimbo. It's almost

37:32

a shot-for-shot remake of your jimbo.

37:34

Like it's really on the nose.

37:36

There's I have a lot of,

37:38

I curse always one of my

37:40

favorite filmmakers. I have a lot

37:42

of books on him. And there's

37:44

a wonderful interview where he said

37:46

someone asked what did you think

37:48

of a fist full of dollars.

37:50

They said I love the movie.

37:52

It was my movie. Yeah, yeah,

37:54

no, agreed. So if you're familiar

37:56

with it, Sergio Leone had seen

37:58

this Curacao film, it's called Yo

38:00

Jimbo. It starred the great Tushirmaphone

38:02

as a wandering samurai, and he

38:04

wanders into this small, you know,

38:06

of the way, a village, which

38:08

is beset by two rival gangs.

38:10

And they're both really, really violent

38:12

and they're constantly attacking each other,

38:14

and the relatively small number of

38:16

people who aren't involved in this

38:18

gang war are just constantly suffering

38:20

because of it. And Muffini's character,

38:22

who is unnamed, uh... In a

38:24

second film, he refers to himself

38:26

as Sanjoro, but that's the name

38:28

of a flower he happened to

38:30

be looking at when someone asked

38:32

him his name, so it's probably

38:34

not true. But he decides, and

38:36

he doesn't have to do this,

38:38

like he's under no obligation, he's

38:40

not, he hasn't been given like

38:42

a mission, he just decides I'm

38:44

going to fuck with these two

38:46

gangs, I am going to set

38:48

them against each other, so that

38:50

they will destroy each other, and

38:52

then all will be well. But

38:54

then things get complicated, and that's

38:56

the movie. Great movie. Exciting movie.

38:58

One of the most influential action

39:00

movies of all time. And Cerziyoni

39:02

says, yeah, good. It's also what,

39:04

it's really kind of out of

39:07

character for Karasawa, because it's so

39:09

bitter. Karasawa tends to be a

39:11

pretty humane filmmaker. And Yo Jimbo

39:13

is the only one that just

39:15

says humanity is fucked. Everybody's petty

39:17

and awful. The only way to

39:19

really deal with this is to

39:21

direct humanity the way a filmmaker

39:23

is like. Yeah, and that's that's

39:25

what we're left. Yeah, yeah, and

39:27

and I love Yo Jimbo to

39:29

pieces. I think it's the better

39:31

movie actually, but Sir Giuliani says,

39:33

I know, I'll take this samurai

39:35

movie and again, a lot of

39:37

those samurai movies were influenced or

39:39

inspired by the overall look feel,

39:41

feel, tone, aesthetic, vibe of the

39:43

American Westerns that were being, you

39:45

know, you know, shipped all over

39:47

the world. And I think Jojumbo

39:49

is no exception. And he said,

39:51

what if I took the samurai

39:53

movie and put it back in

39:55

the old West? And that was

39:57

a good idea. It's kind of

39:59

thing that would happen a lot.

40:01

I almost put the magnificence. 7

40:03

on there, but I think that

40:05

one is kind of openly a

40:07

remake of Seven Samurai. Yeah. I

40:09

think it's even credited in the

40:11

credits. I hope it is, because

40:13

it should be. But yeah, this

40:15

would go on a lot. Samurai

40:17

movies would become Westerns and vice

40:19

versa all the time. It still

40:21

happens. And he said, okay, I'm

40:23

going to take this young, hot

40:25

TV star. Hadn't really done a

40:27

lot of movies and give him

40:29

his first really, really, really, really,

40:31

really, really big, really big, And

40:33

I'm going to cast him as

40:35

this incredibly mysterious, you know, young

40:37

and handsome but grizzled and world-weary

40:39

traveler who goes in, guns ablazing

40:41

and manipulates these two gangs and

40:43

it's the exact same movie. Like

40:45

it's the exact same movie with

40:47

a guns and set of swords.

40:49

And it's great. And what's weird

40:52

about it is it's hard to

40:54

imagine now because we know that

40:56

Sergio Leone. We

40:58

know that he became arguably one of

41:00

the great filmmakers just period like he

41:02

had he didn't make as many movies

41:05

as I wish he had But every

41:07

movie he made was if not a

41:09

masterpiece at the very least dazzling But

41:12

if you looked at just a fistful

41:14

of dollars and you realize that it's

41:16

a fucking knockoff and a and and

41:18

really Among the more shameless knockoffs. It's

41:21

basically a beat-for-beat uncredited remake he ripped

41:23

it's He didn't even credit me. Like

41:25

it's the same story and everything. You

41:28

might be forgiven for thinking, does this

41:30

Leone guy have any ideas of his

41:32

own? Does he have anything in the

41:35

tank? And then he goes on and

41:37

for a few dollars more is a

41:39

great movie. It's not my favorite, but

41:41

it's really really good. But then he

41:44

does, you know, Good the Bad and

41:46

the Ugly and Once Upon a Time

41:48

on the West and Duck You Sucker

41:51

and you realize, oh shit. No, he

41:53

didn't have to rip off anything. He

41:55

had it all. He could have done

41:57

it all himself. I'm

42:02

sorry. I'm sick. Sorry about that.

42:04

It's okay. It's okay. I'm very

42:06

passionate and I want to yell

42:08

about these movies. But no, fiscal

42:10

dollars. It's a great movie. It's

42:12

a great movie. It's a great

42:14

movie. But I feel like if

42:16

you if you watch them back

42:18

to back, fiscal dollars starts to

42:21

feel a little insufferable after a

42:23

while because it really doesn't have

42:25

a master craftsman. I think his

42:27

later films are better, but this

42:29

is a great start and it

42:31

is however such a shameless ripoff

42:33

that a cura corisala successfully sued

42:35

to put his name back on

42:37

it and get some money and

42:39

apparently I don't know how true

42:41

this is but I've heard this

42:43

he may have made more money

42:45

off of a fistful of dollars

42:48

than he did off of your

42:50

jimbo. I know he has been

42:52

very coy, curisawa was always very

42:54

coy about what the settlement actually

42:56

was. Yeah. All right, what's the

42:58

next book? I really love you

43:00

Jimbo, that's so good. Yeah. I

43:02

haven't seen a festival of dollars.

43:04

You've never seen a fissile of

43:06

dollars? Oh my God. Well, you're

43:08

not really a Western guy. I

43:10

haven't sought out a lot of

43:12

Western just because I'm not super

43:15

fond of the genre. I have

43:17

seen for a few dollars more

43:19

because my dad is very fond

43:21

of these. his favorite was a

43:23

few dollars for a few dollars

43:25

more so I've seen that one

43:27

and we saw the good the

43:29

bad and the ugly when they

43:31

released that extended cut theaters in

43:33

like 2005 or so but yeah

43:35

never I'm gonna I'm gonna recommend

43:37

to you because and I don't

43:39

think everyone I don't think I

43:42

would recommend everyone this to be

43:44

like the first like you have

43:46

to go out and see this

43:48

Leone movie but you should see

43:50

Duck You Sucker you know it's

43:52

great right yeah Okay, they're they're

43:54

they're fine Leonie as a filmmaker

43:56

has a certain type of artificiality

43:58

that he likes to work with.

44:00

Yeah. You'll notice in his movies

44:02

that people don't react to something

44:04

until it's on screen. Yeah. Even

44:06

though they're out in the middle

44:09

of a plane and they'd see

44:11

like they'd see like horses coming

44:13

from miles away. But like they

44:15

don't understand that they're there until

44:17

they're like right there next to

44:19

them. So there's this kind of

44:21

cartoon logic at work in a

44:23

lot of Sergio in his movies

44:25

that. Like like. make them feel

44:27

really artificial in a way that

44:29

make them a little less emotionally

44:31

impactful at least for me. All

44:33

right, we should move up. Yeah,

44:36

what do you think? That's neither

44:38

here there. You're talking about Curacawa.

44:40

I'm gonna talk about Curacawa. I'm

44:42

gonna talk about Curacawa. I'm gonna

44:44

talk about Curacawa. I'm gonna talk

44:46

about Battle Beyond the Stars. It's

44:48

kind of a two for one

44:50

knockoff because it's clearly writing on

44:52

the coattails of Star Wars. Science

44:54

Fiction was getting really big at

44:56

the time. What can we do

44:58

that looks a lot like Star

45:00

Wars on a budget? And Roger

45:03

Corman produced this film. John Sales

45:05

wrote the screenplay. James Cameron worked

45:07

on this one as well. He

45:09

did some of the special effects.

45:11

True. And it's Seven Samurai in

45:13

space. What would it be like

45:15

instead of... Now the premise of

45:17

Seven Samurai, you know a village

45:19

is being beset by bandits. The

45:21

villagers know that the bandits are

45:23

coming pretty soon, so they have

45:25

to... leave their village, go into

45:28

the city, and hire with what

45:30

scant money they have, a group

45:32

of protectors. And in this case,

45:34

it's samurai. The samurai decide to

45:36

work for the for the paltry

45:38

amount of money they're offered, and

45:40

there's only seven of them, but

45:42

they have to protect this whole

45:44

village from this gigantic, marauding army

45:46

of bandits, and the entire second

45:48

half of the movie is action,

45:50

just the action sequence of how

45:52

they set up and what they

45:55

fought off. What if that but

45:57

science fiction? Right. What if instead

45:59

of it being a village, it's

46:01

a little planet, what if said

46:03

of Marauders, it's like the empire

46:05

from Star Wars, and what if

46:07

instead of samurai, it's just like

46:09

this ragtag smattering of super aliens.

46:11

So we have some aliens that

46:13

communicate by temperature. We have like

46:15

a lizard warrior. We have a

46:17

literal Valkyrie played by Sybil Danet.

46:19

And they all gather together together.

46:22

One of the greats. So yeah,

46:24

it's Civil Daining, Class Act, wonderful,

46:26

watch the Hellwing too, it sucks,

46:28

but watch it. And yeah, it's,

46:30

what I like about Battle Beyond

46:32

the Stars is they're clearly working

46:34

on a budget, but they have

46:36

a lot of interesting ideas. The

46:38

story is, it is going to

46:40

be functional no matter what. Of

46:42

course they're knocking off the Seven

46:44

Samurai, but it's smart to knock

46:46

off the Seven Samurai because that's

46:49

such a great premise. It almost

46:51

always works. unless you're rebel moon.

46:53

Um, we'll talk about rebel moon

46:55

a minute, but yeah, no, like,

46:57

but like seriously, yeah, good. The

46:59

error with rebel moon is that,

47:01

uh, the filmmaker Zach Snyder tried

47:03

to add too much. He tried

47:05

to expand the story, whereas Battle

47:07

Beyond the Stars is in and

47:09

out in like a hundred minutes.

47:11

It doesn't need all that time

47:13

in space. So the other thing

47:16

is that I think rebel moon

47:18

actually doesn't add that much. It's

47:20

just longer. It's the same god

47:22

damn story. It just takes forever

47:24

and it doesn't it doesn't in

47:26

it's like epic whether you're looking

47:28

at the original truncated version or

47:30

the R-rated version that's longer It's

47:32

just the same fucking story that'll

47:34

be on the stars At least

47:36

new to be playful about it

47:38

Like you know Star Wars doesn't

47:40

have a have a space Valkyrie.

47:43

We're gonna have a space Valkyrie.

47:45

Why because it's cool Well, something

47:47

that I've always been a little

47:49

bit frustrated by... Star Wars is

47:51

they populate the world with all

47:53

these really kind of interesting aliens

47:55

and you know background characters and

47:57

they hint at this larger universe

47:59

that I feel like they never

48:01

really explain or explore adequate way.

48:03

At least not in the movies.

48:05

Not in the movies. I'm sure

48:07

all the expanded universe Lord does

48:10

but it's like... What is the

48:12

philosophy of this planet? Why do

48:14

they dress that way? Surely there

48:16

would be a little bit more

48:18

of like open cultural exchange. I

48:20

feel like Star Wars takes place

48:22

in a world that's already so

48:24

well blended together that nobody has

48:26

those conversations anymore and those are

48:28

the conversations I want to hear

48:30

in a science fiction story. And

48:32

Battle Beyond the Stars does that.

48:34

These characters meet each other and

48:37

they're unfamiliar with each other. There's

48:39

a... I forgot the name of

48:41

the species, but they operate in

48:43

quartets and they all experience the

48:45

same senses at the same time.

48:47

And they explain how that works.

48:49

You know, there's actually a little

48:51

bit of thought that goes into

48:53

it and the way the characters

48:55

relate is a little bit more

48:57

intimate. And it's also sexed up

48:59

because we got we got civil

49:01

Dan. Well, and like the ship

49:04

that they're in, like their version

49:06

of like the Millennium Falcon, it

49:08

looks like sex organs. Yeah, it

49:10

looks like boobs. Not to be

49:12

indelicate, but it's a ship with

49:14

tits. And yeah. And but you

49:16

know, I think they're they're kind

49:18

of winking at the audience a

49:20

little bit. This is all a

49:22

little bit silly and we're all

49:24

having a little bit of fun

49:26

and guess what? Time is fun

49:28

and the special effects do look

49:31

impressive. You know, they're on, you

49:33

know, a relative shoestring. It was

49:35

made for like two million dollars,

49:37

which is pretty huge for a

49:39

film of that caliber at the

49:41

caliber at the time. And, but

49:43

it also kind of winks like,

49:45

I don't think Curacawa is credited,

49:47

John Sales is the only credited

49:49

screenwriter, but there's a character in

49:51

the movie named Acura. So, um.

49:53

or no it's it's not a

49:55

person it's that the planet is

49:58

named Akira so they know what

50:00

they're doing after Akira Karasawa they

50:02

knew what they were doing and

50:04

I feel like they did it

50:06

very tactfully and in a fun

50:08

way so yeah I dig it

50:10

I dig a battle beyond the

50:12

stars alright we could do an

50:14

entire list that was just Star

50:16

Wars knockoffs I think it's fair

50:18

to say and indeed I have

50:20

another on my list I do

50:22

too I'm not gonna do that

50:25

one right now that there's but

50:27

like even Star Wars itself is

50:29

I'm not going to put it

50:31

on the list because it's not

50:33

just knocking off one thing but

50:35

it's basically knocking off everything George

50:37

Lucas liked. Like it's it's hidden

50:39

fortress and we did a whole

50:41

podcast series about everything Star Wars

50:43

ripped off. It was called episode

50:45

zero we can look back and

50:47

then it's earlier in this feed.

50:49

But then it became a pastiche

50:52

and I think it's a different

50:54

thing. But speaking of knockoff films

50:56

of just hit groundbreaking sci-breaking sci-fi

50:58

films. There's a film that I

51:00

really really love and you know

51:02

I was trying to capitalize on

51:04

the unexpected breakaway success of one

51:06

of the most popular sci-fi action

51:08

movies ever made and for whatever

51:10

reason I think it was kind

51:12

of undermarketed and kind of people

51:14

just didn't pay attention to it.

51:16

It got really overlooked and almost

51:19

no one talks about it but

51:21

every time I get someone to

51:23

watch it they go shit that's

51:25

fucking good and this is equilibrium.

51:28

Oh yeah I like equilibrium. Equilibrium

51:31

is a lot of fun. Equilibrium

51:33

comes from, comes from Kurt Vimmer,

51:35

who, you know, he wrote the

51:38

Thomas Crown Affair remake, he wrote

51:40

Salt, it's got a good long

51:42

career of like writing big genre

51:45

films and his directing career is...

51:47

really hit and miss and frankly

51:49

mostly miss but equilibrium kicks out

51:52

so equilibrium is basically what if

51:54

the matrix but instead of like

51:56

the storyteller really wanted to like

51:59

add Kung Fu to like Grant

52:01

Morrison and William Gibson stories? What

52:03

if it was Fahrenheit 451 with

52:06

gun martial arts? And they even

52:08

invented a martial art for the

52:10

film called Gun Kata which is

52:13

martial arts with guns. Much like

52:15

you would see oh, here's martial

52:17

arts with Nunchucks or martial arts

52:20

with a katana Like here's martial

52:22

arts, but we're using guns and

52:24

it's like we're just like we're

52:27

getting right up close to people

52:29

and like sliding our arms around

52:31

trying to get a clean shot

52:34

firing a gun right next to

52:36

their ear and that doesn't Do

52:38

anything because I guess in the

52:41

future everyone just can't hear shit.

52:43

I don't know like That kind

52:45

of just letting that one slide,

52:48

but yeah Christian bail plays a

52:50

guy and in the future Emotions

52:53

have been outlawed but also have

52:55

also anything that could inspire emotion

52:57

has been outlawed. So like great

52:59

works of art. It's got a

53:01

great opening and I think it's

53:03

one of those movies where probably

53:05

shouldn't have had like an opening

53:07

narration because in a vacuum the

53:09

scene would have been so exciting.

53:11

But there's a bunch of guys

53:13

and they've like stolen like the

53:15

Mona Lisa and like a bunch

53:18

of other like priceless works of

53:20

art and Christian Bale and Tay

53:22

Diggs are there and they do

53:24

these like incredible wild martial arts

53:26

gun moves and they... kill all

53:28

the bad guys and then they

53:30

get to all the works of

53:32

art and they say great we

53:34

got him burn him and that's

53:36

what they do because those inspire

53:38

emotions and we don't want those

53:40

emotions have gotten in the way

53:42

of humanity this entire time and

53:44

of course Christian Bale meets a

53:46

woman who was that gun off

53:48

of her anti emotion meds and

53:50

inspires him to start doing that

53:52

too and he realizes what a

53:54

mistake this entire society is and

53:56

now he's gonna join the rebels

53:58

and fight the bad guys. It's

54:00

pretty straightforward it's Fahrenheit Fahrenheit for

54:02

at Fahrenheit for 51. But all

54:04

the action is the matrix and

54:07

the action is I'm sorry man.

54:09

It's pretty much as good as

54:11

the matrix It doesn't have like

54:13

the innovative like visual effects or

54:15

cinematography that the Matrix had, but

54:17

it's just as exhilarating. Like the

54:19

scene at the end where like,

54:21

I'm actually going to tell you,

54:23

it's kind of a twist, who

54:25

Christian Dale like fights at the

54:27

end, it's just this absolutely absurd

54:29

display of the most badass, close

54:31

quarters gun combat slash punching I've

54:33

ever seen. It is, it's ludicrous.

54:35

But then again, so is the

54:37

matrix. Let's not pretend otherwise. That's

54:39

part of the fun of it.

54:41

You can take it seriously, sure,

54:43

and you should, but also, he

54:45

knows Kung Fu. He just downloaded

54:47

Kung Fu. That's ridiculous. We can

54:49

enjoy that too. That's part of

54:51

the fun of it. And I

54:53

think you can liberate it's obviously

54:55

a knock-off and it's never going

54:58

to reach... The levels of ingenuity

55:00

or quality that the matrix hit

55:02

but it is absolutely a movie

55:04

that would not exist at least

55:06

not in its current form if

55:08

the matrix hadn't come out a

55:10

couple years earlier And I think

55:12

it's a really cool double feature

55:14

and you should check it out

55:16

if you never seen it Yeah,

55:18

I really dig equilibrium for the

55:20

the sort of brave new world

55:22

elements to it. The kind of

55:24

dystopian elements is what makes it

55:26

exciting to me And I think

55:28

Kristen Bale gives a pretty good

55:30

performance. He's a wonderful scene where

55:32

because they all take these drugs

55:34

that sort of dampen their emotions

55:36

whenever he runs into something supposed

55:38

to give an emotional response he

55:40

has to remain really sort of

55:42

stone-faced and there's a really wonderful

55:44

scene where he finds that most

55:47

contraband of items a puppy and

55:49

and gosh there's a wonderful he

55:51

like picks up the puppy he

55:53

holds it in front of his

55:55

face and it licks his face

55:57

and he has to remain totally

55:59

taciture and it's like this is

56:01

a master class and acting acting.

56:03

Well done. Yeah, you're right. It's

56:05

pretty fucking cool. Yeah. What's the

56:07

expect? Let's see, what do I

56:09

go? You know what? Uh, this...

56:11

This was a little odd, and

56:13

I remember when this happened, but

56:15

thinking that it was a little

56:17

odd. But when Tim Burton's Batman

56:19

came out in 1989, Hollywood responded

56:21

to that in a really curious

56:23

way because they didn't necessarily say,

56:25

hey, this Batman is really popular,

56:27

a couple, you know, about a

56:29

decade earlier, Superman was really popular.

56:31

Surely the trend here should be

56:33

to make more movies based off

56:35

of popular superhero characters. Contemporarily popular

56:38

superhero characters. Yeah, contemporary like, yeah,

56:40

things that are like really popular

56:42

in the comics. Next we'll do

56:44

The Flash or Green Lantern. Or

56:46

X-Men or something. Yeah. Now they

56:48

did do the Flash shortly after

56:50

Batman came out and they even

56:52

got Danny Elfman to do the

56:54

theme song on TV. Yeah. And

56:56

that from 1990 and that Flash

56:58

TV series is actually pretty good.

57:00

But the trend all of a

57:02

sudden became because Tim Burton was

57:04

so stylish and made his Batman

57:06

film look so much like it

57:08

was made sometime in like the

57:10

1930s or 40s Hollywood said clearly

57:12

The public wants more pulp style

57:14

heroes of the 30s and 40s

57:16

right so they started making films

57:18

like the shadow and they started

57:20

making films like the phantom and

57:22

they started making films like the

57:24

phantom and they started making films

57:27

like the phantom and they started

57:29

making films like the phantom and

57:31

they started making films like Warren

57:33

Beaty's Dick Tracy, which I really

57:35

like. And that's my next thing.

57:37

It's on my list too. Dick

57:39

Tracy. Oh great. Yeah, Tracy is

57:41

in its own way as good

57:43

as Tim Burton's Batman. I will

57:45

stand by it. Yeah. And you

57:47

can tell that the style was

57:49

really the same. There's all, because

57:51

Tim Burton tried to rewrite the

57:53

world to fit Batman. That was

57:55

his sort of aesthetic goal. Batman

57:57

can't exist in the real world

57:59

so let's change the world so

58:01

Batman can fit in it. So

58:03

exactly opposite of Batman to get.

58:05

Yeah. Gotham City is now the

58:07

super stylized place with these impossible

58:09

art deco structures just reaching every,

58:11

you know, up into the sky

58:13

and you can't really find out

58:15

what some of the angles are.

58:18

Everything's really really heightened and Warmbe

58:20

took a really similar approach to

58:22

when to making Dick Tracy. Because

58:24

he also turned it into this

58:26

sort of like comic book world.

58:28

I mean he shot he tried

58:30

to shoot in this really kind

58:32

of, there were a lot more

58:34

lockdown shots because he wanted to

58:36

frame up the shots like there

58:38

were comic book panels book panels.

58:40

He dressed everybody in these really

58:42

bright colors. Everything was super duper

58:44

stylized. And the monsters, like the

58:46

actual gangsters, are terrifyingly great. Just

58:48

the way the makeup. Oh God.

58:50

The way they did all of

58:52

the makeup. The opening scene is

58:54

just a bunch of like goons,

58:56

like playing poker. And each one

58:58

of them is basically a monster.

59:00

Like there's a guy named like

59:02

baby face who has like a

59:04

head the size of a Volvo

59:07

But his face is a normal-sized

59:09

human face And I remember seeing

59:11

that when I was a kid.

59:13

I'm going what? Just the makeup

59:15

effect for so exaggerated. His name

59:17

was little face. That's it Yeah,

59:19

those like the brow and flat

59:21

top and these people are kind

59:23

of like doomed to be who

59:25

they are it's really fantastic And

59:27

Warren Beaty is really good. You

59:29

know, he's he's directing it, but

59:31

he's like clearly playing it up.

59:33

This also marked a turning point

59:35

in Al Pacino's career. He got

59:37

an Oscar nomination for playing big

59:39

boy, the main bad guy in

59:41

the movie. And I feel like

59:43

before this movie, Al Pacino acted,

59:45

and after this movie, he screamed.

59:47

I'll give you that much. Yeah.

59:49

The thing about the thing about

59:51

Dick Tracy is that Dick Tracy

59:53

as a character precedes Batman. And

59:55

I got another one of these

59:58

on my list as well where

1:00:00

like the the I think I

1:00:02

got two actually, where technically the

1:00:04

ripoff movie is based off of

1:00:06

material that either inspired or at

1:00:08

the very least predated the thing

1:00:10

that was popular enough to rip

1:00:12

off in movie form. And I

1:00:14

think that's hilarious. But regardless, yeah,

1:00:16

this is very very much like

1:00:18

the Tim Burton thing, a comic

1:00:20

book come to life. The colors

1:00:22

in this movie are dazzling. Like

1:00:24

just bright yellows and reds The

1:00:26

music is great. You got Madonna

1:00:28

singing these like classy sultry songs

1:00:30

like sooner or later by Sondheim.

1:00:32

Sondheim did the song. Sondheim did

1:00:34

the fucking music. What the shit?

1:00:36

It's got an all-star cast. Dustin

1:00:38

Hoffman shows up for like one

1:00:40

scene just to be like this

1:00:42

weird funny murmuring guy. It's got

1:00:44

a great love triangle between Dick

1:00:46

Tracy, between Warren Beatty, Madana, I

1:00:49

think he was dating at the

1:00:51

time, and Glenn Hedley. Oh, I

1:00:53

miss Glenn Hedley. Oh, she was

1:00:55

great. Glenn Hedley was like, she

1:00:57

was like movie helper. It's like,

1:00:59

oh, good. She's here. Yeah, this

1:01:01

movie will be great. Well, watch

1:01:03

the movie Ron Scoundrels at some

1:01:05

time. Yeah, that's Glenn Hedley is

1:01:07

sort of to her divorce, but

1:01:09

yeah. Agreed. But no, Vic Tracy's

1:01:11

a masterpiece. I really, really do.

1:01:13

And honestly, I'm not sure. Batman

1:01:15

has had a bigger cultural and

1:01:17

artistic footprint. Like I think if

1:01:19

you, it's what, Tim Burton's Batman

1:01:21

is one of the movies, and

1:01:23

there's a few does enough of

1:01:25

them, but if you remove that

1:01:27

movie from cinema history, the whole

1:01:29

history of film comes crashing down.

1:01:31

Like the last 30 years 35

1:01:33

years of cinema are very different

1:01:35

without Tim Burton's Batman It was

1:01:38

just a it was just a

1:01:40

monster But if I had a

1:01:42

choice of much money if I

1:01:44

had the choice to watch either

1:01:46

Tim Burton's Batman or Dick Tracy.

1:01:48

I'm watching Dick Tracy four out

1:01:50

of five times. It's such a

1:01:52

treat. It is such a fun

1:01:54

film. It has my favorite punch

1:01:56

in all of cinema. There's a

1:01:58

montage of Dick Tracy like beaten,

1:02:00

beaten up bad guys. And there's

1:02:02

like five bad guys like looming

1:02:04

in over Dick Tracy like against

1:02:06

the wall. And he does one

1:02:08

like, I didn't even know what

1:02:10

you call, like one haymaker. Big

1:02:12

Haymaker roundhouse punch and he somehow

1:02:14

knocks all of them out with

1:02:16

one punch. And it makes no

1:02:18

sense and it makes all the

1:02:20

sense in the world and it

1:02:22

is the greatest punch I've ever

1:02:24

seen in a movie. It's so

1:02:26

great. No, I love it. I

1:02:29

love the pieces. Great pig. Great

1:02:31

pig. But that was my pick

1:02:33

too. So what you got next?

1:02:35

You know what? This is going

1:02:37

to be a little bit of

1:02:39

an odd choice. I've chosen what

1:02:41

I want to talk about next

1:02:43

here. And because there were a

1:02:45

lot of like little miniature trends

1:02:47

throughout the 1990s when I was

1:02:49

paying closest attention to movies and

1:02:51

I was adolescent and really just

1:02:53

eating up as much as I

1:02:55

could. And and some movies came

1:02:57

out and they were kind of

1:02:59

sleeper hits or they were well

1:03:01

regarded but they weren't like knock

1:03:03

them to the floor or blockbusters

1:03:05

but they became influential enough to

1:03:07

inspire a lot of imitators and

1:03:09

most notably of this was of

1:03:11

course Pulp Fiction Pulp Fiction was

1:03:13

a big hit yeah but you

1:03:15

can trace this huge history of

1:03:18

like Pulp Fiction knockoffs and films

1:03:20

about you know sort of Scuzzy

1:03:22

characters living in crime-ridden LA, but

1:03:24

they're all very flippant and intelligent

1:03:26

and they make a lot of

1:03:28

pop culture references. Clearly, the children

1:03:30

are of Tarantino. Truth of Consequences,

1:03:32

New Mexico, things to do in

1:03:34

Denver, when you're dead. Like, you

1:03:36

know, it goes on. Yeah. Suicide

1:03:38

Kings is on my Runners, by

1:03:40

the way. But there was a

1:03:42

movie that it was... written by

1:03:44

John Favrow and it was directed

1:03:46

by Doug Lyman. Yeah. called Swingers

1:03:48

and Swingers was essentially just this

1:03:50

kind of very sweet romantic comedy

1:03:52

about the hipster scene in Los

1:03:54

Angeles as it appeared in the

1:03:56

mid-90s, specifically the swing scene which

1:03:58

was a thing. Yeah. And it

1:04:00

was and John Favrow played the

1:04:02

lead character he had just broken

1:04:04

up and his best friend who

1:04:06

was played by Vince Vaughn. try

1:04:09

to get him out there in

1:04:11

the world to start dating again.

1:04:13

And Vince Vaughn is of course

1:04:15

this like incorrigible womanizer. It just

1:04:17

doesn't have good advice. So it's

1:04:19

about how John Favrow has to

1:04:21

kind of forge his own path

1:04:23

despite his best friend. Very good

1:04:25

movie. Yeah. It did spawn this

1:04:27

little teeny tiny miniature renaissance of

1:04:29

finding love in the big city

1:04:31

when you're a young intelligent hipster

1:04:33

who's specifically interested in one kind

1:04:35

of scene. One of the children

1:04:37

of swingers is actually a film

1:04:39

I saw many many times and

1:04:41

I've actually met and become friends

1:04:43

with the filmmaker Robert Meyer Burnett

1:04:45

because in 1999 He made a

1:04:47

film called free enterprise, which is

1:04:49

yeah, kind of an unabashed knockoff

1:04:51

of swingers Yeah, you're right actually

1:04:53

I hadn't thought of it, but

1:04:55

that's a good point. Yeah Yeah,

1:04:58

free enterprise stars Eric McCormick who

1:05:00

is really big on that that

1:05:02

show Willingrace Yeah, and an actor

1:05:04

named Riefer Weigel and I don't

1:05:06

know what else he's done But

1:05:08

there are these two men who

1:05:10

are about to turn 30 and

1:05:12

that really depresses that and they're

1:05:14

also Gen Xers who are really

1:05:16

obsessed with popular culture. So they're

1:05:18

having Logan's run nightmares as in

1:05:20

Logan's run they track you down

1:05:22

and kill you when you turn

1:05:24

30 so that's They're big fear.

1:05:26

They're getting old. They're turning into

1:05:28

adults. And they don't know how

1:05:30

to hack that. And they're also

1:05:32

still really interested in pop culture

1:05:34

in their releases and comic books.

1:05:36

And they collect action figures. This

1:05:38

was in 1998 before. geek culture

1:05:40

had really taken off in earnest,

1:05:42

so they were still seen as

1:05:44

like outsiders. That wasn't mainstream interest

1:05:46

yet. Yeah. Also, they're really horny

1:05:49

and they're really kind of over

1:05:51

sexualized and they get, you know,

1:05:53

they go out and try to

1:05:55

get laid a lot. And more

1:05:57

than anything, they're really obsessed with

1:05:59

Star Trek. And so of course,

1:06:01

when they see William Shatner, who's

1:06:03

in the movie, playing himself, they

1:06:05

lose their cool. And they get

1:06:07

to meet William Shatner and William

1:06:09

Shatner as he's depicted in this

1:06:11

movie is a complete insane cook.

1:06:13

Yeah. He's not just self-obsessed. He

1:06:15

has these really weird ideas of

1:06:17

like projects he wants to do.

1:06:19

He talks about a six-hour musical

1:06:21

of Julius Caesar that he wants

1:06:23

to direct and produce. And this

1:06:25

kind of throws the two lead

1:06:27

characters into this existential crisis. Oh

1:06:29

my God, not only are returning

1:06:31

30, but William Shatner is a

1:06:33

total loon. How do we traverse

1:06:35

love and life and life? and

1:06:38

our jobs in this. Well and

1:06:40

I love that twist though because

1:06:42

that's a really good twist this

1:06:44

idea that this person that you

1:06:46

this is something that I think

1:06:48

goes at least as far back

1:06:50

as American graffiti the idea that

1:06:52

there is like a young character

1:06:54

who's gonna meet some like sage

1:06:56

real-life person who's gonna give them

1:06:58

like advice in the third act

1:07:00

like Richard Dreyfus and Wolfman Jack

1:07:02

in American graffiti or Stan Lee

1:07:04

and Jason Lee. in Morats, for

1:07:06

example. And it's always not going

1:07:08

to give a speech, I'm going

1:07:10

to help you turn your life

1:07:12

around. And then in Free Enterprise,

1:07:14

like, yes, we bet William Shatner,

1:07:16

this is great, this is going

1:07:18

to be our life-changing a minute.

1:07:20

We can't get rid of him

1:07:22

now. I think he's kind of

1:07:24

annoying actually. Yeah, it's the bloom

1:07:26

has gone off the rose. That's

1:07:29

a really, the idea that that

1:07:31

would be kind of disappointing and

1:07:33

kind of like make you not

1:07:35

realize what you really care about

1:07:37

anymore. That is I think the

1:07:39

cleverest part of this movie. And

1:07:41

it's a cute movie. It's a

1:07:43

little shabby. It was clearly made

1:07:45

for, it was made for like

1:07:47

30 grand. It's like a. zero

1:07:49

budget kind of a film. But

1:07:51

there's a certain kind of sweetness

1:07:53

about it that I really appreciate.

1:07:55

I like that the characters are

1:07:57

kind of shallow and they kind

1:07:59

of have to, they're shallow, but

1:08:01

they're intelligent and they have to

1:08:03

come to terms with the fact

1:08:05

that they are kind of shallow,

1:08:07

they recognize that about themselves. And

1:08:09

it also is before geek culture

1:08:11

was even taking off a commentary

1:08:13

on what Generation X's relationship was

1:08:15

with its own media and how,

1:08:18

you know, what it meant to

1:08:20

be obsessed with media and the

1:08:22

way we talk about it with

1:08:24

one another and how that informs

1:08:26

who we are. And I think

1:08:28

it comes to kind of an

1:08:30

ambivalent conclusion about a lot of

1:08:32

these things and it does show

1:08:34

that growing up is a big

1:08:36

step when you turn 30 and

1:08:38

moving into these new things and

1:08:40

coming up with facing the travails

1:08:42

of disillusionment. I really like it.

1:08:44

I'm glad I met Robert Meyer

1:08:46

Burnett because I got to tell

1:08:48

him to his face that I

1:08:50

really like his movie. I still

1:08:52

quote it to this day because

1:08:54

I watched a lot when I

1:08:56

was in my 20s. So yeah,

1:08:58

I really take free enterprise even

1:09:00

though it's a swinger, kind of

1:09:02

a swinger's knockoff. Yeah, fair enough.

1:09:04

Again, knockoff isn't a bad thing.

1:09:06

It's just a thing. It's all

1:09:09

there is too really. All right,

1:09:11

you know, there's a lot of,

1:09:13

I feel like there are a

1:09:15

lot of, I feel like there

1:09:17

are a lot of trends in

1:09:19

the trends in the trends in

1:09:21

the 90s. a lot

1:09:23

of my picks are from when

1:09:25

I was around to see the

1:09:28

knockoffs happen because again as as

1:09:30

time goes on if you weren't

1:09:32

there to recognize the trend in

1:09:34

the moment if the trend didn't

1:09:37

remain historically significant or well-known you

1:09:39

might not realize some movies were

1:09:41

knockoffs or even that there was

1:09:43

a big enough trend to justify

1:09:46

a knockoff in the first place.

1:09:48

So a lot of minds are

1:09:50

from relative recently and I'm acknowledging

1:09:52

that and I'm realizing that you

1:09:55

know If only I'd been born

1:09:57

40 years earlier, but I do

1:09:59

have a lot of my favorites

1:10:01

from the 90s and one of

1:10:03

my favorite 90s trends that led

1:10:06

to fewer great movies than you

1:10:08

might think actually, but there was

1:10:10

a certain blockbuster movie that was

1:10:12

not only incredibly successful, but despite

1:10:15

being a horror movie, won five

1:10:17

Academy Awards, was the Sounds of

1:10:19

Lamps. Sounds of the Lambs was

1:10:21

a big fucking deal. It wasn't

1:10:24

even the first Thomas Harris adaptation.

1:10:26

Michael Mann had directed Manhunter's Annabellector

1:10:28

about like six or seven years

1:10:30

earlier. And in many respects I

1:10:33

actually prefer Manhunter as a movie,

1:10:35

but Sounds of the Lambs was

1:10:37

the one that became hugely influential.

1:10:39

And it had a series. It

1:10:42

was a huge head. And the

1:10:44

idea of... charismatic serial killers and

1:10:46

killers who had this like weird

1:10:48

like fetish or particular like bonus

1:10:51

operandi that you could build a

1:10:53

whole movie off of and so

1:10:55

we got one after another serial

1:10:57

killer movies all throughout the 90s.

1:11:00

The most famous of which is

1:11:02

seven. Which I feel does enough

1:11:04

differently that it doesn't, even though

1:11:06

it probably wouldn't have been made

1:11:09

without sounds of the lamps, doesn't

1:11:11

really feel like a science of

1:11:13

the lamps knock off. It just

1:11:15

feels like a project, like it

1:11:17

feels like a descendant. It was

1:11:20

feeling, it was feeding off of

1:11:22

the same trends. And if you

1:11:24

look around at the serial killer

1:11:26

movies, that froze to prominence in

1:11:29

the wake of both of those

1:11:31

movies, seven kind of led, led,

1:11:33

led the charge a lot. There

1:11:35

was like a second way. Yeah,

1:11:38

it was the second one. Killer

1:11:40

kind of touches seven more. But

1:11:42

the thing about seven that frustrates

1:11:44

me, because seven's a great movie.

1:11:47

I love seven, but it overshadowed

1:11:49

a movie that came out one

1:11:51

month later that I think is

1:11:53

around as good as seven, maybe

1:11:56

even better. And because it came

1:11:58

out one month... later everyone referred

1:12:00

to it as like a copycat

1:12:02

of seven even though it really

1:12:05

had a lot more to do

1:12:07

with copycatting sounds to the lamps

1:12:09

and it's a movie called Copycat

1:12:11

it's called Copycat here's a here's

1:12:14

something funny that's a minus as

1:12:16

well I also I love copycat

1:12:18

yeah copycat is is fantastic It

1:12:20

has a great killer at the

1:12:23

heart of it. It's played by

1:12:25

Harry Conic Jr. Yeah, very very

1:12:27

very against type very against very

1:12:29

against type but scary. He's good

1:12:31

performance. He's really good. And Sigorni

1:12:34

Weaver is the lead character. She's

1:12:36

the cop who put him away

1:12:38

several years before the events of

1:12:40

the film. Well, no, she didn't

1:12:43

put him away. She was like

1:12:45

studying him. She was like a

1:12:47

you know, one of those like

1:12:49

people who studied serial killers and

1:12:52

he targeted her and he attacked

1:12:54

her and she survived. Excuse me,

1:12:56

and he was arrested. But she

1:12:58

has been so scarred with and

1:13:01

experienced that she is now a

1:13:03

shut-in and she refuses to leave

1:13:05

her apartment and now two cops

1:13:07

played by Holly Hunter and Dermot

1:13:10

Mulroney are on the on the

1:13:12

hunt for a very strange serial

1:13:14

killer and they enlist Sigorny Weaver's

1:13:16

help. The serial killer in question

1:13:19

has the modus operandi of copying

1:13:21

other real serial killers. Not just

1:13:23

one though, it's not like I'm

1:13:25

just gonna do Son of Sam,

1:13:28

he'll do Son of Sam and

1:13:30

Ted Bundy, and he'll do all

1:13:32

the classics basically. And that's scary.

1:13:34

That's creative, and it is shot

1:13:37

and filmed and acted so god

1:13:39

damn beautifully, like you did not

1:13:41

need to try this hard. No

1:13:43

one would have blamed you if

1:13:45

you just phone this one in

1:13:48

you got an amazing cast all

1:13:50

of them are incredibly well-written characters.

1:13:52

There's a lot of nuance to

1:13:54

everybody Excuse me when characters get

1:13:57

hurt or die you really feel

1:13:59

it It doesn't feel like a

1:14:01

plot point, it feels like a

1:14:03

tragedy. The murders are genuinely very,

1:14:06

very terrifying. It's just a gorgeous movie.

1:14:08

Like everything about it works. And the

1:14:10

only reason we don't talk about it

1:14:13

all the time is because seven came

1:14:15

out a month earlier. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

1:14:17

It really was just swallowed up by

1:14:19

seven and two. It's like, okay, seven

1:14:21

came out, we're good with this. And

1:14:24

people were still watching it. Like seven

1:14:26

stayed in theaters for months. And copycat

1:14:28

came and went. What I appreciate

1:14:31

on a copycat though that I

1:14:33

think 7 didn't do very well

1:14:35

is the psychology of the thing.

1:14:37

Yeah. Seven is a music video.

1:14:40

It was directed by a music

1:14:42

video director. It's incredibly stylish. It's

1:14:44

so bleak. It's almost comedic. Copycat

1:14:47

is actually interested

1:14:49

in the characters. It was directed

1:14:51

by John Amiel who did a couple

1:14:53

of like okay middling thrillers

1:14:56

because he did copycat but he

1:14:58

also did... The Core, which is

1:15:00

absurd and fun, even though

1:15:02

it's scientifically nonsense. He did...

1:15:04

The movie Entrapment with Catherine

1:15:07

Zeta Jones, which... Perfectly satisfying

1:15:09

little sexy ice thriller, yeah.

1:15:11

Yeah, it's kind of a

1:15:13

sexy-hiced movie, Sean Connery. He

1:15:15

did a comedy called The Man

1:15:17

Who New Too Little. Bill Murray. Which

1:15:19

is, yeah, like, legit funny. It's a

1:15:21

really clever premise. We've talked about it

1:15:24

on the podcast before. Yeah. But

1:15:26

before that he did copycat. Well, he

1:15:28

did the Sing and Detective, the

1:15:30

original TV miniseries. That's right.

1:15:32

I'm done on the BBC. That's

1:15:35

probably done a lot of work, really.

1:15:37

Yeah, he did a heck of a lot

1:15:39

of British TV, and that's where he gets

1:15:41

most of his work to this day. Like,

1:15:43

he's directed episodes of The Walking Dead. Yeah.

1:15:45

But yeah, he did copycat in 1995,

1:15:47

and it really kind of delved into

1:15:50

sort of the impact that serial

1:15:52

killers have on people's lives. And

1:15:54

I feel like... Sigorni Weaver gives

1:15:56

such a strong performance as this

1:15:58

woman who has agoraphob Like really

1:16:00

severe agoraphobia, she won't even

1:16:03

open the door. That we kind of

1:16:05

see not just the trauma that she's

1:16:07

been through, but it's not presented

1:16:09

in a really salacious way.

1:16:11

It's presented in kind of a

1:16:13

believable way. We really see her fear.

1:16:16

There's a scene in the movie where

1:16:18

she has to open the door and

1:16:20

get something out of the hallway. And

1:16:22

it really takes us through every

1:16:24

painful step she has to go through

1:16:26

just to get that far. and what

1:16:28

it so there's a scene later in

1:16:30

the movie where she's finally yanked out

1:16:33

of the apartment by somebody and your

1:16:35

heart sings like no like not that

1:16:37

she's in danger but she's outside like

1:16:39

you you only have a small taste

1:16:42

of it but they gave you an

1:16:44

opportunity to actually feel that trepidation so

1:16:46

you know what it means to her

1:16:48

and that makes it feel so much

1:16:50

more violating just to be taken out

1:16:52

of her safe space yeah it's great

1:16:54

yeah And we also get to see the trauma

1:16:56

being visited upon the Holly Hunter

1:16:59

character, because Holly Hunter is also

1:17:01

an accurate actress. And yeah, she

1:17:03

like, something really horrible happens. She

1:17:05

like witnesses this horrible act of

1:17:07

violence. I don't see what it is.

1:17:09

But like that puts her in the mind

1:17:11

of the serial killer is going to come

1:17:14

after me. I've lost all hope for life.

1:17:16

Like she feels like her life is over

1:17:18

at that point. And I feel like that's

1:17:20

what copycat is really getting at. kind of

1:17:22

repeated trauma and that's what the title refers

1:17:25

to as well, copying the trauma. Yeah, it's

1:17:27

really clever. It's better than it got any

1:17:29

kind of credit for and yet, like you

1:17:31

said, it was just swallowed up by

1:17:33

seven. Yeah. Well, we're back to mate

1:17:35

because you had that as well. And

1:17:38

I'm gonna pick so there's another list

1:17:40

we could have done in effect. I

1:17:42

think we even suggested it once on

1:17:44

our on our patron, but we could

1:17:46

do an entire list that's just die-hard

1:17:48

knockoffs. Yeah, Diehard is

1:17:51

such a like another

1:17:53

cinematic milestone, especially in

1:17:55

the action genre that

1:17:58

It didn't like in the

1:18:00

idea of an action movie that takes

1:18:02

place in like a confined space that

1:18:04

had been done before, but it did

1:18:07

it in such a particular clever and

1:18:09

easy to copy way. That immediately

1:18:11

we started seeing one die-hard riff.

1:18:14

after another in which there is a

1:18:16

hero or maybe two who are trapped

1:18:18

in a confined space that has been

1:18:20

taken over by bad guys usually terrorists

1:18:22

not necessarily and they have to sort

1:18:24

of sneak around defeating the bad guys

1:18:26

one by one that's the whole damn

1:18:28

thing there was and and and again

1:18:30

there's no shortage of good ones either

1:18:32

is die hard on a battleship that's

1:18:34

easily Stephen Siegel's best movie die hard

1:18:36

on a train that's easily Stephen

1:18:39

Siegel's second best movie There's

1:18:41

Die Hard and a Hockey

1:18:43

Rink. That's a very underrated,

1:18:45

juggled, and damned movie. Yeah,

1:18:47

that's a good movie. There's

1:18:49

Die Hard on a Mountain,

1:18:51

that's Cliffhanger, I love Cliffhanger,

1:18:54

Cliffhanger Rules. But there's

1:18:56

a film that spun that idea

1:18:59

off just enough, added just enough

1:19:01

of a tweak to it, that not

1:19:03

that long ago, when I mentioned

1:19:05

that this was a knockoff movie,

1:19:07

people fought me on it. And they

1:19:09

said that's not a die-hard

1:19:11

knockoff. That's its own thing. And

1:19:14

I'm like motherfucker I was

1:19:16

there when that movie came out

1:19:18

Everyone knew it was a

1:19:20

die-hard knockoff. It was just so

1:19:22

good That we didn't care and

1:19:25

that movie is speed Speed Speed

1:19:27

is my number one. Is it really?

1:19:29

Yeah, what do you want to

1:19:31

put that down the run? We'll

1:19:33

get we'll get back to speed

1:19:35

but yeah, it's called die hard on

1:19:37

a bus and it's I mean it's one

1:19:40

of the great action films, so I'm gonna put

1:19:42

that, yeah. Okay, well, we'll kick that one down

1:19:44

the camera. I'm gonna, we'll kick that one down

1:19:46

the road, we'll finish up with it. Okay, well,

1:19:49

yada, yada, yada, yada, I'm still on an

1:19:51

action movie kick, okay. Well, well, well, well, I'll,

1:19:53

well, can I do one or do you want to do?

1:19:55

Yeah, I guess you might as well, yeah. Well,

1:19:57

because you have three left that we have three

1:19:59

left that we. don't know and I

1:20:01

have four left that we don't

1:20:03

know. Okay. So I'll do the

1:20:05

next one. I'll do the next

1:20:08

one. I'll do the next one.

1:20:10

I mentioned this before when we

1:20:12

talked about Dick Tracy that sometimes

1:20:14

the movie knockoff is based on

1:20:16

material that predates the original and

1:20:19

that was the case for Dick

1:20:21

Tracy and Batman and it is

1:20:23

also the case for for another

1:20:25

action movie classic that Absolutely would

1:20:28

not exist if another hit film

1:20:30

based on material that whatever I

1:20:32

mean, I'm totally botching this whole

1:20:34

thing casino is a rip off

1:20:36

of the born identity Yeah You're

1:20:40

talking about the, yeah, the 2006,

1:20:42

James Bond, Casino Royal, not the

1:20:44

67 film? No, no, no, and

1:20:46

not the book, even, obviously, because

1:20:48

the book obviously predates even that.

1:20:50

No, there was, the James Bond

1:20:53

movies had been big brassy spectaculars

1:20:55

for over 40 years, and by

1:20:57

the time we got to die

1:20:59

another day, which is, it's fun,

1:21:01

but it's ridiculous, even by James

1:21:03

Bond standards. A lot of people

1:21:05

were like, you know, in this

1:21:08

post-9-11 world, what even is James

1:21:10

Bond right now? What do we,

1:21:12

what kind of spy movie do

1:21:14

we even want to do? And

1:21:16

then Doug Lyman, very, very, very

1:21:18

loosely adapted, The Born Identity, which

1:21:20

I think is a Robert Ledlam

1:21:23

book, and kind of jettison most

1:21:25

of the plot and just kept

1:21:27

the basic premise of a guy

1:21:29

who was like a spy slash

1:21:31

assassin, but a mission goes wrong.

1:21:33

and he has amnesia and he

1:21:35

doesn't know he's a spy. And

1:21:37

as he gradually figures out that

1:21:40

he's a spy, he also gradually

1:21:42

figures out, I wasn't a very

1:21:44

good person and actually ends up

1:21:46

turning against his own handlers. This

1:21:48

has been done as a TV

1:21:50

mini-series before with Richard Chamberlain. It's

1:21:52

not very good. The Matt Damon

1:21:55

version that Doug Lyman directed on

1:21:57

the other hand is fucking great.

1:21:59

It was really stripped down. It

1:22:01

didn't have any of that like...

1:22:03

you know power fantasy vacation footage

1:22:05

you know luxury that you associate

1:22:07

with this kind of action movie

1:22:10

spy genre it's very wet and

1:22:12

grimy when there's a car chase

1:22:14

he's in like a beat up

1:22:16

junker like it's just not a

1:22:18

stunt spectacular the way that we

1:22:20

came to know it was actually

1:22:22

like a strip down gritty spy

1:22:25

movie And it was

1:22:27

such a hit, an unexpected hit too,

1:22:29

because when it was like in production,

1:22:31

everyone was like, it had flown off

1:22:33

the rails, there were these big long

1:22:36

articles and like Premier Entertainment Weekly about

1:22:38

how this production was like an absolute

1:22:40

disaster and no one's gonna see this

1:22:43

movie, and then it was a hit

1:22:45

because everyone loved it. And it was

1:22:47

such a hit that it basically forced

1:22:49

action movies to respond to it. And

1:22:52

any movie that was even remotely in

1:22:54

the spy thriller genre all of a

1:22:56

sudden either had to consciously riff on

1:22:58

or step away from the Bourne identity

1:23:01

and the James Bond movies, which historically

1:23:03

have always been about tapping into whatever

1:23:05

the zeitgeist was, look at Mood Raker,

1:23:08

came out right up to Star Wars.

1:23:10

They just said, fuck it, let's just

1:23:12

do the Bourne identity. So they took

1:23:14

the original James Bond novel, which they

1:23:17

didn't have the rights to for the

1:23:19

longest time. long complicated story. And they

1:23:21

said, we're going to take James Bond

1:23:23

back to his roots, we're going to

1:23:26

make him younger, it's going to be

1:23:28

like his first big mission, and we're

1:23:30

going to really strip it down, there

1:23:33

aren't going to be all these giant

1:23:35

stunt spectaculars, it's like we add like

1:23:37

one cool chase sequence at an airport,

1:23:39

but even that's pretty minor for Bond,

1:23:42

and we make it about just who

1:23:44

is this guy, what is his like

1:23:46

one defining romantic relationship, and because this

1:23:48

is also a trend right now because

1:23:51

of district B13 we'll throw in some

1:23:53

parkour. And you know what it's fucking

1:23:55

cool I don't care but like they

1:23:58

did rip off district B13 in order

1:24:00

to get to it whatever it's fine.

1:24:02

If you're gonna rip off rip off

1:24:04

from the best. is the born identity

1:24:07

version of Bond. It is also, I

1:24:09

have argued and will continue to argue

1:24:11

until the bond franchise proves me wrong,

1:24:13

the best bond film. Because in ripping

1:24:16

off the born identity and trying to

1:24:18

evoke that quasi-real you

1:24:20

know, spy thriller aesthetic of the

1:24:22

Bourne identity, they accidentally brought Jane's

1:24:24

Bond back to his roots in

1:24:26

a way that maybe only from

1:24:28

Russia with love had ever successfully

1:24:31

done before. Kuzina Rayal, the 2006

1:24:33

version by Martin Campbell, is a

1:24:35

very very good adaptation of the

1:24:37

original Jane's Bond novel, which didn't

1:24:39

have any of that nonsense. So

1:24:41

it's a great Bond movie, it's

1:24:43

a great action movie, and it

1:24:45

absolutely would not exist if Jason

1:24:47

Bourne hadn't changed the game. I

1:24:49

agree with that. I think Jason

1:24:51

Bourne came at just the right

1:24:54

time in American history because I

1:24:56

feel like both Jason Bourne and

1:24:58

Casino Royale are post 9-11 movies.

1:25:00

Action movies really changed a lot

1:25:02

in the wake of 9-11. The

1:25:04

idea that we could destroy cities

1:25:06

and have explosions as sort of

1:25:08

light entertainment. was seen as distasteful

1:25:10

all of a sudden and all

1:25:12

our action films got much Stearner

1:25:14

and more gritty our action heroes

1:25:17

became a lot more humorless Doug

1:25:19

Lyman did the first-born but Paul

1:25:21

Greengrass did some of the sequels

1:25:23

and I feel like his aesthetic

1:25:25

really like his really stripped down

1:25:27

kind of naturalist aesthetic really kind

1:25:29

of took over a lot of

1:25:31

what was going to be what

1:25:33

was going to be dictated by

1:25:35

action I feel like a lot

1:25:37

of people have responded very positively

1:25:40

to casino royal because it was

1:25:42

the last James Bond film that

1:25:44

spoke to the politics at the

1:25:46

time. Yeah. Whatever, and we've had

1:25:48

that before, I feel like Golden

1:25:50

Eye, that's my favorite James Bond

1:25:52

movie. Yeah. was the first film

1:25:54

to really kind of try to

1:25:56

reframe James Bond in a post-cold-war

1:25:58

environment. It was the first James

1:26:00

Bond film that was made after

1:26:02

the fall of the Berlin Wall.

1:26:05

What do you do with James

1:26:07

Bond at that point? And that

1:26:09

film is all about what do

1:26:11

we do with James Bond now?

1:26:13

And it's not that they found

1:26:15

a purpose for him. It's that

1:26:17

he didn't really have one anymore.

1:26:19

And I like that about Golden.

1:26:21

And you know, they kept on

1:26:23

making them the next one after

1:26:25

that was Tomorrow Never or Never

1:26:28

Never dies. the dangers of tech

1:26:30

and that one proved to be

1:26:32

pretty salient and pretty timely as

1:26:34

well. And I feel like Casino

1:26:36

Royale was speaking to the torture

1:26:38

and the hopelessness in the war

1:26:40

that was going on in the

1:26:42

post 9-11 world. Right. Whatever the

1:26:44

next James Bond film is, if

1:26:46

they do it tactfully enough, will

1:26:48

surpass Casino Royale just because of

1:26:51

how timely it is. Well, not

1:26:53

cool. It's actually really horrifying. But

1:26:55

James Bond was recently purchased by

1:26:57

Amazon. The next James Bond film

1:26:59

we're going to get is going

1:27:01

to be the corporate James Bond.

1:27:03

Yeah. And this is where we

1:27:05

are. Corporations are running rampant. And

1:27:07

we're going to get a James

1:27:09

Bond to come out of that.

1:27:11

Whether it comments on it or

1:27:14

not, it's going to be real

1:27:16

interesting. That is true. I wrote

1:27:18

a editorial about this for the

1:27:20

rap, actually. It's like... Jeff

1:27:23

Basos is a Bond villain. Like

1:27:25

if you took Elliot Carver from

1:27:27

Tomorrow Never dies, into the real

1:27:30

world, you've got a billionaire who

1:27:32

is like bought up newspapers and

1:27:34

is actively manipulating the news. He's

1:27:37

not the only one doing it,

1:27:39

but Jeff Basos is doing that

1:27:41

and now he owns Jane's Bond.

1:27:44

Elliot Carver bought the Jane's Bond

1:27:46

franchise. What happens when a Bond

1:27:48

villain makes a Bond movie? We're

1:27:50

gonna find out. Maybe it'll be

1:27:53

good. I don't know, but it's

1:27:55

gonna be weird and it's gonna

1:27:57

be different whether it intends to

1:28:00

or not And I'll agree with

1:28:02

you on the point that Casino

1:28:04

Royale. It's not my favorite James

1:28:07

Bond movie, but it's the one

1:28:09

with the only one that has

1:28:11

like a legitimately good script. Yeah.

1:28:14

All the other ones have stories

1:28:16

that are really hard to follow.

1:28:18

Yeah, he's trotting around the world,

1:28:21

but why is he going there?

1:28:23

That part's never really all that

1:28:25

clear in any James Bond movie.

1:28:27

Casino Royale is the only one

1:28:30

you can follow from beginning to

1:28:32

end, and I appreciate that. Yeah.

1:28:34

All right, what's your next pick?

1:28:37

Okay. I'm punching, I'm not punching,

1:28:39

I'm not punching up, I'm not

1:28:41

punching down. Okay. I am, I,

1:28:44

I come here to praise Caesar,

1:28:46

not to bury him. Okay. The

1:28:48

country of Turkey has, oh my

1:28:51

god. Very strange copyright laws. I

1:28:53

know what you did. I feel

1:28:55

like Ryan, Ryan God's like, I

1:28:58

know what you did! And

1:29:01

because of the way copyright laws

1:29:03

are just sort of disregarded in

1:29:05

the country of Turkey, the whole

1:29:07

world of Turkish knockoffs is a

1:29:09

genre into itself. And you can

1:29:11

get these films on bootlegs in

1:29:13

the United States if you know

1:29:15

where to look. And I'm talking

1:29:17

about Turkish Rambo, Turkish Star Wars,

1:29:19

Turkish Star Trek. That's the titles

1:29:21

they're listed under. Turkish Star Trek.

1:29:23

I have a copy of Turkish

1:29:25

Star Trek. And they use the

1:29:27

same costumes. They use the same

1:29:29

character names. They come up with

1:29:31

their own stories, all of the

1:29:33

characters are played by Turkish actors.

1:29:35

They would be sued, but I

1:29:37

think the filmmakers are so wily,

1:29:39

they don't, the studios don't know

1:29:41

where to find them. So for

1:29:44

a long time, Turkish knockoffs were

1:29:46

just being churned out left and

1:29:48

right. If you haven't seen the

1:29:50

Turkish ET, seek it out, it's

1:29:52

bonkers. You will throw up, it's

1:29:54

really weird. It's so weird. And

1:29:56

if you haven't seen that one,

1:29:58

see... The other Turkish eat- You're

1:30:02

right, they're, they're, they're, they're multiple,

1:30:04

they're multiple. Anyway. But of course,

1:30:06

the, the, the, the, the crown

1:30:08

of, uh, Turkish knockoffs is Gooch

1:30:10

Devadam, or three giant men, uh,

1:30:12

which star, which is a, a

1:30:14

superhero movie, starring Captain America, El

1:30:16

Santo, and Spider-Man, Spider-Man's the bad

1:30:18

guy. Spider-Man is a serial killer.

1:30:20

Yeah, Spider-Man is a serial killer

1:30:22

and gangster who, like in the

1:30:24

opening scene of the movie, feeds

1:30:26

a woman's face into the propeller

1:30:28

of an outboard boat motor. Like,

1:30:30

this is pretty violent stuff. And,

1:30:32

and you know, Spider-Man has all

1:30:34

these weird powers. Luckily on their

1:30:36

trail is Captain America and El

1:30:38

Santo, essentially, Captain-Mexico, teeming up to

1:30:40

fight the evil Spider-Man. This was

1:30:42

made for a budget of maybe

1:30:44

$50. The costumes looked like they

1:30:46

were stitched at home because they

1:30:48

were. But they're Captain America El

1:30:50

Santo and Spider-Man costumes. The Spider-Man

1:30:52

costume is like the least accurate.

1:30:54

And El Santo is easy to

1:30:56

do because you just need the

1:30:58

right mask. But yet I feel

1:31:00

like there's... It feels like the

1:31:03

truth is breaking through with something

1:31:05

like Uch Devadam. We have these

1:31:07

characters and we're so obsessed with

1:31:09

canon and depicting these characters in

1:31:11

a very specific way that we

1:31:13