So... Alright - River of Death

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Geoff takes us on a journey to... the title of this episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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or is it croissant no matter how you say it start your day with freshly cracked scrambled eggs loaded on a buttery flaky croissant try it with maple brown butter today at Tim's at participating restaurants in Canada for limited time So today I want to talka

So today I want to talk about a movie I watched. Based on an idea that we discussed earlier in this podcast, actually pretty recently, not that much earlier. Also, Howard Stern has resurfaced and, man, I thought I'd go over that a little bit as I understand it, what I do understand, which admittedly isn't much, as well as week one of the NFL is in the books. Maybe we'll talk about that for a minute. What do you say? Let's get into it. So I watched the Bill's Ravens game, which was essentially the opposite of what happened in the Lions Packers game. Real interesting first week of football, Chiefs lost, Lions lost, Ravens lost. Bills should have lost, but they did not.

Somehow the Steelers won. Can't believe the Jets blew that one. The Vikings beat the Bears last night. I just, I thought the Bears had it. It was a really interesting week one that saw a lot of pretty good teams lose. Are they good? It's only week one way too early to start freaking out. I think it's all going to be fine. Buckingiers won. Beat the Falcons. That was a fun game. Anyway, sad for Aaron Glenn, sad for Ben Johnson, sad for Detroit fans in general. Wow.

Real mixed bag, week one. So last week, Howard Stern was supposed to make his return. He was on a summer break. If you didn't listen to the previous, I don't know, whatever episode it was, maybe two or three weeks ago, I answered an email asking what I thought about the Howard Stern news. Here's essentially what happened. A couple weeks ago while Howard was on summer break, news broke or leaked that Sirius XM was going to essentially cancel him by low-balling him to such a degree in their contract renegotiations. His contract is up in December.

They were wanting and expecting him to reject the offer so that they could essentially pull the plug on the show and save lots of money. This came out of nowhere. There were no verified reports. it was just suddenly kind of leaking everywhere. Nobody really could seem to identify where the leak came from or where the news originated from. Then it was announced that Howard was going to come back from his summer vacation and answer the questions that America has and dispel the rumors or explain what's going on or, you know,

address it. However, the day he was supposed to return, he didn't. There were reruns on and then they put out a press release saying that this show was going to be delayed for a week, which was really bizarre. A lot of people thought it was a negotiation tactic. People thought that, like, Howard was trying to play a hard ball by promising to come on the air and then not coming on the air and hurting the ratings, or maybe he was prepared to say something and then legal got involved and they had to gag him for a way. I don't know. There was all kinds of rumors spreading around. I figured it was probably simpler than that. If you take it at face value,

he came on the air yesterday and said simply that he had a bad cold and that he couldn't shake it and that he's still sick and that he thinks just at his age, when you get a cold, it sticks with you a little bit longer, and he was too sick to return to the air, and didn't have the energy and didn't want to do a piss poor job. I don't know. You know, Occam's Razor, right? It's fun to engage in conspiracy theories, but I think the simplest answer is usually probably the correct answer,

and that makes the most sense. He is kind of old and frail, honestly. He's not a tough guy. regardless. He came back on the air yesterday and addressed the rumors. I guess, you know, it was kind of hard for me to listen because I streamed yesterday and then we recorded a podcast yesterday. And then I had to get ready for the break show and then stress about the break show and then film the break show. And then by the end of that, I was so fucking wiped. I came home. I laid down on the sofa at about 5.30 threw a blanket on and just really didn't move for most of the rest of the night. And so I was only able to tune in and fits and spurts in the

car when I was like set designing or something. And what I gathered from it all, because it was a lot of nonsense, a lot of talking around it, is just that it was all bullshit. He doesn't know where it came from. None of it's grounded in truth. It never was. When they heard, the rumors hit, they decided to take the opportunity to have some fun with it. And so they played up the announcement. He's going to return. He's going to discuss the whole thing. He's going to talk about it. Also, I should mention he returned with a prank. So Monday morning when Howard was supposed to return, it was actually Andy Cohen. He announced that Howard had been replaced in the last week. And that's why he hadn't been on the air,

that it was kind of a rapidly changing landscape, but that they were rebranding to Andy 100, and that this was like the culmination of a life stream for him and that he loves Howard and wants to carry the torch and he was in studio. They rebranded everything to Andy 100. They were answering the phones as Andy 100. And that went on for about 10 or 15 minutes. People were losing their mind.

News agencies started to report on it and then Howard cut in and said, ah, it's me. It's Howard. I'm back. It was all just a joke that Andy and I, a little prank Andy and I played. And it was cute, I guess. it's not the first time he's done that particular bit. I think it's maybe, I want to say, I think maybe the third time I've seen him play that prank. So I didn't know about it until

after the fact. So I would like to be able to sit here and say like I would have seen it coming from a mile away, but I genuinely don't know. Anyway, he's back. He's back on the air. I listened to a little bit today. And as I said, what I could yesterday. And the, the crux of seems to be that they think someone from the staff or from serious who interacts with the

staff unintentionally leaked to this information being too loud at a bar or telling a friend's boyfriend some gossip or something and it just spun and purple monkey dishwashered its way into the public and into something that was essentially

bogus. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. there is a contract renegotiation coming up in December. They do have to pay like a hundred million dollars a year for the Howard Stern Show. At its peak, easily worth that kind of money. The Howard Stern show was bringing in like 20, a little over 20 million listeners a day at the height of his popularity on public radio. And I think on Sirius, they hit somewhere right around 20 million for a little bit too. I don't think he brings in nearly those kinds of numbers. I imagine it's very expensive for Sirius and probably are getting diminishing returns as Howard's audience

slowly dies, honestly. People like me, they just get older and older, and I don't think Howard's bringing in new audience. It's certainly not going to find a lot of new audience on satellite radio. You know, that's the one thing about going behind the paywall is people don't discover you behind the paywall. They discover you, and then maybe they follow you behind the paywall eventually, but once you're behind the paywall and you're only behind the paywall, you're no longer findable for the general public, you know? That just is what it is. So whatever numbers you take into that moment are probably the highest they're going to be. And they're just going to kind of slowly, you hope to tread water at that level. But it's, it's a, man, it's hard to

grow an audience anyway. But for that product to be 100% behind a subscription, next to impossible, I would think, to grow. That being. said when you bring in 20 million people with you, do you really need to go? However, my point being, I wouldn't be surprised if the rumors were true. I could totally understand that. It seemed callous and strange and weird that Sirius would float these rumors when they have had such a successful partnership with Howard. That has, by all accounts, been mutually beneficial and pleasant on both sides. I've been a fan of Howard for so long, and he is always at odds with management and with the station. And that is just not a problem.

at Sirius. They've kind of given him Carblanche to do what he wants to do and run it as he sees fit. And so he and Sirius seem to get along famously. I'm sure it's different behind the scenes, but for them to want to leak something like this to tarnish the end of his career, when that could be handled behind the scenes. And then for front-facing, you create this amazing send-off of the end of a

career, the end of a 20-year partnership. Howard put Sirius on the map, and now it's time for Sirius to, you know, shoot off into the stratosphere as he retires or moves on to his next thing. There's so many different ways you can spend this to make it a huge, successful, you know, hand job for everybody involved and make money doing that, that it made no business sense to me unless it was, you know, shrewd CEOs trying to play hardball in the media, which does happen. I just, I don't know. So if you believe Howard, that's nothing, that there was no truth behind any of it. If anything, Howard said, and I do understand this sentiment, and I can get behind this sentiment.

I can also be easily convinced that Howard's full of shit and he's making all this up and that it did leak and that they do know who the leaker is and that it is an issue and that they are fighting this behind the scenes. I'm totally amenable to that being the truth, right? I find it easier to just take stuff at face value. Howard hasn't steered me wrong in a very long time. But anyway, as I was saying, Howard intimated in at least today's episode that this was personally really frustrating and annoying to him that this leaked in this way because it's A, not true. And B, people are going to think it's true. And now he feels like he can't retire because it'll look like he's getting canceled or fired. And his ego won't let him do that. After all the

times he's been fired in his career and found greater success and fuck you'd to new heights in his career off the you know off the ashes of every firing he can't go out as a fired dude so now he has to resign with serious so that he can continue this according to him so that he doesn't look like he's getting fired or canceled and i completely and totally understand that sentiment and the idea that that could absolutely be true because I would feel the exact same way if I were him, I think, honestly. Anywho, shows back on. He says there's no news on whether he's going to resign with Sirius or not other than that he is planning to and that everything that happened over the break is bullshit and complete and total fabrication. And they think that there

might be a mole inside the Stern Show that is spreading these conspiracies and rumors and they're not sure if it's intentional or stupidity based, but they're going to start investigating and looking into it. And I, for one, am into that because as if you listen to fuckface slash regulation, you know, I love a paranoid era. There's nothing better to me than being just knee-deep in paranoia in a production. So I'm looking forward to that. However, we should probably talk about River of Death. That's the movie I watched from 1989. And you might be asking, Jeff, why did you watch a movie from 1989 called River of Death? Well, let me tell you why. I saw this article on the internet on flickeringmyth.com, I guess is a film fan site.

Where do people come up with these names now? Flickeringmyth.com published an essential Indiana Jones rip-off movies of the 80s list. And I love that. Indiana Jones. I loved Indiana Jones rip-off movies when I was a kid, so I thought, oh, this could be fun. I'll see if there's any I don't recognize on there. Maybe I'll watch them, you know? I could be a way to kill an afternoon. And I was pretty impressed with the list. I'll just go through it, okay? Magic Crystal, which is a Hong Kong action comedy. The Golden Child, which I have seen, Eddie Murphy, wouldn't have put that in the Indiana Jones category, but these people see fit to. The Goonies, I guess, totally fits.

The Bill, seen that. River of Death, which we're going to talk about very soon. Firewalker, which is a movie I've never seen, but the poster is so familiar to me. I must have seen it a thousand times. It's Lewis Gossett Jr. and Chuck Norris essentially being like Tomb Raiders, I want to say. So I will probably watch that at some point. King Solomon's Mines, which was Alan Quartermain and the King Solomon's Mines, I think. I remember seeing that when I was a kid. It had Richard Chamberlain in it, and it was very, very, very bad. I was thinking about rewatching it. I believe Sharon Stone might be in that, but I don't 100% remember.

Then there was a movie called The Ark of the Sun God, which I'd never heard of and looks interesting, and I really don't know anything about other than it's got a pretty badass poster of a dude who looks kind of like Rambo, and he's got a staff that looks kind of like a Thanos's Infinity Gauntlet. Then we have Armor of God, which is a Jackie Chan. Indiana Jones rip-off film, which I really want to check out. Never heard of. A movie called Gwendolyn, aka The Perils of Gwendolyn in the Land of Yikyak, which the poster leads with boobs, if that gives you any idea, what that film's probably like. Then there is Romancing

the Stone, which is a movie I saw in the theater with my mom. That was a huge and successful film. That is the Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, romantic comedy with Danny DeVito in it. that spawned a sequel, Jewel of the Nile, both really good films. I believe the main character's name was Joan Wilder. And that's the list. So looking through it, there was a bunch I wanted to see, Armour of God, Ark of the Sun God, I want to rewatch King Solomon's Minds, never saw Firewalker.

But River of Death stuck out to me. And I think it's because it has Donald Pleasance on the cover. I'm a sucker for Donald Pleasance. If you don't know who Donald Pleasance is, He plays Dr. Loomis in the Halloween movies. So I looked it up and this movie was on Amazon. Decided that it would be the first of these films that I would watch and I would watch all of these movies

and then report back to you on the best Indiana Jones ripoffs, et cetera. However, I watched this film and while I was watching this film, my idea morphed into something different. And we'll get into that at the end of the review. But let's start with River of Death. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures.

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Regency app for details. Let me read the synopsis to you. An adventurer decides to go in search of a lost city in the Amazon jungle. A motley crew of other people with reasons of their own decide to join them for the wealth of the lost city. But to their horror, they find out that they have bit off more than they can chew. What with a Nazi doctor still doing is experiments on people in the same place. Wow.

I feel like they just spoiled the whole movie. That came pretty late in the film. Although you saw it coming from a fucking mile away. This movie stars a guy named Michael Dutnikov, who I don't know if you are going to remember. I remember him as American Ninja. He was a guy who looks a very good-looking dude, has some on-screen charisma, looks a lot like Mel Gibson, but kind of tried to play a Harrison Ford-esque-type role, and he just never quite hit.

And as soon as I saw him pop up in the movie, I was like, oh, fuck, whatever happened to him, it's a shame. that he never quite, like, got to that next echelon, that, like, leading man in a good movie echelon, right? He was right there on the cusp. Kind of, like, right there at, like, Mickey Work Level, and he stayed, he, like, gravitated just below that. I was sitting here watching it and so bummed for him

because, like I said, he's got the looks and everything. He makes perfect sense. And then, as the movie unfurled, I realized why. He's not a very good actor. No offense, I'm sorry. I know he was in Bachelor Party. he was in American Ninja. He was in avenging force. He was in River Death. Obviously, Air America, which is a great movie. A bunch of ninja films. He was in a ton of television, including the Cobra TV series, I believe. And he was in one million things I've never heard of. And I think it's because going back and watching River of Death, he's just not very good. He's got a lot of like, this movie's all over the map, first of all. This movie does not know what it is. This movie thinks it's a comedy at times. It thinks it is apocalypse now, like very literally thinks it's apocalypse now at times.

It thinks it is an action film most of the time, and it bounces all over the map. But one thing is certain. Any time Michael Dutikoff is given lines that are meant to be funny, they are not. And that's unfortunate. It starts in the 1940s, obviously, with the only thing that anybody ever filmed about the 1940s, the Nazis. It's actually Robert Vaughn. By far, the two most famous people in this film are definitely Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasance. They're both Nazis. Robert Vaughn is a Nazi scientist. I guess Donald Pleasance is just a Nazi asshole.

And Pleasance is coming to shut Vaughn down and be like, listen, you got to get out of here. I think the Russians are coming or something. You're doing experiments, heinous experiments on humans. I'm going to tell the furor yada, yada, yada. Robert Vaughn just fucking shoots him, just turns around and puts a bullet in him, fucking leaves him for dead, escapes in a plane. disappears cut to today by the Amazon. Michael Dutnikoff is like a, like I said, like an Alan Corderman or an Indiana Jones type guy who just kind of hangs out and like runs people on missions into the jungle if they need stuff. He's escorting like an old guy who's a scientist and his daughter because there is some sort of a disease that is infecting the tribes people and he's trying to figure out where it's originating from so that he can find a cure so that

that he can save all the people of the Amazon, and while they're on this expedition, they get kidnapped by an aggressive tribe, and the doctor gets killed, and the daughter, his, like, blonde, heartthrobby daughter, who Michael Dudacoff has been, like, you know, making out with and stuff, she gets kidnapped by the tribe, and then he escapes, heads back to town, is getting provisions and stuff, and it's like, I got to go back and rescue her, meet some other people that want to go into the Amazon as well, because where he's headed is also close to a missing temple that is the secret to lost wealth and yada, yada, yada. And so some of those people are, well, it's a bunch of character actors, but one of those

people is Donald Pleasance and his girlfriend, even though he's like 70 and she's like maybe 30, like blonde German girlfriend, father, daughter, or, I don't understand the relationship exactly, but they end up on, it's not clear that he is a Nazi, he's obviously hiding the fact this is many years later, and they begin the adventure. This movie is scored, and the score is maybe the most confusing thing about it. It starts, it sounds like a television, like a 70s television drama. Imagine interstitial music on Dynasty or Falcon Crest. That's what it sounds like at first.

And then at some point, it gets zany. It gets like, woo-whoop. like Bozo the clown level silly and then dark and foreboding and it is just like it is a roller coaster of sounds the score throughout the whole film there is

despite the fact that this main character is an Indiana Jones esk Michael Dutnikov with comedy one-liners he also has a narration that is lifted straight out of apocalypse now which I guess makes sense because they're on a boat

they steal a boat from pirates They're hiking through the jungle and they're by the water and pirates show up in a boat and try to kill them. So they kill the pirates and then they steal the boat and then they have a boat to go up the Amazon in and it's all very apocalypse now. He has this narrated soliloquy that just runs throughout the film that is like very, very dark and he has this like whispers and it's very Marlon Brando channeling Joseph Conrad and it's very serious. and then they'll be like a fucking Pratfall. It's absolutely ridiculous. There's a boxing match at some point that is worth mentioning.

I don't quite know how to describe it other than look out for that. That's all I'll say. It's beautiful. I will say that. I don't know. Where did they film? Let's find out where they filmed.

was River of Death filmed. Because the exteriors in this movie are fucking gorgeous. It was filmed in Port St. John, South Africa. Okay, there's all these like village shots that are super cool. At one point, they go to this cannibal

tribes, beachfront village, and it's very, like, bamboo built, like multi-tiered on the water, and it is unbelievably gore. It's so picturesque. and so beautiful. And then there's like city shots

that are supposed to be right by the Amazon. And it's just like, it's awesome. There's like little moments of like, you know, establishing shots and wides that are just of city life and people going about their business.

And it's just really, shot very well and it's very pretty. I will give this movie that. There's, there's kind of akin to like, I guess, Temple of Doom. There is a musical number about,

I don't know, 30 or 40 minutes in where a lady does like a cabaret number. but the lady is creepy and she's like grinding on a skeleton and that's weird and there's nothing like sexy about it. It's just kind of bizarre. And then a bunch of bad guys and other just people are in the crowd and it keeps zooming in and getting close-ups on people in the crowd. And the way it's framed and shot and colored, it makes them all look like Batman villains, you know? Kind of like imagine like Two-Face and the Joker and the Ridler and Clayface are all like at a lounge watching some late, watching, you know, someone perform and they're all laughing maniacically. And it just has that vibe. I don't know why. Like once again, really doesn't fit the tone of the film. But it is, uh, the director clearly had a lot of ideas and wanted to see them through. Not a lot of those ideas flowed into each other. But that's okay. He was clearly experimenting. I should actually, we'll dive into the director here in a second.

There was a moment. Oh, right. I was saying, I couldn't remember if Donald Pleasance and the blonde lady were like a father-daughter thing. It was sexual because there's a moment when Donald Pleasant sucks a finger and it's heinous. Something you never, ever, ever wanted to see in your life. Be warned going into the film. You will see that and it will stick with you. It's like, uh, It's like Joaquin Phoenix says in 8mm, there's things you see that you just can unsee. I will say this, there's a lot of helicopter work in this film. A whole light, you'll see. I'm sure a decent amount of it is stock footage, but there's definitely some filmed footage in this movie, and a lot of it takes place in and around helicopters,

so enjoy that. I feel like we don't get good helicopter work in films as much anymore. Maybe it's because in the 80s we were obsessed with the jungle. we were obsessed with the Vietnam War, we were obsessed with post-Vietnam War jungle stories and maybe we're not as much now and so that's why. But man, you definitely don't see

as much jungle helicopter work in 2025 as you did back then. So revel in that. There is one well-performed and well-shot silent knife-throw kill that I really appreciated in there. I'll give you that. There is some good action to look out for.

This is a bad film. though. And I cannot lie to you about it. I wish that I could say that it's a hidden gym and that Michael Dutnikov turns in a really understated but fantastic performance and that it's weird that it was overlooked because this movie has a lot of redeeming value and entertainment in it still even in 2025. But it was pretty bad. It was pretty shitty film. I'm really glad I watched it, though. I love bad movies. I love that they exist for me to watch at any point in time. I am 30 years after this film was made, getting to enjoy it. I really, I really do

appreciate that. I said earlier that my idea kind of morphed and it did. While I was watching the, while the credits were rolling, it threw up some related films under, I watched it on Amazon. And the related films, each one was funnier than the last. And I was trying to

think, like, what Indiana Jones ripoff film am I going to watch next? But those related films looked so much more interesting to me than the Indiana Jones ripoff films that I decided, what if we do this? I had an idea. Let's pivot. Let's set aside the Indiana Jones stuff.

Doesn't matter. Maybe we'll get back to it someday. Maybe we won't. But what if we take what we're doing and we turn it into a version of an idea that I had so long ago. It's one of my oldest ideas for content. I had it before drunk gamers.

I think it would have been right around the same time I created Ugly Internet. Might even precede Ugly Internet a little bit. I used to have terrible insomnia throughout my teens and my early 20s. I would say until probably around 28 or 29, I started to get it under control. But I just had the worst, worst insomnia. It's why I drank a lot early on because it would try to help me get to sleep. But because I was up from like, let's say I would get up out of bed at like 1.30 and I would be out of bed until like four. And I would do that three or four nights a week probably.

And I did that for years. So I would just go into my living room and I would just watch whatever movie was on Cinemax or Showtime or HBO at 3 in the morning. And I had this idea for, at the time, it would have been a website. This was in the 90s, you have to remember, and movie websites were huge. I'm reading Film Geek and Slash Film and Ain't It Cool News and all of these film. Like the internet has exploded with film fandom and it is really where it all exists right now. View Askew is huge.

the Vue Askew forums, everybody. Little do I know, Bernie and Matt are on the Vue forums. Jason and his brother Nick are on the Vue Forums. I'm on the Vue Askew forums. None of us even know each other yet. It's a wild time on the internet where all this stuff is happening. And so I have this idea for a film website. I wanted to call it 3 a.m. critic.

And I basically take a movie that's on at 3 in the morning, a directed DVD, a direct-to-video, a video, film starring like... a character actor you saw on two episodes of Twin Peaks and nobody else you recognize, right? That level of film. And treat it like it's Citizen Kane. Find the director.

Interview him about it. The writer. Do a deep dive on it. Discover the hidden themes of the film. Treat it like it's this monumental work of art. Treat it like it's Sunset Boulevard, you know? Treat it like it's a, it's Theleney. And not in a making fun of it kind of way, but in a tongue and cheek, I love bad stuff.

This is my jam. This is what I'm into. I unironically like this because it's bad and kitchy and silly. And I'm in on the idea that somebody could make something low budget at this level that's entertaining. And maybe it's not entertaining in the way that they anticipated. But maybe it is, you know? Like, maybe it is. regardless, a loving send-up

that elevates the film and elevates the people that are involved in it, the actors, the actresses. It was that I had this idea I used to think about it all the time that there are dudes in Hollywood that direct

straight to DVD and straight to TV films that you've never heard of. Those dudes direct 10 movies a year. They drive around in a 7-series BMW just like all the other

famous directors and actors, but they're living just an insanely stress-free life because they're directing movies with low pressure. It just has to come out. It has to get done. I mean, I'm sure they have integrity and they want to make the best product they can make. But they're making these films and they're pumping them out and there seems to be no end of them, right? And you can just go from project to project and probably make a pretty fucking good living without the pressure of

having to have hits, right? I always, that was my idea back in the day. And I just I wanted to explore that world. And so I thought 3 a.m. Critic was a great way to do that. I would just identify the movies via my insomnia, and then in the daytime, I would write about them and turn it into a whole thing. Never did it. Ugly internet took off, then drunk gamers took off, then rooster teeth took off. Don't want to do that now, but kind of want to take the spirit of that and say, instead of 3 a.m. critic, what if we have 3 a.m. theater? And that's what this is. This is a new game that we're playing that has nothing to do with Indiana Jones anymore. At this point, it is just we watched River of Death. Check it off. Then we go to the related movies

of which there are a ton. I just wrote down the first six. We pick one of those related films and that's the next movie we watch. And then we watch that film and that's the next episode of 3 a.m. theater. And then at the end of that episode, when that movie's over, we look at five or six related films and we find the next one. And if we ever hit a wall where there's just nothing in the five or six that we want to watch, which I do anticipate being a potential because I kind of went down, I kind of tested this out with some bad movies and just kind of see where they went. And I would run into walls in places I wouldn't expect to. And so if that happens, then maybe you can take a step back and look at the IMDB of the director or

the writer and jump to a different production that they did. That's my idea. So I watched River of death. Here are the six movies that were listed immediately after. A movie called Flesh and Blood. And by the way, these are all very similar quality to River of Death. This is like right in the same wheelhouse. Flesh and Blood. Dammed

River, which looks identical to River of Death. Like I immediately rejected it because I felt like I'd be watching the exact same film again. A movie called Black Eagle, which apparently has Jean-Claude Van Dam in it, and I'd never heard of. And I thought about

watching that one, but if you look at the related films of that one, you're going into a very hard Jean-Claude Van Damme Stephen Seagal turn, which I don't know how long I'd be stuck in, and so maybe not that one. A movie called Jungle Raidered, which looks a lot like the Indiana Jones stuff, honestly.

A movie called Ashanti, which stars Michael Kane, and is about a scientist and his wife who was a scientist going to Africa and she gets kidnapped into slavery, and it's all about how slavery exists in the... I don't know. It was it just seemed heavy and weird, so I'm not going to stay away from that.

And then Out of Control, which from the poster looked like a booby movie. But I was essentially down to Out of Control and Flesh and Blood because I had eliminated the others. Flesh and Blood is a 1985 movie starring Rutger Howard that was directed by Paul Verhoeven, and I was scared might be approaching good. Like Rutger Howard and Paul Verhoeven and Jennifer Jason Lee is in it, I believe. So I thought, that might actually be a good film. Maybe I should hold off on that. And honestly, if I'm being honest with you, I just didn't want to watch a period piece.

My wife has been down to Natting it for nonstop for like a month. And I realize this is a different period. But I just want to see some today shit right now. So I decided to go without control after I read about it. And it's a little more, it's not exactly a booby movie. It's a little bit more than that. It's actually a film about a bunch of high school students that graduate and the night of the graduation. One of them has a rich dad.

He leads them the use of his seaplane, and I think they're up in like the Puget Sound or somewhere, and they are supposedly taking the seaplane to a private resort on an island where they can, you know, have a weekend of debauchery or party or whatever. And then the plane crashes on a different uninhabited island that is being used by drug smugglers, and they have to escape the island and fight or survive the drug smugglers. And I'm hooked. So that's what I'm going to watch. I like that idea. And also, has Sherilyn Finn in it in her very first theatrical role. So I'm very excited about that. If you don't know who Sherilyn Finn is, she is Audrey Horn from Twin Peaks. There are also some other actors and actresses that you will recognize from other 80s movies. So that's going to be episode two out of control. I don't know if this means I'll watch it and then report on it next week or if it'll just be in a future episode. We'll just kind of play it by ear. But it is on my agenda to watch Out of Control as episode. 2 of 3 a.m. Theater,

the new show within the show, so all right that we have started today. Oh, you know what? We never looked at the director of River of Death and what else they did. Let me look them up real fast. It was directed by Steve Carver. I just want to see like the most famous thing

Steve Carver did. Oh, okay. Steve Carver directed Lonewolf McQuaid, which you might not have heard of if you're not very old. But it was an 80s action, early 80s action film starring Chuck Norris and somebody else. David Caradine. It was starring Chuck Norris and David Caradine. And it was a, I think he's like a Texas Ranger fighting drug dealers or something. I saw it when I was a little kid. I don't really remember anything about it other than it was kind of a big, big movie with, you know, big people in it. So pretty high profile.

and I don't really recognize a lot of other stuff that he directed. Yeah, that seems to be pretty much his claim to fame. He directed a lot of other movies that seem to be in the vein of River of Death. Maybe we'll cross paths with one of them again in the future. Right now, though, let's move on to a song of the episode. This week's song is going to be from Luscious Jackson. I'm starting to get to a point where I can't remember if I've done some of these songs before. So if I have done Luscious Jackson before I apologize, I don't think I have.

It was a kind of a funky, jazzy rock band, all-female rock band from the late 80s, I guess late 90s, probably mid to late 90s, real close with the Beastie Boys. I remember, I think one of the girls from Luscious Jackson was in the Beastie Boys when they were a punk band or before they became a hip-hop band. There's some sort of a connection there. But anyway, the song is Deep Shag. Kind of a, yeah, just a buzzy, funky little mellow song. I think you'll enjoy it.

Deep Shag by Luscious Jackson. I will see you right here next week for maybe some more movies, maybe a shallow dive into a different puddle. Who knows? I certainly don't know, but I'm excited to find out with you. All right. This is the end of the show.