The Flop House - Ep. #340 - The Final Programme, with Joel Hodgson and Matt McGinnis

Episode Date: April 10, 2021

The prophecy has been fulfilled. The Flop House got to sit down and discuss a bad movie with the godfather of "bad movie comedy" as a genre, Joel Hodgson, as well as Matt McGinnis, who works with Joel on a little show you may know as Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return -- and they would like to return AGAIN -- this time beholden to no network -- so please check out their just-announced Kickstarter for all-new episodes of MST3K! ...but also please enjoy us trying to puzzle our way through the truly puzzling "mod superspy becomes caveman-styled new messiah" movie, The Final Programme.Wikipedia entry for The Final Programme.Movies recommended in this episode:The SpongeBob Squarepants MovieSlaxxBetween the Lines

On this episode we discuss the final program. The first of many movies of the ECCU, Eternal Champion Cinematic Universe. Hey everyone, welcome to the Flop House, I'm Dan McCoy. Oh hey, I'm Stuart Wellington. Hey, I'm Elliot Kaelin in a different garage this episode, but you're not here to talk about what garage I'm in. You're here because we've got a very, very special guest on this episode today.

He's a television visionary, he's a puppetry wizard, he's a master designer of magic tricks, he's a heck of a nice guy. You may know, invest from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 or from any of a number of other things, cinematic Titanic, TV wheel, Mystery Science Theatre, other stuff. Anyway, he is my former boss and yours, Joel Hodgson.

Joel, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, Stuart, hi, Dan, I, Elliot. Thank you. I'm so happy to be on the podcast. Or I mean, the flop house podcast, that's right. You got to get the brilliant. Yeah, I wanted to brand it right off the bat. I'm so thrilled to be here.

And yeah, Elliot and I worked together long and hard on the first 20 episodes of MST3K that were on Netflix. And it was a blast. And I'm so grateful for his help on it did an awesome job. Thank you. He was a head writer man and I couldn't have picked a better guy for the job so thanks man. Thank you. So do you think it was a bonus to his resume or to have this podcast, this bad movie podcast

on it or were you like, this jerk trying to ride the bad movie train riding my co-tales, I started this. It unfolded in front of me in a really unique way. And I did think about it. It passed through my mind a little bit. But it's based on the way I felt about it, it's based on Elliot's character and my friendship with him and I kind of went, yeah, this is good. I don't feel discounted. I don't feel, yeah, it doesn't feel it's slided at all. I feel like it's some kind of embellishment in a good way. So I didn't get that feeling. I saw it as a good thing. Well, that's very sweet. I mean, this podcast I'm sure would not exist without the previous existence of Mystery science, three to five thousand my favorite show

ever. And I'll never forget the first time I met Joel where we met at an at an incognito diner in New Jersey, I believe. And it was like we were spies that were meeting up for the whole time. Was the diner incognito? Yeah, the diner was disguised as an auto repair shop. Uh-huh. Wow. It was Edison, New Jersey, the Skylarke diner. And I've met, I've had some really important meetings there. I met Harold Buckle, who is my, you know, executive producer for years on MST there. I met a lot of friends there and it's peculiar and I don't know if it's convenient if you're in New York City, but it was convenient for me to come up to Edison. I live in Pennsylvania, so it was easy for me, but you had to take the train,

and I'm sure there is a much more elegant way we could have met. I think I had to take a train to a bus and then walk for a while after that, but it was worth it. It was worth it, because I was meeting one of my heroes and it all lived up to my expectations. So Joel's here and he does not have anyone with him

that he brought or does he? Yeah, I brought a guest too. I thought it'd be fun. I wanted to even the odds a little bit. You guys have all this culture, you have all this history. And you guys like finish each other's sentences by this point. So I wanted to bring the guy I work with day in and day out

And he's a producer on msd3k and his name is Matt McGinnis. He's right behind this wall It's me Boy that wall moved really quickly. Yeah There must have been a monster at the end of the book Yeah, there must have been a monster at the end of the book. That's pleasure to be here. Thank you so much guys for joining us. I like Joel. You said, Joel, you said we finished each other sentences,

which is a polite way of saying that I interrupt the other two guys constantly. And so you guys are on here not just because Joel Matt, thanks for being with us. You're here not just to talk about this very strange movie that we're going to talk about today, but also You are promoting something which I feel like is kind of taking advantage of our friendship in a mercenary way, but okay, that's fine What's going on with mystery science theta 3000? We're about to do another Kickstarter for mystery science theater and it's telling anyone it starts next week

What does this show, I mean, they think we're doing this live, right? The people think that we're manufacturing this right in front of them. Yeah, which is pretty crazy considering people, we're recording it, people start it and stop it throughout the day because it's a long show but they still think it's live.

They think that when they pull it, that we're just reading them. They, that's like, we're in the control of what we're doing, but if we try to, it's wrong, once they press play well, have to run into a studio at the microphones and be ready for when they want to listen. Just like the people who live in your TV, yeah. Exactly.

And this is recorded, and so our Kickstarter is next week, and it's pretty fun. And it's, I think it's's Make more mst3k.com And it's on Kickstarter and we're making new shows and the really cool thing is we're gonna have our own online theater called the gizmoplex Which is kind of gonna be a gathering place to watch Show watch, you know for premier shows, it's a premiere theater. So we're going to fund new shows to make. We'll premiere them in the Gizmoplex, as well as you can host watch parties there

and watch old episodes and stuff like that too. So it's going to be kind of, I mean, a little bit, like because you guys are comedy nerds, I can say this and feel comfortable. So it's going to have a little bit more of a CTV vibe to it where the mads are working to make new content that'll be in the gizmo class. So it's a little, that's a little bit, a little bit of an accent that's a little bit different, but that's a scuttle but that's what we're going to be doing. And so the Kickstarter campaign,

so this episode will be up on April 10th, I believe, right? That should be the day, so the Kickstarter will be going on, I think, or was it, we'll just be about to start. Okay, so go there right now, maybe. Well, this is the sort of definitive promotion. Yes. Well, I like it.

I'm taking too long promoting my pitch. No, not at all. Not at all. That's great. I'm just learning about it. So this is fantastic. This is the first he's hearing about. I need to know what I'm going to be working on this year.

So I think you, Jill. By the way, this is your job for the next couple of years. So it's good that you're hearing about it now. OK. Thank you for inviting me. This was great. Bye. Matt, as he's famous for his love of Disney and Disney properties, which will come in hugely helpful as we talk about the final program from 1974 or 1973, I guess, a British science fiction fantasy film based on a novel by Michael Morecock that I only realized while starting to watch the movie, I tried to read at one point and could not make my way through. And so it was in a way, this was a movie that Dan was, we watched this movie and Dan was

texting me as he watched it, trying to make his, difficult he was having following the plot. And I want to say to him dude compared to the book this is a Connect the dots fixture like I get it now This was a movie that we were we're was on a list to look at for ms.t And and mad is the guy who does that and so Matt Matt kind of found this movie and Then he kind of said well you have to look at this movie and then we started looking at it and we he kind of said, well, you have to look at this movie. And then we started

looking at it and we were kind of amazed by it. There's things we saw that we couldn't kind of get over that were so kind of incredible and weird. And then we said, oh, this is the perfect thing for the flop house. Okay, great. And we didn't watch it until last night. Yeah. So what we learned though is when we watched it all the way through, was that when we initially watched it for MST, we had only watched the good parts. So now we found out everything else. Yeah, it was kind of like the ending,

which kind of blew our minds. And then there were just these, and the other one was, well, I'll just wait on the other things that we got enthused about. But man, we're really sorry. This is a tough one. But it was only 90 minutes, so. That's the thing.

We just finished watching Zack Snyder's Justice League. So I was like, this is trim, this is bright. This has a certain jauntiness to it. Yeah. It's brisk. Yeah, it's super brisk. I don't have to worry that Martian manhutters is just going to show up that any character might turn into Martian manhunter

at a given drop of a hat. We say it's brisk. It is short and a lot of very unusual stuff happens in it that you will never see in another movie. And yet, it still manages to have that sort of like 1970s British science fiction lag. That was, I feel like. Like, it's got a nice vibe, you know, it's done by the guy who did a lot of the Avengers TV show,

did Bob and Will Doctor Five. It's got that like feeling to it, but also you're like, oh man, how can something with so much weird stuff happening be so slow? It certainly doesn't have 90 minutes worth of story for a 90 minute movie. So it's like 90 minutes, but it's got,

I mean, but this would be a great episode of Night Gallery. You gotta admit, this. Yeah. The thing that tricked me into it was the art direction. It really evoked, it really evokes Zardas to me. Like, yes, yeah. Like I love Zardas and did you know about, I mean, what is a Bormon? Was he the director of the guy who did deliverance? Yeah. He finished with deliverance and he said, I got to do a movie where Sean Connery wears a red diaper.

Yeah, Carplage. John Bormon after deliverance, it was the biggest movie in the world. He had Carplage to make a movie and he made Zardas because that was his pristine vision and that was the movie that he could, he felt like he had to make. And it's kind of like, people are really critical as Zardas and make fun of it, but there are some really elegant as a production design. There's some amazing things going on. And when we saw, when Matt and I saw the good parts of this movie, I was feeling the same way about this.

Like, is this the same kind of thing? It's that kind of, it's the 70s. It's like the worst time in film history. And then they're trying to do fantasy science fiction and it's really hard. Yeah, well, there was this feeling it that feels like in 70 science fiction of like, well, there is this feeling it feels like in 70 science fiction of like,

well, no time is ever gonna be as weird as right now. So if we're gonna make a science fiction fantasy, let's just 70's sit up as much as possible. Uh-huh. The more 70's it gets, like the more accurate it is to this time, the more it's gonna be timelessly strange. So guys, let's talk about what happens in this movie. Oh, it did.

You see what you're gonna say? Oh, no, I just had that feeling too while watching it. I'm like, okay, well, this is clearly satirizing something, but I don't know what. Yeah. You're like, Disco culture clearly is a metaphor for being inside a giant pinball machine. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a very sound idea, I think.

And there's that kind of despair, and he's this unfeasibly smart, unfeasibly rich guy, and he, there's more drug use than like the umbrella academy in this movie, and alcohol. From wall to wall drinking and taking pills, right? Yeah, it's that time period in 70 science fiction when you can tell who the hero is by who ingests the most chemicals.

Like that's how you know that they're okay. And so this is based on a Michael Morkock novel. Now here's another mystery science theater connection. He wrote the screenplay to, I think Journey to the center of the earth, the version, you see that at the land that time forgot. One of the two movies that we did.

And the Earth's core, you mean? At the Earth's core, maybe it was at the Earth's core. And I remember very well. Thank you for correcting L.A. by the're a score, you mean? At the Earth's core, maybe it was at the Earth's core. And I remember very well. Thank you for correcting Elliot by the way. Yeah, thank you. I remember riffing that movie and seeing his name come up and being like, do we not do a joke about his name

because he's gonna be well known to our fans or do we not do a joke about his name because it's hard for me to think of a joke that is we can do on the show that's not about how his name is Morcock. I don't know. I can't. Let's just avoid it.

Let's just avoid it altogether. What is yours? No thanks. I'm full. Oh, that's good. That is good. There you go. That's very good. Where were you when we were riffing that episode, Matt? You'll think of it as a bumper sticker, right? Make mine more cock. And so this is a corner week because only one of his novels to have reached the screen. And once you've seen the movie, you're like, okay, well, and it's part of, this is part of his Jerry Cornelius series. Jerry Cornelius is his version of like a mod, like super science fiction super spy who is a cynic and who's done with the world.

And he dresses like a vampire. He dresses like, with dark painted nails, because again, the 70s, he's super cool. Yeah, and he's like, there's a little bit of entrojony there, clearly an inspiration for like, no fielding and remain climate and like the Casanova comic book. Yeah. So very much so. So he looks a little, he's got elements of Sigourney Weaver in his face to the actor. Like all of. So it's John Finch who was the star of frenzy. He looks, he looks very all over Reedy. Yeah, that guy, he was the guy from frenzy.

Yeah, this is the guy who, they, who they think is the killer in frenzy and has to, has to prove his innocence. There's a bunch of actors in this, watching this movie, it was like, I recognize that guy, I recognize that guy. There's a lot of British actors in this that we will, I will point out their, their other roles. Uh, and this is part of the, this character's part of Michael Morkhawksy, Turnal Champion series,

and we don't need to talk about that. So the movie begins, because I cannot spend another minute of my life talking about Elric of Melne Bene, I'm sorry, I can't. So we begin with a Johnny band music. There's a- What about Hawkmoon, can you talk about Hawkmoon? Hawkmoon apparently was originally supposed

to do the soundtrack for this movie because they're Hockwind. Oh, Hockwind. Oh, Hockwind. I'm sorry. Hockwind. And the director said, I don't like them. And so they didn't do it.

So Hockmoon saved this movie. Yeah. So to Johnty Band music, there's some people building a funeral pyre in a rocky wasteland that we will learn is lap land. And there's this mod cool dude Jerry Cornelius who again is kind of like if you crossed like Mick Jagger and Patrick McGuin in the prisoner and then through a little bit of Robert Smith in there too. Oliver Reed. He's got an Oliver Reed vibe too. Yeah he's very all of the Oliver Reed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As in the the young Oliver Reed chronicles, the TV show that used to be on. Oh, man. Well, that's where they practice all their CGI that they use later on. Yeah. They used in the prequels. Yeah. And

you learn where all the elements of Oliver Reed's personality come. Yeah. Like the building blocks. So any is wearing this ruffled shirt and this big fricote. Anyway, while he's watching this funeral pyre in Lapland, we have flashbacks to him talking to his old professor, Professor Hira, who is played by, who is an Indian character but is played by Hugh Griffith, Academy Award winner for Ben Hur for Best Supporting Actor. He's one of these British actors who did a lot of brownface roles.

And they're talking about the Kali Yuga, the worst of the, of the eras in human development. It's a dark age of humanity that they're living in right now, just coming to an end soon. She's the end of the world is coming. And this is the kind of thing where as in many 50s through 70s science fiction, people just know is happening through logical deduction. It's not like they point to experiments or evidence that the end of the world is coming. They're just like, we know it.

Like we can feel it. We figured it out. I have to say before we continue, I'm really happy that you're doing such a detailed synopsis because like I was not paying that close attention. So I didn't really follow. In the way through this, we kept going, I can't remember why we are supposed to care about this. Well, that's a good question.

Even I had it many times during the movie, while paying attention. Anyway, so we find that this funeral is for Jerry Cornelius' father. He was a famous scientist. Jerry Cornelius, it's just tossed off on the radio. It's mentioned as a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, which is insane, since he's not only just a young man, but a young man who lives in Therley on alcohol

and chocolate biscuits. Yeah, he loves chocolate cookies. Yeah. My, yeah, let's cross-calcook each. Yeah. My window into this movie eventually was like, oh, okay, this is like British 70s Buckaroo Bonzai. Yeah, so yeah. This is like the idea like, yeah. That's a great analogy.

Yeah, it's barista bonzai is what you would call it. Yeah, he's kind of like Bruce Wayne, but without any of the creativity or more roast uh... well let's have a let's again having just watch that's not just sleep let's have the creativity of Bruce Wayne which is yet one idea i'm a back and everything's kind of flows from that yet but this guy didn't have that idea

yet he didn't have the idea of being a bad that's true plus is a jerry corneal is which is a shame yeah Jerry Cornelius, which is a shame. Yeah. Remember when he had to train, when Batman had to train to fight Superman, that was pretty wild. It is. Yeah, man. This isn't going to be easy, but I'm going to start with some tires over. Yeah.

I'm going to start following a lot of weightlifting accounts on Insta. So funny. If it's like he's got to start, he knows he's going to fight Superman. So Alfred just becomes Burgess Meredith from Rocky and Bruce Wayne's chasing chickens and running after a bicycle. And then, and, and then Superman just hits him in the head once and kills him. It's like, oh, we went about this the wrong way. Okay. So Jerry Cornelius, also, I remember reading a Jerry Cornelius book and it took me a long time to get over to this name as Jerry Cornelius, which I assumed was like a podiatrist, somewhere, like in Great Neck. It was, it doesn't sound like a super spy to me. Anyway, a colleague of his father's, Dr. Smiles, is there, this play by Graham Crowd and

who, almost to his doctor, who, but he turned the roll down and instead it went to Tom Baker. So imagine this guy with a really long scarf that could have been him. Wow. And he's tall. So it would have been a super long scarf. It would have been incredibly long. Yeah. By the way, when we were watching this, Audrey, like who has never seen any Doctor Who, just

just said, oh, I see why people like Doctor Who now because Because they have this was their only other option. I don't understand and she's like no no no Just like she just assumed that this was like the kind of vibe and I'm like, you know what you're not wrong You know, yeah, anyway, he was also in like a in O'Lucky man He's in a lot this guy you'll you'll recognize his face if you've seen other British movies from this time Anyway, he's like he's Dr. Smiles He's like your father had some valuable microfilm. I need you to find it.

It's in your house and he goes, well, I'm blowing up my house and then get some to a helicopter and flies away. Jerry, we catch up to him drinking and driving on his way home and the radio says his dad was a biophysicist and he's a Nobel Prize winner. He sets off a flare in the woods, which is the signal for his butler

to come get him in a boat and just meet with him. And the butler says, Jerry's sister Christina has fallen under this way of their evil brother Frank, who's keeping Christina drugged and she's been sleeping for seven weeks. And Jerry says to him, you gotta get Christina out of the house.

I'm gonna blow up the house with Frank in it because nobody likes Frank. Frank is a real Nerduel. This is a family with a lot of issues. Does everybody follow him that so far? So this is when the movie takes its first, this is when I think it takes its real first inexplicable turn, which is when he goes to visit General Wrongway Lindbergh

played by Sterling Hayden, who's a kind of like hippie general. And he wants to buy massive amounts of napalm from him and we kind of revealed to us through dialogue that some horrifying third world wars going on just off camera, and the Vatican has been destroyed and all these parts of the world no longer exist. The Amsterdam is 23 miles of white ash.

That is part of a dialogue there, yeah. And to end, Lindbergh seems to be, I mean, he is a, it's certainly Hayden Smokin' a cigar, and you gotta know that it was one day, and you probably ad-libbed most of his lines is what I'm guessing because he well this is where in the movie I'm like okay we've got like we've got ourselves a Southland tail situation like this guy has no interest in like telling us

what's going on he just thinks it's really deep if we throw a lot of stuff at the wall and uh but is this after what do you feel this could have been after a strange love? This must have happened very much. Yeah, this is about this movie comes out about nine years after strange love This is during the time I wonder if this was during the time when Sterling Hayden knows earlier I think when he was in Europe on his like Self-imposed exile when he felt guilty about what he had done during the blacklisting I think that was earlier, but yeah

This is it's very much I think they were like, well, this could feel like strange love if we bring Sterling Hayden into it, and we're gonna have him play a general, but instead of playing a general who is crazy in an uptight way, we're having a general who is a little wacko in a groovy way. Like he's got like a long-go-t, right? Like I'm trying to remember what he looks like.

Yeah, really long hair, like a huge long hair wig on. Yeah. And he's, and there's, it's almost like they are they're also borrowed elements from 2000 want occasionally throughout this. Oh, very much so there's a couple of pulls off that. And it wants to be yeah, once we very cool Ricky and uh, yeah, you were watching you're like, oh man, this like this makes me think that maybe war is crazy. and you're like, oh man, this makes me think that maybe war is crazy. It's a wacky generals in charge. Maybe war is not so sane.

Hey, you know what, what's so civil about war anyway? Yeah, it's a real catch 22. I'd like to see our schools get all the money in an Air Forcehold of Big Sale to buy a fighter jet. And certainly Hayden's character is like he should be in Skadoo but in somehow he escapes Skadoo and he ended up in this movie. So. And you can do everything with a phone back then. You don't have to show anything.

Yeah, that's true. To guy with a phone barking orders and like telling you everything, right? So, yeah. And we're not going to show you a monitor with anything on it. And Jerry General has gone to him to buy napalm and a computer controlled car. None of this ever appears in the movie. So this scene is totally superfluous. There's no reason for it.

Because next stop, he's got to go to a pinball bar where there's like the bikini girls rolling around to giant hamster balls. It's a, and uh, uh, during this. I really serve in Milaco Plus. Yeah. This is the scene we saw. This is the first thing we saw and we go, this is genius. This is the reason. So. This is the first thing we saw and we go, this is genius. So we love this.

This is, this movie's too much for us. Let's bring it to the flop house. Yeah, and uh. Well, this is definitely also the scene that is the most like, oh, you can see that this guy worked on the Avengers TV show. Yes. Like with the pinball still with the bass.

Yeah, this is, this is a brief glimpse at the charm in Dr. Fib fives but nothing else really touches that i don't know about that i don't know about that i will there's some other five the moments that i like that i think there's so it's a supermod place he goes to meet up with an assassin played by uh... Ronald lacy you may know invest as to from raiders the lost arc and uh... he's like this super uptight assassin who again does not appear in the movie after the scene so the scene is totally irrelevant.

And he's very stressed about pinball and Jerry wants to buy a napalm from him. And he says, give me a couple days. Jerry is picked up by a busty lady and then turns down an offer from an elderly fortune teller to have his fortune told and a bunch of nuns are playing slot machines. That's the scene. Again, doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the movie. It's, it's a, it's this move. At this point, the movie is daring you to discover a plot

have you have you ever picked up a Thomas pension not full of the doesn't the scientist come up in the the pinball bar yeah doctor smile shows up again but then they show up again and he keeps coming up there's not it's but he keeps asking for this microfilm there's going to be the plot but it doesn't really show up yet the for this microfilm. And then we see there's gonna be the plot,

but it doesn't really show up yet. The plot doesn't show up till the next scene. There's three men in dark suits. These three doctors, one of them, Dr. Powis, is played by George Colores from Citizen Kane. So there's a little bit of movie history here as well. And they're meeting with Miss Bruner, a sort of super tough, super genius femme fatale lady.

And she does not want Jerry involved in whatever they're doing. Super tough, super genius femme fatale lady. And she does not want Jerry involved in whatever they're doing, this final program they're talking about. Oh no, no, no, she wants him involved, they don't want him involved. And she's got this guy with her name Demetri, who we don't know why he's there, but he's like a, we think he's like a bodyguard

or a chauffeur or something, but she has- He looks for Lollig Matthew McConaughey. He's a dead ringer for McConaughey. He's like a Greek McConaughey, he's like Maconopolis. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say one thing, Elliot, is this okay to interject

while you're telling it, or is that do we save these comments for later? Oh, no, keep interjecting, because the way I do it, the only way you're going to get a word in is if you interject. So this is the time. I was thinking about the pinball scene and how inspired that was. And it evokes this kind of use.

The funny thing is, is the director also claims to be the set designer, right? Like, didn't he design it? Yeah, yeah, I think so. In the credits it says, director designer. And then directed, yeah, by Robert Fouster, whatever. They use a lot of inflatables in the movie. And so this is the first time you're kind of seeing that thinking and you know it's kind of like it feels like that that is a

theme that goes throughout the movie is inflatable. So this is the first time we're seeing that. I just want to mention it. But also the nuns at the pinball machine is that kind of thing like it's depraved as you can imagine. Yeah. It's the end of the world. This is where the world is, is that nuns are playing slots and pinball.

This is dogs that live together. That's what it's just. It disgust you. Yeah. And it's like things to come when the little boys playing the drum and the world's going to war. It's just in things to come when the little boys playing the drum and they're the world's going to war. It's just this is how bad.

This is how thick it's going to get for you. You're saying that the social satire in commentary on this is pretty subtle and also measured. Yeah. It's like when the Ewoks are playing drums on the stormtrooper helmets and you're like, there's a person's head inside that man. I mean, they're kept in there. I mean, they probably took the head out first, girls, it wouldn't make as good a sound, right?

That's true. Maybe you never know. Which means you have to imagine Ewoks sticking his head in there and pulling, sticking his hand in there and pulling out a stormtrooper head and then probably making a puppet out of it or eating it, you know. I mean, he doesn't have to cut his head. He doesn't have to decapitate him.

You can probably remove the helmet without decapitating a person, right? These are Ewoks, they like to do it. They could have just found the helmet with the head in it. That's true. Does anyone know if Ewoks eat meat or are they fruit eaters? I mean, they were literally roasting Han on a spit, right?

When they first got him. But they might have thought that he was like a mango boo, like a vegetable person in the Oz novels. So it's who knows I mean the Ewoks are big big elf rank elf rank bomb fans So yeah, let's get wicked. It's like Zardos. It's like it's like Zardos all the Ewoks know about humanity is from the Wizard of Oz That's it. Okay, so guys these scientists. They're not happy about it and The they but they need Jerry to get into his house to get that microfilm. Now we know Jerry is planning to blow up his house,

so this could be trouble. But that night, Jerry Cornelius, first he, he tests out this weird little needle gun that he has, that his brother Frank also ends up having one. So I don't know if this is a family weapon, we're in the future people just shoot little needles at each other, but it's like a see-through plastic gun

That looked pretty neat, right? It's like those telephones from the 90s where you could see all the machinery inside. Oh those were so cool. It had a CO2 cartridge in it too Which was kind of a nice touch to suggest that the it's CO2 powered, you know, so that was a cool It's like it's like the plastic gun that John Maccovitch uses and in the line of fire, right? Yeah, I guess so. That one shot little needles too, right? Yeah, yeah, that's Jerry Cornelius.

Yeah, yeah. Now, okay, how different would in the line of fire be if instead of Clint Eastwood, it was Jerry Cornelius? Is this guy playing Jerry Cornelius? It would be very different, right? Well, instead of Clint Eastwood, it was Jerry Cornelius. I mean, I feel like Eastwood would have none of, no time for the shenanigans of this movie.

No. This. Because how different would the final program be if it was Clint Eastwood playing the part instead of John Finch? Again, very different. I don't think it would have been that different. It still would be pretty boring.

You think still Clint Eastwood still be wearing the ruffled shirt, dark fingernails? I mean, it'd be fun to look at like a lot of the final program is. But that's true. I mean, how much do you think Clint Eastwood could add lib a better plot into the script? True. Vera, yeah. So speaking of how kind of boring the script is, we get a discussion, again, a flashback discussion between Jerry and his professor about how there needs to be emerging of science and spirituality or chaos will erupt.

It's unclear, again, what this means and continues to be. Miss Brunner shows up. She's read Jerry's books, and that's from before Jerry lost faith in all knowledge. And she says she's a computer programmer who's trying to find the program for immortality. And to finish her work apparently she needs her dad's his dad's Microfilm they all go on foot to the house leaving behind Dimitri misbrunners devoted assistance so we think

Suddenly, uh-oh red photo negative red photo negative beobo visual effects video effects the house is glancing They would light that is supposed to cause pseudo epilepsy and Jerry somehow leads them through it by going up ahead Pressing a button on his watch coming back and getting them and the lights never never stopped so I don't know what pressing the button on his watch did do you guys have any explanation of what he's doing in this scene filling time feel it seems like they are filling time quite a bit yeah I'm pretty sure that I was reading the Wikipedia summary for this movie while the scene was going on to try and figure out what was that scene really does give you pause because it's very noisy and and in some ways it's kind of inspired

in kind of a weird alpha bill kind of way like this is where there's these blasts of lights that that that is a deterred to keep you from getting you know to keep people away right away, right? Like a moat. And so it's shooting these balls of light. And if you watch it, it will give you epilepsy or it will, will it kill you or just like, just really like screw you up? The only one way to find out. Let's get to that house. It's very good. So anyway, but I thought that was kind of a, I thought that was one of the things that was actually fulfilled in kind of a good way. Like, I felt like it was pretty seamless and it was a simple idea. It's just light and sound. Yeah.

It wasn't a big dip in quality to realize an idea like this. So go ahead. Yeah. So this, but this is just one of many traps that they're going to have to go through. They get into the house, which is... Are these traps designed by his father or are they designed by Frank? This is a question that's not answered. Jerry seems to know his way around, so I'm guessing they're designed by his father.

The Cornelius family seems like an interesting family. Yeah, I remember watching a movie about Jess with M. It feels like it's very like mod gothic, you know, yeah, there's some hint that Jerry isn't love with his sister. Dark shadows. Yeah, it's very dark shadows. Yeah, Frank seems to be possibly also the same.

There's very, it's very like if Edgar Allan Poe was like groovy. Like, hey guys, like what if the Raven, like what if the Raven, what if Edgar Allan Poe was groovy? Like what if the Raven turned what if the Raven, what if the Raven, what if the Edgrab pose, what if the Raven turned on? Yeah. Wouldn't that be cool?

Never more, Billy. I feel like it diminishes the men as quite a bit of he says, never more, baby. What is it? And then slips on some shades, and you hear like guitar lick. So, Jerry and Miss Brunner,

for some reason, leave the three doctors behind. The three doctors immediately screw something up and have to escape from some poison gas. They escaped to a chest puzzle. Now that was 5C with the gas and everything. Yeah, that was a grand looking scene too. And that ballroom really, really felt like 2001. It was really evoking that vibe of...

It did bother me though that in the sort of shot where like they're getting off the elevator and going into that room that behind them you can clearly see there is no ceiling and when they cut back there is a ceiling. And I know that's not valid information or useful in any way, but it bothered me. So I want to bring that up. I'd like to make that canon. I'd like to read that in as an aspect of the house that's meant to throw off intruders,

is that pieces of it will swivel around or change shape while you're in there. You can't put anything past house Cornelius. They do all sorts of crazy things in there. They have a Starbucks in their house, and it's like, where the customer's coming from for this Starbucks, it's in a private home. This doesn't make any sense.

They're just wacky. They're just wacky, that way. Yeah, they have one of the bedrooms, the whole's in a private home. This doesn't make any sense. They're just wacky. They're just wacky that way. Yeah, they have, like, one of the bedrooms, the whole floor is a ball pit. Can you believe that? Like, this is goofy. Come on, what are they thinking? And you know what kind of chairs they have?

Let me give you a hint. It's a bag and it's filled with beans. It's a bean bag chair. Oh, no kidding. Wow. Anyway. Disgusting. Yeah, well, that's the thing. It's a bag bag chair. Oh, no kidding. Wow. Anyway. It's disgusting. Yeah.

Well, that's a thing. It's a bag of cooked beans. It's baked beans. It's baked beans and refried beans in a bag. And the bush is baked variety? Yeah, and the bag is a trash bag. It's just a trash bag full of baked beans that they put on the floor. Now, here's a question.

Discussing this aside, do you think it would be more comfortable to sit in a bean bag chair full of refried beans than just a regular bean? I mean mean you need a lot of refried beans to fill that space because it's essentially a liquid emulsion at that point. Yeah, let's get blue sky that's exactly. Let's say we've got infinite refried beans. I don't know. I throw a little bit of rice and I'm sure you got a little bit of a stronger foundation. I know that if you just had beans and that weren't refried, because let's face it, they put a lot of stuff in refried beans right now. You're right.

Yeah. Well, another rant of Jolls against modern refried beans I've heard it before. You've got regular beans. I think they're going to function way better. If you want that bean bag chair kind of feel, I think so. You know what, the refried beans are going to make your bean bag chair behave like stretch

Armstrong all the time. That's exactly what I want. Yeah, it feels like a feature, not a bug. I want to be able to do a snow angel in my bean bag chair. Yeah, I finally feel what it feels like to be wrapped in the warm embrace of stretch Armstrong after all these years of hearing aid for it. We call it memory beans. It's just no matter, no matter how far

his arm stretches, they just can't see to get all the way around me. So finally, you could find on Ali Baba though. This is red charm strong bean bag chair. That's just like really upsetting looking and it's kind of in the, it's the size of like a barber chair. Yeah, where you could go. It's $2,500 like I could maybe get that. Yeah, it's like it wouldn't break me. It's a lot of money to spend on a chair.

But man, people would talk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I will get this stretch aim string. What they have on here. Now I want to hear LA Composite Torch song for Stretch Armstrong and the time he doesn't get to spend with it. I'll think about it. I'll think about it. I'm distracted with the fact that I just said Stretch Armstrong, which makes me think that if a like in a lane-stretch version of Stretch Armstrong, where it's just her legs kick up really high, I guess. Well, she's singing torch songs. Okay. Stretch hardthrob. That's the, so if anyone wants to mock up, I guess a lane

stretch seeing it towards strong to stretch arm strong. Let's let's do this. Okay, it all right. Yeah, that's the kickstarter for get mystery science leader. This is what we're kickstarting right now. Okay, they go through a bunch of traps. They got to solve a chest puzzle on a wall and a blade comes out, but they get through. It leads them to an inflatable maze. They're like children just just running this lost in this place and Jerry finds them safe. Yeah, it's super bad.

Yeah, it looks great and all the different colors and stuff. It's, but can I stop you, Elliot? It's to me, this feels like that moment where in, in, in, in, again, it's 2001 inspired, like that changed the movies because I think it was kind of like, we collaborate with the youth who are taking drugs and drinking while they watch these films. So this is part of their experience.

We owe this to them that, you know, that we're, you know, it doesn't really have to hold up as a real movie, it's an environment, they'll go in this black room, a theater, take their drugs in marijuana and watch these, and it'll work. Like, don't you think that was that, it seemed like that was kind of part of this.

I think very much, around the time there were a lot of experience movies, where it's more, ignorant to experience it more than to like, draw a plot narrative from it. I have to imagine the big, this is, I'd like to bring us all back to the year 1968. It's the opening weekend of 2001 Space Odyssey and Stanley Kubrick, of course, master perfectionist as he is, is inspecting all the theaters to make sure that the audience

rupt his standards. And three young people come in, blasted off their, out of their minds, off of acid. And he, and he says, uh, no, no, no, no, I don't think so. And then Arthur C. Clark is there and he goes wait let's them in let them watch the movie and Stanley was like I put a lot of work into this movie I don't want people just using it as as a color and light show and Arthur C. Clark was no no no I've got a feeling about this Stanley and then the and they go in and and they and like, whoa, this is amazing. And Stanley Kubrick is amazing.

This is visionary, yeah, you're right. And now I'll take credit for this forever. And that's the way it happened, guys. That's the story, yeah. I could you know. History's fascinating. All the way up to Tchuchin Chong movies, right? Yeah.

Well, when Stanley Kubrick's up and smoke came out, that was, yeah, it was a big thing. Yeah. I mean, the idea that, oh, we don't have to make a real movie. They certainly did use that for teaching Chong movies. That's really cool. Yeah. I mean, at, and, and Arthur C. Clark's the Corsican brothers. Okay. No, this is what we, this is why we do this, Joel. Well, this is, this is not really, I hate to pull back the curtain too much. This is not really for people who want to know what happens in the final program. But speaking of what happens in the final, Jerry finds the button. What happens in the final program? I'm just a funny.

Jerry finds the butler who is dying. The butler has failed to get Catherine out. Frank found out about it, poisoned the butler. Jerry finds Catherine asleep. There's slash marks on her arms. There's drugs all over the room. It's a tear. It's not.

It's a bad scene as Jerry Cornelius might say. Frank bangs on the door. And Jerry has the... There are a couple lines Jerry Cornelius has in this movie where he swears really casually, in a way I didn't expect. And he goes, Frank goes, who's in there? I'll kill you. And Jerry goes, you know it's me, Frank,

and you're shitting yourself. And it's such a, like, a toast of London-type line, like... Yeah. And Jerry and Frank have a needle gun fight as Frank talks about how great drugs are basically Frank shoots Jerry. And Jerry thinks he's shooting at Frank, but he shoots Christina. Oh no, her fate. I'm not sure whether she dies or not. The whole, the whole Christina plot kind of disappears from this point. It's just a motivation for Jerry to go after Frank, but Bruno catches up to Frank beats him up And she says we'll give you drugs if you get us the microfilm

She forces him to open up their dad safe, but Frank traps them behind some glass because there's so many traps in this house It's a regular Franco trap house and they just and Frank escapes with the micro film and That's when Bump bump bump bump now. It's a hunt now. It's the hunt for it's the sir start trek three the search for Frank and they just, and Frank escapes with the microfilm. And that's when, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Now it's a hunt, now it's the hunt for, it's the start track three, the search for Frank. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Jerry wakes up in a sort of minimalist nursing home

where there's only one bed in the middle of a huge empty room. This is some of the very two thousand stuff. You didn't mention who the actor who plays Frank is and you like the sense of credit for everyone else. I have no fucking idea. I just thought you would tell me because Frank is played by Derrick O'Connor who I know him best at you. I know him best as Bob Hoskins partner in Brazil, but sure you would know him best at you.

Oh my god, you're right. Yeah, you would know him best as Ralph in Hawk the Slayer. Oh, shit. Oh, he's also a deep rising. Yeah, he's in time bandits. Atherton. Yeah, wait, so he's in he's in lots of stuff. He's another one of these actors were like, I saw his face and I was like, I know him

from stuff. And like he's like the one in this movie. Yeah, yeah, he's in, let's see, what other stuff is he in that you might know. Of course, yeah, he's in the movie movie the first movie of Daredevil first movie There's only one why am I saying first? You probably know in the days Dan you know him best of course as Dean read from how to make an American quilt and You know, he's in he's in lots of stuff, but he's this is his Second appearance in a flop house film

Anyway, that's a great quality. And I did recognize them. And they kind of cast them as this kind of character-y type character. He's pretty, he comes off as like kind of a pretty, he's like, if Richard Keel was shorter, like I feel like. And he's got a real bad guy quality about him. He looks like a guy who's strung out on drugs

in the future of the 1970s. So Jerry Cornelis wakes up in this nursing home. They tell him he had an accident at a carnival. And he has another flashback about his professor that doesn't really matter. Miss Brunner picks up Jerry Cornelius and takes him to eat at a restaurant that's ringside at a kind of milk slash mud wrestling pit.

This is more kind of like wacky. The future is decadent type stuff. And there's a very long scene where Jerry is bantering with a waitress played by Sandra Dickinson, who was trillion in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV show. And she's got kind of like a Harley Quinn type voice. And cigarette girl box of like water or wine or?

Well, yeah, it's like the equivalent of wine but it's like here's some like a toxic waste from the champagne region of France or whatever like like it's a joke it's a it's a hilarious counterculture jokes yeah the music that they use was what is that really tough umpa kind of music that's to evoke like this is funny though we're not really willing to put the time in to make this funny. Like actors the actors are gonna make you believe what's going on is interesting and when they look over their shoulders and they'll laugh at it this was where I began to hate this movie. The end of the go,

why are you doing this? Because it's so lazy, it's that again. It's like putting the Wallace and Gromit theme over 1984. It's not doing it any favors. It doesn't work. Yeah, and it's that thing too, where you run into it. Like anytime they do a movie about stand up,

they always just, there's very few of them that actually use real stand up that's funny. And they indicate it's funny because they have the audience laugh at it. So that was really discouraging, but that music plays throughout the scene. It's a really long scene, and it's supposed to be funny

because they're ordering toxic waste to drink like wine. Yeah, and I also feel like I was like watching it being like, okay, like, this is like the most basic thought in the world. And I've said it many times in the flop, I was like, oh, in a better movie that might have worked. Yeah. If you just like tossed away that line, like if it was just like a moment in a comedy,

everything feels very led and when they try and do comedy. If it was a villain in Robocop 5, order and toxic questions, I'd be like, oh cool, that makes sense. Sure, sure. It is a poor step, cousin to the restaurant scene in Brazil where the woman keeps offering him like it's Jewish because pepper and then explodes, you know, because there's going

to terrorist attacks. Now, do you think they shot this scene in a, it's in like a club with a milk mud wrestling ring? Now, I know that Adam Sandler likes to shoot his movies wherever he wants to go on vacation. Do you think that they were just like, we're already already going here we might as well shoot a fucking scene here let's see if people sign the release and then we'll just shoot it it's possible i mean we'll have to look into how many milk mud wrestling clubs are worried London at the time and probably a lot and you know that Chris Claremont was right there

watching at the whole time uh-oh that's of the people who know about Chris Claremont, X-Men, right? X-Men legends, sexual peccadillas. True nasty boy. Anyway, so misbrunners there, they both want to find Frank, him for revenge, her for the microfilm, and they kind of come to an agreement that they're going to do this. They go to Jerry Cornelius' apartment, it is a mess.

She calls a computer for information. Well, he goes and takes a ton of... His freezer is just overflowing with biscuits, what we would call cookies, and what in England, they call biscuits. And he's... There's liquor bottles everywhere. He has a coffee vending machine in his apartment, because again, these are the Corneliuses. They like... They're just like the Starbucks in their house. They love to be able... They had loved it to pay money for coffee. Somehow, somehow this is the most average place in the whole movie. Like it's got its quirks, but like there's still something kind of real and boring about it.

Yeah, well he still has like a couch, you know, he has furniture. It's filled with bottles too. Isn't the whole idea that every counter is lined with empty booze bottles in the same thing? Yeah. Yeah. with empty booze bottles in the same? Yes, yeah. That, because he lives in a sort of a Dr. Gonzo, Raul Duke, constant haze of chemicals, but mostly liquor.

And he quotes the Spanish acquisition sketch, because again, it's a comedy, because they have a joke from a funny thing in it. And Jerry hits on Miss Brunner's assistant and is lightly rebuffed and as in Norwegian would crawls off to sleep in the bath. He's brushing his teeth very angrily. With his foot in the sink. Yeah, and he looks very uncomfortable posture.

He sees in the mirror reflection that the assistant is now playing piano naked and he watches us for a little bit and then again crawls off to sleep in the bath and He the we see the assistant at first it seems like is about to have sex with Miss Brunner But as it becomes clearer later on she is going through some sort of process of consuming and absorbing the assistant into her own body Which is represented by her holding her fist in the air well coral music plays kind of like divine coral music This is one of those things where I it was just an inkling I had that I had to look up the description later to find out if that was actually happening. Yes, Joel Hodgson, you had a question.

I mean, I'm just kind of trying to reiterate and with my hand what happened in the movie because there is this kind of effect that happens where it's status, it's yeah, it shutters. And I didn't catch that in the least. Like that's what's amazing. I didn't get that, but that that actually makes sense somehow. So you're saying, she somehow got a way to absorb people. And we know that that comes later. But so you're saying she's starting that process. Yes. I think so.

I mean, I was a little confused because normally when I make love to somebody, my body shudders and that weird stuff, stuff things. And Angelic music plays, right? Yeah, I thought that was like, I thought that was like just a stylistic showing of like the ecstasy of sex or sex to see, if you will. But yeah, I did not get that at all. That's what I thought was the joke at first was that it was, yet it was a joke about how good this erotic moment is.

And because they couldn't, Leonard Cohen's, how all of you, I assume, was not, maybe hadn't been written yet, so they couldn't play that. So they went, it was inspired by the scene. Yeah, that's what it was. He was, Leonard Cohen saw this movie and he misunderstood what was going on in the scene. So he went and wrote that song and he said, someday two superheroes are going to do it in

a big metal owl to this song. So the in the next morning, the assistant is gone. We now know that she's been eaten, but it's unclear at the time. They go to a train station because Miss Bronner's computer said that Frank would be there. And he is. It takes a long time for this to happen. He's picked up by Dr. Baxter, who is a former colleague but now enemy of Jerichoinillus' late father.

And Dr. Baxter is played by Patrick McGee, who is a big, big actor and a lot of stuff. But you might remember him best as the author in Clock of Orange, who gets beaten up by Alex and the droogs. So here he's a bad guy though, and that one he was a victim. They drive off and they follow him. Frank talks to Baxter for a little bit. Frank wants to sell the microphone, but he doesn't know what's on it. And Frank thinks he killed Jerry Cornelius, but Baxter is like, oh, I just saw him.

I think he's still alive. I think I just saw him the other day, or. Q.Dartgun fight and foot chase. While Jerry and Frank are running through a junkyard, which I guess represents modern society or something, just some jazz music. Miss Brunner kind of seduces Dr. Baxter and then absorbs him in the exact same way, fist-upraised choral music playing. There was jazz music? A jazz music? A jazz music during the chase, I believe. I remember it correctly.

I only remember the input music. Maybe it was, maybe I was so, maybe my mind had blocked out the marching band music at that point and was just playing other things I might enjoy more. You sounded so disturbed, too. Like I missed jazz. I just shocked.

That's why around the mystery center, the other guest said he was known as jazz McGinnis because he just always had to tell us about jazz. He'd be like he'd be like this kind you know who also riffs. Coltrane and he like yeah we get it. We get it. Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh doesn't have a single establishing shot showing you where you are or what yeah where in context you are there's there's that one scene where he's walking in a city and there is a there is kind of a process shot of a bunch of cars stacked up

and that's the only time they do any kind of special effects, photography to indicate a sense of place. And I think if they would have used that more, this would have been a better movie. I think that's the sort of an clear movie. And that scene, that shot, it wasn't until I read the Wikipedia entry that I realized that was a shot of Trafalgar Square. And it was supposed to be showing that it's full of detritus.

But yeah, that's the only shot where I was like, it's like, oh, well, this is, yeah, this is an establishing shot, and I still don't know where it is or what's going on. I just thought it was like the first step into like the Wally universe where, like, we can just put trash everywhere. Oh, yeah. Well, this is Wally is the sequel to the final program. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, well, and there's the, when he's chase, when Jerry's chasing Frank, he chased him into a large building, and we get like a helicopter shot,

right, where the camera like you see them run in and then you can see through the courtyard, Frank like run from one door to another. That actually is a great shot. That's actually cool, yeah. So Jerry shoots Frank, killing him, the Frank plot line is now over. We're off onto the microfilm plot line, the final program of the original plot of title. Brewerer takes the microfilm and Jerry just starts drinking. His whole family is gone and so rightfully he's about to get drunk and then Miss Brewerer is like, and he talks to Miss Brewerer and he seems to know that she eats people. It just comes up casually in conversation. I was like, oh, okay, so that's,

you knew that was happening. You didn't try to stop it or anything like that. You just felt that was, all right, okay. And she says, come to Lapland. Come with me to see dual, the most complex computer in the world. And he's like, I've seen it. Steven Spielberg, the truck's chasing a guy.

Like I understand. I don't need to see it again. I saw it. But instead they're gonna go to Lapland, wherever Lapland is in relation to them, it is a mere hot air balloon ride away because they step into a waiting hot air balloon and just head over there.

They toss them up, it's out. And they hit. But it's one of these, it's like they're trying to, there was something about, early scene when he gets into a helicopter and just flies off, there was something a little surprising of like what and it's like they're trying to pick up on the fumes of that and they're like how do we heighten from helicopter hot

air balloon that'll seem whimsical there's a lot of misplaced whimsy or mimsy in this and I wish it was the last mimsy to be honest so anyway hell yeah don't do that so I was just I wanted to be Jane Shallot for a moment. Oh, that works. You just tell them not to do it. When Matt tells me, when Matt tells me it works for a couple minutes, they show up at a kind

of pod in Lapland where the three scientists are and they're like, what is Jerry doing here? We don't want him here. Our experiment is at a crucial moment. And there's so much, this whole scene, this whole sequence is full of so much science fiction, techno, Mubo jumbo, gov, that I love so much, because it's like, there's just so much made up science language. But the Jerry goes off and finds there's a vintage submarine at an underground dock and

talks about how he used to have a submarine too, and it turns out this is a secret Nazi lab that was left over after World War II. And they're continuing, I guess, the experiment that was started there, and Jerry's like, oh, the world's about to end soon. And they shown that Dmitry, the assistant that was left in the car earlier, is living in a kind of glass bedroom.

Well, remember too, earlier, he does say in the lemon grove or whatever it was, there's the only line I remember is when he says, He does say in the lemon grove or whatever it was. There's the only line I remember is when he says, the world is ending, I'm gonna go watch it on television. Which also seemed like another one of those, just like, oh, the future so dismal, because of television and stuff.

And this is, there's a line later where someone says something about like the third world war or something like that and he's like, it's already going on, just people, something like that, and he's like, it's already going on, just people get distracted by the commercials, and it's like, that's almost a satirical idea, but it's not really, like it's... You're getting there.

Yeah. Yeah, it's baby steps, baby steps, evolutionary steps, as we'll see later in the movie. Anyway, they showed Jerry Duel, which is a kind of hilariously small computer. It's like the size of a paper shredder, which would be accurate for now. Like you don't need, but back then, it's a very un hilariously small computer. It's like the size of a paper shredder, which would be accurate for now. Like you don't need, but back then,

it's a very unimpressive looking computer. With a fucking title plate on it that says, most advanced computer in the world do not touch. Yeah. The only thing I can compare that to is when I was recently an audience member on Jeopardy, and they had a sweet in the Wheel of Fortune set for a while. He brings this up every episode, guys.

And the Wheel of Fortune was under a thick layer of plastic sheeting and there was a sign that said, do not touch wheel under any circumstances. That's happened so many times. So many times. And I just wondered what people's excuses were for why they had to touch the wheel at that moment. I think too that in this in the laboratory, they really step up their game as far as our direction goes. And this is when this is again where Madden and I was watch, this is when we happened to watch

it the first time and said, wow, I'm really enthused about this movie because Zardas did this really elegantly as well, where there's kind of a simple society. And then there's these sci-fi elements that kind of are in pockets throughout the kind of pastoral farm community. And this had the same kind of vibe where you hit this pocket. And I thought it was pretty nice looking throughout the rest of the movie. It was kind of like a peak.

Yeah, I think so too. But now what I like also is that it's kind of got a mod style to it, but the Secret Lab looks like something that people threw together in a pre-existing room, which I really liked, as opposed to every X-Men villain has a secret lab that looks like it was built by a crew of hundreds. And I'm just like, was Mr. Sinister really like using an electric screwdriver, like installing all these panels to cover up all the wiring?

Like, there's no way that Apocalypse hired a contractor to do this. So was he really like lying down underneath the counter, like wiring up all of his big computers and stuff? But this looks like a place. I can't believe Comic Books. Time up the cables so he doesn't trip on them or they don't get confused. He stays a ball over my eyes.

Yeah, they know that Apocalypse is like, oh, I need more zip ties to get these cables into bundles. And he goes to the store and he doesn't have a credit card or like, or some, I guess, maybe he needs cash to pay for this. So like, is he going in like, pawning ancient Egyptian artifacts or something like that? Like, what is a pocket? I have to assume. Yeah.

Good point. Anyway, and then suddenly he's got to prove the provenance of it. So the latter he's out there busking hustling to get that bag. Again, a movie I would rather see. Yeah, you've got this immortal mutant apocalypse who has wires that for some reason go from his elbows to his torso and a big belt buckle that says, Hey, and he's just playing a violin on a subway platform to get enough money to pay for these zip ties for his cable bundles. Anyway, they take him, so, Miss Brunner writes goodbye on the wall of Demetri's room

and it fills with gas and they take Jerry to my favorite room in the whole place, which is the brain room. It's just fake brains in fish tanks with liquid and wires going into them and they're like, oh yeah, we're harnessing all the knowledge of these brilliant brains so we can feed all human knowledge into this computer

and then feed it back into the head of the perfect immortal person, which seems like an extra step that maybe they don't need, but I don't know. And they're like, we can't seem to crack feeding all the knowledge into a human brain. So here's a solution to human brains. To a brain. And it's like, that wasn't your first solution. Like I understand, you've already got a bunch of brains. That's literally how life works is that human knowledge is distributed throughout multiple

brains. So the idea that, wait, I got it. Two brains. There's a real Elon Musk quality of it where it's like, I'm a genius. You know how people should travel in cities, tunnels. How come nobody of your thought of this brilliant idea before? It's this and so good I'm rediscovering human civilization, one invention at a time. So they explain to Jerry Cornelius in more interesting words than this that his dad built a kind of prism chamber.

He built it in Lapland because Lapland gets six weeks of uninterrupted sunlight. And the non-setting sun puts all this solar radiation that's going to be stored up in this prison. We're going to put two people in there at just the right moment. Then we're going to combine them into a double-brained, self-regenerating, immortal, superperson. I'm going to mention they throw the word hemaphrodite around here. It's kind of a problematic word for them to be using here. It's not really necessary for what they're talking about. They were going to merge misbrunner and demitry, but now misbrunner wants to use Jerry.

And who wouldn't? Why wouldn't you want to be one half of an immortal super being that is an alcoholic addicted to chocolate biscuits who cannot get through a single day without pissing off everybody around him and it is kind of like mopey all the time. He didn't think about it very much either when she asked him, he just kind of went, okay. Yeah.

It is worth noting too, to really reiterate the fact that he's an alcoholic He has like a small kind of wet bar in the dashboard of his car So and he just pops pills into as well when he's drinking so yes very much like Not even like a textbook alcoholic like kind of like a comic strip Yeah, like it like Andy Cap is like, bro, you need to cool out for a little bit. Go home, dear.

Dude, have some hot fries. Go home, sleep it off. Have 40 years of a comic strip that's not funny and get back to it. That is, there is, like, I don't know enough about the origins of Andy Cap, but it's like, I assume it's built off of that, like, some, the love of the dad from Mr. Doolittle from my Fair Lady, where it was like, English drunks, lower class English drunks are hilarious. Like, this is the new part of culture, the same way that there was like that hillbilly

culture craze in America for a while. It's like the lock horns too for British people, right? Like, Andy Kappen is why I can't get along. Yeah, except for there's more implication than Andy Kappen's perhaps violent. I don't know. Well, with the lock horns, I always assumed that that is a message that is being sent by the United States government secretly to aliens or demons that have threatened the earth. And it's that they they have said, you need to send us messages in the lock horns or else we'll destroy your planet.

And it's like every day we got to have another lock horns ready for them. It's the only thing that it's the only thing that tells them the message of what's going on. Like it wouldn't surprise me if the if the news tomorrow was like was like oh it turns out KGB agents were sending messages to the lock-orns for for 50 years to their American sleeper agents. Kind of a new appreciation for the lock-orns. Wow. No it's no pogo right. Come on. I mean it is no pote don't don't don't slam pogo around.

It's not even a beetle Bailey. Now here's the thing about beetle Bailey. So go on. So beetle Bailey. Now, here's the thing about beetle Bailey. So how I go on. So beetle Bailey. A beetle Bailey. So beetle Bailey is the brother of high, from lowest, from high and lowest, right? Like that's how, that's what it comes up. So is it, I'm trying to come up with some,

well I guess the analogy would be that like beetle Bailey is to high and lowest as perfect strangers is to family matters. Does that mean anything to anybody? Is that should that be on the SATs? I mean, it means something. I don't know why this is that like, it means it's passed away, it's been out of,

sculpted out of mashed potatoes and say, this means something. Because I have this yarn board of spin-offs that I wanted to show you, that proves that high and lowest and family matters take place in the same universe. Okay, so guys, Demetri, he escapes. He attacks Jerry, they fight.

There's a couple funny lines that Jerry has here that again. He is a hero who is very okay with openly talking about how he is bad at fighting. And it is just, Gressamani has a line that goes, help, Miss Brunner, I'm losing, which I think is, which to me was a funny line. They're kind of like triner, I'm losing, which I think is, which to me was a funny line. There's a couple of wise cracks. Tripping, falling over things,

the pieces of the set that are there, all fall over very easily. Like, if there's a can in that room, it's not full of anything. Yeah. Was it that fight scene or was it one earlier where there was that exchange with like, oh, I'll staple your balls to the inside of your thighs.

I don't have any everybody has thighs yeah that's really there's a couple there's a couple of wisecracks this this fight street writer runs me the fight mister science theater connection in the episode future war which seems to take place in an empty cardboard box that's like they need things for them to bump into but don't want to fill those things they think

uh... miss brunner shoots to meet tree but they've got a hurry to pull off this experiment. They put Jerry in the chamber, he's kind of out of it. Ms. Brenner comes in and kind of see through 90 and the scientist's bicker a lot. And Jerry and Brenner have kind of like, it's not quite wrestling and it's not quite sex and it's not quite a fight. They just kind of roll over each other

over and over again. They have a tumble. They have a tumble, yeah, they're just tumble. Yeah. And the screen gets all psychedelic and the brains are not happy about it. The brains in the, in the jars and the scientists are like, Oh, we're in pain and they're falling down and I'm not sure why. And when the lab is a mess when it's all done and you see that one of the scientists

his shirt is just gone. He's not wearing any else. Notice that. Okay. I was like, what's what scenario was going on? Where either his reaction was that he ripped his shirt off or somehow the solar radiation energy just tore his shirt off, but everyone else's shirts are fine. Well, also like all the scientists like after the end of this are like all but one are like dead on the floor, but you don't actually see them injured per se. They're just in pools of blood. Yeah.

So you're not really sure what happens to blood almost too much blood for a person now yeah now you have just ushered in a new age of humanity all the scientists who dead there's blood everywhere is this a circumstance when I can touch the wheel of fortune I gotta I gotta refer I gotta refer you to the sign it says under no Circumstances circumstances, I apologize. I know that and you'd have more luck touching the actual Wheel of Fortune that will move us out of Kali Yuga and into the next age of spiritual and even development,

then touching that one. And I guess you're gonna have to talk to, it's not a, it's not a mere griffin production, I don't think. I don't remember who makes Wheel of Fortune, but you're gonna have to talk to them, but under no circumstances, it says. The door opens, we get a double vision point of view shot. That's right. It's another thing, like Westworld where you see the point of view of a superior being and it looks worse than normal

human vision. It's weird. It's walking through the lab. It finds Dimitri and Dimitri says, are you the Messiah and Jerry, you hear Jerry's voice say, I don't know, let's just say it's the end of an age. And then we see Jerry, and he's very clearly not the Messiah. He is the caveman from altered states, but kind of like hunched over and with too much makeup on. And he goes, see you around, sweetheart,

in a Humphrey Bogart voice. And then just kind of, he, and- We have to stop right here. Okay. Okay. So that's my gesture. This is the thing that this was the movie for sure. Matt and I saw. Okay.

And it was a bit troubling. And it was one of those things. I mean, I think that there's confusion in this movie, but there were a few moments of windows of like really, and a really exciting idea But that was so fucking weird Says that and then later later Matt and I kept like trying to remember exactly what he said like Did he say 23 Skadooh? 23 Skadoo. Hey, I got a snored in the back of my truck.

Like, we couldn't remember it was like, here's looking at you kids, but it could have been anything, right? Well, it was more so that it was a Humphrey Bogart impression. Like, we were so thrown off by that that we couldn't remember the actual line. And we just kept thinking to ourselves, like, why was it a Humphrey Bogart impression? Well, that's one of the things that dates this movie so much is even more than like his clothes is that that was the research that was the time of the Humphrey Boat research.

And so when like Humphrey Boat stuff was really cool for young people because he was considered the most counterculture of the classic Hollywood stars. So like- You gotta bring that back. That's why like, like, um, play it again Sam. Like stuff like that exists was because it was like, oh yeah, Bogart, like, so, but it's, it dates it more than anything that at that moment, this guy who's supposed to be like a counter culture figure is like, free Bogart impression,

that'll show I'm cool and like, Jokey, you know, and the kids will get it. It is also so strange, this creature that he turns it to because, you know, Jerry is supposed to be this like, ultra cool, you know, drugs and parting, like, but also brilliant guy. Miss Brewerner is this like, you know, seductress who is also like a praying mantis, like eats those she mates with. And you kind of expect, once they're merged at the end

into this super being, that it's gonna be this kind of like beautiful and drudgenous like, till the sweetened David Bowie, like everyone struck by how gorgeous. Yeah, I was expecting like the things at the end of dark crystal. Oh, okay. Yeah, but instead it's it's like oh here's a caveman who talks like It's the ultimate apex of human evolution is a caveman who talks like Humphrey Bogart and walks with a sort of like John T kind of like shuffle

Yeah, and and has bad vision needs glasses and they put a lot of work into that because it wasn't really seamless makeup. Even his body was misshapen and there were a lot of prosthetics all over his body and that was really well done. And the idea that, yeah, like you said, Elliot, it's like the accumulation of all human knowledge. The thing it must do is let you know that it's seen an old Humphrey Bogart.

It's so wrong and at the same time it was chilling. It was chilling to me and I don't know exactly why. I think, so this is an example much like the movie cats of a perfect execution of a flawed concept. I think the director watched this and was like, this is exactly what I am going for. There is no compromises. He's a kind of caveman. He knows Humphrey Bogart. He's going to wander out and say it's a very tasty world.

We're going to have more psychedelic lights and a sort of psychedelic version of a loony tunes and ring around the screen and He was Bugs Bunny. That's what was so weird. Yeah, is that he's almost He's almost being as flip as Bugs Bunny. It's like I thought I took a left that albacarkey I thought I took a left that albacarkey. You know what's he actually like? The Supreme being is talking like Bugs Bunny now. Yeah. Yeah, and he just kind of saunters into oblivion.

And he's just walking on water, right? He's walking on water and it's this kind of murky, it's kind of this murky world that's ahead of you that isn't at all, we're not inside the building anymore. It's like a primordial swamp that he's walking out into, so that doesn't track either. No. Yeah. I mean, never have I wanted to be in a, like a festival critic screening of a movie, as I would have wanted to be in a movie theater in 1973 hearing the reaction in the end.

I have to say too when I first watched this, like generally I look at the movie like by myself and decide if it's something I want to have Joel take a look at too. And like, so you mentioned like her see through 90 and there's kind of like a lot of nudity in the third act And I remember telling Joel like I feel this really weird movie But I don't think it's right for the show like it has a fair amount of nudity in it And it was like oh well how much like making me maybe we can cut around it I was like well in the end shot. It's just like a butt like for the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah I don't think we can cut around it like a butt, like for the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't think we can cut around it. So it's a, yeah, I think that it was, this is when it first started, I was like, oh yeah, I had a similar thing, and I was like, I could see why they would do this as a mystery science theater movie. And then yeah, it was, throughout it, it was a little too grown up.

And then yeah, it's just a caveman's butt walking away. I have to admit that the, I guess when we get to Final Judgement's I'll elaborate on this, but like when they, all the stuff at that secret lab is really playing directly to my tastes. And that, but then as soon as he comes out and he is a Humphrey Boo-Gart spouting caveman, I was like, You'd say Humphrey Boo-Gart as I'm like a ghost.

Yeah, as a, I talk, we talk a lot about ghosts in my family and also boogers. So there's a side in me. Humphrey Boo- is I mean now he is Humphrey Boo guard, right? You know, let's be honest. He's legally you have to you have to refer to him that way. Yeah, all the speed of spades Sam. Now I just while we were while we were talking I was looking up the IMDB trivia about this movie. Apparently Timothy Dalton was originally supposed to play the Jerry Cornelius role. And they were hoping that Vanessa Redgrave would play Miss Brunner.

I wonder if they'd be able to pull it off. Also, this is trivia. According to Michael Morcock, who visited the set, George Chloris was very baffled by the script, which seems like not should be trivia, should be just taken for granted, that whoever was in the movie was daffled by it. Also audiences were.

But do you think that having an actual James Bond, not yet, but eventual, and a Red Grave would have carried this movie or not? I think it would have stepped up the intensity of both of those characters. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, they both seemed kind of like, oh, these are people that I understand why I didn't quite know who they were. Like they're fine, but.

Yeah, it is interesting for a movie to not give us a single likable character. Okay, so that's kind of audacious. So now fantasy casting. Okay, but what if it was Paul Rubens and Cindy Lopper? Do you think they would have been able to carry me up? Okay, I do. Okay, here's another one. Here's another one. This is interesting pairing. Paulie Schorren Agnesmorehead. Do you think they'd be able to pull it off? That's actually pretty cool. Yeah, I'd be curious. This felt this movie felt to me like it was rocky horror without the music or fun. You know what I mean? It was like a real life and it had that kind of cavalier 60s vibe like everybody's you know sexual sexual norms are out the window now. Let's just have fun

with it and it kind of felt like that as well. That kind of alt sci-fi fantasy vibe is throughout this movie as well. But what I thought was so hard was they never had a moment where Jerry Cornelius was not just depraved and not just didn't care about anything. So how do you have a movie with that? Or is this for final, our final judge? Well, you know what, let's go into it. Yeah. I just found that really hard.

Like, when does he stop being flipped? Like every fight he's in, he's joking. Like, it doesn't matter if I'm alive or dead. It doesn't matter if the world's alive or dead. Like that kind of, it almost can't, you almost can't relate to it as a normal person and go why should I care? You don't, you're rich and you don't care.

So what are we supposed to do with that? Yeah, he's like not cool enough to be a cool cynic. And he's not like, or to be a romantic cynic. And he's not, it's not like the arc of the movie is to show him that life is worth living as long as you have the chance to become in a mortal, to brained, hungry, bogart, quoting caveman. Yeah. Like, although he does say, he does, actually, you know what?

He does say, he walks out and he says, he says, it's a very tasty world. Like, maybe that is, that's his arc, is that like, he realizes this is what I need. I needed to be covered with hair. I needed to have knowledge of all Humphrey Bogart. Maybe he's never seen a Humphrey Bogart movie. And he's never seen anything he really connects with. And all human knowledge included, like,

in a lonely place and stuff like that. And now he's like, I get it. There are people out there like me. Not like me, I have two brains and I'm a caveman. But like me, and so finally, I can live in this world where is there before there was no one like me a Nobel Prize winning alcoholic scientist who's in love with his sister possibly and has a CO2 needle gun. All right all right all right Ali shut up we gotta get the we gotta get our special guest side of here so let's do our final judgments fast, which is where we say if it's a good bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or movie we kind of like, you know, good, bad, you know, movie, you know, you know,

you have fun watching because it's so bad, you know, you know, but like, I don't think that these categories work, unfortunately. You know, Joel and Matt, you should know that almost every episode, the categories don't match up really well to what we're doing. Yeah, I wanna say that like my experience of this is like, I'm mildly glad I saw it, but the pleasures of this movie for me are all kind of like, like pop culture nerd intellectual where I'm like, okay, let me try and parse where this fits into like culture, like okay, that it's got this counterculture thing,

and it's mod English, but it also fits into this particular counterculture trend within science fiction writing, and it's got that vibe of the Avengers or even hammer films or whatever. So like trying to place it and trying to understand the currents of culture that put this nonsense in front of my brain is kind of where I found the fun in it. But what do you guys think? I agree.

I think that it's an artifact. It's this kind of like confection. I'd never heard, I've never heard of this movie ever or seen an image from it. And, and it was that thing where again, because when Matt and I kind of jump through it, you know, it's kind of like, well, watch it. to jump through it. You know, it's kind of like, well, watch it. And we'll go, let's go down stream. And we'll go 10 minutes down and watch some more. And each time we were watching it, there was something kind of interesting going on. And, and then we go, oh, this is great. And we didn't know what the rules were for the flop house. And we were going, can we watch the movie? Should we watch the movie? And so we didn't watch it. We thought maybe we were going to watch it all together. So we didn't watch the whole thing.

And then last night we watched a whole thing. So it was kind of like that. But I feel the same way and it's kind of like, like Dan was saying, it's kind of like this. It's fun to see the connection that how this movie seems, other movies together that were trendy, and that they were kind of borrowing things from. So it's almost like a composite drawing of a bunch of other movies with a little, with a narrative that's strung together that isn't working because nobody gets excited about rich people that are bored. Yeah, it just can't work. So that was what I guess that's my take on it. Unless you're Tennessee Williams. Yeah, that's true. And you're writing about him. Yeah.

I mean, I guess the only thing I can say is that out of all the movies I've seen, this was one of them. Yeah. I'm I love that reaction from the movie. Is it? Yeah, yeah, I think it is. You're voting that. I didn't even realize. Out of all the movies. What was the movie? What did you want to say?

It's a movie. It's a movie. It's a movie. This is one of them or out of the movie. All the movies you'll see this year. This is one of them. I think that's. Oh, that's like the tagline for the movie, right?

Yes. Oh, okay. We'll follow up with you. Come on. Oh, I'm tired. Come on. We'll come back here. Oh, I'm tired. Come on, go ahead. Thank you, something original.

Stewart, what did you want to say? I mean, I have a limited amount of patience for like 70 surreal weirdo stuff. I mean, I like the visitor and the visitor is pretty cool and that's, you know, weird, but. The visitor's great. Uh, yeah, I mean, this just didn't have, I, it felt like, altern alternately like it was trying too hard

and it wasn't trying to let me like, or let me like any of the characters at all. So yeah, I'm not a fan of the final program. I'm glad it's the last one, you know what I mean? Yeah. Ellie and I swear if you do another Mimsy joke. I learned my lesson. I'm not doing any more do another Mimsy joke. I learned my lesson. I'm not doing any more jokes about Mimsy's.

So I'm gonna, I feel like my reaction to this is a little different than you guys. This is a movie that I didn't, that I actually kind of liked a little bit. It is slow, it makes no sense. And you're right, the characters give you nothing to latch onto and the story is not that interesting, but I'm a real sucker for 70 science fiction stuff and 70s kind of weirdness stuff and Like I said that any I'm a fan of almost any movie where you go to a hidden scientific base And it looks like it was thrown together with duct tape and zip ties

And they just give you a bunch of scientific mumbo jumbo about the new in the next stage of humanity And then there's a lot of weirdness that happens. I went, when he gets, when he comes out as a caveman, that was a disappointment to me. That was not, that was not a pleasant surprise, but there were, for all the things in it that I didn't necessarily like, there were a lot of things that hit the like, the stuff I like, and I just felt that I like the kind of mix

of kind of mod science fiction made out of 70 stuff. And also just every now and then seeing a real rundown transition, you know, just kind of like a crappy translation. So I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but I would say the part of me that genuinely likes Sardas, I think also genuinely likes this movie a little bit. Also, too, like sometimes we think about the best, like Matt and I will think about the best context for a movie. And this movie would be really cool

if you had it running during a party. Yes, yeah. Like that would win. You would win if you had it running if there was no expectation like you don't have to do anything. And people say that about the new Cats movie too, that it would actually be fantastic if it's just playing on the TV during a party.

I would say Cats rewards a close viewing in hilarity. But I think the way that you guys first watch the movie, I think is the right way to watch it, where you're just skipping around in the movie, because the scenes don't really matter, and you just see a bunch of neat stuff, and get some science from umbo jumbo in there. And uh it but the movie did make me feel good about my decision to not throw myself into the uvra of Michael morcock and get lost in his dozens of novels about the same hero reverberating throughout history. Stu, we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that another time, Elliot. I don't think this is the place.

I want Matt to have a shot at going back at his remark. You can use the same one. Which is the headline for the mystery science theater. You can use that. What I would like to do is personally apologize to the MST3K fan base who are a lovely group of people please don't let my ignorance inhibit you from donating to our make more mst3k kickstarter campaign that's right promise let's let's let's ignore it in the future let's hear about this kickstarter campaign

let's hear again where can we find this kickstarter campaign and how can we contribute to it and what can we get from it Joel Joel, makemoremst3k.com. It's on Kickstarter. We're making new shows. It's like what we did six years ago. It's new shows and its own online theater called the Gizmoplex. And lots of amazing rewards

and we're working with our Kickstarter guru. I've been asked with who's brilliant and we're happy to be working with them again. Yeah. I know I'm going to be contributing. And if you're like me and I know I am, do as I do. Now that's true. That's two that's two MST lines back to there. You go. Okay. So those are two classes. I don't want to hear it. To be really strict. It was I think also the fire sign. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's it.

I know I am, right? Yeah. So I'm stealing from Mystery Science Theater, stealing from Fire Science Theater. No, we've taken so much, you guys. There was, there was, there was, there was, I have to say more. I feel like this is, this has been my life experience

with Mystery Science Theater is, is the thinking something is funny and not knowing why and then hearing the original. And there's one episode where you're just like, you know, everyone knows funds where the fair is at. And I was like, what is what? And then eventually hearing, was it were all bozos on this bus and being like, oh, okay, that's what that's from.

So if you want more of that rich tapestry of jokes, pokes, riffs and gifts, then just go to, what does it bring back? MST3K.com. Make more. I'll make more. I'm sorry. I apologize. Don't listen to me.

Make more MST3K.com. Thanks, you guys. Hey, I saw much fun being here. Thank you guys. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you. It's been great. We're so glad to have you on.

Hey, kid. Your dad tell you about the time he broke Stephen Dwarf's nose at the kid's choice awards. In Dead Pilots Society, scripts that were developed by studios and networks, but were never produced, are given the table reads they deserve. When I was a kid, I had to spend my Christmas break filming a PSA about Angel Dust, so yeah, being a kid sucks sometimes Presented by Andrew Reich and Ben Blacker dead pilot society twice a month on maximum fun. You know the show you like thag hobo with a scarf who lives in a magic dumpster Dr. Hube. Yeah!

Hey, Jakey. Hey, Helen. Hey, you've got another true false quiz for me? Yep. Our trivia podcast, Go Factorself, used to be in front of a live audience. True. Turned out that's not so safe anymore. Correct. Next, unfortunately, this means we can no longer record the show.

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putting this out in the world. This is your creation. You want to steal something you don't want to get something uncopy right you're putting this out in the world this is your creation you want to buy stock footage Alex mentioned before for the last live flop how show on zoom I made a video about where I sang a song about how I had to pee and we're having an intermission because I got a pee and I got to tell you great high quality, high deaf images of things like a clown dancing that I put in the background. But anyway, so if you want to explore their library and subscribe today, you can go to storyblocks.com slash flop that's storyblocks.com slash flop. Hey, Dan, you know, the flop house is also supported in part by Libby.

I got to tell you guys a little story. So this is a true story from my life. I'm recording this right now from my in-laws house in Northern California. Two days ago, my family were driving up here in our car. It's a six hour drive on a good day. And what happened this most recent time? Traffic, bad traffic. Suddenly, we're crawling through downtown Walnut Creek.

No thank you. Normally in this situation my kids would be just in the cards of crawl. That's true. That's a good point. Anyway, normally listen to all the talk radio you can normally listen to, right? Yeah, yeah. So I'm gonna continue with the ad now. We don't need to listen. We'd already listen to the Moana soundtrack probably 17 times. Normally in that situation my kids would be throwing a full on rebellion, but not this time. Why? One word. Libby is a free reading app created by Overdrive that lets you borrow ebooks and audiobooks from your library on your phone, tablets, candles, computer, if it's electronic, you can borrow things on it with Libby. All you need is a valid library card from your library, and even if you don't have a library card currently, you can read samples of any book you see.

It works just like your physical library. With Libby, you can borrow available books you want to read, and they return themselves automatically after your loan expires. I wish my physical library worked that way. My fines would not be so high. So we're driving up north, and each time the kids are getting restless, we just hit the Libby. Bam!

House on Poo Corner. Boom! Marvelous Land of Oz. Kapow! Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. They also have picture books, even. Probably all kinds of grown-up books. I don't know. I don't get to listen to grown-up books anymore. It's too.

It's a great e-book and audiobook service, and you don't feel the guilt that comes with patronizing. Let's say a huge corporation that treats its warehouse workers like dirt, because it's all through your local library. So download Libby in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store to start borrowing and sampling eBooks and audio books today. I recommend it. Hey, boom. And you know what that sound is? That's an incoming, jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub-jub- after the other ones. Yep. Uh, this message is for Tom. This message is from Sarah.

This April, Tom and I celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. Since we can't travel, I wanted to ask the peaches to give my sweetheart a shout out. Tom, you're the bee's knees, my snickerdoodle, and I can't imagine being stuck at home with anyone else Also from our house cat to yours Rural or Bow mamao That was a sweet message. Thank you. Yeah, that was very sweet. You're named after one of the best cookies Tom That was very sweet. And your name after one of the best cookies. Tom?

No, no, the Snicker doodle, the pet thing. No, Tom's are pretty good too. Tom's of main cookies. It's made out of beeswax or something. Oh, yummy. Yeah. You already plugged more and move along. Those Tom of Finland cookies.

Hold on a second. I'll check it out. Just Google that. Just Google it right now. Before you do that, I have one thing I'd like to plug. My comic book, Maniac of New York, new issues are still coming out. Issue three comes out April 14th. It'll be in comic stores. And if you can't make it to your local store, they're sold out. You can also get it on comicsology.

But as always, support your local comic book store. Yeah, and if you're running away from the maniac in New York, why don't you come to Hinterland's bar, Minis bar, and say hi, and buy some stuff. Thank you. You're welcome. So let's move on to letters from listeners. Like you.

Like you. I got a couple of letters here, and I can't remember whether I pulled them up on my phone or on So it looks like it's time for a song because we got a couple of letters and it might be long till Dan pulls them up on his Device wouldn't it be nice if he did it ahead of time, but hey, I'm sure he's a busy guy doing stuff like watching TV and reading old comics, thinking about things. Nobody cares about that's right, Dan's a busy guy. Once he missed part of a movie, because he was cut in a mango up, he could have paused it, but he didn't. He's a busy guy. He doesn't have time for all of that stuff. No, Dan, so busy. He doesn't have time for what you might call the very basics of producing a podcast that he's been

doing for almost a decade and a half. That's right. He's Dan. He's a busy guy. He's a busy guy. He's a busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy guy, Vizzy, Vizzy, Vizzy, Vizzy, Vizzy, Vizzy, Vizzy, Vizzy, Vizzy, Vizzy, guy starring Dan McCoy as himself created by Chuck Lorrie. Okay. Thank you. I didn't have it pulled up. I just couldn't remember whether it was on my phone or my computer and then I chose the wrong one. But anyway, sometimes Dan has two screens open.

It's a second screen experience and Dan doesn't know what screen to look at this modern world so full of screens everybody knows what I mean. Hey guys, does this look green? I'm pointing to a toe that I stubbed the other day. Hey, Dan's got too many screens. Dan's got too many screens is brought to you by rolled gold pretzels. Wow. All right. Thanks. It's a big one. So all right.

Here's the first letter. It's from Marissa last name with hell. So what screen were they on just so that our audience it's closure? What? It was on my phone. But then once I was using my laptop, I decided to go with it. Greetings, peaches, any long time flop flop house devotee knows that the show's deep

sea plot is the discussion and celebration of newspaper comic strips and their characters and lore. We did so, we did plenty of that already. Recently, thanks to the flop house Facebook group, I was introduced to the current far side as single panel iteration of Heathcliff. Example on the day I'm writing this email today is Heathcliff. Features the eponymous cat standing in a living room, hands folded behind his back facing a bird cage. The bird appears to be speaking to Heathcliff. The caption shows us what the bird is saying.

I have friends who are bees. My birding desire to know what the flop-house Fellows think about this bizarre, racing new Heathcliff gave me an idea. A spin-off podcast, perhaps a series of minis, perhaps an iPoddeus-thel Donors-only bonus mini-series, where the three of you unleash all of your comic strip thoughts, feelings, and arcane knowledge into the world. What strips do you think would provide the most fodder for such a series? What are your thoughts on Peter Galgur's Heathcliff? Remember to save some of the good stuff for the spin-off podcast. Okay, love and thanks for everything

Bristle last name withheld. I will say about Heathcliff specifically. Just make sure you don't give up too much You got to keep some behind the paywall. Yeah When I was a kid I I don't know whether this version of Heathcliff was always like this. When I was a kid, I remember Heathcliff, and I was like, oh, this is off-brand Garfield. I'm not interested in this. I'm a kid.

I like really obvious things. Like a cat that talks about how he likes food and hates Mondays. But now that I'm at a tall I don't know whether the surrealist Heathcliff is new or it's always been the case but I get a kick out of it. I don't understand it but that's the joy. Yeah. I don't know if I was going to do a flop house style one one of the most inexplicable one's to me is Fred Bassett which I don't know if I was gonna do a flop-house style one one of the most inexplicable inexplicable ones to me is Fred Bassett, which I don't think I've ever detected a joke here. Oh no Fred Bassett is just about a depressed dog. Yeah. Yeah, so that would be a

good one I think Stewart or would you just talk about how attractive you find the mom and roses right? I find her very attractive Dan. She knows it. I send her letters all the fucking time. The mom, the mom, it's become a problem. I mean, the mom and the mom and Rose Rose is if resembles your actual life in a number of ways from her tough attitude to her red hair.

Yeah. Curly red hair, yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I feel like it might be helpful to for a show, you know, to sustain a, you know, a show we might want to pick something with a really deep narrative. So I don't know like like the Slylock Fox or like, or like funky winger bean. We talk about funky winger bean a lot on this show. That's because, you know, we love it.

It stands favorite comic strip. I feel like funky winger bean is famously on the internet, at least the comic that gets the most of that type of flop style coverage because it's so inexplicably sad. Yeah. When it's mostly meant to just do jokes about band teachers, you know, but I think I want to mention first off,

who am I attracted to on the comics page, the mom and the family circle, but after the haircut, you know the But I think I wanna mention first off, who am I attracted to on the comics page, the mom and the family circle, but after the haircut, you know the one I'm talking about. When they cut their hair to make, she cut her hair to make a little more modern. I think my thoughts on Heathcliff are. You said family circle. Is that the same thing as family circus?

Oh sorry, I meant family circus. Family circus is a magazine, which I'm also sure is full of hot moms, but I don't look too much. The thing about Heathcliff I wanted to mention is that when I was a kid, I would actually skip the main comic strip and just read the last panel where readers would send in their stories about how weird their cats were at home. That was more entertaining to me than the actual comic strip.

But this just goes to speak about how like there are a lot of comics that last for a long time on inertia. And so I think maybe I would cover Mama, the comic strip, about a mom and her son. And there's no jokes in it. And it's not a pleasant to look at strip. And it's even as a kid, I was like, why is this here? Like, why is this in here? I don't understand this Either that or or that Prince Valiant strip where there's there's almost no there's no dialogue balloons It's just it's just illustrated pictures and as a kid I could not I it was It was something that I was so baffled by I wouldn't I wasn't understand what I was supposed to get out of it

Yeah, like Mark trail or something I I feel like. I feel like. I feel like we should do it based on that comic strip Caroline in the city. Well, that's actually not a real strip Stewart. That's, yeah. But she made the strips on the show. So like, would they just throw them in the fucking trash? Yes, they did.

They didn't want it and they published them. That would have been a great amount of, like that. Perfect synergy. Yeah, Ty and. Yeah, well, what you're really, what you're learning is that you could have hung out outside of her apartment and just picked up the old

strips from the garbage and you'd have priceless, priceless pieces of art. Wait, they shot that in her apartment? Yeah, they shot it in her Leotompsons actual apartment that she bought with her Howard the Duck royalties. And it's just, yeah, I mean, we should get in touch with her and just ask her what she did with all that. Wait, so she bought the apartment with her royalties.

So she, if she bought the apartment with her royalties, she then decided to what subsidized the mortgage on the apartment by shooting it there so she could charge the production extra money. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, man, that's how it gets you. It's overhead. They say it's overhead and they pay themselves. Yeah. Also, she stole all her clothes from that show and also the theme song. And I don't even know what you're going to do with that theme song,

but she just walked away with it one day and she just keeps it at her house. Which is that apartment. Yeah, I mean, it'd be weird to walk off set if you're just walking back into your own apartment though. You know what I mean, it'd be weird to walk off set if you're just walking back into your own apartment though, you know what I mean? That's fair. I guess yeah, really the hard I guess you just stopped from taking the things out of her apartment Yeah, that's actually true. Yeah Okay, so let's move on to the second and final letter of this particular episode Dan before we do that I have two I have two other songs about the two screen problem before. I have two parody songs.

I'll do one now and one after this letter. So this first one, of course, you'll remember what the source of it is. Whatever happened to the letters from the listeners, I thought they were on my laptop, but maybe they're on my phone. Ah, everywhere you look, everywhere, there's a letter. Or maybe it's on another screen now

Anyway, so that was the first one I'm another one after the letter interrupted Dan for that one. Okay. Thank you I mean, I'm always glad I interrupt to Dan. I get a little in Dwarfen boost each time. Yeah That explains it. This is from James last name with held who writes? Oh Brooks James I'll break his name is his name is James ATG peach. After hearing the recommendation for Stuart's performance as tube man in psycho gourmet, I went looking for his I am a B. Yeah, I go or man. I like I don't know. Gorman. I recognize the title snatchers from the pod, but was surprised by another title. I don't know. Gorman. Uh. Uh. I recognize the title Snatchers from the pod, but was surprised by another title I don't

recall ever hearing discussed. That is the 2005 movie The Wiggles sailing around the world. This film features Stuart Wellington, the role of friendly pirate crew. Is there a reason this hasn't made it to recommendation before? And should I expect the usual level of of Gore from this as I do in all Wellington the vehicles, uh keep flopping me made these James last thing withheld, you know, I've been I've been asked like this This come up a lot I get asked this a lot on social media at the bar on the street at the grocery store and

The the short answer is if I made this movie, I do not remember it. So I mean, 2005, that was a kind of weird time to be a steward. Okay. So I came. A steward. A steward. Yeah.

Yeah. Me steward, Panken. That's it. I don't know any other steward. It was a weird time to be a yeah me Stewart Panken. That's it. I don't know any other stewards. It was a weird time to be Stewart Panken. Like do I have a career anymore? I don't know where am I. So I mean long story short, I don't think it's me. You might want to watch it. And if it's me send me you can tweet at me. You can send Dan an email at Dan at Gmail or whatever. I don't remember what it is because email is I'm just looking to sorry. I'm distracted because I'm looking to see what Stewart Panken was doing in 2005

This is this is important. This is important stuff look He was on two episodes of curb your enthusiasm Which I guess started in 2005 or no, this is in 2005, it was in these episodes. Okay. And so Stuart, so you're saying that you don't have any hilarious behind the scenes anecdotes about your time with the Wiggles.

I don't, I mean, again, there might be some out there, there might be accounts out there, but I don't remember them at this point. So who knows? Maybe if I get hit on the head with another coconut, I'll remember them. That's how it works. If you get hit too many times, you'll lose all your memory forever. I got that from an episode of Charles and Charge. Yeah. Yeah. So Stuart Panckin seems to have 161 credits. Yeah.

Some of them, you know, they're just this year. So he's doing okay. Yeah. If you thought that after not necessarily the news and nearly departed, that was the end of Stuart Panquino. I mean, the fact is, Stuart Panquino's acting is just a side hustle. He got rich off of Panko, which is what he invented.

Wow. And he's just been living pretty. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they are the superior breadcrumb for frying. So So thank you Stuart Pankin for toiling away in your in your garage lab to get us the exact best crumbs for for frying it. Yeah, okay. Well, that was great. So now we're gonna do. I've got my last song. Oh, okay. Okay, this was do up doop doop doop doop doop doop doop doop. Which of dance screens has the letters questions on it? Okay, that's the last one. Okay, thank you, Rockefeller for stopping by.

one. Okay, thank you, Rockefeller for stopping by. Rock up hell yet. That's when I do an impression of Rockefeller. The thing that we do now is we recommend movies, movies that might be more immediately rewarding than the final program. I haven't seen a lot recently, but I did watch the SpongeBob SquarePants movie from 2004. 2004's SpongeBob movie. You finally caught up with it, huh? A trim 87-minute love that you know, I didn't grow up with SpongeBob. I love that every comment you have now is secondary to the runtime,

which was your main selling point, but you're saying Audrey, did she grow up with it? Yeah, she's she's all like nine years younger than me. She's not like hugely younger, but she's definitely of a different enough generation that she grew up with SpongeBob. So like a December May romance or usually younger but she's definitely of a different enough generation that she grew up with SpongeBob. So like a December May romance or December. Yeah, well, you're not robbing the cradle, you're just robbing the middle school. Uh-huh. Let's not belabor this part of it too much, but she has introduced me to SpongeBob as a

pleasant, funny thing to watch. Toss on the television. And a lot of great jokes. I like that the SpongeBob has sort of continued the older style of cartooning, or cartoons, where I feel like post-Sympson's and post-reduce sale animation, things got really tight and not as expressive. Like there's a lot of silly stuff on the census, but even so, they stay on model a lot.

Whereas like a show like SpongeBob is like, we're gonna push the character design in crazy directions. We don't care, we don't care if this is on model. Like we're gonna have a scene where SpongeBob and Patrick slowly You know dehydrate and it's crazy how Weird they look and I just like that it has that zany quality that I think Got lost somewhere along the way with some cartoons and I found it very good So Dan if you had to cast SpongeBob SquarePants using only the members of the flop house,

who would play whom? Okay, well, I am Squidward. Okay. Obviously. I'm glad you didn't make us point that out. Thank you. I think that Elliot probably is SpongeBob, although he's a little more like deliberately irritating good SpongeBob. SpongeBob only annoys through like the goodness of his heart, whereas Ellie it's more of a little

stinker. And I guess you are Mr. Crab. Oh, I swear it would be that that who's that that starfish is always hanging out with with SpongeBob. Oh, Patrick Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the right answer Dan. You did it. Uh if Patrick had if Patrick had Mr. Krabs job. Uh huh. Yeah. Okay. So what do you guys got? Well, I was going to recommend 2004 SpongeBob movie. I guess that means kind of on everybody's list. Sorry, you know, I think that was guys serious question. Do you think that was the biggest zag in terms of a recommendation on the flop house? Or has there been a bigger one? I don't, I think that's one to open up to the fans fans.

Do you remember a bigger zag than that one? Zag a technical term meaning surprising recommendation., a technical term, meaning surprising recommendation. Yeah. All right. Let's see, I'll recommend, since we're recommend, recommend in shorties today, right? It's all about shorties.

Do you mean kids' movies or short movies? Short movies. Oh, no. You can watch this with a kid if the kid is pretty grown up and has a refined sense of taste. That's right. I'm recommending another shutter movie. That's a movie you can see on shutter. It's a movie called Slacks.

That's because it's about a pair of killer genes. And not just because they look good. It's because they kill people. Now, it's like, and that's with two X's. Two X's. Two X's spelling. Yep. And it is, and I'm not just recommending this,

another shutter movie because they sent me a gift basket full of shutter treats. I appreciate that they respected. I am a cool influencer. But yeah, so Slacks is, I mean, it's a movie about a killer pair of jeans set in like an, like an old Navy style. I don't know. Is that a big box store? Is that a small box store? I don't know. It's a medium sized box store. Yeah, medium sized box.

So, and it plays a lot of story. The container store, I guess, would be like all those sizes of boxes in one store. Everything. Yeah. So it, you know, it plays with some pretty, uh, pretty straightforward satire on like retail culture and hipster culture and That stuff that stuff we've kind of seen a million times before but it um the performances are all pretty fun the And it's it's super colorful. Maybe I was just excited after watching just slag to see a movie that's a ton of colors in it and it's It's shot really well and it's fun to watch and it's super short. So, selects. And I'm going to recommend a movie that I guess, I mean,

I don't really remember the runtime. It didn't strike me as being super long. I'm going to check it out real quick. Okay, so this movie is recommendation is an honor of late. I'm gonna check it out real quick. So this is the fine BB and see if I get a good one. This movie is a recommendation, it's an honor of having a late. So I'm gonna bust your biscuits on this one. Good, thanks. Yeah, make sure, I'll get my biscuits ready for a possible busting.

And they're ready. Okay, so this one, it's an recommendation honor of the late Joan McClendon Silver who passed away at the end of last year. You may remember her from crossing the Lansing or Hester Street, which is one of my favorite carolcane performances. Anyway, I watched a movie of hers I hadn't seen before. It's called Between the Lines. And it's a kind of ensemble comedy drama from the 70s about a countercultural newspaper that is

outgrowing its position as a counterculture newspaper basically and how that affects the people who work at the paper It's very 70s been in a different way than the final program is very 70s And 41 all yeah, oh our 41 so you're gonna want to watch this in three parts But the boys you gotta mess up you gotta mess up a ton of dishes like order some kind of meal that comes with like all kinds of sauces and shit So you just fuck it all up so you'll have extra time to watch your movie. You're going to want to keep burning the rice. So you got multiple pots to scowl out so you can have enough time to watch it.

It's also in a lot of ways relevant to this modern world of kind of scrappy start-ups selling out to big tech corporations and what that means for people. I feel like it goes one to one in some way. And it's got a great cast. It's got Lindsey Krauss, Gwen Wells, John Herb, Bruno Kirby, Michael J. Pollard, and Jeff Goldblum is especially great at it as this kind of like, he's this rock critic who's kind of like if Kramer from Seinfeld was like a young cool guy. And this is just going to say it, top drawer, young sexy Jeff Goldblum.

Like he's, you're going to want it. So anyway, it's called Between the Lines... it's funny and serious and it's on canopy right now i believe so if you uh... like me enjoy john michael and so for stuff and you haven't seen it try between the lines not between the lions which is a pbs show about yeah reading uh... starting the lines from the public library in new york this is between the lines are the characters are the characters in that They are, they are puppets on the show. Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense.

Yeah. So that was the two, the two lions. Thanks for approving you know the names. So we got, that was two shorties and a medium style. Yeah. Great. I guess that makes one big movie burger that you can eat. Yeah, just get a shorty, stick a median side there, get another shorty, and that's your movie witch. Sorry, muscles is biting me now. You said well.

You said sucks, dude, stop it. If people didn't know that your cat's name is muscles than the grammar of that sentence would really baffle them Okay, well We don't want to anger muscles further less to consume Going crazy. Oh, yes, he is actually going crazy. Let me get a screenshot of that. So maybe I can Sit it out with the he said show go He say the star of the show now put me on the air. I'm the mama anyway Let us say goodbye for one another episode. Thank you so much to our guest Shul and Matt for being a dream. The dream. What a treat.

Thank you to Jordan Cowling for producing the show. Thank you to MaximumFun. Go over to MaximumFun.org for other great podcasts on this great podcasting network. And if you have the chance, let people know about the show. Tweet about it, review it on iTunes, but for now I have been Dan McCoy. I am Stuart Wellington.

My name's Elliott Kaylin. I don't know why, we're all talking a little bit like the movie phone guy, but not exactly like the movie phone guy, but okay, I'll run with it. This has been The Flop House, right in our... goodbye. You're all ready for this? For this, ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artists-owned, audience supported.

Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artists-owned, audience supported.