The Flop House - The Christmas Martian, with Alonso Duralde

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

It's the most wonderful time of the year. Some might go so far as to call it the hap-happiest season of all. Why? Because we're rejoined by Alonso Duralde, one of the warmest most delightful film critics and podcasters in the world, for our annual bad holiday movie! That said, goddamn you Alonso for suggesting we watch The Christmas Martian. This... this... thing... oof. Just listen to the show.We’re coming back to San Francisco Sketchfest on January 25! Get tickets now! And: BREAKING NEWS -- we'll be discussing THE MASTER OF DISGUISE!OR, if you prefer to watch us from the comfort of your own home: Flop TV Season 3 tix are ON SALE! Tonight (12/6)'s episode is on the oft-referenced ZARDOZ!Stay updated on Flop House events and side projects, plus a little extra, with our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets!Wikipedia page for The Christmas MartianRecommended in this episode:Dan: PTU (2003)Stu: Sentimental Value (2025), Sirāt (2025)Elliott: The Baron of Arizona (1950)Alonso Duralde: Rebuilding (2025), Train Dreams (2025)

Hey listeners, just a few quick words up the top to remind you that flop TV is going on right now. It's the first Saturday of every month if you want to watch it live and chat with other listeners in the chat, viewers in the chat, send us some messages to be answered, perhaps, at the end of the show. We've been having a lot of fun going through famous bad movies of the decades. All of that will be available video on demand, as well. for ticket holders up through the end of the flop TV season. You can get a season pass and watch all of them. You can binge them during the holidays. It's a lot of fun.

So if you're interested, go to theflophouse.com and check out our extra flop streams. On this episode, we discuss The Christmas Martian. The movie that stretches the definition of only 65 minutes. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Flop House. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kaelan. And it's that time of year again. The happiest time of year

because at the time we're joined in our annual Christmas visit by that bearded gentlemen that we're all waiting to have show up in our houses in the middle of the night. Alonzo Dorale, the greatest film critic there is. Alonzo, give us, what are the credits

you prefer to be used today and what are you promoting today? Oh, you know, I mainly like to be known as a person who breaks into Elliot's house via the chimney, but... Killer of killers. Let's see. I'm the film critic for the film verdict

Or one of the film critics for the film verdict Now you're the one that counts Oh stop A podcast co-host of several shows Including Linolium Knife and Maximum Film Right Here on the Maximum Fun Network And author of Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas

Now Out in a revised and updated edition Pick it up What were the Christmas innovations that occurred You know It's amazing what it pops up in 15 years years. There was a crazy amount of new stuff to get to. I mean, when I wrote the book in 2010, Netflix was still sending discs in the mail. So, you know, they've really changed the game there. But then there was also a lot of cool older stuff that I just, you know, and a box upon

me, I didn't know about when I wrote the first go-round. So like, thanks to Turner Classic movies as, you know, pre-Christmas week marathons, I now have a much fuller understanding of Christmas noir that I didn't have before. Oh, wow. A bunch of those in there and some other fun stuff. Are there any old movies where Santa has to solve a mystery? You'd think, but I, you know, I think he might be a little too omniscient about that. I mean, he does see you when you're sleeping and know when you're awake, so he also knows when you shib that guy.

He immediately knows who's been naughty or nice, so there's not a lot of mystery element. That's too. Five-minute mysteries with Santa Claus. That would be so fun. It's like a Colombo-type show. every week Santa has to solve mystery, but he figures it out instantly because he sees everything.

And then the rest of the episode is just him puttering around. Yelling at elves. Yelling at elves. What are you doing over there? Get back to work, Slacker. He doesn't realize the cameras are on. Yeah.

Not so jolly now, are you? Yeah, it's like that documentary that ruined Shelley Berman's career over Santa. That was a joke for Alonzo. Yeah. Because Alonzo is the expert, you know, usually he comes with some possible, yes, ex-mis...

You're like practice, trying that one out? Yeah. Are you like launching a tourchequerque? If you don't pronounce it the right way, it doesn't sound great. Yeah. I'm a perth. And for this year, he suggested the Christmas Martian, which I was very excited was only 65 minutes long until I watched it.

Only is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. It certainly felt more interminable than movies, you know, three times the length. It's amazing. So, I think it was last year I watched all of the human condition, which is like almost nine hours long. And I found it so captivating. It's a lot of fucking dishes for you, buddy. It sure was.

But watching The Christmas Martian, it was like, it felt, yeah, like time had no meaning. And I was like, what is going on? This is, it felt so much harder to get through than nine hours. of something else. So I'm glad to hear that you guys had the same experience that you guys weren't like. I loved it.

It was so fun. It also didn't help that I had to keep like rewinding like 20 minutes because I'd realize that nothing that had happened had entered my brain. Yeah, that's going to be a real challenge in my summary. So I'm probably going to rely on you guys. It's that way that like I can sit down

and watch like a two to three hour long movie and I'm like, great, this works perfectly. But if I have to sit down and watch like three episodes of the same television show, I'm like, oh, no, it's, time has no meaning. There's a beginning and end. Every, you know, like, time keeps resetting. Like, you know, the, so that's what this movie felt like every two minutes, maybe.

If not more. And what made it even harder for me at first was, so I found, so this movie is available on Amazon Prime. But when I started up that version of it, the audio and the video were out of sync. So I, and I went, and this movie is so amateurishly done that I didn't know if that was a choice or not. And I was like, so I had to watch the first couple minutes of it before I realized, like, I got to, I got to test this. So I went to the 2B version instead. And that one, the audio wasn't sync. And I was like, thank goodness I didn't sit through 65 minutes of this movie with the audio not just out of sync by a couple seconds, out of sync by minutes.

So you would have the audio from one scene over the video of another scene. And there's a part where you can see video tracking lines. Like they clearly transferred this from a VHS. And I was like, well, that's just the Amazon version. Nope, that was on 2B2. See, now I watch There's a beautiful Blu-ray of this that came out in the last couple years

From Canadian International Yes, for the other Canadian International Pictures label And I watch the original French In Subtitles version I don't know what To Be has No, they just have the English dub Okay

But yeah, it's It's Franco not Frankie Exactly, and Catou is what they call Catherine Yeah Yeah, I had a Marsha and Duneoelle, yeah. There was a constantly...

That's actually the title. Glitching square in the corner of what I watched where I'm like, is that my television? No, it must be this whatever, yeah, decades-old VHS they use... There's certain movies where you just honestly don't know.

There's this queer art film from like the 50s or 60s called Pink Narcissus and it's, you know, it's non-narrative, it's all just sort of this very lush imagery. If you've seen like like Pierre E. Gilles or like those kind of artists that very much influenced their like big

swaths of like, you know, pink silk and glitter and, you know, that kind of thing. All the music videos in the 1980s. Exactly, yes. Roxy Music was taking notes. So they brought it back to Dallas one time and they had, they screened it for me because I was reviewing for the

gay paper there and they accidentally repeated one of the reels and I just thought, oh, what a bold choice. And I had find out later oh that's not the oh okay well in that context it's like sure why not it's like the old story of like the abstract painting that's in a museum for years and then someone comes by and they're like that's upside down that's not the way that's supposed to be true true story we bought a piece by the artist atah hourbach and they came with very specific instructions on how and where to get it

framed there's like a place in los angeles that does their you know version of like it has to be this kind of museum level framing, blah, blah, blah. And they didn't know which side was up until they asked the artist. I was like, this is every hacky joke about contemporary art. And it's true. And then the artist is like, I don't know because actually my kid did it. Yeah. Yeah, they're like, which side do you think is up?

Oh, man, just tell me. Speaking of not knowing which way is up, what's going on in the Christmas, Martian? Oh, okay, fine. Let me crack out my two note cards. We open in rural Quebec. It's more like a small town. It's not super rural, but it's fairly rural. We meet two children, Frankie and Kathy, or Francois and Cateau.

Yeah. Who are wandering around a snowy landscape, just two figures on a field of white. The color is blown out by time. It is almost like a scene from McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Yeah. If we hadn't mentioned it before, this is a French Canadian production

so I assume I presume we all watched it dubbed maybe Alonso I watched subtitled I watched subtitled you know I must see the Christmas Martian as the filmmakers intended yes thank you I will have some other questions for Alonzo

it was so snowy I worried I turned on quintet man that's the second quintet reference you made in recent episode No, it's in my head for some reason. Yeah, you watch you with the kids. I just did a screendrafts episode about Altman and Quintet is mentioned. Oh, really?

Oh, wow. So, they wander into a, like, a little grocery store, like a convenience store. And while they're talking to the adult there, a Martian wanders into the store, cleverly disguised as a bunch of coats and a hat. and he steals a bunch of... I think he's just dressed and goes to that. Interesting, interesting. I mean, he does not make that... A fishnet body stocking made of green yarn.

Let's describe the Martian here, guys. He's like a man. So he's Matt Damon gets stuck on Mars. Okay, yeah, go on. It just said it. He grows potatoes there. With his own poop. Yeah, he's, uh, I'm pulling up a picture of the half of the Martian. He's a guy, I know he's played by a guy who was like a big children's entertainer.

In my house, we call it Barsoom, by the way. That's fair. That's fair. Your grandma, Deja, always called it. Always called a Barsoom. The old country, she called it. He's got, so this guy is, he's wearing just regular winter clothes, right? But over that, yeah, it's literally a fish net, like, like, thick yarn over his whole body.

And it looks, he looks like a killer in a, you know, in a movie. Oh, Gialo, yeah. And he's got this sort of mesh face mask. He's got a mesh face mask with holes for the eyes. and then one big hole that goes over the nose and the mouth. Like, he should be the guy, he's the guy that Hannibal Lecter is helping someone catch. Like, that's what I'm going to say.

Yeah, this is the Jame Gumb callback outfit. Like, I mean, I got it. It looks like some kind of Martian fetish gear of some stripe. Like, this man. I feel like putting Martian in it at all as being too terrible. Yeah. Yeah, this movie throws him on Martian the way that, like, Americans think anyone who speak Spanish is from Mexico. It's like, hmm.

Also, he never says he's from Mars, right? He just from another planet. He says he's very much not from Mars, that it's from a planet that we don't even know where it is. Because we're not advancing up. That is insulting of the filmmakers. Pretty racist for the Quebequois, I have to say, yes. Do you think they were trying to jump on the,

Santa Claus Conquers the Mars Bandwagon? Yes. Who wasn't? The Martians. Please, Elliot. I know, I apologize. I have to respect to the debut of Piazodora. It's the only, because that's the only other thing I can think of

that Santa Claus and Martians put together. Yeah, everybody's looking to cash in on that action. Yeah, who could play. One short of a trend piece. So the Martian, the Martian is like stealing food, like sweet food, like whatever. Jelly beans. Yeah, jelly beans, candy, confections.

Yeah. And, of course, the shopkeeper. Maple-based things of various kinds. The shopkeeper calls the cops. And we learn over time that this is not the first. citing or incidents where people are like concerned that there seems to be something strange going on in their town in their neighborhood yeah there's something strange in their neighborhood yep uh and don't look good who would they call alia that's they would call they would call

they would call le buster de fanteau yeah uh so and like you know like people have seen UFOs flying around in the sky etc etc so the kids go chasing after this market They follow his footprints in the snow that are green. I couldn't tell that they're green, but we hear that they're green. The Blu-ray makes it clear that they're green. Oh, thank you, thank you. I'm so glad someone went through frame by frame and restored this.

They're also like, they track him, there's like bubbles around, and they find like a giant matchstick that when they strike the matchstick, it launches Kathy up into the sky, and she flies around for a bunch. while she's holding the match stick. And they shot this using a real crane

that they pull her around, pull her around on. So it was the first thrill of the movie where I was like, I'm worried this kid's going to fall. Yeah, John Landis isn't the fucking supervisor, right? I hope not. Like, her brother's constantly yelling, like, Kathy, you're too high, come down, or whatever. And I'm like, if she had control over this, I think,

like, it's one of these, like, many things and, like, dumb kids movies where she's like, well, the kid has to be saying, something. It's got to be yelling something. Like, she can't figure this out on her own. You see that shot of the little girl like suspended in the air with nothing under her feet

and you're thinking the safety standards on this could not have been like up to current standards, let us say. Probably not. The terror in her face, real, not acting. Yeah, no. She's method. The kid by the way who plays Francois

is the son of the director, by the way. Oh, how to get the role? After a worldwide search. Ellie, don't launch into your rant about nepotism. We don't have time for it. Excuse me. I'm just, nepo babies are ruining the French-Canadian independent film community. The Santa Mars films.

He auditioned wearing a fake mustache, so his dad never knew us. He wrote his name as Joe Hill instead. Exactly. Do you think Stephen King is just like huge Joe Hill fan and has no idea? This guy looks exactly like me is great. Weirdly, I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night. Oh, that is weird. And maybe Joe Hill has memories.

He's like, I remember my mom would go out on dates with a guy named Richard Bachman. Okay, he was always a running man. I don't know. But I tried it. You know, I tried it. He had a problem with a Turner overdrive. It was a long walk, but it didn't pay off.

Yeah, thank you. So they, at one point, While she's hanging in the air, her brother's like, just fall, it's snow, it's soft or something. So she falls and, of course, does not injure her stuff. And it's fine, yeah. But there's hard ground beneath that snow. And snow, when compacted, can get pretty hard.

Yeah. Also, don't matter how soft the snow is, if you're falling from 20 feet, 30 feet, it'll probably hurt, yeah. Yeah, but it's a movie. Spider-Man tries to stop you from falling. Oh, could still snap it, you snap your neck if he does it by the feet. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. He's lost a good girlfriend that way. At least one. That we know of. I don't know how many he's got stashed in his closet. So, but this is a kid's movie, so of course she is not mangled or killed. She's not mangled. So they eventually find the Martians UFO. It's like a red saucer that is partially covered in snow.

And it's like lodged in the snowbank. They explore for a little bit. They find their way inside. when they eventually bump into the Martian himself. Who will remind everyone is not from Mars, but we'll keep on Mars at all. He looks like a weird man in fetish gear. And they, after a brief interaction, they bond over a shared love of candy. And they learn that the Martian is stuck there.

That he's an alien from a distant galaxy and that he was what, like exploring or observing planets when his ship crashed and he needs a part fixed in order to leave. I think it's important that this movie, much like Ugi loves with generations later, reminds children that when you meet a stranger

is always a great idea to go into their vehicle and have candy. He seems super nice and cool. He also... Upright guy. Oh, of course. I mean, there's a scene where he,

there's a moment in that scene where he's trying to figure out what language they speak and he's kind of going through different languages. And in this English dub, at least, to find English, he starts reciting, I think, the Declaration of Independence. And it was like, wait, this isn't yours.

Hold on a second. Yeah, Elliot got very defensive. Canada has a rich history of their own English language documents that they could have leaned upon here. I don't know any of them, but, you know, they must have them. Get DiBrandom in here. He'll tell us all about it. I like the idea that they're like swinging for the fences

where they're like, let's use an American thing so that we'll play well in American audiences. That's where the run is. When it hits the multiplexes. Not reading the Canadian Hockey Code or whatever. Yeah. Recipe for one on the only, like, Mabel Serp or Tim Horton's menus or something. Kind of one of the cool ideas here is the idea that, like, he crafts a beverage that allows them to understand each other.

Yeah. Again, like kids, drink what the stranger gives you. But, you know, the idea that it's not just like some mechanical thing, but a liquid, I thought was so groovy. Because they believe in organic technology that changes the user. Yeah, I don't know if you've heard of a little Canadian filmmaker David Kronenberg. It would be so funny if it was like, this is his earliest work, uncredited. Yeah, the new flesh. The failure of this catapulted him in a different direction.

You can only tell the one scene. The one scene when the Martian just chomps down on plastic all the time. I mean, that's our future, buddy. I was reading something recently that was talking about. about a, I think it was them reaching out to David Cronenberg to potentially direct return to the Jedi, I think after, maybe after David Lynch had turned them down. And him saying, he said something about like, I lost it halfway through the phone call. What would that sound like when David Lynch turned them down?

I don't think it's the right film for me, George. That kind of thing, yeah. I mean, I appreciate the invitation and all. Trust me, I respect what you're doing, but it's not my kind of work. That's the kind of thing he would say, yeah. Because that's what he said about it. David Lynch was open about it. He's like, yeah, I knew it wasn't going to be my movie, so I didn't want to make it.

And it's like, yeah. I'm more suited for Dune. Okay. I don't really want to work with little bears, George. Not this way anyway. Maybe in a dream. Here's my pitch. They go to a diner.

And George Luke was like, there's no diners in Star Wars. And then years later, he put that one diner in episode two. and David Lynch calls on George, you told me there were no diners in the Star Wars universe. Damn it, Lucas. Okay, so the kids offer to... It was the lawsuit of Lynch v. Lucas

over the ownership of character Dexter Jeter Jeter, space diner owner. So, you know, this doesn't happen yet in the scene in the movie, but it happens later. But I feel like it's important to bring up the name of the Martian, so I don't just keep calling him the Martian.

Yes. Now, his name, of course, is in an alien tongue that would be far too difficult for a human to pronounce. Oh, your tongue would just tear out and fall out of your mouth if you tried to say it, yeah. Roughly translated into English, it means poo flower. Now, that was hilarious. Yeah, yeah, that was, I mean, it was a thing that was in the movie, for sure.

Did it wake you up out of your slumber day? You know, I was just, like, watching it, like, why is it, why is this happening? Like, the movie is not like, like, the movie is so, I mean, it's dumb, but it's so innocent otherwise that I'm like, why does, why is there this scatological thing in here that's not like a joke? Like, it's not funny that his name is poo flower. So is this any different in the original French or Kepaqua? It is, I don't remember the actual phrase, but it's essentially poo flower. Oh, okay, okay. They're being true to the OG.

They weren't playing lowbrow for the English audience. They're respecting the autort's intention. I mean, give them credit. They got to the joke before Douglas Adams did of having an alien with an embarrassing sounding name because that was this whole thing with Slaughty Bartfast, the idea that he has a name that he's embarrassed about. So, you know what? I mean, that's a badass name.

I was going to name my first born Slaughter Bartfast. Sloody Bartfest is a great name, yeah. I have to say as a kid, like, and even now to some degree, but like as a kid, I was like, what? Like, is that a particularly embarrassing name? Like, I guess it sounds kind of like fart or like, it's got like gross sounds in it. But I'm like, let's go to, let's go down Adams Avenue to Hitchhiker's Corner, my regular segment where I tell you things about Douglas Adams writing,

Hitchhackers Guy to the Galaxy. I love this segment. So he wanted a name that sounded like it was, could be filthy, but wasn't actually, because he was doing this for the radio. And he says it is in the behind the scenes writings that he started with the name Farty Fuck Balls as the name of the character. and then like and kind of like drained it of actual swear words until he got to slirty Bart fast

something that sounded vaguely vulgar but was not actually right so okay yeah I mean look I love the hitchhangers guy to the galaxy but for me that part fell flat I'm like I think Forty Fuck Balls was from the original draft of the Christmas Martian they're like no it's it's for kids it's for kids poo flour what about poo flour sure I guess so

we have three names for this Martian we can use Farty Fuck Balls Sucky Dix up and Poovlauer. I guess we've got to go with Pooflop. Those are the only three options? Yeah, those are the three options that Canadian Film Board said we could use. We've got to pick one of them. All right.

Everything else is already copyrighted. It's pretty copyrighted. Every other name that exists. Every other possible name. I'm sorry, we tried to clear Glitoris Jones, but it turns out there was a man with that name, so we couldn't do it.

Yeah, yeah. He lives in Toronto. No, damn it. What about Queen Elizabeth the second? No, can't do it, can't do it. Can't do it, Sally. Okay. So the kids offered a help poo flower by,

I'm just going to call them the Martian again. I don't know why I brought them. Yeah. They offered to help the Martian because. It certainly meant I got to say a lot of bad words. Because their uncle is a welder. So they decide to pile on to a nearby passing sledge and ride across the landscape.

eventually realizing this is going too slow. Well, like a bunch of wood. Wait, is it a bunch of wood? What is it? It's manure. Manoeuvre. The Martian is like, I don't know what this smell is, but it's certainly vivid. And the girl says, you know, it smells bad, but it sure grows vegetables or something.

Oh, that's right. This really doubles as just a catalog of ways to travel across snow. Every way you can find to travel across snow, somebody does in this movie. I'd like to commend Stuart at this point, by the way, like I commend him and make it clear to the audience that his summary is so much clearer than anything that happens in the film because the film alternates between like low-speed shenanigans

that go on forever and like cutaways to random people in the town doing bits of business and it all feels so disjointed. This is classic, I mean, this is the kind of movie I haven't watched in a long time where it's like a classic 60s, 70s, low budget film where none of the shots are long enough

or they're way too long. And it's clear they didn't get the coverage they needed for scenes. And it's clear that like dialogue. I mean, we're watching the dubbed version anyway, but I assume the dialogue was dubbed in at the last minute, even in the French one, to explain what's going on on screen at times. It's a just like real amateurish stuff.

It was kind of refreshing. Welcome to my childhood. I grew up on all the Disney movies that you won't find on Disney Plus because they're just not all that good. Song of the South, that kind of thing. Yeah, for instance. Yeah, no, no deposit, no return with David Niven and Darren McGavin and Donnoblin.

A million dollar duck or something like that. Not a $1 million dollar duck, exactly. These were the kiddie matinees of my youth. Yeah. I mean, with a name like million dollar duck, though, I mean, like he puts butts in seats. And there's only one million dollar duck, and that's Howard. Wow, Uncle Scrooge is libit.

Well, he's got so much more. He would be mad. He would take issue. Okay. So they ride across they ride across the snow. They realize this isn't going fast enough. So the Martian takes the kids off the sledge

and he strikes one of his giant matches and they fly away. And the adult is like, what the fuck? I'm realizing we don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but we skipped very early on the part where an adult sees the Martian fly away and he's dressed like Mary Poppins, I guess, for some reason.

Marsh is in drag at one point and he calls a cab. Yeah. Or he is in a phone booth and a cab shows up. I'm not sure what the connection there is. But then he just flies away. Like Mary Poppins, yeah. And even like Cox's legs in that, like, woohoo, I'm flying away. It's, yeah, it's a moment.

I can't remember the order of things. Have we gotten to the part where, like, one guy also who has, like, seen the spaceship, like talks about how he saw this giant egg, the biggest egg. I mean, this is kind of the, like, in. interspersed in these scenes with the kids and the Martian. We see the townspeople kind of sharing their suspicions

of the strange happenings around town. Usually this is held at like the general store, maybe the sheriff wanders in and like puffs his chest out. It's like the local package store or whatever. You know, you go and get anything and you're trying this and stuff. I don't feel like we need to dwell on any of those scenes.

Also like the Warriors, there's a DJ who pops in periodically to let us know that like reports of UFOs are a prank. And also the children's parents where the mother keeps being like, our children never came back home for lunch. And dad's like, it's fine, it's fine. They're on vacation. Yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge the existence of those scenes,

but also that scene in particular had me clutching my head a little bit. Because I'm like, why is this fucking idiot like so fixated on the idea that this was like not literally, not that just that looked like an egg. There was a literal giant egg. And man, if I could get my hands on that fucking egg, I'd have the biggest egg. I'd be so rich an egg. You're going to make an omelet like nobody's business. And also, it's the only, like, flashback in the movie, right?

That he's telling his story and then we flash back to him seeing it. But we know there's an alien in this movie at this point. Like, there's no, this is normally in a regular movie. This is what you would show earlier to build up to the idea. There's something strange in the neighborhood and it don't look good. But here, it's happening in the middle when we already know about it. It's just, yeah. And also, the vast majority of this movie has no music.

and except for when it does, which is just the theme music that's like do do do do do do do do do right, something like that. Stuart, we don't have the rights to that music. Oh no, oh no. Let me get some, what, uh, yeah, like, what are they, like beaver bucks? What do they use up there?

We're all in the same. They have birds on them, they do have beavers on too. Loonies, right, loonies? Yeah, we all desperately would like to live there right now. Yeah, it would be great. Okay, so the. Shout out to our friend Eric Marsazak, who got while the getting was good and moved from New York to Canada years ago. So the adults, as I said, the adults are getting suspicious.

They are in, they basically form a posse over time to figure this out. So the kids eat a stolen turkey and a whole bunch of candy. They learn about their new Martian friend. It was their mother's Christmas turkey that they took. It's not like they stole it from the store and ate it raw. I mean, we know that he's not above stealing, so that's fine. They didn't steal a live property off a farm and then tear it apart

in a sort of suddenly last summer type massacre, you know? Yeah. Is that the second suddenly last summer reference you made recently? Yeah, because we did it. We recently did our live shows in Chicago and it also made a suddenly last summer. For some reason, suddenly last summer and a quintet have been on my mind quite a bit,

so I don't know why. Tell you a therapist. I like my entire... You took cured for him. I would say the majority of my therapy appointment this week was based on me having seen a movie, which is not uncommon in my therapy session.

It was the, I was like, Doc, can you kill me? Can you, yeah, can you do the eternal sunshine and the Spotless Mind Treatment for me, please? Just for this movie. I know what you suddenly did last summer. Is that anything?

It could be, yeah. I mean, the audiences that would get either side of it are don't match at all. Yeah. I'm in the middle of a diagram here. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's just Alonzo. I feel like the only way you can test this theory, Dan,

is to, like, make it in a, what, a one-panel gag comic or something? Yeah. But does you have the technology to do that? Yeah. Send it into, what, the New Yorker, New Yorkers looking for shit like that? Yeah, that's what they love. Don't they have a little comic contest? You could win that. A little comic.

Okay, so. Dan, why don't you just stick that in as the caption of whatever panel they've gotten in their contest? Yeah. With a newly fixed and cleaned of snow, a UFO, they manage to fly this flying saucer, and they go for a little ride around the world, not without a couple of false starts and hiccups, like when they're clearing the snow off,

and they almost get take off, and they almost all die, but luckily they don't. Is this a part where they go to the desert? I think so, yeah. Oh, look, it's the Sahara Desert, and they're like, wow. And then there's just like a static scene of them, staring out the fake window where there's, like, you know, green screened in, like just dunes, sand dunes.

It's worth noting that the UFO is a TARDIS and that it is way bigger on the inside than it would appear to be on the outside. On the outside, it looks like a really cool, like early 70s, like the sort of light fixture you would have hanging over the dining room table. You thought so? I thought it kind of looked like an egg. It also, like, a little bit. Nothing like an egg. If I had that... We should mention also that...

So this flying saucer has a long antenna on the top that you never really see the top of because it's clearly the wire that it is hanging from. I was going to ask whether that was intended to be the antenna, and that's how they're getting away with the most egregious wire that I have ever seen. Yeah, because it's the same... They're using the same crane that they yank that young girl around.

Yeah, they rented it for the day. You've got to use it for other things. I love my husband. He just opened the MoMA Design Store website. Oh, that's awesome. And here is the Nelson Saucer bubble from Herman Miller light fixture. And yeah, that's exactly what this thing looks like.

Have your own little Christmas Martian in your house. In red, yeah. It's right. In red. For the Christmas collection. Yeah. Okay, so they take a ride. They take a ride around the world.

Around the world, around the world. They, uh, water aliens in that one. Yeah. They, uh, they return to the world. their town and like the kids look out the windows. He tells them they're taking a ride around the world. He's just showing them images on a video screen. It's possible they're not going anywhere.

It's like a Disney dark ride, you know. Yeah, it's like a Nathan Fielder bit. So they are flying over there, Kepequa town, they're pointing out things they know, they point out the road that leads to Grandma's house, which I feel like expands the universe of this movie considerably. Well, they're opening it up for a spin-off sequel. The Martian and the Grandma.

World Building. they say goodbye they wander off into the night to return home oh wait I should say before you go to say the part where they're excited to see their own hometown

that was the one moment in the movie that I genuinely really liked a lot that these kids he's like this is Antarctica here's this desert but then seeing their own town from above

it seemed genuinely thrilling to them they're like oh yeah there's the road there and I thought that was a I don't know if they meant it that way but that felt like a richly observed you know the idea that

like, yeah, the thing they're most excited about is seeing where they live, but just from a different angle. And this movie came out, by the way, the same year as Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which at the end of the movie, of course, they're looking down from the Great Glass elevator to see their own town. That was the big competition.

That was the big competition in the theaters. They're like, who's going to win the weekend? There was a competition at, uh, what, Connors? We got to delay the release of Willy Wonka by three weeks. We don't want to get stepped on by the Christmas Martian. Yeah. So the kids leave right in time for the posse to arrive.

So the Martian's looking out, his view screen, and he sees just like a sea of foreboding lights heading in his direction. It looks like all like snowmobiles, which there was briefly a little confusion because the kids stole a snowmobile earlier. Do you remember that? They kept stealing the welder's stuff. Their welder uncle, they kept stealing his things,

then bringing them back, and the police officer would be like, they said it was stolen. Exactly. And now it's back. Arrest someone, you know. But I thought the shot of the snowmobiles all coming from the darkness. Yeah, very mad max. Yeah, very mad max. That was genuinely, I like, it was a little scary and I was like, all right, okay,

this is a better shot from a different movie where it's like evil snowmobile or sort of day. This is the Oxbow incident. I want to talk about this moment. The Oxbow marching. At this point, like, the Martian can leave in his ship. But he sees these people coming out and he's like, oh, you know, oh, they're, more friends are coming in to say hi or whatever. He goes out.

Because he represents the spirit of fun, Dan. Right. But then this posse starts chasing him around. And the fucking Martian doesn't just, like, get back in his goddamn ship and take off. He, like, runs around the snow for a long time. His power is like a godpower. The point at which I texted Alonzo saying that I hate him. I hate this idiot.

You're welcome. He is so advanced that he, he has. has nothing to fear from these primitive humans. He's a masked Martian. And they've moved so far beyond like hate and violence on his planet that, yeah, he just assumes this is like a Lollapalooza. Like, he doesn't read bad intent into it at all. Much of the movie was the kids showing him different winter sports and ways to have fun

in the snow. So maybe he just thinks there's another one. Yeah. So he leaves him on. If he's like, let's chase everybody and they just shoot him and gun him down. And at the end of it is the Martian lying in the snowbank, leading to death like at the end of McCabe and Mrs. Miller. And the kids are at home being like,

wow, I hope we get to see the Martian again. And he's just dead. And the snow slowly covers his body. Yeah, yeah. And we're like, wow, they really build a community out there in the frontier. The kids put the church fire out. Yeah. You'll see if again come springtime.

I'm glad you could restore my faith and my own empathy because as much as I hate that Martian, I was like, oh, no. No, no. No, no. No, not with like crazy 70s technology. It's horrifying. No, they shot poo flour. No, he was the best of us.

So the kids return home. Their father puts on his Santa outfit to surprise the kids and give them presents. And he starts giving them presents. Doesn't go down the chimney because he's seen Gremlins. He knows that's a mistake. He does, yeah. He has that part queued up on his VHS tape. He can see to the future.

He is distracted briefly and he leaves the room and then Poo Flower shows up, also dresses Santa Claus. and then the father returns and there's a big confusion and then a bunch of cops show up and arrest both of them because they can't tell who is who. These cops have never, you know, consider the idea that they could take

the fake beard off of these two and see which one of the martian is. Not these days anymore. For all they know, maybe these are Jewish policemen, they don't know who Santa Claus is, they think this is what Martians look like. Could be.

This was a legendary French-Canadian Jewish Exactly. That's what I was going with this. So they're both arrested. They ride in the back of a cop car with who's like the chief of police, who looks like a pig in a stye. He's so happy. And the, but then the Martian just disappears from the back of the car.

And then like, I guess it's the end of the movie. What happens? I don't remember. Notes at this point just say flies away? Question mark. What do they do? I don't remember. I think he just leaves.

I think he's slings and that's it, right? Yeah. You had two extra note cards to fake us out there. And there's no text at the end that says whether the dad was found guilty of being a Martian and sent to jail or anything like that. Well, they had to cut them open to find out. They determined not a Martian.

Determined up. Well, we got good news and bad news. We dropped the charges. Bad news. Your father is just in his constituent parts now. Bad news is we can only do it once. Bad news is. It's hard for the Martian to get home

because as a Christmas gift, He has given the kids the model of his UFO that I think they used for many, for some of the shots. So it's, you know, I don't know how he's going to get away now that they have the craft. Off camera. Oh, Hans, do you know anything about this movie that you can tell it? Like, I seem to, you know, from poking around the internet, it seems like maybe it's a minor, like, cult film in Canada. Yeah, I think it's the kind of movie that they would run on Canadian TV. Like, you know, Dave grew up in New Hampshire and he said he remembers seeing it as like,

on offer as a kitty matinee up there because that's, you know, very near the border. So, yeah, I believe this is a beloved Canadian film. And it occupies an interesting little corner of history because they ran out of money and this producer named Rock... Really? Yeah. It looks like it's all up on screen.

Every centim of it. All the Loonies are up there, right? This producer named Rock Demers came in to sort of help finish it. And he winds up becoming this kind of the Canadian Disney in terms of like having, he has this company called Le Productions La Fette, which makes all of these bananas live action kids movies. I don't know if y'all have ever heard of the peanut butter solution. Yeah.

Yeah. Or like, you know, Jacob Tutu and the Hooded Fang and Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler. Jacob Tutu and the Hooded Fang is, I've never seen the movie and I've never read the book. Oh, I read the book. It was listed as one of the books In the back of a book I had as a kid It listed as another book available from the publisher And I was like, what is this book about?

What is a hooded fang? I wish I could tell you having read it But I just remember it being weird. I remember as a kid assuming like, I guess he gets a pet cobra or something But I never went all the way to actually read it. I have not watched that one. I need to.

But anyway, so yeah, but this is the beginning of his career as a kid film producer. So, you know, thanks to the Christmas Martian we eventually get down the road to Jacob Tutu in the Hooded Fang. So, yeah, so this is, you know, I think this is in that category of like, what's that, there's also that Canadian TV special where Gilda Radner voices a witch. Oh, yeah. That's like a Halloween.

Yes, yes, yes. The Halloween. Yeah, that's a Halloween favorite up there. The witch is something, yeah. So, yeah, I don't know that it's really made it to the lower 48 as much as a cult item. but that was before this episode was recorded. So clearly now, I think the Avalanche begins, and I think Rift Tracks did this one a couple years ago.

That would make sense, yeah. I was going to recommend this to the mystery science theater people, should they do more episodes? And then I saw that Rift Tracks did one of it, and I'm like, all right, never mind, it's been taken care of. Curses. It just, I realized the reason I, one of the reason I hadn't seen a movie like this in a long time is that this is the kind of thing I would watch.

I would see only on Mystery Science Theater, 2000, you know, where something were otherwise it would not have fallen into my lap because it didn't reach the level of professionalism that made it to Milburn, New Jersey. And something with a lot of natural space for jokes to fill. Yes. Oh, yeah, no, it's made for it. But these are the worst.

Speaking from experience, when you get a movie that just has like three minutes with no dialogue and you're like, oh, damn it. What are we going to say? They're just running around in the snow. They're doing nothing. Time for another political rant. I will say this, like, there's something about a kids movie that not only feels like it was made for kids, but it was made by kids.

That's true. You know, like, it really feels like the, like the Frankie and Catherine are like sitting there going, okay, now what happens? And then what? And then he does this, you know? It has the feeling, yeah, of like, that's the best thing you can say about it is it's interminable for an adult, but it has the feel of a story kids are making up or even that the kids have the camera and are just like shaking it around and things like that. And I have to admit, compared to the talk of the office where I am has been the live action Moana trailer. And compared to something like that, I think I kind of prefer the Christmas version in some ways. There's no, green screen. Yeah.

Oh, no, it's all up. This is all reality. Yeah. That kid is really way too high in the sky. So let's do final judgments, whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like. I'm going to say, I think I texted some very interesting. of this to Stewart, that any, like, three minutes isolated of this movie is hilarious. But if you watch all 65, it's interminable.

Like, it would be a great thing. If you're looking for something weird to put on in the background of your holiday party on mute, like if you're the kind of person to do that sort of thing, this was... Which feels like 50% of Dan's Queens is... Yeah, yes. I recommend it for that use and that use alone. I would say it's a bad, bad movie because it really tried me. my patience, but, you know, it's got

its charms. Did it try your patience, did it want to buy? No. I mean, my patience is pretty small. They got to run Amazon instead. Now, yeah, I mean, this is a monstrous movie, but, I mean, I feel like this is very much

a bad, bad movie, but with the caveat, I feel like, under, with the right audience of bad movie sickos, if you are doing a bad movie night that is Christmas themed, I could see this one being a fun one to watch with people and watch people squirm and get annoyed and check their phones for 65 minutes.

It feels like an eternity. But no, I would say this is a bad, bad movie. I agree with you guys that I think it is a... This is a bad, bad movie for solo viewing. But, yeah, if you wanted to use it to... If the thing you want to watch is the effect it has on somebody else, then it's a good bad movie for that. But I feel like by the end of a discussion,

I kind of talked myself into liking the concept of it as a low budget for kids, really dumb, you know, little movie. But it is not, it's, I wouldn't recommend watching it or showing it to people, unless you want to see the movie and be uncomfortable. Yeah. I actually watched this movie and then immediately watched Zardaz

for the first time to prepare for a flop TV. And I'm like, what a day I'm happy. What a time to be alive. Alonso, what do you say? I mean, I can't disagree with anything you're saying. And I do say this probably plays best if you're in a situation where you're with people who are enjoying its badness and you can talk to each other during the slacker parts of it.

But ultimately, I mean... Which is like 75 to 85% of it. But ultimately, I have to kind of say this is a movie I kind of like just because I was four years old in 1971. And so, like, I recognize the shape of this sort of misbegany. children's entertainment that was just the coin of the realm

of the early 1970s and I could see where if you were a kid and you saw this at Christmas time would be the sort of thing that you would want to go back to every year and then maybe as an adult

at one point go oh God this really isn't very good is it but there is something so like you know on Project Runway Heidi Klum used to always use the term home sewn

as like kind of a disparaging thing but there's something homes sewn about this movie. It literally just feels like some people who are not in any way in the show business, we're like, let's make a kid's film with these things that we have handy and all of this damn snow.

And so, yeah, on that level, I think it kind of works, but yeah, it is a tough sit by yourself, no question. Yeah, it's hard to, I like the idea of it more than I like the it, but I will say in a world where the problem is that things are too slick and soulless and

kind of like ultra polished in terms of like AI and professional entertainment and things like that. There's something I do find appealing about like this is the like dumbest, roughest cuttest, like most slapped together type thing. There is a

There were no studio notes involved in the making of this. Yeah, exactly. Nobody was like, how do we get it to be four quadrants? I think they were like, how do we get enough film to get it up to 65 minutes? Alonso now now I kind of want to see the judges from Project Runway give

their takes on this movie. If only, I want to see, like, Tim Gunn be nice. I want to see Nina Garcia be, I don't know, unhappy, and I just want to see Lawroach's face. Like, I want to see his displeasure, or maybe he'd love it. Yeah, I at least want to hear their thoughts about the Martians' Fishnet Body Suit, you know. I do want to acknowledge. They were handed a fishing net, and Tim Gunn said, make it work. Come on, make it work. The, you know, we've, we've navigated Elliot's now long ago

moved to LA as best we can. You know, we've done what we could for that and I think it's

you know, not really affected that much except for that like watching a bad movie alone is never the

ideal way to experience them. So I think that probably the level of bad bad ratings has gone up since

simply because the three of us aren't all watching these movies together and having a grand old time. Certainly. Certainly.

Certainly, I think that's a good point. Certainly, I enjoy these movies much less when I'm by myself. And also, I only have time to watch these movies and no other movies in between. It feels like user error on life there, buddy. Oh, boy, is it ever. Yeah. Hello. Hello, I'm calling on behalf of the Beef and Dairy Network podcast.

No, I'm sorry. No sales calls. Goodbye. It's a multi-award. podcast featuring guests such as Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Josie Long. I don't know what a Josie Long is, and anyway, I'm about to take my mother into town to see Phantom of the Opera at last. You are wasting my time, and even worse, my mother's time. She only has so much time left. She's 98 years old. She's only expected to live for another

20 or 30 years. Mother get her shoes on. Yes, the orthopedic ones. I don't want to have to carry you home again, do I? Right. Well, if you were looking for a podcast... Mother, you're not wearing that, are you? It's very revealing, Mother. This is a musical theatre, not a Parisian Bordello. Simply go to maximum fun.org. I'm reaching for my Samsung Galaxy 4 as we speak. Mother, mother, not that hat. Have you been looking for a new podcast

all about nerdy pop culture? Well, I have just the thing for you. Secret Mysteries of Nerd Mysteries. Secret Histories of Nerd Mysteries is a weekly pop culture history podcast hosted by me, host Alston. And me, host Brenda. We've already tackled mysteries such as

What Happened to the Puppets from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, a Snoopy Mexican? and why do people hate Barney so much? From theme parks to cartoons to 80s, 90s, and 2000s nostalgia, we tackle it all. Check us out every Tuesday on maximum fun.org and wherever you get podcasts. The internet. We are all on it all the time. You need to be on it all the time.

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And speaking of Whole Cloth, we're sponsored in part today by Quince. You know, things are getting colder. There's a lot of holiday stuff going on. So you need some wardrobe staples that are going to look sharp and feel good and keep you warm, you know? From Mongolian, let's take that again. From Mongolian cashmere sweaters to Italian wool coats, quince pieces are crafted from premium materials and belts to hold up without the luxury markup. They got great outerwear, down jackets, wool top coats, and leather styles built to last.

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you i was going over canada i'm like oh i should have said something about the martian movie that we Anyway, JumboTron. Polly Amateur Hour is like the Flop House if the hosts were in a musical comedy, Polycule. So it's nothing like the flop house. But it is in the good bad column. Join Nicole, Laurel, and Daniel for a funny, filthy variety show with segments such as Unicorn Hunter Hunters. And is this Polly? Monogamous folks love it too, but they love only one host at a time.

So why listen to helpful Pollycasts when you could shotguns, and Chaos Muppet Energy with Poly Amateur Hour. There will be jingles. Listen to Polly Amateur Hour wherever you get your podcasts. We also have a personal jumbotron. That's a jumbotron that's for a person

from another person or people. And this jumbotron is for Evelyn Ann, and it comes from Jonathan, Fletcher, Ian, and Oscar. And it says, Happy 15th anniversary to my amazing wife. You're my best friend and the most amazing travel partner

anyone could ask for it. You've made a quezen, art, if you will, of bringing joy to everyone you encounter. We are very blessed. What a sweet message. That's so lovely. Now to go from that sweet message to some more crass commercialism, because we got some flop house things to promote as well.

That's right. As you may know, flop TV continues apace. The government tried to shut us down, but we said no. Every first Saturday of the month, we are doing our live, one-hour, televised type version over the internet of the flop house. It's flopster piece theater this season. We're doing some of the biggest, most famousest flops, or most legendariest flops, I should say. And the next episode, as we're recording this, but I think we've, when this episode airs, it's not done already.

I think it will have been done, but you can still talk about it. I'm unstuck in time. Well, our December episode was Zardaz. That's right. On December 6th, we talked about SARS, it was hilarious. It was hilarious. January 3rd, we'll be talking about Dr. Doolittle, the 60s version. And February 7th, we'll be talking about Plan 9 from outer space.

That's live on the internet, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, each day. time. But let's say you can't make it at that time. Don't worry. If you have a ticket to a flop TV show, you can watch the recording of it as many times as you want through the end of February. So go to theflophouse.Simpletix.com. Again, that's the flophouse.com. Buy yourself individual tickets or get the season past that's six shows for the price of five. Do it. It's like you're stealing money from us. You know, you want to. It's the thrill of crime, like in the movie pickpocket. Anyway, we've got another show that I want to say. That's an in-person show. The Flop House is returning to San Francisco SketchFest for SF SketchFest 2026.

We're going to be appearing on Sunday, January 25th. It's an afternoon show 4 p.m. Pacific Time in person. So you know what? You can still go to work on Monday and you won't be too tired from our show. So come on by Sunday afternoon, January 25th in the San Francisco Sketchfest. We'll be at Cobbs Comedy Club again. I love performing at Cobbs. It's a really fun comedy club to be at.

Go to sfetchfest.com, I think. Let me double check that. Yes, it's just SFSCfest. Fetchfest.com for more information. And I just want to remind everybody, I've got a book out right now. That's right. Joke Farming, How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense from the University of Chicago Press written by me. It's got all of my joke writing secrets.

Shh, don't tell anybody. You can learn how to write jokes the Elliott-Kalen way if you buy the book. And it's available anywhere books are sold. So go buy it. Thank you. Let's answer some letters from listeners. This first letter comes from Aaron Last Name Withheld. Who writes, like many a millennial, whatever combination of literacy and interest that turns one into a reader, trademark sign, earlier in life, has completely atrophied for me.

I used to be a reader, and now I can't honestly say that I am, the shame. I've decided on a plan, though. Get back into reading through film criticism. Can you recommend columns, books, articles, or newsletters about film that are well written, and genuinely fun enough to rival, flicking through brain rotting short-form video content on my stupid phone. So, again, Aaron last in a world. I was just reading about the study that said that flipping through short-form video content, the effect on your brain is bad.

Yeah. That literally you're worse at everything afterwards. So I'm going to recommend a website. I love it. I hope it goes on a million years. It has some really great thoughtful criticism. It's called The Dissolve. Oh, no. No, no.

Steward, yeah, starring us. Although, I mean, we should recommend, of course, the reveal a newsletter from a couple of the dissolved folks. Keith Fitz and Scott Tobias and Keith was kind enough to come out to our Chicago live shows. Yeah. That's a great newsletter for Alonzo, I'm sure, has thoughts on film criticism. I mean, I feel like Alonzo's work is itself. I always enjoy and I always find both thoughtful and well-written. Well, I'm going to shamelessly recommend my husband.

new newsletter on the ghost site called sluggish at sluggish.gish.ghost.io, and it is film criticism, but also he writes about food or art or music or whatever he has a mind to. And, you know, I've always been a fan of his prose. And I think it is, he is not here to bum you out with talk about contemporary politics. So if you're looking to avoid that lane entirely, I think you'll enjoy what you see at sluggish. And then, of course, you know, Justin Chang over the New Yorker doing a bang-up job he's got a Pulitzer in his pocket

and the other one is playing a piano I don't know I've lost my Alanis Morris said there but anyway he just wrote a really great take down of Wicked for Good that made me feel less alone in the world so I was just reading that yesterday

if you don't mind reading older criticism I mean like there are great new critics on the site as well but like all of Roger Ebert stuff is at Roger Ebert.com and like you can there's a reason why he was a beloved critic he's a very like personable

like fun writer and also obviously if you're on letterbox you should read Dan's letterbox reviews he's a very good letterboxed reviewer and they call him his generation's Paul Schrader I feel like but the thing is I feel like Dan does give thoughtful reviews whereas like I'll do like one

fucking line or joke. And I feel like that seems to be there's like such a aspirational trend at this point of like, can I come up with the best one liner to describe this movie? And it really overlooks the impact of real thoughtful film writing or just writing on art in general can have on your enjoyment and also your willingness to check out stuff you might not. I read, I listen to a lot of heavy metal music. And part of the reason that I explore so much and I make it almost like a hobby is that I have found a couple of blogs that I really love and I really love these writers and like reading critical writing on something like music or like having somebody describe something that isn't just words, you know, like describing like music and writing are so different. and like writing and images can be very different.

Like it's just an interesting, like seeing somebody try and describe the feelings you get while watching a movie or like, yeah, I don't know, I just think it's really interesting. And I feel like it's becoming less valued in our current culture. I also, I want to recommend three books that are not necessarily film criticism

but are about movie making that if you haven't read, or if you want to get your eyes off of a screen and onto paper, unless you're reading them, i guess his e-books or whatever um but i'm sure alonzo's probably read all of these uh you guys might have read them too but um the devil's candy by julie salomon which is a great book about the making of bonfire the vanities uh picture by lillian ross which is a great book about the red badge of courage where you do not gain respect for john houston by the end of the book um but

it's but it's a really fascinating book and also when the shooting stops the cutting starts by ralph rosenblum about film editing and those are just three those are three great books about movies and I would throw in Stephen Bach's final cut also about the making of Heaven's Gate. I was going to mention that too, and I'm like, it's four books too many, but the final cut is also fantastic. Oh, you know what? Because we're going to do Dr. Doolittle in a couple of months for Flop TV. Pictures at a Revolution is a great book. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's also a great book. It deals with, one of the things it deals with is Dr. Doolittle and the death of old Hollywood filmmaking through that movie. Speaking of Mark Harris, his Mike Nichols' biography is really. Oh, it's great. Yeah. I just have to read that one. And actually, I'll recommend another one is the studio by John Geckery done, right? John Phillip done.

Yeah. Where he basically was just wandering around. He's just walking around 20th Century Fox for like a year and just writing about what's going on and what it's like there. And it's so, I found it there's so much in it that is about the making of their Dr. Doolittle's coming up. It's going to be our big release. We've got to get rid of Dr. And there's like a page and a half where they're like, we're going to make this movie about apes, whatever.

And I'm like, they have no idea that that. movie is going to be a huge hit and Dr. Dool is going to be a fiasco. Also, you know, while we're going down this rabbit hole, there's a really fun book called Roadshow about the age of the Elephantine 1960s musicals and how they basically almost destroyed Hollywood because everybody was chasing the dragon of Mary Poppins and Sound of Music and like every studio sank a fortune into these huge Biameth Roadshow intermission musicals at a time when the kids just wanted to see Easy Rider. Yeah.

And I will recommend a book, Kyle Buchanan's Blood Sweat and Chrome, about the making of Mad Max Fury, right? It's really fun. And it's like, it is one of those things where you're like, not only do I love the movie, but also it really imparts that feeling of like, yeah, this movie shouldn't have gotten made probably and we'll probably never see something like this again. No, it's amazing when you're reading a book about a movie

and you know the movie was made. That's why you're reading the book. But every turn of the page, you're like, there's no way they're going to be able to do this. It's like this is impossible. Someone's going to die. Tom Hardy's involved. I also want to put on my Dave Berg hat

and the lighter side of film criticism. Everyone's favorite Mad Magazine article, the lighter side of it. This writer was asking for like, you know, also some short and engaging stuff. You know, Nathan Rabin has been a big supporter of the podcast over the years and he does a lot of very funny, like sillier projects like we might do here on our show. His new book, The Fractured Mirror,

is about to come out, which is a terrific look at American movies about movie making. And so if you're looking for something that you want like some short hits that you're not going to get mired in the middle of a real long chapter, that's the ticket,

and it's really sharp and fun film writing. But let's move on to... I feel like that's the most time we've ever spent answering your question. I think we could spend, you know, Like a lot longer. But Andrew last name withheld writes this. Would you recommend books about movies?

Oh, here we go again. Based on a recent letter, I knew I had to provide some additional reporting. In 2008, I got to go on the study abroad trip of my dreams. We spent a month living on the Galapagos Islands, learning about its human and natural history. There was a cute one-room schoolhouse in the island where we, take lessons right next to the beach. It was the only inhabited island because it had a dormant volcano that collected a major source of fresh water.

The volcano seemed cool, so I got two friends to ditch class one day, bike across the island, and hike up to the volcano to the lake. We spent an idyllic morning swimming around the warm water in the caldara, then took a break to eat Ecuadorian Oreos on the shore. Suddenly... Wait, wait, wait. I want to know how Ecuadorian Oreos are different than domestic Oreos. You know, all these little details.

Suddenly this jaunty old white guy with a coterie of 8 to 10 young women came marching down the volcano straight towards us. He started chatting us up and seemed a bit zany. The women, young American students... He told us he was a Martian.

He was wearing a fishnet stock. He was wearing a fishnet of some kind. You took our jelly beans. The women, young American students, didn't really say anything. They just kind of followed him and sat looking as he pontificated to us. He then started saying,

this is a beautiful place, but whatever you do, never go swimming in freshwater in the Galapagos. He said there's, quote, small brain-eating worms in the water, and for God's sake, whatever you do, don't swim in there. I'm wondering which horrible person in the news this guy's going to turn out to me.

I was kind of rolling my eyes at the strange man who started lecturing us about brainworms when my friend, who had been kind of quiet since this guy showed up, suddenly asked, are you Patch Adams? And he said, yes, of course. That's why I know about these brain worms. Anyway, it's time for me to go.

As he and the young... He then teleported out. As he and the young women... The red clown knows should have been the tip off. As he and the young women left, they kept saying, don't get brain worms. I was stunned, and now I actually kind of worried that a doctor had told me I was going to get brain worms.

But also, because it was apparently Patch Adams, I turned to my friend who had identified him and was like, how did you know that was Patch Adams? He told me that at the University of Illinois, there's one dorm that's kind of a hippie dorm, and they have various artists in residents who live with the students and Patch was a recurring guest

who apparently had a reputation of sharing his weed we then spent the next few weeks on the Galapagos logging many more rapid weird encounters with Patch and his group of young ladies we'd emerge from a hiking trail right when their bus happened to be driving by and they would see us and shout

brainworms or we'd be at a restaurant and they would all happen by and shout brainworm boys later we encountered them swimming on a different island and asked Aren't you all worried about the brain worms? And Patch Adams was like, oh, no, it doesn't affect me. Were they just fucking with us about the brainworms

or does Patch really have ultimate healing powers? So that's another Patch Atamantium update for you from Andrew Lestning with him. I feel like it raises so many more questions than it answers. Get the Director of Health and Human Services on the horn. Yeah. Anyone knows about brain worms, yeah. Certainly become the number one Patch Adams anecdote. I think if people have stories

about Patch Adams, write in. Tell us your Patch Adams. I want to hear more of the tales of Patch Adams. Maybe. You're going to have to eventually watch Patch Adams. Now, I also want to make it clear, these are all secondhand stories that I'm just reporting along.

Yeah, yeah. We're not looking for Richard Simmons over here. We haven't independently confirmed any of them. I mean, if you're Patch Adams, write in and tell us, what were you doing in the Galapagos with the bunch of young women telling people about brain worms? Yeah, what's your secret on avoiding brainworms?

Do you have to vibrate your skull at a specific frequency? Send it to our government. Perhaps. Anyway, that's a recurring segment. Tales of Patch Adam. Tales from the Adams patch. He is alive. I'm just checking his wiki page.

80 years young. If you were immune to brainworms, you'd be alive too. It's the number one cause of death is brain worms. Oh, wow. That's him. Let's move on to It's so funny if he's like, someone's like, who are you? And then he puts the red nose on them.

They go, patch out. Where he's going to go roller bakes. He takes the red nose off and nobody knows who he is. So let's move on to recommendations, movies that may be a better use of your time than The Christmas Martian. So I saw this movie about this doctor who thought laughter. It was the best medicine. It was called Dr. Giggles.

So this I like to recommend a movie called PtU It's a With Jeremy Piven? No It's P-C-C-U It's P-T so it's So it's Jeremy Tiven

Yeah Paul Thomas you I can't I would look at this title by the way And I keep thinking Paid Time Off But

P-TU It's on the Hong Kong Collection on Criterion right now. It's structured by Johnny Toe. It's an 88 minutes long. It's one of these sort of crime movies about, you know, cops being just as bad and dumb as the criminals and sort of events spiraling out of control. It's kind of a one crazy night cop thriller in that way.

I'll admit that, like, some of the machinations of the plot got a little convoluted for me to keep track of, like, who was mad at who for, what but it didn't matter uh it just was like kind of a pleasure to be in the world like i i'm gonna sound like the old man that i increasingly am and also have been since i was a young man and say that like it really made me feel for like what we've lost with the way movies are filmed now like it just it just looked gorgeous like it looked beautiful like it's all shot at night but it's these vivid sort of like neon colors too and the the staging was gorgeous like it's just the sort of thing that you don't see much these days with digital photography but if you want to see something just sort of like soak in the atmosphere I really enjoyed it sounds

good cool I actually have two movies to recommend because I've seen yeah I know I've seen a lot of movies but both of them I really loved so I can't I don't want to save either of them I hope that's okay. Check the rulebook. Is it allowed? Well, I don't care. We didn't bother the right one, so yes. Are you a golden retriever?

The, uh-oh, depending on my personality test. So the first movie I'm going to recommend is, as of this moment, my favorite movie the year. It's the new movie from Yolchim Trir, sentimental value. Love it so much. I am a huge fan of his Oslo trilogy. and while this isn't, I guess, technically part of that, it feels like a natural progression of the themes that are in those movies. It is this beautiful story about a father and daughter who are estranged.

The father's a filmmaker who wants to make one more project and his daughter is an actress who has, let's say, a lot of resentment toward her absentee father, who's, frankly, kind of a piece of shit. And it's, Yacom Trier has a way of taking themes and ideas that seem like they're very serious and kind of boring and making it kind of light and bright and light and fun and makes those emotional moments really hit.

And yeah, I found it to be really beautiful and it's a really fun movie and it's got some great performances from Stellan Scarsgaard, of course, and Renata Reinsva. And El Fanning's great in it. And, of course, Anders De Nielsen Lai, Lee, Lai, manages to sneak his way in there and doesn't have too many terrible things happen to him this time, which is unique for Yolchem Trrier movies.

Yeah, I really loved it. It's great. And I also got a chance to go to Lincoln Center to catch a matinee screening, which meant I was there with a lot of very old people of Spain's offering for the Academy Awards, a movie called Sarat, which is a kind of like, what if Wages of Fear was held at a rave in the deserts of Morocco, where a father, a middle-aged father drags his young son to this rave

because he's searching for his daughter who has gone missing and he has a reason to believe that she is at this rave. And he continues to follow leads kind of deeper into the desert and putting himself and his son into greater danes. and a lot of the cast are non-actors who were like handpicked from like the rave scene and so you have these really interesting performances from some like I would just say interesting kind of like looking people and it felt very natural and the sound design is incredible it's all shot in the deserts of Morocco so it's gorgeous and and yeah and of course

the way it incorporates like dance music is really interesting too and it was really fun when my friend who I went to see the movie with was in the bathroom after the movie

and then she heard an older lady be like I'm over raves which is great yeah so Surratt it's great is it my turn to recommend a movie yeah no I got some more I'm going to recommend a movie that I just saw

recently and it's not the greatest movie in the world but I had a lot of fun watching it It's a Samuel Fuller movie from 1950 called The Baron of Arizona, which stars Vincent Price, and it's loosely, very loosely based on a true story of this guy who in the, right before Arizona was a state in the late 19th century, this guy forged a bunch of documents because he was present and he found a woman and he said, she's the last heir of this baron who had a Spanish land grant that by law has to be recognized by the United States. and it covers all of Arizona and he had gone to all this trouble to basically like turn part of the U.S. territories into his own personal kingdom

and try to get it through the courts with all these forged documents and it came very close to actually doing it and again this movie version of it is I think they changed every single fact in the entire thing other than the names of the people involved but Vincent Price is really fun in it there's some really fun scenes where he's like

yeah I guess I just got to be a monk for three years in Spain so I can get access to this one document I need to forge and it's a short type movie it starts out a little slow but it's got a lot of fun to it and it's called the Baron of Arizona and is it an amazing movie no but there's like I said there's a lot of fun stuff and it's a fun story so I would recommend it if you want to watch like I did I was like I want to watch an old movie

that I have not seen that will I'll watch it relatively quickly and it'll be fun. This was exactly what I needed. So that's what I watched. Alonzo, what about you? What movies about Barons have you seen? Barron's not, at the moment, a little slack on that front.

But I'm going to take a page from Stu and recommend two movies. One of them is the new one from Max Walker Silverman, who had a film a couple years ago called A Love Story with Dale Dickey. This film is rebuilding. And like most movies nowadays, it stars Josh O'Connor.

And he plays a guy in Colorado. who's, there are fires in the hills that displace him from his land and some of his neighbors as well. So they all wind up in kind of like a FEMA trailer camp trying to figure out what to do next. He has a young daughter that he is jointly raising with his ex-wife, played by Megan Fahey.

And her mom is played by Amy Madigan, giving another great performances here that is not Aunt Gladys. But it's a really beautiful and quiet movie about people and the land. about sort of, you know, people at turning points in their lives and trying to figure out, you know, what they're going to do next. And a film that is also, you know, quiet and beautiful and very much about people in nature is Train Dreams, which is on or coming to Netflix. But if you have

the chance to see it in theaters, I really recommend that you do because it is one of the most gorgeous films of this year. It stars Joel Edgerton as a guy who, in the early 20th century, kind of travels to go work in like labor camp, lumber camps to like sort of clear out the forests in the Pacific Northwest as the railroads are coming in. He gets married to Felicity Jones. They have a young child and he's got like his home life with them, but also kind of going off to do these jobs and, you know, things happened to them in their lives. And yeah, both of these films, you know, they're of the kind of Terrence Mallet, Kelly Reichart school of like not a ton

of dialogue. Fast action, pulse pounding. Exactly, yes. Cray edited in a blender, you know. Terrence Mallet, you know best from Crank. So, yeah, I really love both of these movies that are among my favorites of this year and I hope people check them out. I'm just, I went into a reverie, like, imagining a Terrence Mellick crank. Where's, you know, it's all shot at Golden Hour and, you know, beautiful, yeah. Haunting.

Thank you, Alonzo, for torturing us yet again. It's what I do. Thank you for having me back. You should certainly plug again if there are things you would love to. Plug your book again. Plug your book in, Alamo. Sure, yes. The book is, have yourself.

A movie Little Christmas, revised and updated. It is out now. It is in stores everywhere, ideally. It's certainly an online booksellers. I can guarantee you'll find it there. Go bug your library. Get them to get a copy, too. Why not?

You can also pick up my book, Hollywood Pride, that I did with TCM and running press. That's still out there in the world as well. Read my stuff at The Film Verdict and check me out on the podcast, Linoleum Knife, with my husband, Dave White. We just hit our 15th anniversary. Oh, yeah. Not, we're not a flop house level, but, you know, we're one of the old guard. You can hear me on Maximum Film here on the Maximum Fun Network.

I'm also on breakfast all day with Christy Lamere. It's a YouTube show, but we also do a podcast. And I pop in regularly at the Deck the Hallmark podcast to talk about Christmas movies on the regular. So, yes, go get sick of my voice. It's impossible. We've all been guests on Maximum Film, right? I believe you have. Yeah.

And linoleum knife is, I should, I just want to make a special, linoleum life. Linolium knife I want to make a special plea for is just, it's such a great, I love listening to it. It's such a, it is like the perfect mixture of like intellectual and cozy, you know, like, it's like, it feels, there's something very cozy about it, but also I come away from it always with like an idea or a recommendation or something from it that I hadn't thought of before and it wouldn't have known about otherwise.

So I really treasure it. Thank you, Elliot. I appreciate it. Well, as long as we're thanking people, we should thank Alex Smith, our producer. He goes by the name Howl Dottie all over the internet. Alex came up to see our Chicago live shows, and it was both a delight to see him, and he was a big help at the shows. He got me way too drunk the night before. I blame Alex exclusively.

You had no hand in that. You were let us pray. So thank you, Alex. How good Stuart? No, Stuart doesn't have a lot of experience with alcohol. I'm just, I'm just baby. Oh, Stu is baby. Okay. Yeah, Stu is baby, yeah. And thank you, of course, to Maximum Fun, the home of our show, the home of maximum film,

a lot of great shows. Check them out over at maximum fun.org. But for this episode of The Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalin, author of Joke Farming, How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense On Store Shelf Now. I should have mentioned it.

And we've been joined by Alonzo Duraldi. Bye. A Merry Christmas Martian to us all. And a Martian New Year. Slowly gotten better. It's finishing the show. It's only taken us

almost two decades. One of these days really going to nail it. Much like people in both of your households, I have a cold. My fucking things up. I think I'm getting one. Yeah, you can hear my throat doesn't feel so good. Should I go drink a bunch of NyQuil so I can match your energy?

That'd be great, yeah. Okay, I don't know what I'm looking for in my phone. Let's just start the show. Are you DMing with anybody? No, I think I was subconsciously like, I'm going to call up the stuff. I'm going to be later on the show, but that's so far ahead. Anyway. Yeah, later is not now.

By definition. You've never said anything truer. Okay. They call me the tautologist, Batman. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows. Supported.

Directly. By you.