Rocky III

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(A Note from Derek: Hey, everybody. As we're all aware, just about everyone is under a Stay At Home order around, so getting new shows out might be kind of spotty until Jake and I can figure out how to do this without having to be in the same room. Options will be discussed soon. Until then, we ask that you bear with us. Also, please stay safe, follow whatever guidelines you're supposed to and wash your hands. We can't afford to lose any listeners!)

Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) personifies the American Dream; he started from almost nothing, and he went on to become the heavyweight boxing champion. He has a wife (Talia Shire as Adrian), a son (to be determined later), a big ol' bronze statue of himself, and a buttload of money.

And making friends!

But it's not all love and unicorn farts. He also has a brother-in-law (Burt Young as Paulie) that is jealous of Rocky's fame and fortune, and he also discovers that his manager, Mickey (Burgess Meredith), has only been allowing him to fight boxers that are easy to beat. And a wrestler named Thunderlips (Hulk Hogan in his first film role) who folds him up like a duvet cover during a charity match. Oh, and there's a homicidal top-ranked boxer named Clubber Lang (Mr. T) who wants to beat Rocky into a gelatinous pulp, just as the champ was getting ready to retire.

Clubber is the real hero of this film.

Clubber beats Rocky (and also somehow manages to give Mickey a fatal heart attack), and things are looking bleak. Fortunately, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) appears and tries to train Rocky to box like an actual boxer, while Paulie gets really racist and identifies the band Survivor as "boogaloo music." It's a weird movie.

Derek picked this one, and he regrets nothing. Sure, it's the goofiest movie in the entire Rocky canon, but it's so darn fun, and it goes by really quickly. Plus, it give shim a chance to do his Stallone impression, which is adequate, at best.

Jake agrees that it is pretty silly, but still a fun watch. He also gets to break out his Stallone impression, as well as his Mickey and an astoundingly good Clubber Lang! For that alone, you should check out this one, you guys!

So lace up your gloves, put on your shiniest shorts, and tune in to this week's episode!

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

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Robert Downey, Jr. is Harry Lockhart--a burglar who isn't very good at his job, and he accidentally stumbles into a new one when he interrupts an audition while trying to hide out from the cops. Suddenly thrust into the spotlight as a potentially famous actor, he meets a girl at a party who turns out to be high high school crush Harmony (Michelle Monaghan), meets a private investigator named Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), and becomes entangled with a nasty agent (Corbin Bernsen) while trying to help Harmony find out who killed her roommate.

Potty mouth.

Harry finds out who Harmony's roommate really is, loses a finger, has his testicles electrocuted, and makes a new friend in Perry, who thinks Harry is an idiot. Hollywood can be weird sometimes.

That message is "listen to our podcast."

Jake recommended this movie, and he loves it. It has been a favorite since he worked at a video store in Alabama! He recommended it to anyone who would listen back then, and many of them came to resent him for it. He regrets nothing, and he is right.

Derek was seeing this for the first time and was pleasantly surprised. Robert Downey, Jr. was nailing it, and Val Kilmer was great because he looked like he was genuinely enjoying himself. The whole thing feels like the Coen brothers made a Lethal Weapon movie with Guy Ritchie!

So grab your tiny gun and your severed finger, and tune in to this week's episode!

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat

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Finishing out the Bruce Campbell run, Derek and Jake sat down to watch Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, which features a bunch of great character actors--including M. Emmett Walsh, David Carradine, and an actress whose name they can't remember, so they call her "Hottie Blue Eyes". Clearly, they came to play.

And be subtle as they do it!

Bruce Campbell is Van Helsing, who travels to the middle-of-the-desert town of Purgatory to hunt down a vampire known as...uh..."Megatron" (Carradine)? We can't remember. But he's a vampire, just like everyone else in town. The big difference being, they have all sworn off killing humans to feed themselves, choosing instead to manufacture and drink synthetic blood. A larger group of locals want to go back to the old ways, so they want to fight the others and take control of the town.

"Margaret"? "Margarine"?

There are also a bunch of other characters that really serve no purpose other than to be fodder for the vampires to kill. There's also a family that comes to town, but it's unclear who the viewer is supposed to be rooting for. The whole thing is a mess.

ZZ Top is not impressed.

Jake did not like this movie at all. The acting is terrible, the story is non-existent, and the score sounds like it was ripped-off from Blazing Saddles. He was not impressed, and he is not wrong.

Derek liked it a little better, but only as a vehicle for making jokes. He agrees that the movie was awful, but it provided entertainment value in other ways. Still...woof, it was bad.

So drink some fake blood, try not to murder and tune in to this week's episode!

Maniac Cop

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A movie so bad, they literally threw out the lead halfway through!

Do not look directly into his mustache...unless you want to fall in love.

This time around, Jake and Derek cracked open 1988's Maniac Cop, which features Robert "The Big Chin" Z'Dar, Bruce "Not as Big a Chin, But Still Pretty Substantial" Campbell, Tom "The Inexplicable Sex Gargoyle" Atkins, Laurene "USA Network Late Night Regular" Landon, Richard "One Bad Mother--...Shut Your Mouth!" Roundtree, William "Have Another Cigarette" Smith, Sheree "Meaner Than She Looks, and She Looks Mean" North and Victoria "Visible Mustache" Catlin.

Lieutenant McCrae (Atkins) searches for a killer who is murdering people while dressed as a cop. When Jack Forrest's (Campbell) wife Ellen (Catlin) is found dead after she catches him in bed with a female cop, Mallory (Landon), Forrest becomes the primary suspect and must find out who the real killer is to clear his name. This leads to a confrontation with the real killer, Matt Cordell (Z'Dar), and his...girlfriend? Keeper? Potential victim? Anyway, her name is Sally, and she beats the piss out of McCrae with a cane, and Matt throws him out a window, leaving the movie rudderless.

When Chins Collide!

Can the suddenly very available Jack and his side piece Mallory find and stop Cordell before he kills again? Will anybody take notice of just how quickly Jack got over the murder of his wife? Did McCrae's mustache survive the fall? Will somebody please give Captain Ripley (Smith) a lozenge?

You'll have to tune in to find out!

Jake picked this one, and almost instantly regretted it. He continued to regret it throughout the entire viewing, and still does. He's terribly sorry. And he can't figure out why everybody things Mallory is so hot. It's kind of weird.

Derek was visibly distracted by Ellen's mustache in every scene she appeared in. He also regrets Jake choosing this movie. There are almost no redeeming qualities to it, and also an unnecessary inserted story line about the mayor, who is covering up what happened to Cordell.

So run--do not walk--as far away from this movie as possible, but listen to our latest episode!

My Name Is Bruce

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Once again, the guys sit down to watch a Bruce Campbell movie. This time, Campbell gets back to his roots and made this one with a bunch of his friends (and some new folks), literally in his own back yard! Sure, the budget was about ten thousand percent higher than the movies he made this way as a kid, but it's a fair trade-off for the improved quality.

A little higher, anyway...

Bruce Campbell takes on his most challenging role as Bruce Campbell, who is recruited--or, to be more accurate, kidnapped--by a superfan named Jeff (Taylor Sharpe) to help rid the small town of Gold Lick, Oregon of Guan-di, the vengeful Chinese god of war and bean curd. Unfortunately, despite years of fighting them on the silver screen and television, Bruce Campbell has no idea how to defeat it.

Will he be able to save the people and town? Will he get the girl (Grace Thorsen), who also happens to be the superfan's mother? Will he fire his agent (Ted Raimi)? And, most importantly, will he bang his birthday hooker? You'll have to tune in to find out!

Good luck with that, Bruce!

Jake enjoyed the scene with the hock shop owner (Tim Quill) and his partner (Danny Hicks) offering Bruce any gun he wants. He was, however, suitably concerned at Jeff's level of obsession with the man. He also thinks that it looks too much like a TV show to be a movie.

Derek didn't have a problem with the look of it, and he really enjoyed the whole cast, including the cameos from past Evil Dead trilogy actors. But he doesn't get the whole thing about the bean curd. He also got a kick out of "Shemp's Premium Whiskey", another nice callback to the Evil Dead films.

So get yourself one big name, keep it under $1.5 million and tune in to this week's episode!

Bubba Ho-Tep

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(A Note from Derek: Well, it's a new year, and time for some changes! For one, we'll be changing from a [mostly] weekly podcast to a [mostly] "every-other-week" podcast. The reason for this is because, quite frankly, I would like to have a little free time to myself when I'm off work. Editing these podcasts can sometimes be a real pain in the butt, especially after a long day at work, so I'm spreading the work out a bit. Another reason is, with the way the last month has gone, we haven't been able to get together as often as we'd like to do these shows, so we ended up with huge gaps over the last six months or so. We're still going to get together every week--when that's possible--and record, but rather than issue them each week, this will allow me to build a library of finished shows that I can put out if we have to skip a week or two. The bottom line is, I'm trying to set up a release schedule that works for both Jake and myself. We appreciate all of you that have stuck with us over the past month of nothing very much, and we hope to ensure that there are fewer gaps from now on.

Another change I'm making is shorter episode descriptions. Honestly, it's kind of redundant to record ourselves talking about the movie and then write out an almost complete synopsis for the webpage. It's ridiculous. So I'm not doing it anymore.

Once again, thank you all for your patience while we try to get our ducks in a row. All the best. -- Derek)

*****

Everyone loves Bruce Campbell, right? We sure do, and that's why we're starting out 2020 with one of Bruce's finest movies that isn't an Evil Dead sequel!

This week the guys sat down to watch Bubba Ho-Tep, where an elderly Elvis (Cambell) and a post-assassination John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis) whose skin was dyed brown and his brain has been replaced with a bag of sand square off against an evil mummy in cowboy clothes that is killing residents of the old folks' home they reside in so it can feast on their souls. Will they defeat the hillbilly mummy? Or will it defeat them and suck their souls out through their buttholes (a thing the mummy has been known to do)? You'll have to tune in to find out.

No, really. This is Elvis and JFK.

Jake is into the look of the whole thing, especially considering the micro-budget it was made on. Not too shabby!

Derek also likes it, but wonders if the whole thing is a figment of Elvis' imagination and he's the real killer. Who can say?

Exactly.

So put on your rhinestoniest jumpsuit, grab your walker and tune in to this week's episode!