An Excursions Diversion

I was going on a run (unfortunately, I still do that*) and it occurred to me, "Jeez, I never have any content for my blog, so it would be fun to make a post where I list all the movies Marshal Latham and I have watched for our opposite-of-renowned podcast, The Outcast Excursions. I could even make a post citing the Genre we've done the most movies in, the Director we've covered the most, and the Decade we've hit most." But dang, I knew it would be soooooo much work, and I barely make time to write, podcast, or properly wipe myself as it is.

But when I got home, I remembered that Marshal had once created a shared spreadsheet for the show and I thought, if I could grab that and fill in everything since he last updated it, it would only take me an hour or so to find the answers. And to my delight, Marshal has continued to update it, even including the next episode not yet released.

So, in answer to the question only I gave a crap about . . .

Total number of episodes (counting our try-out episode [DUEL]):

44

Year most covered:

TIE (4) 1983/2014 (1983: SPACEHUNTER, SWORD OF THE VALIANT, SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, KRULL) (2014: DRACULA UNTOLD, HERCULES, THE LEGEND OF HERCULES, THE GIVER)

Oldest film reviewed:

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934)

Newest film reviewed:

LISA FRANKENSTEIN (2024)

Most-reviewed director:

Alfred Hitchcock (6), which isn't surprising, since we try and do a Hitchcock film every year or so. Roger Corman is coming up quickly behind, though.

Number of movies by decade:

1930s: 1

1940s: 4

1950s: 4

1960s: 7

1970s: 6 (this includes the forthcoming OUTLAW JOSEY WALES)

1980s: 9

1990s: 0

2000s: 1

2010s: 8

2020s: 3

I suppose that means we'll have to seek out a Nineties film soon (perhaps 2014's POMPEII)(**).

Number of Video Game Adaptations:

1 (WARCRAFT)

Number of Horror movies:

15 (though it does include Sci-Fi Horror like PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES and THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES)

Number of Disaster movies:

2 (METEOR, AIRPORT)

Most-featured actor:

James Stewart (because of Hitchcock)

Worst Movie Marshal Would Like Us To Review:

GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE

Number of Sean Connery films:

3 (METEOR, SWORD OF THE VALIANT, MARNIE)

Number of Black & White films:

7 (THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH '34, THE INNOCENTS, THE THIRD MAN, CAT PEOPLE '42, NOTORIOUS, THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS, IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE)

Number of times we've watched WASP WOMAN:

Zero

Well, now that my blog post is finished, I'm not exactly sure what my point was. I suppose it was to mention that Marshal does good work over there on his Patreon and regular website, and that I appreciate his willingness to sit down with me and talk movies every month or so.

*It bugs the crap out of my mother that I refuse to go running until it's dark (though I probably run 10 or 12 times a year in daylight, not counting up at the cabin, when I'm all alone anyway), but I just seem to have a mental block/phobia about running while the sun is still out. Maybe it's that I'm afraid I'll be seen or mocked (which still happens a couple of times a year, the bastards), or that I just prefer darkness (matches my soul, I guess). Regardless, she's sure I'll be hit by a car and no one will see my crushed body as it twitches its last there on the road. Probably not the *best* way to go, but still . . .

**That was a joke.

Marshal and Rish Talk THE FANTASTIC FOUR

Were you one of the millions of potential viewers that skipped seeing FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS in the theater?  Well, it's still playing in a handful of theaters, and if you want to hear Marshal Latham and I talk about how good it was*, then you might want to hear our review of it, over at his Comics Cave sub-podcast.

Feel free to check it out HERE.  And, if you ever wonder why we're so behind on these kind of reviews, well, go support Marshal at his Patreon, and you can hear them a wee bit closer to release.

*Complete with spoilers, unfortunately.

Warning: if you wait for the streaming release, Galactus won't be nearly as impressive.

Marshal And I Talk About KRULL (1983)

A while back, Marshal and I watched KRULL, an ambitious 1983 Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie hoping to be the next STAR WARS.  But did STAR WARS have The Glaive?

Seems like a long time ago, but you can check out our review HERE.

Firewalk With Me (and Marshal)

One of the subgenres we like to visit on our Outfield Excursions podcast is the Indiana Jones knockoff, and strangely, I seem to enjoy these more than Marshal does.  So I was happy to sit down with him and watch FIREWALKER, a Cannon Films adventure starring Chuck Norris, Louise Gossett Junior, and the girl from FLASH AhAhhhhhh GORDON.

But if he ever finds an Indy Jones KO with Jean Claude Van Damme in it . . . that's a bridge too far.

Marshal and I Experience THE TERROR

Unca Marshal and Cousin Rish over at the Outfield Excursions have reviewed the Roger Corman, er, "classic," THE TERROR, starring a pre-fame Jack Nicholson and a post-fame (sorry) Boris Karloff.  A lost French soldier encounters a spectral babe, a witch, a bird of prey, an old and paranoid Baron, a dude who becomes a dummy, and a Dick Miller on his way from a lonely stretch of beach to a castle and back again.  I'd tell you the name of the director, but I only have so much space on my blog.

Even if you don't care to hear us talk about THE TERROR, surely you want to hear my Karloff impression, no?

Check it out HERE.

Marshal & I Review a Notorious Film

For our recent Outfield Excursions, Marshal and I sat down to watch Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 film, NOTORIOUS, starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.  Oh, and Claude Raines.*

Check it out HERE.

*Dunno how I missed him in the cast; it was like he was invisible or something.

Marshal and I Talk LISA FRANKENSTEIN

Over at the Outfield Excursions podcast, Marshal Latham and I talk LISA FRANKENSTEIN, the 2024 teen Eighties reimagining of the Mary Shelley tale, starring Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse.

One of my favorite horror movies of the new century was JENNIFER'S BODY, written by Diablo Cody.  Yeah, I know that everybody hates it, but a lot of folks love the Star Wars Prequels, so there.  Anyway, Marshal suggested we review the newest Diablo Cody-written Horror-adjacent film, LISA FRANKENSTEIN.  And now, the shoe's on the other hoof.

Check out our discussion HERE.

Re-Evaluation /Third Time's The Charm

Recently, I spoke to a real Horror aficionado, a die hard fan, one who makes my admiration of the genre seem quite pedestrian.  He told me his favorite movie is THE THING (1982), but that PHANTASM from 1979 is high up on his list.  Now, I have never had a love for Carpenter's THE THING, though I can certainly appreciate its technical achievements and cool musical score.  But jeez, my memories of watching PHANTASM in the late Nineties have never faded, where Jeff and I watched it and disliked it so much that we never went on to its many sequels.  I have always remembered it as being both idiotic and confusing, both when I saw it as a child on television, and as a young adult.

But this guy absolutely *loves* Horror, so I asked the guy, "Can you help me to appreciate PHANTASM?  Because I never have been able to."  And he said, "Well, it's not for everybody.  But hey, why don't you try PHANTASM 2, which was made a couple of years later.  Maybe that will be more your style."

I mentioned it to Jeff, who has been watching a couple of movies each week with me, several of them in our favorite genre, and when we went to the library together, he produced a copy of the 1979 original and said, "What do you think?"  Well, I told him how I remembered thinking it was a dogturd the last time I saw it, but he reminded me that we watched SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT last month and that it pretty much kicked ass.  So, I shrugged and said I supposed I'd watch it with him if I had to.  I suggested we play a drinking game where every time Angus Scrimm said "Boooooooy," we'd take a gulp, hoping that would make it more enjoyable.*

Well, he also got a couple other movies, and I much preferred watching those to PHANTASM, but eventually, he proclaimed the time had come.  And I gotta say, I tried to find good things in the movie, such as the framing of a couple shots, a couple of angles of Scrimm staring or smiling, and the lovely--if repetitive--score by Fred Myrow . . . but it was few and far between.  There is the scene where the shiny ball kills the Tall Man's employee rather than its intended victim, and the gore and excessive amount of blood are pretty great.  

But that's a single moment, in a ninety minute borefest.  

It may be that, twenty-five years later than the last time I saw it, I liked PHANTASM even less than before.  And I have become far more tolerant of mediocrity lately than I used to be since, a lot of times, simply making a movie during the Golden Age of Slashers will be enough for me to give it at least two stars out of nostalgia.

Huh.

I recalled, both previous viewings, being horrified (in completely the wrong way) by how train-derailingly not scary the fuggin' jawas were, and in that respect, I was not disappointed.  But man, everything else . . .

. . . everything else ranged from mediocre to festering garbage.  It's all so slapdash and meandering, like when I was a kid and I'd get my friends together and start the camcorder up and we'd just make up whatever scene we were going to shoot on the fly, with no thought of where it might be going in later scenes.

The story is nonsensical, from beginning to wow, that ending, where is it all a dream?  Was it a boy's imagination coping with tragedy, which would almost be an effective ending if it were handled well, but then the Tall Man shows up and grabs the booooooooy and we roll the credits.

Hey, maybe something that I love you think is total dogshit (Big Anklevich tells me this at least once a month), but I pretty much had my evening ruined by watching PHANTASM again.  But Jeff helped out by saying, "Look on the bright side: you don't have to watch it again for another twenty-five years . . . and by then, you'll probably be dead."

Thanks for that.

*It didn't.  I believe the first use of "Booooooy" came at an hour and ten minutes in, and by then, Jeff's drink had gone flat, and was now room temperature--which, in Jeff's defense/condemnation, is approximately forty degrees Fahrenheit.

They're Here Already! You're Next!

Yes, just a throwaway post about the Monster Cereals returning to stores . . . or is it?

Over on the Journey Into... podcast, Marshal and I have reviewed INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, the 1978 remake, and one of my favorite horror films.*

It's a familiar story: people are acting strangely, seemingly changed from their usual personalities, and two coworkers at the Health Department, Matthew Bennell and Elisabeth Driscoll, try to get to the bottom of it.   Is it paranoia, mass hysteria, a vast conspiracy, or just the fraying of our increasingly-insular modern society?

This is the version set in San Francisco, and it's probably the best movie we've reviewed on this show--almost nothing in it doesn't work, and it's filled with familiar faces, such as Leonard Nimoy, Veronica Cartwright, Robert Duvall, and Jeff Goldblum.  There's even an appearance by Kevin McCarthy, repeating those famous words from the first version (that I got my title from).

Check it out HERE . . . but only if you've already seen it.  After all, you're next.

*In fact, it might be my favorite remake of all time.  People are always making lists of movies where the remake is better than the original, but with the exception of THE BLOB (1988)--which I haven't seen in thirty-five years--I always disagree.  Yeah, I know.  But INVASION '78 is the only one where I have to nod and say, "Yeah, an excellent, excellent flick, despite how much I love the original."

Not The M-Word!!

My buddy Jeff dragged me to the movies the other day, and I ended up having a really nice time.  However, I was even more vexed than usual about the trailers that played before it (and I recognize that I am pretty easily vexed).  Last year, we saw a couple of musical movies coming out with the ad campaigns hiding that they were musicals, but dude . . . on this particular screening, there were four.

First up was a TV trailer for "Agatha All Along," which holds absolutely no appeal to me except that it's a Musical.  But ah well, they don't care about me, since I've seen everything Marvel already, and ain't about to change no matter how much I loathed QUANTUMANIA and the villain in THE MARVELS.  But I get that the majority (if not the vast majority) of MCU fans are straight males, who are notoriously averse to see Musicals (especially the young ones, that most-valuable demographic, so they're not about to say, "Say folks, you remember the show about Wanda Maximoff that a lot of you liked?  Well, here's a show kind of like that, just with way more singing!"

Second on the roster was MUFASA: THE LION KING.  So, the first movie was tremendously successful, despite no adults liking it, and it was a Musical.  But why hide it for this second one?  I mean, it has an echoed line in the newest trailer that strikes me as a kind of beat poetry, if not an outright intro to a song, but still, heaven forfend you let people know that there are new songs by Lin-Manuel Fricking Miranda.  Perhaps you can no longer feel the love tonight, kids.

Third up is going to be trouble.  JOKER 2 is just weeks from coming out and they're still hiding its musical nature, despite them casting Lady Gaga as Harley . . . and why else would you cast a singer in that part?  I mean, come on.

But this one I at least understand.  The legions of outspoken, rage-fueled internet troll bastards that loved the first movie would absolutely refuse to see the sequel if they knew it was a musical, and the people who like musicals aren't going to want to go see a dour R-rated exploration of mental illness, especially after that joyless first film.  It is going to be like watching a train derailment when the film comes out . . . but the good kind of train derailment.**

And of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention WICKED, which is simply baffling to me.  This was a new trailer promoting the flick that comes out at Christmas.  They played an orchestral version of Defying Gravity in the first trailer, and a bit of the lyrics in the second trailer . . . which will be a fun selling point to the fans of the play (of whom there are many), but Disney is clearly afraid of alienating the rest of us, that either aren't familiar with the play or loathe Musicals, like my buddy Jeff*.  And it's ironic to me, since Disney single-handedly kept the Musical alive during my youth (well, them and Andrew Lloyd Webber, I suppose), and has made billions of dollars every year from the audiences' embrace of those Musicals (yet, they consistently hide the songs in their animated film trailers, as though teenage boys would simply die of revulsion were they to know that Disney Princesses sing, and hopefully will continue to sing until the end of time).

WICKED is doubly-egregious because it a) could and should wear as a badge of honor that it's based on a hugely successful Broadway musical, and still cowardly hides it, but b) is PART ONE of a two-part film that, understandably, they are terrified of the world knowing, because why would anyone go see a movie that's been split in two?  That too will be very interesting to see play out.

So, I found it strange that it wasn't one or two trailers doing it, and if you don't consider "Agatha All Along" to qualify, then three is still a pretty shocking number to see either way.

Cue the music.

*Who was on the train to see WONKA last year when he first learned it was a Musical . . . from me.  He still went to the film, but very likely would not have had he known the true nature of the film.  Which, I suppose, totally excuses the dishonest ad campaign for movies like that and THE COLOR PURPLE and MEAN GIRLS musical remakes.

**There could be good kinds.  Maybe a derailment for a movie, or during wartime, or the kind where the people onboard the train don't believe in precisely the god you believe in.  You know what I mean.

Marshal & Rish Pull Out The Big Guns (of Navarone)

Marshal and I finally got around to watching 1961's THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, starring Gregory Peck and David Niven.  And then we talked.

Check it out HERE.

Rish Outcast 284: Study Group

Rish talks about defying the expectations of TOP GUN 2 and A THOUSAND WORDS (warning: spoilers).

Then he presents his sketch "Study Group," with help from Big Anklevich, Marshal Latham, some British guy, and Tena Kolakowski.

If you want to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you want to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

If you want to be where the people are, go HERE.

Logo by Gino "Studly Group" Moretto.

You's The Force Ten (From Navarone)

Marshal and I tried really hard to do a consistent series of Outfield Excursions episodes this year, so there's already a new one available, discussing FORCE TEN FROM NAVARONE (starring Robert Shaw, Harrison Ford, and Carl Weathers), the sequel to THE GUNS OF NAVARONE.

For some reason, we talk about the sequel and then the original film.  I'm sure that was my fault, but ah well.  Check it out HERE.

Rish Outcast 283: All's Well That Ends Well

Inspired by Big Anklevich and Taylor Swift, Rish talks about some of his favorite unhappy endings.

Warning: Spoilers abound!

Timecodes (unreliable)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) - 20:02

Halloween: Season of the Witch - 25:20

Se7en - 28:45

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Normal Again) - 31:05

Pet Sematary - 35:15

The Mist - 37:25

Planet of the Apes (1968) - 38:16

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - 42:35

The Descent - 44:44

Also, various Stephen King stories (The Jaunt, Gramma, The Mist), Big Anklevich stories, The Outer Limits, maybe more. 

If you want to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you want to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

If you want to hear the whole Taylor Swift song, go HERE.

Logo by Gino "All's Swell" Moretto.

(I published this at 7:07 on 7/7)

There Are Dog People And Then There Are...

Not too long ago, Marshal and I got together (literally) to watch 1942's CAT PEOPLE.

It's a movie I had seen several years back, but was reminded of when I picked up a story by Val Lewton (who produced CAT PEOPLE) called "The Bagheeta," to record for my podcast.  Marshal was game to review the movie, and here it is.

Basically, a man meets and marries a mysterious foreign woman who is convinced that she is under a curse to turn into a deadly were-cat when she becomes emotional.  But it's all in her head, right?

Talking about this moving made me want to watch the other flicks Lewton made for RKO (such as 1943's THE LEOPARD MAN).  Check out our discussion HERE!

Marshal and I Fear "Premature Burial"

I mean, don't you?  If the answer is no, then we should end our vacation right here.

Over at the Outfield Excursions podcast, Marshal Latham and I talk about Roger Corman's THE PREMATURE BURIAL, a movie he tried to do on his own, without American International Pictures (and hence, he couldn't afford Vincent Price in the lead).*  Of course, when he shopped it around, the studio that bought distribution rights was, you guessed it, AIP.  

Anyway, based(ish) on Edgar Allan Poe's story of the same name, this 1962 flick tells of Guy (Ray Milland), who is terrified of being buried alive, and the woman who tries to reason with him.  There's nothing to fear in that, right?  Check out our review HERE.

*There were seven films in the Poe cycle, and Price starred in six of them.

Rish and Marshal Pass Through THE GATE (1987)

A long while back, Marshal and I watched an Eighties horror flick with Stephen Dorff called THE GATE.   

It was a PG-13 horror flick about a gateway to the underworld in a suburban kid's yard from 1987.  Somehow, I never saw it.  Till now.  Check out the fun HERE, if you dare.

These creatures were really impressive, as little as they appeared in the film.  Note: Nice to see that Vin Diesel had steady work back in 1987.

THE WITCHES (1990)

So, I grabbed the earlier movie version of the Roald Dahl book, and I am so glad I watched these in reverse order.  Every time there was a repeated gag or plotpoint from the Zemeckis 2020 film, I was happy to discover that it worked better in this version.

This film was fairly well known for scaring the crap out of a generation of kids, and is lesser known for the saccharine-sweet happy ending that diverges from the book, but I was happyto have watched it.  

Anjelica Houston was obviously having a blast playing the Grand High Witch, and the mouse effects ranged from pretty good to "Wait, how the hell did they pull that off?" 

Yes, there were still a couple of WTF moments, but partly in gruesome and disturbing choices.  

There was also a moment when Jim Carter, who would go on to play the butler in "Downton Abbey," has a mouse run up the leg of his trousers, then he flops around on the kitchen floor, screaming, "It's gone into my underpants!"  Probably the most undignified film appearance outside of the Star Wars Prequels . . . yet today, he's married to that hot British actress Imelda Staunton, so go figure.

THE WITCHES (2020)

I watched the 2020 Robert Zemeckis version of THE WITCHES last night, and there were two or three moments in the film where I actually found it scary.  There were also, if I counted right, six or seven moments where I actually exclaimed, "What the ph**k?!" . . . which is rarely a good thing.  Granted, at least two of those were due to terrible storytelling, and three others were due to the Satanic choice of casting Kristen Chenowith (as a child, no less).  But the film was bizarre and often tipped right over the edge into terrifying.  It felt as though someone had hired David Cronenberg to make a children's film, but when the credits rolled, the flick had been co-written and co-produced by Guillermo del Toro, and maybe that was the reason for some of it.  

Zemeckis was once a powerhouse filmmaker (and lest I forget, he did make one excellent horror film, WHAT LIES BENEATH, which caused me to leave the lights on all night after I saw it), but is now reduced to making mediocre to nigh-unwatchable CG motion capture garbage.*  And this certainly qualifies as Exhibit C.

I guess it was made for streaming (like his truly awful live-action PINOCCHIO remake), but man, there was so much that didn't work in the film that I wish I could sit down with Marshal Latham and talk it through, to see if he found the main character as visually repellant as I did, or if he too was forced to look away from Anne Hathaway for the first time in her career (sucks to get old . . . or turn into a monster, you take your pick).  Also, there's a older version from the Eighties with Angelica Houston in the Hathaway part, and I mean to stop writing, blogging, audio editing, and peeing and rush out and watch it immediately, so I can see where they zigged, as opposed to Zemeckis's zags.

Perhaps, like Dean Koontz and Avril Lavigne, the real Zemeckis died years ago, and this imposter is making movies in his stead, using his once-holy name.

Marshal and I (and Valerian) Visit A Thousand Planets

Hey, do you remember that Luc Besson movie, VALERIAN & THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS (the first installment in the vaunted Valerian and Lorelei series)?  Well, once upon a time, Marshal Latham and I watched it, then talked about it on the Outfield Excursions podcast.

Is it as awful as we'd been lead to believe?  Come along with us, to at least fifty or sixty planets, won't you?  Check it out HERE.