The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 541: The Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan and Submarine Cinema
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Mark and Norbert discuss the 1990 action thriller The Hunt for Red October. Directed by John McTiernan and starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Sam Neill, James Earl Jones, and a few strategic pings, the movie focuses on what happens when an intelligence analyst meets a submarine captain. In this episode, they also talk about submarine cinema, Jack Ryan, and countermeasures. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
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John’s Horror Corner: The Last Days on Mars (2013), an acceptable Sci-Horror about the perils of exploration to Mars.
MY CALL: Good enough, entertaining enough, but nothing great. However, truth be told, there are much better Sci-Horror space and Mars exploration movies. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Last Days on Mars: Red Planet (2000), Mission to Mars (2000), Apollo 18 (2011), Europa Report (2013) and Moonfall (2022) tell similar cautionary tales of space exploration.
As it turns out, another MFF’er (does that sound derogatory?) reviewed this film when it was released. See Mark’s review by CLICKING HERE.
Director Ruairi Robinson’s only feature film opens splendidly with gorgeous cinematography of arid Martian landscapes, happy go lucky 50s music, and routine space chores undertaken at the start of a massive dust storm on the very last day of their six-month mission.
The cast includes Liev Schreiber (The Omen, Sphere, Phantoms, Scream 2-3), Elias Koteas (Fallen, Let Me In, Dream House, The Prophecy, The Fourth Kind, Skinwalkers), Olivia Williams (The Sixth Sense, Below), Romola Garai, Johnny Harris (Monsters: Dark Continent, Black Death, The Cottage), Goran Kostic (Children of Men), Tom Cullen (Invasion, Black Mirror) and Yusra Warsama (Castle Rock) among others.
The team has not been as productive as they’d hoped, producing no useful samples to bring home. But on the last day, a member of the crew comes across evidence of bacterial life… on Mars! This discovery comes paired with tragedy as a crewman is lost, falling down a seismic fissure while collecting his final sample. Remember what happened when they found extraterrestrial bacteria in Species (1995)? Or the virus or whatever it was in The Thing (1982)? Or the first sign of Life (2017) on Mars? Yeah, these things never turn out well.
Suffice to say, a crewmember wanders back to base camp after being infected with something and becoming, for lack of a better word, a murderous bacterial zombie (not unlike the geologist in Prometheus). The infected hiss and growl like 28 Days Later (2002) rage zombies, and use tools and weapons to murderous ends just as readily… and they even solve complex problems. So, highly intelligent rage zombies despite having no pulse and, thus, evident brain death. The closest comparison might actually be the fungal zombies from The Last of Us (2023-ongoing). The uninfected crew fend off the infected as we circle towards a rather familiar ending scene in these infection-based thrillers.
We don’t wander anywhere near the Sci-Horror-ness of Life (2017), Event Horizon (1997), Prometheus (2012), Virus (1999) or Moontrap (1989). In that sense, this movie is more Sci-Horror-LITE. But it is still violent Sci-Horror, for sure.
This is all stuff we’ve seen before. But it’s very executed well. Is this to be some highly recommended Sci-Horror? Not really. Red Planet (2000) and Mission to Mars (2000) are both more entertaining, present more engaging problems, and the losses hit you with emotional gravity. But I definitely wouldn’t be steering anyone away from this either. Solid cast, nice shots, decent effects… this was a perfectly enjoyable, even if not so exciting, one-time watch.
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John’s Horror Corner: The Game (1984; aka The Cold), an incredibly boring movie about how sick 80s millionaires entertain themselves.
MY CALL: This ranks among the most boring horror I’ve endured. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Game: Much better movies to watch about deadly games instead include Red Room (1999), Would You Rather (2012), Cheap Thrills (2013) or Truth or Dare (2018).
Gathered together in a mansion by three bored eccentric millionaires, nine people compete in ‘The Game’ for one million dollars. To win this game, the players must not leave the mansion as they face their greatest fears. While the game transpires, the wealthy game-runners are watching remotely and communicating by intercom.
The presence of a creeping mist implies that weird things are about to happen. And most nefarious goings on seem to be accompanied by the presence of a weirdo who looks like a hunchbacked Gru. Both of these elements are resolved with dumb twist-revelations in the end.
The gags endured by the players of The Game include sudden cold temperatures, a shark in the swimming pool, displaying a hanged contestant on TV, a woman is attacked by a vomiting rubber demon puppet, and some forced Russian roulette. But despite the attempts at diversity, all of the effects are of the lowest possible phoned-in quality, and somehow even worse execution. The acting and writing are likewise excruciating. This is awful. Like, truly destitute. I’m ranking this waaaay at the bottom dregs with Boardinghouse (1982). And to quote that review: “I’ve written nearly 1000 reviews for this website. And this, truly and honestly, may very well be the most devastatingly boring thing I’ve watched and reviewed. Spare yourselves. Avoid this at all costs.” Well, now I’m beyond 1200 reviews and those sentiments now apply to The Game just the same. We could probably lump Fatal Exam (1988) in there for good measure.
The filmmaking is pretty clunky at every level. When someone is swimming laps in a pool, the sound editing/mixing produces the sounds of lightly splashing water in a sink or bathtub. The sound just doesn’t match what we’re watching and it’s uncomfortably noticeable. And when our wealthy masterminds wander the hotel, they play almost comedic Vaudeville-esque piano tunes. This music shouldn’t exist in this movie, which is not at all a horror comedy.
Everything about this movie is horrible. Director Bill Rebane (The Demons of Ludlow, The Alpha Incident, Invasion from Inner Earth, Rana) has put together a real stinker for us here. It may be fun to mock among friends. But there is nothing inherently fun about this movie, not even in a “bad movie” way, by its own merits. Just bad.
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John’s Horror Corner: Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992), an even more wild and equally delightful sequel.
MY CALL: This sequel is much less horror and more of an anthology-esque mix of Sci-Fi, fantasy and horror with moderate to hokey doses of comedy and loads of great effects. It’s silly and light, but still a bloody movie that’s a lot of fun while continuing to embrace its predecessor’s 80s-ness in the best ways. MORE MOVIES LIKE Waxwork II: Well obviously you should have already seen the first Waxwork (1988) movie, and perhaps even The Wax Mask (1997).
Director and writer Anthony Hickox (Waxwork, Warlock 2, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth) picks up this sequel by extending the very scene which ended Waxwork (1988)—including some footage of the wacky violent finale. As the museum burns down, an animated severed hand scrambles across the lawn, following Mark (Zach Galligan; Waxwork, Warlock 2, Hatchet 3, Gremlins 1-2) and Sarah (Monika Schnarre; Warlock 2) home for some bloody Evil Dead 2-inspired evil crawling hand shenanigans.
Fearfully anticipating that the evil of the waxwork would not be vanquished (before the finale events of part 1), Sir Wilfred (Patrick Macnee; The Howling, Transformations) leaves Mark videotaped advice from the grave. Now having inherited Wilfred’s collection of supernatural antiquities, Mark selects a time-traveling amulet in his quest to find proof of the evils of the waxwork.
Many of the wax exhibits hinted in part 1 went unexplored. This sequel time portals us to Victor Frankenstein (Martin Kemp; Embrace of the Vampire) and his monster, alien lifeforms in the parasitic theme of Aliens (1986), and King Arthur to name a few. I must say, the Lampooned Alien-themed segment was an absolute delight with Sarah assuming the obviously hoked-up Ellen Ripley role. The big-headed rubber monster suit is awesome, some iconic scenes and deaths were homaged, and the larval tentacle monster attack scene was outstandingly slimy and gross. There are also distinct homages to Dawn of the Dead (1978), Nosferatu (1922, 1979) and many more, as this sequel clearly tasked itself with having an even more wild finale than part 1.
Unlike part 1, there are no wax exhibits of murderers and monsters to haplessly “enter”. But Mark’s amulet opens portals to times and places (that may have never existed in our dimension at all). But just like part 1, these separate portaled-in vignettes give the movie an anthology-ish feel as our time travelers assume pre-existing roles in these fantastic alternate dimensional spaces.
Among his time traveling adventures, Mark meets his supernatural investigator father (Bruce Campbell; Escape from LA, Moontrap, Black Friday, The Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2), a woman turns into a werepanther of sorts (you read that correctly) and later splatters a victim’s head, we catch a glimpse of Drew Barrymore (Scream, Cat’s Eye) as a vampire victim, and the same finale big bad evil guy (Alexander Godunov) as Die Hard (1988)!
The blood, gore and effects honor the promises of part 1 with eye-popping, brain launching, neck-stretching, head-smooshing, space helmet-imploding, squirmy alien-regurgitating, and other bloody antics. And all is done in the same humorous-to-hokey fashion as part 1.
Overall, this sequel is much less horror and more a mix of Sci-Fi, fantasy and horror with moderate to hokey doses of comedy. This is a fun, light, but still bloody movie that’s a lot of fun and continues to embrace all that was good from 80s horror.
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The Movies Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 540: Dragonslayer, Cranky Dragons, and Hot Lakes
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
Mark and Adam Hodgins (of the GoFigure show on YouTube) discuss the 1981 fantasy film Dragonslayer. Directed by Matthew Robbins, and starring Caitlin Clarke, Peter MacNicol, Ralph Richardson and a cranky dragon, the movie focuses on what happens when a young wizard thinks he can defeat a powerful dragon. In this episode, they also talk about practical effects, 1980’s fantasy movies, and being the last of something.
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
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MFF Data – Audiences and Critics Love Cold Stallone
While working on an assignment last year I was reminded that 1993 was a massive year for Sylvester Stallone. After several years of flops (Rocky V, Oscar, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot), Stallone needed a hit and they came in the form of Cliffhanger and Demolition Man. The critically respected action films pulled in over $400 million worldwide and gave Stallone’s career a much needed boost. These movies don’t have much in common (aside from being awesome), but they do feature Stallone in some very cold situations. In Demolition Man, he’s sentenced to decades inside an ice cube, and in Cliffhanger he battles John Lithgow atop the Rocky Mountains. This got me thinking about other Stallone movies and I started noticing a pattern. Between Rocky, First Blood, Rocky II, Rocky IV, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and The Expendables 2, his “Cold Stallone” films do well with critics and audiences when he’s in a cold location, or frozen inside an ice prison. Also, his love of fur coats inspired Ryan Gosling’s Ken character in Barbie. Good things happen when Stallone is cold.
Here are some examples:
- Expendables 2 – When he meets JCVD’s character for the first time, it’s cold outside. This is the only time in the franchise when Sly seems chilly, and it’s the highest rated film in the franchise.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – He’s introduced on an ice planet.
- Creed – Super cold – Sly’s highest-rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes
- First Blood – Super cold – Highest-rated Rambo movie
- Rocky IV – He goes to Russia and trains in the snow. It’s the highest grossing movie in the Rocky franchise.
- Creed and Rocky – He’s been nominated for three Academy Awards for his work in Rocky and Creed. Very cold.
I wanted to see if this assumption held up so I rewatched most of his films (I already knew he was super cold in Cliffhanger, Rocky 4, and Demolition Man) and lumped them into three categories
- Not Cold or Chilly – There are no instances in which he seems chilly
- Chilly – It’s not freezing outside, but it’s still cold. For instance, In Cobra, a character says “It’s getting cold out here, huh? Yeah. Better get inside..”
- Cold – In Creed II while he’s sitting by Adrian’s grave he rubs his hands together and blows warm air into them. Dude is cold. He doesn’t have to be cold for the entire film, he just needs to be really cold at least once.
Here are some quick overall stats for Stallone’s career
- Average Worldwide Box Office – $149 million
- Average Tomatometer Score – 44%
- Average IMDb User Score – 6.06
Box Office
- Cold – $193 million
- Chilly – $93 million
- Hot – $130 million
Tomatometer
- Cold – 63%
- Chilly – 38%
- Hot – 35%
IMDb
- Cold – 6.78
- Chilly – 5.98
- Hot – 5.725
Conclusion – Cold Stallone (plus a good script, direction, editing and solid supporting characters) is the best Stallone!
Take a look at this timeline and you’ll notice that Stallone is at his best (for the most part) when he’s cold.
Here’s a quick timeline to further solidify this dumb data.
- 1976 – Rocky – Cold
- 1979 – Rocky II – Cold – Huge hit – Elevated him further into A-list territory
- 1982 – First Blood – Cold – Excellent action film
- 1985 – Rocky IV – Cold – Highest grossing Rocky movie
- 1985 – 1993 – He had some big hits, but nothing huge or critically adored
- 1993 – Cold – Career Comeback – Demolition Man and Cliffhanger
- 1993 – 2006 – Had a few cool films like Copland and Daylight, but it wasn’t great
- 2006 – Cold – Rocky Balboa – It was smart going back to Rocky, and it was very smart to make him cold again.
- 2006 – 2012 – solid run, but nothing Oscar worthy or Rocky IV huge.
- 2012 – The Expendables 2 – Chilly (not cold) – $312 million worldwide. Only chilly Expendables movie and it made bank and has a Fresh Tomatometer score.
- 2016 – Cold – Creed – Huge hit and he got an Oscar nominated
- 2017 – Cold – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. II – Highest grossing film (unadjusted for inflation)
- 2018 – Cold – Creed II – Gross over $200 million and is one of his highest rated films
Here’s a breakdown of his stats so you can check them out. Sure, some of the Cold Stallone movies are soul crushing, but on average, it’s best to go with Cold Stallone.
If you’re bored and want to listen to some podcast episodes about Sylvester Stallone movies, On my Movies, Films and Flix podcast (you can find it anywhere), I’ve talked about Rocky 4 (Episode 526) – Driven (Episode 271), and Cliffhanger (Final Fights episode 32).
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MY CALL: Some blood, weak death scenes, no actual gore, and nothing scary. Still, solid characters and story (even if highly and obviously derivative) made this an experience I did not regret. I’m not recommending it. But I’m impressed with what was accomplished with little FX budget and a genuine care for at least passable writing in a genre starved for anything more than throwaway characters and often topless victims. MORE MOVIES LIKE Sorority House Massacre: For more sorority horror, try Black Christmas (1974), The House on Sorority Row (1982), The Initiation (1984), Sorority House Massacre II (1990), Black Christmas (2006) and Happy Death Day (2017). However, I’d skip the remakes of Sorority Row (2009) and Black Christmas (2006).
Giving her account from a hospital bed, Beth (Angela O’Neill; Grandmother’s House, Alien Nation) explains her recent stay at a sorority house that ended in mass murder. Her arrival was admonished by a trio of NOES-ish young girls during a surreal, mildly bloody nightmare. Then, by day, she has waking visions of a man with a knife interdimensionally stabbing at her. It seems that director Carol Frank is sampling some Freddy Kruegerisms. Meanwhile, in a nearby mental hospital, a male patient becomes rambunctious. He lives in a perpetual half-sleep state and has visions of Beth! Oh, boy. Yet another 80s slasher with a psychic link.
Our mental patient escapes from the hospital, steals a knife and a car, and heads to the sorority house which was once his house where he killed his entire family except for his little sister (spoiler alert, it’s Beth!)… in a manner that in no way smacks really hard of Michael Myers’ return to Haddonfield. And returning to the NOES connection, Beth awakens with a bloody knife wound that occurred during one of her visions. Yeah, Frank’s influences are pretty obvious.
The nudity is present, but not so salacious. I mean, it’s abundant but it never feels so dirty as typical horror nudity. Plus, as an equal opportunist movie, we see a guy scrambling and running from the killer totally buck naked as well. It’s refreshingly amusing seeing a naked dude sprint in sneakers and nothing else.
Our silent killer picks off the sorority girls and their boyfriends one by one in generally boring fashion. None of the death scenes are worthy of mention. I was annoyed by their simplicity and clearly budget-challenged execution.
This was director Carol Frank’s (The Slumber Party Massacre) second 80s slasher pitting a male slasher against a bunch of cute coeds. But despite the generally goreless, very weak death scenes, this movie was somewhat entertaining. The characters were likable and far above the typical slasher fodder, and the story—though blatantly highly derivative—actually worked. Not going out of my way to recommend this. But it’s not bad.
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MY CALL: If you often feel that horror fails to cultivate the dread, utter shock, and dire hopelessness it deserves, then this is the gut-punching atmospheric film you need in your life. That is all. MORE MOVIES LIKE When Evil Lurks: For more Argentinian horror, go for Terrified (2017). For something similarly primordial and utterly dire, try The Dark and the Wicked (2020). Additional Spanish language horror recommendations include The Passenger (2021; La Pasajera), The Platform (2019; aka El Hoyo), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and [REC] 1-3 (2007-2012)—but not [REC] 4 (2014).
Casual agrarian frontier life takes a dire turn when brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodríguez; Juego de Brujas, Legions) and Jimi (Demián Salomón; Into the Abyss, Satanic Hispanics) happen upon a mutilated body near their ranchland. The macabrely disfigured man who is claimed to be possessed by a demon threatens to birth greater evil upon the land.
Upon discovery of the bloated, oozing body of Uriel, it is imperative that they take his body far away and kill him to halt the evil inside him from moving to the next vulnerable soul, the unborn child of a neighbor. While often reduced to a group of panicked men discussing the matter on the ranch, the atmosphere is incredibly stressful. For what they feel they must do is as unsettling as the perceived consequences of inaction. Moving the corpulent demonic vessel is a likewise unnerving matter. He seeps pus from his lips when disturbed, and his skin is an amalgamation of bedsores and clusters of cysts. The very sight of Uriel admonishes what lies within.
Despite only affecting three small neighboring ranchland households, this dilemma feels intensely large. With no help from local authorities and uncertain of the best way to handle this unique problem, they do what they think is best. But to us viewers, their actions feel anything but.
From here, the wild superstition is as horrendous as the imagery is brutal. Characters are murdered under hopeless circumstances, for reasons combining possession and fear of demonic forces. As the story continues; the desperate superstition mounts. Leaving all possessions behind, burning clothes exposed to the evil, and fleeing the afflicted land eventually seems to be the only option. They run. The evil follows.
The cinematography and general camerawork are excellent! But what about blood and guts…? There is a brutally grounded abruptness to death in this movie. The special effects gore of the severed lower half of a man to the festering obese body of the ranchland neighbor Uriel will surely shock viewers. Multiple self-inflicted suicidal ax wounds to the face will leave you slack-jawed at the visuals as well as with other awkwardly unique and undeserving deaths. The animal attack comes out of nowhere and is truly astounding! In fact, this movie will make you nervous whenever you see a camera linger on an animal. Oh, and the car death… that, too!!! Not to mention a LOT of skull crushing squishy head trauma. Yeah, this film brings a lot to the table.
What this film lacks (for me) is a satisfying resolution to the story. Some people didn’t like the story or the “rules” of the possession because they didn’t fully get it—or so I’ve read online. But as someone who got it, I still didn’t care for the turns or revelations of the third act. However, even with this criticism stated, I thought this film was awesome and the execution of aspects I liked less remained thoughtfully crafted.
Writer and director Demián Rugna (Terrified, Cursed Bastards, Satanic Hispanics) has regaled horror fans again, and his greatest flaw may also be the source of his strength: his patience. After all, his previous feature film was in 2017! So rather than rush him, I simply hope he has another soul-rattling groundbreaker in store for us by 2029… but yeah, sooner would be better! In the meantime, I need to find the horror anthologies to which he has contributed short segments.
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John’s Horror Corner: The Evil (1978), this “classic” haunting would best be left forgotten in the 70s where you found it.
MY CALL: This was… not good. Lame, boring, bad death scenes… I have nothing good to say about this.
Perhaps because of the director’s (Gus Trikonis; Baywatch, Beauty and the Beast) general inexperience in the genre, the opening sequence feels unlike classic horror even though we viewers know better based, if nothing else, on the movie title alone. The property caretaker wanders through a huge house following the sounds of perhaps kids or women talking and giggling. It leads him to his fiery death at the basement furnace. So now, just in case the audience wasn’t sure, haunted!
Dr. Caroline Arnold (Joanna Pettet; Casino Royale) is a psychologist hoping to start a drug rehab center. She buys a grand Civil War-era mansion and hires a few friends and grad school interns to fix it up. But just as soon as she was deciding to buy the place, Caroline started having persistent visions of a ghostly form that only she can see, and it seems to be guiding her to something. Eventually it leads her to a dust-covered diary… and then other stuff.
Other than the ghostly sounds and form (seen by Caroline), we begin with the typical early-stage haunting antics. A dog freaks out, stumbling across a dead body in the dumbwaiter (the burned to death caretaker), the discovery of an archaically locked cellar door (that someone naturally unlocks), ghostly psychokinetic force throwing someone across a room and later rather aggressively undressing a women, doors are opening and slamming shut on their own, oh… and the house has locked and trapped everyone inside and rendered the glass windows unbreakable (apparently).
The death scenes… they’re not good. The burning death (caretaker) is just okay even if perhaps more shocking in the 70s. The electrical wire death is super lame as the victim is holding and shaking the wire which eventually is strangling him. Some dude just catches fire while climbing a rope. You know what… I’m done reviewing lame death scenes in this lame movie. Although, there is a pretty gnarly scene when a guy nearly buzzsaws off his own hand. But that’s about it. One scene that was meant to be intense felt nothing of the sort—again, I wonder if it would have been more intense by 70s standards. The theme here is that all the horror elements are falling short.
This was pretty much boring for its entire running time. So, here’s to another “classic” that would best be left forgotten. Lame. Not recommended.
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The 2023 Random Movie Awards! Mark and Megan hand out random awards to their favorite 2023 films. in this episode, you’ll hear them talk about Full Time, Poor Things, Perfect Days, Ferrari, Fremont, Bottoms, Dream Scenario, Godzilla Minus One, Past Lives, Fallen Leaves, Insidious: The Red Door, Scrapper, All of Us Strangers and many more 2023 films. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
Movies, Films & Flix 