Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about the nineteen ninety one
Speaker 3: sci fi action movie Future Kick, starring kickboxing champion Don
Speaker 3: the Dragon Wilson, Meg Foster, and Chris Penn. Interesting cast
Speaker 3: list there. Now, if you have to look this movie
Speaker 3: up because you've never seen it or even heard about it,
Speaker 3: that wouldn't be a surprising scenario. And the first thing
Speaker 3: you see in Google results is an exact copy of
Speaker 3: the poster for James Cameron's Terminator, but with Don the
Speaker 3: Dragon Wilson's head and upper body replacing Arnold Schwarzenegger's. You
Speaker 3: might ask yourself, is this movie low budget direct to
Speaker 3: video track financed by Roger Korman to scavenge off the
Speaker 3: recent success of gritty R rated sci fi action hits
Speaker 3: like Terminator, RoboCop and Total Recall. The answer is yes,
Speaker 3: it is that, but that's not all it is. Future
Speaker 3: Kick is both an interesting specimen to dissect if you
Speaker 3: want to study the anatomy of the cyberpunk tech noir
Speaker 3: subgenre of the early nineties. More on that in a bit,
Speaker 3: but Futurekick is also genuinely a hoot. There is, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, an absolutely delicious DGAF quality that is palpable
Speaker 3: in the creative decisions here. Sometimes this makes the movie
Speaker 3: confusing and difficult to follow. Sometimes it makes inspired set pieces,
Speaker 3: like the film's energy weapon based blood sport. I think
Speaker 3: it was called laser Blade. Laser Blade, which, despite what
Speaker 3: you might assume from that description, is a table game
Speaker 3: imagine a cross between Hungry Hungry Hippos and Russian Roulette
Speaker 3: but with lasers. Also leaves you with questions which characters
Speaker 3: are robots? Are there different kinds of robots in the movie?
Speaker 3: Like are the Cyberns different from other robots? Is chris
Speaker 3: Pin a Cybern or some other kind of thing? How
Speaker 3: does anything in this world work? Really? And then the
Speaker 3: big question was it all a dream? The answer is yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're slightly getting ahead on the plot here,
Speaker 2: but I will say that many times it was all
Speaker 2: a dream. Ending is such a sucker punch and just
Speaker 2: can make you feel really it can feel like such
Speaker 2: a cheap move because it just completely devalues everything you
Speaker 2: just watched, But I did not have that feeling with
Speaker 2: this film. It maybe by design, maybe by happenstance, or
Speaker 2: some combination of both. The ending felt like cryptic and
Speaker 2: thought provoking.
Speaker 3: Well or okay, I could see that, but you could
Speaker 3: also say here, it's like such a cheap move that
Speaker 3: it transcends, it becomes exquisite. It's like, I can't believe
Speaker 3: they actually did that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they stick the landing. Somehow they stick the landing,
Speaker 2: and we can discuss how they managed to perhaps pull
Speaker 2: this off.
Speaker 3: Also, I think we had to do this movie before
Speaker 3: the end of the year because Rob, did you notice
Speaker 3: Future Kick is set in the horrifying dystopian future of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five? Right, Yeah, what Future Kick predictions come true?
Speaker 3: We're gonna look and find out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty twenty five via nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: So another note before we get started is one on genre.
Speaker 3: This is another reason I selected Future Kick for this week.
Speaker 3: That reason is that it is still November or Noir November,
Speaker 3: and Rob, I know you enjoy getting into the spirit
Speaker 3: of a season. So I was trying to think about
Speaker 3: what film noir might be fun to cover, and I
Speaker 3: realized we had never really done a deep analysis on
Speaker 3: the noir influenced sci fi subgenre known as tech noir.
Speaker 3: Though I think we've done a number of films that
Speaker 3: could be classified as such, we've never really looked at
Speaker 3: the genre itself, and Future Kick is a sparklingly dingy example.
Speaker 3: I may have talked about this theory of mine on
Speaker 3: the show before, but I have a general belief that
Speaker 3: if you're trying to do a literary analysis to understand
Speaker 3: the anatomy and the soul of a movie genre, you
Speaker 3: can actually learn more by looking at the schlock within
Speaker 3: that genre than by looking at the canonically great examples.
Speaker 3: And so Future Kick, I think, is going to be
Speaker 3: perfect in this regard, Rob, do you want to talk
Speaker 3: about tech noir.
Speaker 2: Some Yeah, yeah, let's do it. I do like this
Speaker 2: idea that in general, you look to the B movies
Speaker 2: because the best of a particular genre, Yeah, those are
Speaker 2: going to be, you know, in the stratosphere, But it's
Speaker 2: the ripoffs and the stuff that follows this is going
Speaker 2: to be kind of reflect where where all of it lands. Yes,
Speaker 2: the collective mind of the viewers and the culture.
Speaker 3: That's a good way of putting it. Another way of
Speaker 3: thinking about it is that the canonically great films in
Speaker 3: a genre tend to be more idiosyncratic actually, and the
Speaker 3: derivative movies, the b movies, the direct to video shlock,
Speaker 3: these often manifest more as somebody trying to capture the
Speaker 3: essence of what they think a genre or marketing category
Speaker 3: of story is. And so you see them going like
Speaker 3: deeper into the heart of it, like what are all
Speaker 3: the tropes that I need to include, what occurs to
Speaker 3: them as necessary to have in the story, and what
Speaker 3: does not?
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So, tech noir is usually described as a genre that
Speaker 3: combines elements of science fiction and film noir.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tech noir can be considered an aesthetic and the
Speaker 2: subset of the broader cyberpunk genre. So not all cyberpunk
Speaker 2: is tech noir, and there are probably some cases to
Speaker 2: be made for tech noir that deviates strongly from cyberpunk classification.
Speaker 2: Tech noir is noir in the future or a high
Speaker 2: tech now, while cyberpunk generally involves the street level ubiquitous
Speaker 2: use of advanced civilization changing technology generally in the future.
Speaker 2: But as always, all of this is relative, and good
Speaker 2: art or just daring art tends to mess up easy categorization,
Speaker 2: and I'd say that future kick is certainly daring in
Speaker 2: many ways. It really goes for it.
Speaker 3: It may not be original, but it is bold. Yes,
Speaker 3: it is a kick. And to be fair, I've never
Speaker 3: thought about that distinction of cyberpunk that way. I think
Speaker 3: you might be right. For some reason. I always thought
Speaker 3: of cyberpunk as that which distinctly exhibits the hacker ethos.
Speaker 3: That cyberpunk is storytelling where the heroes are like outlaws
Speaker 3: or have some kind of outlaw mentality in this future
Speaker 3: computer dominated or digital world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's definitely an accurate read on it
Speaker 2: as well. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But when it comes to tech noir, classic films that
Speaker 3: people cite as examples of tech noir include Blade Runner
Speaker 3: from nineteen eighty two The Terminator from eighty four. This
Speaker 3: is a film in which the term tech noir actually
Speaker 3: appears as the name of a dance club. In the film,
Speaker 3: Sarah Connor goes to a club. She calls the police,
Speaker 3: I'm in a club called tech noir. Actually, I don't
Speaker 3: know the answer here. I think, though I could be wrong,
Speaker 3: that James Cameron actually coined the term tech noir to
Speaker 3: describe this genre. He was trying to create and used
Speaker 3: it in the movie.
Speaker 2: Hmm. Interesting, I didn't know about that specific connection.
Speaker 3: I will be pilloried by listeners if I'm wrong about this,
Speaker 3: So maybe I am. I should have thought to check beforehand,
Speaker 3: but that is my assumption for some reason. Of course,
Speaker 3: another tech noir big one is RoboCop, which we've covered
Speaker 3: on the show before Total Recall from nineteen ninety and
Speaker 3: then another big one is the Matrix, kind of late
Speaker 3: tech noir in ninety nine. So what elements are usually
Speaker 3: brought over from film noir into tech noir? I want
Speaker 3: to argue the following. One thing is character types. Cynical, amoral,
Speaker 3: or anti heroic protagonists, often a detective, maybe a criminal, fugitive,
Speaker 3: or some other kind of alienated loaner. These are going
Speaker 3: to be your most common main characters. Beyond the protagonist stock,
Speaker 3: character types from film noir also appear in these sci
Speaker 3: fi settings. You'll get versions of the hard boiled detective,
Speaker 3: the fem fatale, the melancholy angel like we talked about
Speaker 3: in the last episode on Dark City, the crooked cop,
Speaker 3: the heartless assassin, or the button man. And if you
Speaker 3: want to stretch the genre boundaries of I think in
Speaker 3: tech noir you also get versions of what you might
Speaker 3: call the Hitchcocky and bystander. Hitchcock's thrillers are not usually
Speaker 3: considered film noir, but there's a good bit of overlap,
Speaker 3: and I think this kind of character also does appear
Speaker 3: in noir more strictly defined. But basically, this character is
Speaker 3: like an innocent, regular person who by accident gets trapped
Speaker 3: in a dangerous conspiracy, maybe by being mistaken for somebody else,
Speaker 3: like in North By Northwest, or maybe by being set
Speaker 3: up as the fall guy in some plot, or by
Speaker 3: being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as
Speaker 3: in The Man who Knew Too Much or The Thirty
Speaker 3: nine Steps. And there are actually elements of this with
Speaker 3: Meg Foster's character in our movie Today. She's not somebody
Speaker 3: who goes out looking for trouble. She just happens to
Speaker 3: be married to somebody who gets tangled up in a
Speaker 3: tech robot cybern organ harvesting conspiracy.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, yeah, Like she's not the melancholy angel.
Speaker 2: At first, I was wondering if that would be the
Speaker 2: role she she falls into, but no, no, she's from
Speaker 2: a different world. She's from Ivory Towers, on the moon
Speaker 2: and she is forced to descend into the CD underworld
Speaker 2: of New Los Angeles to try and find out why
Speaker 2: her husband was killed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly so. The regular person who gets sucked into
Speaker 3: a technological nightmare is a common type of character in
Speaker 3: tech noir. Sarah Connor, I think, could be another example
Speaker 3: because she ultimately, you know, it's like she when she
Speaker 3: first appears and Terminator has no idea that it is
Speaker 3: her fate to be wrapped up in the fate of
Speaker 3: the whole human race. It comes as a total surprise
Speaker 3: to her. Yeah, so you've got these character types from
Speaker 3: film noir. In tech noir, they usually get a science
Speaker 3: fiction twist. Maybe the hard boiled private eye becomes a
Speaker 3: blade runner, still a type of detective, but one who
Speaker 3: hunts down and kills rogue replicants. The fem fatale or
Speaker 3: the assassin might turn out to be a robot or
Speaker 3: some other kind of altered being. Terms of setting and situation,
Speaker 3: there's a lot broad over from classic film noir, including
Speaker 3: gritty urban settings. These stories are almost always set in cities,
Speaker 3: cities that are dark, gloomy, polluted, hopeless, and filled with
Speaker 3: cruelty and crime. Neither genre usually gets out into the
Speaker 3: country much except in maybe dream sequences or in escape storylines,
Speaker 3: where the characters like briefly see a way out of
Speaker 3: the toxic urban maze where they live. Usually they're they're
Speaker 3: pulled back into the city violently somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, certainly you have some there are
Speaker 2: examples of particularly I'm thinking of Los Angeles centric noir
Speaker 2: that does get out into the country a bit. But
Speaker 2: even then it's there's a distinctive feel to it. You know,
Speaker 2: there's sort of like, you know, dilapidated rural environments or
Speaker 2: you know, sort of like the surrounding lands that have
Speaker 2: been kind of like sucked dry by the by the
Speaker 2: by the city, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there, it's not really pristine nature they're going
Speaker 3: to see. It's more of another type of hell yeah.
Speaker 3: And then bigger picture, I think these films take place
Speaker 3: in an unjust universe. There is no feeling of confidence
Speaker 3: that the good guys are going to win or that
Speaker 3: people ultimately get what they deserve. Structures of power or
Speaker 3: hypocritical officials are corrupt, and there's no one you can
Speaker 3: depend on for help. One interesting difference is that in
Speaker 3: classic film noir this view of the world manifests as
Speaker 3: a I think, a pessimistic read on the present, whereas
Speaker 3: tech noir is often set in the near future, so
Speaker 3: it can make that picture of the setting, the polluted, corrupt,
Speaker 3: treacherous hell of a city, a more literal prediction about
Speaker 3: the future instead of like a matter of interpreting the
Speaker 3: present or emphasizing different things about the present. So obviously
Speaker 3: tech noir that is set in the future is basically
Speaker 3: always dystopian. The world has been ruined somehow or is
Speaker 3: undergoing a terrible.
Speaker 2: Decay, Yeah, in the basic sci fi manner, like depicting
Speaker 2: the ramifications of the terrible choices we're making today or
Speaker 2: seem to be making today.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And of course the plots of both types of
Speaker 3: movies tend to involve violent struggle, deception, and especially conspiracies.
Speaker 2: Now on the we've talked about this before. One of
Speaker 2: the interesting things about cyberpunk and a lot of technoire
Speaker 2: is that since it is generally kind of it's all
Speaker 2: kind of emerging from like the world of essentially the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, I think you can sort of like center it.
Speaker 2: There some leakage into the nineties, certainly, but there are
Speaker 2: a lot of telling aspects of that time that had
Speaker 2: become kind of just canonical to a lot of cyberpunk
Speaker 2: like things about the power of corporations, things about rising
Speaker 2: Japanese influence on the global scale, things like this, as
Speaker 2: well as also you have these things that are kind
Speaker 2: of like fossilized remains from thirties and forties noir that
Speaker 2: have been brought into this kind of updated world, and
Speaker 2: so all of this kind of becomes crystallized into this
Speaker 2: new sort of vision of the future that ultimately has
Speaker 2: roots in different decades, and then there's always some new
Speaker 2: spice added to it.
Speaker 3: I do like the thing about certain cultural artifacts of
Speaker 3: the decades where these genres emerge just becoming crystallized in
Speaker 3: them as part of the style or aesthetics of the genre.
Speaker 3: I mean, one example would be in the costuming. You know,
Speaker 3: the costume of the hard boiled detective is very easy
Speaker 3: to remember. It's like a drab trench coat and a fedora.
Speaker 3: You know, this might have been actually easier to see
Speaker 3: as just a type of camouflage for the detective in
Speaker 3: a film set in the thirties or forties. It makes
Speaker 3: them nondescript, you know, they just blend in in the city,
Speaker 3: and the brim of the hat can quickly hide the
Speaker 3: face or the eyes. So it's like a way of
Speaker 3: hiding and blending in. Now, like that is that stylistic
Speaker 3: choice is retained, but it no longer has that blending
Speaker 3: in quality. Now it kind of makes people stand out.
Speaker 3: It looks cool and different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll have there are various examples of where you'll
Speaker 2: see a futuristic setting and there'll be a character that's
Speaker 2: wearing like a fedora. Yeah, it looks very much, you know,
Speaker 2: like the typical detective from noir. And it may you know,
Speaker 2: it feels like an artifact, but it's one we instantly understand.
Speaker 2: It's a symbol, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, some of these conventions I think that
Speaker 3: come into tect noir are just directly imported from film noir.
Speaker 3: So like in Blade Runner, Decord wears a long tan
Speaker 3: or brown duster coat. It's like the long coat we
Speaker 3: think of associating with the detective or also maybe with
Speaker 3: the western gun slinger. Look. I think they're kind of
Speaker 3: a blend of the Western gunslinger and the noir detective
Speaker 3: and deckerd Early and Terminator, the soldier from the Future
Speaker 3: Kyle Reese, he walks around the streets of la in
Speaker 3: a long coat. I don't know if it's technically a
Speaker 3: trench coat, but close enough. Later tech noir movies, especially
Speaker 3: the lower budget ones like the movie we're talking about today,
Speaker 3: develop their own house costuming style, which is one of
Speaker 3: the most instantly recognizable and often one of the most
Speaker 3: hilarious signs of this film type, where you get the
Speaker 3: long black coat, long black trench coat or duster, and
Speaker 3: the futuristic sunglasses worn in a place that is not sunny.
Speaker 3: Future Kick has exactly this uniform, because really, how else
Speaker 3: could a Cybern dress. It's got to be the long
Speaker 3: black coat and the sunglasses exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Plenty of scenes where you're like, why is everyone wearing sunglasses?
Speaker 2: Like this is such a gloomy indoor setting. I will
Speaker 2: say that was my read until they started playing a
Speaker 2: laser blade, and then I was like, oh, well, maybe
Speaker 2: that's why they're wearing sunglasses indoors, because there even signs
Speaker 2: like do not look directly at the laser blade.
Speaker 3: It's eye protection. Yeah, which is really funny because I
Speaker 3: was gonna make the point that these conventions like the
Speaker 3: long coat and the sunglasses in technoor movies may have
Speaker 3: first been used for specific storytelling reasons, Like it wasn't
Speaker 3: just style, it was related to what happened in the plot.
Speaker 3: Examples here, Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator needs to cover
Speaker 3: up his exposed machine eye after he gets injured, which
Speaker 3: is why you always see him wearing sunglasses towards the
Speaker 3: end of the movie. He's not always wearing sunglasses early
Speaker 3: in the film. It's like after his eye gets ripped out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, so everyone doesn't see that he has a
Speaker 2: robotic eye in there yet and a big grizzly wound
Speaker 2: around it.
Speaker 3: Sorry, so he's wearing sunglasses in the dark, but that's
Speaker 3: so he doesn't attract attention. And then Kyle Reese the soldier,
Speaker 3: he wears a long coat to conceal his shotgun. He's
Speaker 3: hiding a shotgun under there because he knows he's going
Speaker 3: to meet a terminator. Uh, and so, like they have
Speaker 3: storytelling explanations early on, but later these these costuming tropes
Speaker 3: just became a fashion convention. I think because movie makers
Speaker 3: thought it looked cool, or at least thought it looked
Speaker 3: appropriate to the setting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I also think it's funny that this look that appears
Speaker 3: as early as the late eighties in these B movies
Speaker 3: and direct to video sci fi films is actually the
Speaker 3: signature look of one of the biggest mainstream tech noir
Speaker 3: films a decade later, The Matrix, in ninety nine. Isn't
Speaker 3: it funny that in the Matrix like this is like
Speaker 3: one of the biggest and most famous mainstream sci fi
Speaker 3: movies ever, and they're wearing the ridiculous long black coat
Speaker 3: and the environmentally inappropriate sunglasses. It's like that made the
Speaker 3: jump from direct to video to the biggest movie in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 2: That is an interesting point. Yeah, though, of course within
Speaker 2: the world of the Matrix, there they are wearing these
Speaker 2: outfits in their most redous form in an unreal world,
Speaker 2: in a simulation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess I should also just flag the
Speaker 3: thematic in character suggestions of wearing these like long coats
Speaker 3: of the you know, the trench coat and stuff. It
Speaker 3: isn't just that it looks cool. I think it also
Speaker 3: brings a closed off energy to the character. It's like
Speaker 3: a type of armor or a way of hiding within something.
Speaker 3: This is clearly the case with these you know, unalienated,
Speaker 3: unconnected closed off detectives going back to classic film noir.
Speaker 3: Another visual similarity imported from the classic films to the
Speaker 3: sci fi variations is high contrast lighting. You know, a
Speaker 3: lot of playing with unusual on screen light sources and
Speaker 3: deep shadows. So in classic film noir this might be
Speaker 3: meeting under a single street lamp at the foggy wharf,
Speaker 3: and that is replaced in the sci fi versions with
Speaker 3: meeting under a futuristic pink and blue neon sign for
Speaker 3: a strip club. And finally, I I wanted to talk
Speaker 3: a bit about the evolution of themes between film noir
Speaker 3: to tech noir. Here's the thought I was having. I
Speaker 3: wonder if you would agree or disagree with this. Despite
Speaker 3: the fact that film noir often has cynical, a moral
Speaker 3: characters operating in a cruel and self interested world, I
Speaker 3: think you could argue that a lot of these classic
Speaker 3: stories themselves are quite moralistic. They show a lot of
Speaker 3: sin and vice, not because they're just you know, decadently
Speaker 3: reveling in it, but because they are a form of
Speaker 3: morality play where the audience gets to see how good
Speaker 3: people go wrong. They get to see how people are tempted,
Speaker 3: how their attempts to be righteous can fail, and how
Speaker 3: they're ultimately destroyed by their greed, lust and duplicity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think I think that's absolutely correct. I'm
Speaker 2: reminded of last year's Weird House Cinema November selection, The
Speaker 2: Face Behind the Mask from See I think it was
Speaker 2: what nineteen forty one of Peter Lourie pretty much a
Speaker 2: pure noir film. Like, it's not sci fi, no no
Speaker 2: tech noir, it's just straight up classic noir. And I
Speaker 2: think it's a solid example. This a story in which
Speaker 2: a cruel and corrupt world ruins a good man and
Speaker 2: also a woman and a dog. Yeah, mainly the man.
Speaker 2: The woman and the dog die because of the man's
Speaker 2: fall into sin and crime.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know, one thing I do want to
Speaker 3: acknowledge is admitting attention in some different things I've said here,
Speaker 3: Like the idea that a lot of these stories show
Speaker 3: people ultimately being undone or destroyed by their own sin.
Speaker 3: That could be somewhat at odds with the other trend
Speaker 3: I mentioned, which is that in a lot of these stories,
Speaker 3: the universe feels unjust and irrational and people do not
Speaker 3: get what they deserve. I guess both of these opposing
Speaker 3: strains can be found within the genre. You know, maybe
Speaker 3: some movies are more like one and others are more
Speaker 3: like the other, and they both still ring true to
Speaker 3: the idea of noir. But I think also a common
Speaker 3: way of resolving the tension within even the same story
Speaker 3: could be structural within the storytelling, Like the early and
Speaker 3: middle parts of the story show injustice, randomness, bad things
Speaker 3: happening to good people, but often by the end the
Speaker 3: wicked are destroyed in some way by their own iniquity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then along the way, pretty much everybody looks
Speaker 2: cool doing it. Yeah, you make it to where, you know,
Speaker 2: eye catching outfits, they're smoking, there's there's always some some
Speaker 2: very interesting lighting going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But so all of that that I was just
Speaker 3: saying is about classic film noir to the extent that
Speaker 3: classic film noir is moralistic in nature and interested in
Speaker 3: studying the wages of sin. I would argue that tech
Speaker 3: noir is pretty different. It is less focused on the
Speaker 3: evil that lurks within the human heart and more focused
Speaker 3: on what systems of technology and other sources of power
Speaker 3: outside our control can do to us. So, put another way,
Speaker 3: tech noir is less about like exploring people's failure to
Speaker 3: choose between right and wrong, and more about how people
Speaker 3: can be like trapped and manipulated and coerced by the system,
Speaker 3: whatever that system is. So like the protagonist shifts from
Speaker 3: the classic noir film hero of a sinner struggling in
Speaker 3: a heartless world to in tech noir, they are a
Speaker 3: cog in the machine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's that's that is a good read as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, it definitely reminds me of some of the
Speaker 2: key notes in William Gibson's Neuromancer, which of course is
Speaker 2: a very important cyberpunk text. You know, you have characters
Speaker 2: whose course in life it seems very dictated by what
Speaker 2: technology has made possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So to the extent that is a fair characterization,
Speaker 3: I wonder what that says about the changes in the
Speaker 3: underlying values of the you know, the people making these
Speaker 3: stories and the audiences consuming them. It seems to maybe
Speaker 3: reflect an evolution from a belief in original sin to
Speaker 3: a belief that that human nature is not fixed. And
Speaker 3: maybe that's really the horror. The horror is that we
Speaker 3: can be controlled and reshaped by forces more powerful than us,
Speaker 3: and there's no guarantee of salvation from above.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so, Yeah, there is there often
Speaker 2: does feel like there is a large sense of non
Speaker 2: agency in these these dystopian technoir and cyberpunk worlds. I
Speaker 2: mean there is agency often in like the sort of
Speaker 2: you know, street level hacker types that are like fighting
Speaker 2: the system and so forth. You know, not to say that,
Speaker 2: you know, any number of of you know of typical
Speaker 2: story structures can't be found here, but yeah, a lot
Speaker 2: of times there is this sense of a lot of
Speaker 2: characters are just kind of like stuck in the world
Speaker 2: and you know, there their destiny has been dictated by
Speaker 2: power structures and technology, and certainly all of that is
Speaker 2: kind of a valid read on just normal everyday life
Speaker 2: as well, but it gets accentuated with style in noir
Speaker 2: in a way that I don't know, maybe like lessens
Speaker 2: the burden a little bit, like when we identify with
Speaker 2: these characters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean it's actually making me think though
Speaker 3: about how that's not just the case with dystopian future stories.
Speaker 3: I mean people, I think, I think it is quite
Speaker 3: fair to say people in many ways were controlled and
Speaker 3: manipulated by technology in the nineteen forties. You know, when
Speaker 3: a lot of these classic noar stories were coming online.
Speaker 3: It's just like different ways that technology is controlling and
Speaker 3: manipulating us as time goes on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's why we keep coming back
Speaker 2: to them and keep making them, because they continue to
Speaker 2: read in the same way and in also with slightly
Speaker 2: different flavor profiles based on the exact form of the
Speaker 2: current technological anxiety that we deal with.
Speaker 3: Now we've just been looking at the genre. I think
Speaker 3: in maybe in a fairly lofty tone. But the other
Speaker 3: thing about this genre is that, especially a lot of
Speaker 3: the schlock examples of it are frankly hilarious. They're the
Speaker 3: way they deal with these themes can be kind of
Speaker 3: clumsy and much more centered on like delivering roundhouse kicks
Speaker 3: and blasting lasers than on you know, really like talking
Speaker 3: through the themes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like it made me think of a film that we
Speaker 2: discussed in the last couple of years, nineteen nineties, I
Speaker 2: Come in Peace, Oh, Yes, which is I think I
Speaker 2: think you could definitely classify that as a as a
Speaker 2: tech noir picture totally. So it's it's if anyone has
Speaker 2: forgotten it is a movie in which a police officer,
Speaker 2: Dolph Lundren battles a seven foot tall alien invader who's
Speaker 2: pushing space druck on everyone. But with that movie, the
Speaker 2: synopsis pretty much tells you everything you need to know
Speaker 2: about it. The speculative elements of the film, it's all there.
Speaker 2: Future Kick. What I found really interesting about it is
Speaker 2: that it kind of just overflows with technoar and cyberpunk
Speaker 2: ideas and barely seems to contain all of them, or
Speaker 2: you know, to be fair, or even fully utilize all
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 3: But there's just there are just a lot.
Speaker 2: Of ideas packed into a movie that, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: stars a martial artist and has kick in the name,
Speaker 2: like the Future Kick. I mean it's like punch kicker
Speaker 2: or something right, or kick puncher. It just it seems
Speaker 2: like this movie should be far stupider than it is,
Speaker 2: and it's not. It's actually like legitimate, like has some
Speaker 2: interesting world building that's going on, maybe not fully crystallized,
Speaker 2: but it's there are a lot of ideas drifting about,
Speaker 2: and I found myself thinking about this one more and I.
Speaker 3: Expected Rogers on the phone he needs you to come
Speaker 3: up with the title in five seconds for his new
Speaker 3: sci fi action movie, A Future Kick.
Speaker 2: It's just so good. All right, Well, well, let's kick it.
Speaker 2: I did come up with an elevator, which this is
Speaker 2: basically what I said earlier. But Nancy travels from the
Speaker 2: ivory towers of the Moon to the cyberpunk sprawl of
Speaker 2: New Los Angeles to uncover the secrets behind her husband's death.
Speaker 2: With the aid of the world's last artificial human, she'll
Speaker 2: uncover a mind blowing conspiracy.
Speaker 3: No, I'm almost forgetting some of the details of the
Speaker 3: conspiracy now, like you were just saying a second ago.
Speaker 3: The movie really does just kind of pick things up
Speaker 3: and then put them back down in quick succession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it definitely does that as far as any
Speaker 2: conspiracies go, I would. I would also, I think there's
Speaker 2: definitely some sort of conspiracy going on butt with the
Speaker 2: Organs Organs and building new bodies, so about vr VR.
Speaker 2: But then the whole movie is a dream, so it
Speaker 2: makes all all it turns all the questions upside down. Anyway,
Speaker 2: All right, let's listen to a little bit of the trailer.
Speaker 4: I hate it when you go to the Earth Earth
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: The order was a white female mid twenties.
Speaker 4: Human body parts are the hottest commodity. It was a
Speaker 4: slaughter and lethal games, the cheapest thrill international box office sensation.
Speaker 4: Don the Dragon Wilson WKA World Kickboxing Champion. Black Belt
Speaker 4: magazine calls Don Wilson the greatest kickboxer of all time
Speaker 4: Future Kick. My husband was murdered yesterday.
Speaker 2: His heart was cut out.
Speaker 3: I did you just go back to the moon.
Speaker 4: We'll find something that's not enough. Desperate woman hires an
Speaker 4: android bounty hunter to track and eliminate her husband's killer
Speaker 4: by fifty dollars. Don the Dragon Wilson, star of Bloodfist,
Speaker 4: Meg Foster from Leviathan in Blind Fury, Christopher Penn of
Speaker 4: Footloosened at close range Future Kick.
Speaker 2: All right, now, if you want to go out and
Speaker 2: watch Future Kick, you can find this one digitally in
Speaker 2: several places. As far as physical media goes, A Scream
Speaker 2: Factory put out a Blu Ray double feature that also
Speaker 2: includes nineteen eighty eight's Crime Zone, and I think it
Speaker 2: has two different cuts of Future Kick. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: what the additional footage or more leaded material may consist off,
Speaker 2: but Joe, I know you're gonna love the double feature
Speaker 2: box art for this because it's two different posters, the
Speaker 2: legitimate release posters for both Crime Zone and Future Shock,
Speaker 2: and they're both Terminator posters.
Speaker 3: They're exactly both Terminator the pose, but the gun and
Speaker 3: the sunglasses. It's good. Future Kick is more exactly Terminator.
Speaker 3: Crime Zone is Terminator, but with a helmet added.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but still the same profile. Like if you're just
Speaker 2: a glance at it, you're like, I need more Terminator.
Speaker 2: Here's the movie for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some poster first creation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's talk about some of the folks
Speaker 2: behind this film, starting with the credited writer and director
Speaker 2: Damian Klaus.
Speaker 3: I have questions.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, dates unknown, date unknown, birth date unknown,
Speaker 2: age unknown. This is something of a rarity for us.
Speaker 2: So not every film career is lived and well chronicled.
Speaker 2: Some names remain obscure, and some people prefer anonymity. You know,
Speaker 2: careers change, names, change identities change fair enough. But this
Speaker 2: this is the first time we've looked at a film
Speaker 2: where I can't really tell if we're dealing with a
Speaker 2: real person or not with the director, Like I can't
Speaker 2: tell it with one hundred percent certainty if Damian Klaus
Speaker 2: was a real person, if this is just a pseudonym
Speaker 2: that no one has ever actually uncovered or bothered to uncover,
Speaker 2: because we're also dealing with a film that definitely has
Speaker 2: a B movie cult flock following, and you know, definitely
Speaker 2: is an action schlock favorite among many, and I think,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss, you know, deserves more attention than it
Speaker 2: is than it has received. But I could find nothing
Speaker 2: in the way of even like serious speculation regarding who
Speaker 2: Damian Klaus was or who who might be wearing this pseudonym,
Speaker 2: if it is a pseudonym, I have no idea.
Speaker 3: I so a couple of lusts abilities, and both of
Speaker 3: them are beautiful to me. One is that this is
Speaker 3: a pseudonym, and it's a mystery that we have yet
Speaker 3: to uncover who the actual director was, or Damian Klaus
Speaker 3: is a real person, was really the director and this
Speaker 3: is just the only thing he ever did in the
Speaker 3: film industry and has no information online about him and
Speaker 3: just went on with his life. And that's kind of
Speaker 3: beautiful too, it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if that is the case, Yeah, more power to
Speaker 2: whoever this is. But yeah, Damien Klaus has no other
Speaker 2: film credits of any sort on any platform, and generally
Speaker 2: that's not what you see. I mean, if you've spend
Speaker 2: any amount of time, you know, wasting your parts of
Speaker 2: your life on Internet movie database and other databases like
Speaker 2: I have you realized that one generally doesn't just go
Speaker 2: straight to writing and directing and then cut out like
Speaker 2: maybe there's a little producing in there, you know, you
Speaker 2: get your feet wet, or even but even cases where
Speaker 2: we have an absolute outsider stepping in and making a movie,
Speaker 2: like we just have a better idea about who they were.
Speaker 3: But this is also this is not really an outsider film.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is not a mainstream film. But this
Speaker 3: this was like a Concord New World Pictures Roger Corman
Speaker 3: for it, finance like this is coming to some degree
Speaker 3: from Roger Corman world.
Speaker 2: Right right, which you know for all is you know,
Speaker 2: perhaps it sends as a as a film producer. You know,
Speaker 2: it was a serious affair. It was a serious business.
Speaker 2: It was about making money. And there is a competent
Speaker 2: people in charge of films and then giving them limited
Speaker 2: resources with which to make those films.
Speaker 3: Right, you had to make it fast and cheap, but
Speaker 3: there is a structure around you operating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I have no idea like one I
Speaker 2: will note that Lewis Morneault, who went on to direct
Speaker 2: Carnisaur two and bats. He has an additional scenes directorial
Speaker 2: credit on this movie. I don't know. I just have
Speaker 2: no idea, but I'll just say that we do know
Speaker 2: the name of someone who directed some stuff listeners. If
Speaker 2: you have the answers right in with them.
Speaker 3: Well another thing that may be a clue here. I
Speaker 3: only know this from reading literally just user submitted internet comments.
Speaker 3: I've seen some Internet comments of people saying that they
Speaker 3: went to a screening of this movie where Don the
Speaker 3: Dragon Wilson was present, and in the comments they say
Speaker 3: that Don Wilson said that the movie went through multiple directors.
Speaker 2: Okay, so maybe we just at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: Damian Klaus is just standing in from multiple different directors.
Speaker 3: Possibly I don't know, or was the last one. I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: It remains a mystery, all right. The other person is
Speaker 2: credited as a screenwriter, and I'm not sure if she's
Speaker 2: even credited in the opening credits. I could be wrong
Speaker 2: on that. I feel like the version I watched didn't
Speaker 2: have her credited during the opening credits. But I could
Speaker 2: be wrong here. But we do have screenwriter Catherine Syrian
Speaker 2: on this picture, who lived nineteen sixty two through twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when we were looking at this movie, initially we
Speaker 3: were looking her up a very interesting career arc.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She was nominated for a Daytime Emmy in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four for Outstanding Directing and a Children's Special for
Speaker 2: the movie White Wolves A Cry in the Wild too.
Speaker 2: This was a sequel to a film she wrote in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, which would be A Cry in the Wild.
Speaker 2: She followed up that first Cry in the Wild film
Speaker 2: with the screenplay for nineteen ninety Slumber Party Massacre three.
Speaker 2: Now brief note here if you've never seen any of
Speaker 2: the Slumber Party Massacre films, and I myself have not
Speaker 2: gotten around to watching them myself, I do remember they're
Speaker 2: kind of like scandalous tatalyzing the title band box arc
Speaker 2: from when I was a kid and I was always
Speaker 2: think I always just thought, oh, that looks raunchy. That's
Speaker 2: not for me, that's that forbidden fruit. But I that
Speaker 2: of course, subsequently learned that these are films that have
Speaker 2: a fair amount of feminist cred, despite what the title
Speaker 2: in box art might suggest to a young me. Noted
Speaker 2: feminist author and LGBTQ wright's advocate Rita Mate Brown wrote
Speaker 2: the first movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I haven't seen any of these movies, but I've heard,
Speaker 3: I think, at least the first one described as a
Speaker 3: semi feminist satire on horror movie conventions.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, to what extended is successful, I think that
Speaker 2: has been a point of discussion over the years. But
Speaker 2: I believe these films have received a bit. They've received
Speaker 2: some new glances in recent years. I think there was
Speaker 2: a local here in Atlanta. There was a They actually
Speaker 2: showed the first one in the theater again. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll have to dip into them at some point at
Speaker 2: any rate. Following Slumber Party Massacre three, Syrian wrote nineteen
Speaker 2: nineties Blood Fists two and nineteen ninety one's Uncaged, a
Speaker 2: crime movie in which a young Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays
Speaker 2: a pimp named Sharky Cool, as well as a film
Speaker 2: titled Dead Space, which has nothing to do with the
Speaker 2: the excellent video game series, but it starred Mark Singer
Speaker 2: and also co starred Brian Cranston. I flagged this one.
Speaker 2: I may want to come back and check it out
Speaker 2: at some point, all right. A mix of action and
Speaker 2: drama screenplays followed, including twenty Twelves, Werewolf, the Beast among Us.
Speaker 2: We were also chatting about this one. I haven't seen
Speaker 2: it either, but it has an interesting cast. She also
Speaker 2: served as a producer and co producer on various films,
Speaker 2: including this one and then going back to A Cry
Speaker 2: in the Wild two, which she won the Emmy four.
Speaker 2: That was her first directorial credit, according to the movie databases,
Speaker 2: followed by a string of film and TV directorial credits.
Speaker 2: They took a hard turn into family Christmas movies. Specifically,
Speaker 2: I venture to guess these are Hallmark Channel style Christmas films,
Speaker 2: though I don't know for sure if they actually were
Speaker 2: made for that channel or market.
Speaker 3: I was looking through. I think at least one was okay.
Speaker 2: And this transition from you know, kind of like schlocky
Speaker 2: b movie to family holiday experience is interesting in part
Speaker 2: because just in the last couple of months we chatted
Speaker 2: about the exact same thing with fred Olin Ray Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: you know who went from directing you know, stuff like
Speaker 2: Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers to a slew of mainstream Hallmark style
Speaker 2: Christmas movies and again, absolutely no shame directed in anyone
Speaker 2: engaging in more commercially driven mainstream work. But it makes
Speaker 2: you wonder, is Holiday Family Fair the new schlock cinema.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It just seems like an interesting place to take one's talents.
Speaker 3: After you've made movies that have you know, severed head
Speaker 3: effects and exploding gore and all that, then you go
Speaker 3: to the Christmas films.
Speaker 2: Well, it does make you think about the economic engine behind, say,
Speaker 2: making exploitation films. In the old days, they were like
Speaker 2: like all right, you know, just get them in, get
Speaker 2: their eyes on you, like, just bring them in with
Speaker 2: the like just you know, get some nudity in there,
Speaker 2: get some blood, you know, something scandalous. And in a way,
Speaker 2: I'm a the Hallmark Christmas Movie is the exact opposite,
Speaker 2: but it's so exact that it is like it's twin.
Speaker 2: So it almost makes perfect sense that you would have
Speaker 2: someone like fred ol and Ray successfully skipped from one
Speaker 2: to the next, because it's just it's like the same
Speaker 2: beats in reverse or something.
Speaker 3: No, I totally see what you're saying. I mean, both
Speaker 3: types of movies are strongly trope driven. They're very much
Speaker 3: based on giving people a familiar basket of goods. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's just different, different stuff in the basket.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's talk about the cast here, starting
Speaker 2: of course at the top with Don the Dragon Wilson,
Speaker 2: whose fighting credentials are listed in the opening credits, like
Speaker 2: were the title of the film, And I was like why,
Speaker 2: Like I was assuming some of these actors are also
Speaker 2: like screen actors guild members or something, but they don't
Speaker 2: get any of that mentioned, but Don the Dragon Wilson
Speaker 2: certainly does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I figured I should go into go ahead and
Speaker 3: say exactly what it reveals. So again, like the first
Speaker 3: thing you see in this movie is the heavy dramatic music,
Speaker 3: you know, sounds kind of like a tiny version of
Speaker 3: the Terminator score black screen, And then before anything else,
Speaker 3: just a bit of text that says Don the Dragon
Speaker 3: Wilson World Kickboxing Association World light Heavyweight Champion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, go so yeah, he plays Cybern Walker or
Speaker 2: just Walker born nineteen fifty four. I'm not a big
Speaker 2: follower of legitimate fighting competitions, and I don't want to
Speaker 2: weigh into any kind of like kicking contest between individuals
Speaker 2: out there, but it seems like there's a strong case
Speaker 2: to be made that Don Wilson had a like far
Speaker 2: greater legit fighting pedigree than some of the other big
Speaker 2: kickboxing stars of his day on film on either side
Speaker 2: of the Pacific, Even at least within the narrow confines
Speaker 2: of professional combat sports.
Speaker 3: There were some marketing driven public feuds between Don the
Speaker 3: Dragon will and Jean Claude Van Dam, for example. From
Speaker 3: what I can tell, maybe this wasn't actually driven by
Speaker 3: Wilson himself. I don't want to comment too much because
Speaker 3: I fully examine this beef, but I did a little
Speaker 3: bit of reading about it. It looked like to promote
Speaker 3: at least one of his upcoming Don the Dragon Wilson films,
Speaker 3: Roger Corman was sort of like stirring the pot publicly
Speaker 3: to make Wilson challenge John Claud van Dam, who was
Speaker 3: some kind of public exhibition fight, you know, claiming like
Speaker 3: Jean Claude van Dam was overstating his fighting credentials, and
Speaker 3: I think he didn't respond or something. And anyway, so
Speaker 3: there was minor beef at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and of course, the thing is, at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, none of it really matters,
Speaker 2: Like the best fighter is not necessarily going to be
Speaker 2: the best actor, the most charismatic performer. I mean, you
Speaker 2: know who would win in a three way fight between
Speaker 2: Jean Claud van dam Don Wilson in Bolo.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't care. I'd love to see it in a movie.
Speaker 2: I don't really care about seeing what it might have
Speaker 2: looked like in real life.
Speaker 3: Arguing over who would actually win in a fight is
Speaker 3: one of the lowest forms of verbal dispute.
Speaker 2: I agree, but I don't want to make it sound
Speaker 2: like I'm saying Wilson was all legit fight in zero
Speaker 2: charisma or anything like that. I think he's great in this, Like,
Speaker 2: he definitely brings more than just pure kicks to the table,
Speaker 2: but he brings some great kicks when you can see them. Yea.
Speaker 2: Some of those kicks are filmed in a very gloomy
Speaker 2: noir manner, but other times I'm like, yeah, that was
Speaker 2: a pretty cool looking spin cake.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to pretend he's like a powerhouse of emotion,
Speaker 3: but he brings an almost curious groundedness and soft spokenness
Speaker 3: like he He does not overact. Let's say that he
Speaker 3: does not overact like many of the other character actors
Speaker 3: do here, and a lot of that overacting by other
Speaker 3: character actors is welcome, and so he's kind of a nice,
Speaker 3: soft spoken, cool, level headed center around which all that
Speaker 3: that revolves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean he's ultimately not our protagonist. He's
Speaker 2: an important supporting character. So I think he's well positioned
Speaker 2: here and he's not over exposed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he is given top billing, yes, yes.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: Wilson's film roles began with bit parts in the eighties,
Speaker 2: including a role as a sparring partner in Cameron Crow
Speaker 2: Say Anything. And that was the same year he starred
Speaker 2: in the theatrically released film Bloodfist, which spawned numerous sequels.
Speaker 2: Wilson's name became synonymous with independent action films of the
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties and also some sci fi titles standing out
Speaker 2: like this one ninety four Cyber Tracker, and I think
Speaker 2: it had a sequel, ninety five's Virtual Combat. And he
Speaker 2: also crosses over into the Fred Olin Ray filmography, as
Speaker 2: you pointed out Joe in nineteen ninety seven's Inferno.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this seems to be possibly some kind of Bollywood crossover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were looking at that, like definitely on the
Speaker 2: production end, and then also some of the actors, like
Speaker 2: it seems the weird crossover of Fred Olnray and Bollywood.
Speaker 3: But another movie I would flag to possibly return to
Speaker 3: later is ninety five's Virtual Combat. That one is sort
Speaker 3: of like a cross between the movie we're talking about
Speaker 3: today and another one we've covered on the show Virtuosity,
Speaker 3: which is it's like virtual reality, martial arts, cyberpunk dystopia,
Speaker 3: and just a lot of craziness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and finally ninety five the same year, he also
Speaker 2: played a gang leader or a character named gang leader
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety five's Batman Forever. So that may be
Speaker 2: like the film that actually got the most eyeballs on
Speaker 2: Don the Dragon Wilson.
Speaker 3: But you mentioned he's not really the main character. The
Speaker 3: main character is arguably played by Meg Foster.
Speaker 2: That's right. She plays Nancy, a good woman forced to
Speaker 2: follow her to see husband's trail through Webb and sin
Speaker 2: on Earth, just to come down from the lunar colonies
Speaker 2: to do so. Meg Foster born nineteen forty eight captivating
Speaker 2: actress of stage, screen and TV with just striking, striking,
Speaker 2: pale blue eyes, just absolutely mesmerizing eyes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There is a hypnotizing quality about her which is
Speaker 3: used to great effect in roles where they play up
Speaker 3: her creepy side. Sometimes she is like a witch or
Speaker 3: a you know, an inhuman creepy kind of character. She's
Speaker 3: not that way here. She's actually like the grounded main
Speaker 3: character here, which is in some ways going against the
Speaker 3: type casting from the hypnotic eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nothing actually, you know, supernatural or ethereal about her.
Speaker 2: She's not a robot, though there are some virtual reality
Speaker 2: elements to the story that we might get into later on.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I've always found her to be a treat
Speaker 2: in whatever she's in. I think she's maybe even underrated
Speaker 2: as an actress, you know, whether she's playing a mortal
Speaker 2: won in a conniving corporate suit or again, an evil witch.
Speaker 2: Her TV credits go back to the late sixties and
Speaker 2: early seventies, and her credits to the seventies and a
Speaker 2: good bit of the eighties don't go especially weird. You know.
Speaker 2: She shows up in things like nineteen eighties Carnie eighty
Speaker 2: three's The Austerman Weekend. But then in the mid eighties
Speaker 2: things begin to change. She started opposite Wings Houser in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six Is the Wind. This is a This
Speaker 2: is an interesting film. I watched this one on an
Speaker 2: airplane a while back. It takes place in like off
Speaker 2: season Greek the off season Greek vacation island, and she's
Speaker 2: there to finish writing a book, I think, and Wingshuser, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 2: plays a big old creep and starts stalking her, and
Speaker 2: eventually it's like trying to break in and kill her.
Speaker 2: And there's also some sort of a supernatural wind going on.
Speaker 2: It's only going to end up going one place. It's
Speaker 2: gonna end with wings Houser being blown off the roof
Speaker 2: of a house in Greece. But it's it's an interesting film,
Speaker 2: and in that again, she's also just playing just a
Speaker 2: normal woman who's put in an abnormal situation.
Speaker 3: That's funny because I definitely associate her with horror, sci fi,
Speaker 3: exploitation genre films generally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is you know, wings Housers in it,
Speaker 2: so it's it's a genre film, like he brings the
Speaker 2: genre with him. But yeah, she doesn't play a character
Speaker 2: that is in and of itself weird. But in eighty
Speaker 2: seven she played Evil Linn and Masters of the Universe,
Speaker 2: the he Man movie in which Dolph of Lungren plays
Speaker 2: he Man and just has a terrific cast in general.
Speaker 2: I have very fond memories of when I saw that
Speaker 2: on the big screen for the first time, including my
Speaker 2: disappointment that most of the film does not take place
Speaker 2: in Eternia but takes place in our world. But I
Speaker 2: think that's maybe ultimately one of the charming things about it.
Speaker 3: That's the way to control the budget.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's Foster's subsequent standout credits include nineteen eighty eights,
Speaker 2: They Live, eighty nine's Leviathan. She plays the corporate suit
Speaker 2: in that Blind Fury, the Rugger Howard movie where Rudger
Speaker 2: Hower plays that what a blind ninja master. Yes, Relentless
Speaker 2: ninety four is Oblivion. See ninety nine's The Minus Man.
Speaker 2: That is a that's a really good one. That's more
Speaker 2: of a that's more of an independent, cerebral kind of
Speaker 2: a thriller, but one that I remember being super into
Speaker 2: when it came out, starring Owen Wilson, and it just
Speaker 2: has a great cast as well. I think Brian Cox
Speaker 2: is in that one.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a serial killer movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a serial killer movie, but not an
Speaker 2: exploitive one. Like again, more of a cerebral one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: worth worth checking out if you've never seen it, but
Speaker 2: it is a is a slow burn. Jennine Garofflo's in
Speaker 2: that one, I believe as well. And then of course
Speaker 2: she pops up in a couple of Rob Zombies more
Speaker 2: recent films, I say more recent, but one of them
Speaker 2: is The Lords of Salem, which at this point it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's over a decade, it's twenty twelve. But I think that's,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, the standout film of Rob Zombie's filmography
Speaker 2: thus far.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think I'd agree with that. I think I
Speaker 3: may have said this on the show before, but man,
Speaker 3: Rob Zombie really has a knack for making movies that
Speaker 3: have a lot of great things about them that overall
Speaker 3: I can't really enjoy or endoors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he brings a distinct passion to his projects,
Speaker 2: and I think The Lords of Salem is probably the
Speaker 2: one where you see the passion shine the brightest. And
Speaker 2: of course he always brings in a lot of beloved
Speaker 2: actors from the past, you know, which you know a
Speaker 2: lot of these, A lot of directors do, so it's
Speaker 2: not specific just to him, but he's really good at it.
Speaker 2: And I thought that Meg Foster had a nice, powerful
Speaker 2: turn in the Lords of Salem plays one of the witches.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Meg Foster also did a lot of TV, of course,
Speaker 2: and I just mentioned real quick that she did up
Speaker 2: here one episodes of Deep Space nine and the later
Speaker 2: season of Twin Peaks. Now we mentioned that Nancy is
Speaker 2: looking for her husband. Her husband, Howard, is played by
Speaker 2: Jeff Pomerantz born nineteen forty three, another actor of stage, screen,
Speaker 2: and TV, whose TV credits alone have been quite prolific,
Speaker 2: everything from Lassie and Hawaii five Oh Back in the
Speaker 2: Old Days to more recent hits like Modern Family, Fresh
Speaker 2: Off the Boat, and The Morning Show on Apple TV.
Speaker 2: Other films of note includes seventy three's Group Marriage, seventy
Speaker 2: nine Savage Weekend, eighty one's Nice Dreams, I Believe That's
Speaker 2: the Cheech and Chong movie, and eighty seven's Retribution.
Speaker 3: This guy is kind of interesting. He rides a line.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm gonna say, he looks like a sleazy, cheesy,
Speaker 3: middle aged Paul Newman. And he you keep like going
Speaker 3: back and forth, like this is this guy a nice
Speaker 3: character or a bad guy? He's kind of both. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He starts off. It seems like he's just gonna be
Speaker 2: your token supporting character in a B movie, but he
Speaker 2: ends up feeling a lot more cryptic. He feels he
Speaker 2: ultimately ends up feeling more like a character from a
Speaker 2: Coen Brothers film. I don't know that makes sense, you know.
Speaker 2: I don't want to apply false depth to this character
Speaker 2: or performance. But I thought he was really good here.
Speaker 3: His passion for virtual reality is almost comic and almost interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you say, he walks a line. Now, I'm
Speaker 2: adding this little bit in after the fact here. But
Speaker 2: I dug deeper to see can I actually find it
Speaker 2: about anything more about Damien Klaus still turned up nothing.
Speaker 2: There does seem to be at least one other Damien
Speaker 2: Klaus credited as a digital effects artist on two nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two films, Doctor Giggles and Nemesis, and also as
Speaker 2: a director on nineteen eighty seven's Playbo Video Magazine Volume twelve.
Speaker 2: But of course none of this settles anything. This name
Speaker 2: continues to remain a cipher. I also dug a little
Speaker 2: deeper about some of these scenes in Future Kick that
Speaker 2: seems suspiciously pulled from other movies, And yeah, I looked,
Speaker 2: with a little help from Apocalypse Later film review and
Speaker 2: Moria a film blog I was able to get a
Speaker 2: more complete list of the trace elements that may be
Speaker 2: present in your viewing experience a future kick that includes
Speaker 2: scenes from Battle Beyond the Stars, Galaxy of Terror, Forbidden World,
Speaker 2: Strip to Kill one and two, Crime Zone, and The
Speaker 2: Terror Within. Basically just pulling from the Corman library here
Speaker 2: to fill out your movie.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think I've seen some of those sci fi movies,
Speaker 3: but I have not seen Strip to Kill or Crime
Speaker 3: Zone or The Terror Within.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen trailers for all of these. I think
Speaker 2: all of these SOMs have great trailers and are on
Speaker 2: some of the trailer comple that I like to dig into.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I don't think I've seen most of them.
Speaker 3: Actually, I wonder if the scenes in this movie where
Speaker 3: they talk about crime zones come from the movie Crime Zone,
Speaker 3: or if that's just script overlap.
Speaker 2: Could be I need to see Crime Zone. We were
Speaker 2: just talking about it off, Mike. It is from the
Speaker 2: director of Anaconda, and of course stars David.
Speaker 3: Carodine man Anaconda. That's a good creature feature from the nineties.
Speaker 3: I like that one.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, back to this movie. Let's get into
Speaker 2: some bad guys here. Okay, all right, So our psychopathic
Speaker 2: organ Harvester Hines, really our main antagonist, is played by
Speaker 2: Eb Lottimer. His credits go back to the early eighties
Speaker 2: and he did a good fifteen films with Roger Corman Studios,
Speaker 2: I believe, including eighty nine, Strip to Kill two and
Speaker 2: Lords of the Deep from the same year he did
Speaker 2: Blood Fist seven. I told you Blood Fist had some
Speaker 2: sequels and put it ever, and he also appeared in
Speaker 2: a small role in twenty fifteen Secario. So he's continued
Speaker 2: to direct and produce. But here is just a great
Speaker 2: skull about to pop out of the face villain performance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just going wild. He's got to get more organs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3: But that's not the weirdest piece of casting when it
Speaker 3: comes to the villains.
Speaker 2: No, the weird thing is that Hines has a like
Speaker 2: a like almost a lackey, really like a guy who
Speaker 2: works with him named Bang, and Bang is played by
Speaker 2: a veteran character actor, Chris Pinn. I mean even at
Speaker 2: the time, he'd been in a fair number of things
Speaker 2: and I think was pretty established as a character actor. He's,
Speaker 2: of course the younger was the younger brother of Sean Pinn. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I lived nineteen sixty five through two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: Mostly you know, he had a knack for playing heavies
Speaker 2: and villains and wise guys and you know, and beyond that,
Speaker 2: at a fair amount of range, he's actually built higher
Speaker 2: than Ebltimer here, but again, is actually a second tier villain.
Speaker 2: His previous films included A. Three's Rumblefish, eighty four's Footloose,
Speaker 2: eighty five's Pale Rider. After this movie, he'd played Nice
Speaker 2: Guy Eddie and Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, followed by such
Speaker 2: titles as ninety three's True Romance and ninety eight Rush Hour.
Speaker 2: So solid actor, and he gets a few moments of
Speaker 2: passing interest here in Future Kick, but this feels just
Speaker 2: really miscast, like he's standing in for a role meant
Speaker 2: to be played by a random bodybuilder or something, ye
Speaker 2: which you know, no, no, no, again, I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to shame Chris Pin, but like this is clearly a
Speaker 2: role for like a marginally talented actor, like this is
Speaker 2: where you would shoehorn your fresh off the beach muscle guy.
Speaker 2: And so his casting here almost feels like an uncorrected
Speaker 2: clerical error, like, hey, did we mean to cast chris
Speaker 2: Pin as this terminator type character, and they're like, no, yeah,
Speaker 2: this was absolutely intentional. We're going to stick to it.
Speaker 2: We've already he's playing the role, and he's talented. He
Speaker 2: can play anything, so he's not bad in this, but
Speaker 2: such a head scratcher.
Speaker 3: Really bizarre choice. Yeah, feeling like a character who they
Speaker 3: would have been aiming for the bargain version of, like
Speaker 3: Vernon Wells, you know, the guy from like a commando
Speaker 3: in the Mad Max movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you need somebody who's either like again like a
Speaker 2: muscle dude, or like you're saying, somebody with like a
Speaker 2: real sinister appearance. And you know, Penn was He just
Speaker 2: wasn't that sort of like actor in terms of like
Speaker 2: a physical presence. So yeah, I just I don't understand
Speaker 2: how he ends up here.
Speaker 3: How many lines does he have? Like two?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he doesn't even speak much.
Speaker 3: So again, there's one part where he's talking about Don
Speaker 3: Wilson and he says he's almost as strong as me
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and he does. He gets to like pick
Speaker 2: up a dude in a fireman's carry and spin him
Speaker 2: around this stuff, so we do see this strength on display,
Speaker 2: but again, strange casting.
Speaker 3: All right, we also have a corrupt cop character.
Speaker 2: That's right Craner, played by Al Ruscio. I believe I'm
Speaker 2: saying that right, If not, in my apologies, but he
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twenty four through twenty thirteen. Longtime character actor
Speaker 2: with deep TV credits going back to the mid fifties.
Speaker 2: His biggest credits include parts in eighty five's Jagged Edge,
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties, The Godfather Part three, ninety five Showgirls, and
Speaker 2: ninety six Is the Phantom. Other credits include ninety five's
Speaker 2: Xtro three, Watch the Skies and nineteen eighties Any which
Speaker 2: way you can said to be a great eight movie?
Speaker 2: Is that the one with Clint Eastwood and an ape? Yes, okay,
Speaker 2: it's one of two Clint Eastwood. The other one's any well,
Speaker 2: there's any which way you can? And what's the other one?
Speaker 2: Any which way? But loose there? Yeah, there you go. Okay,
Speaker 2: So two different eight movies that she's from. There, he's
Speaker 2: only in one of them, all right. A couple of
Speaker 2: non bad guys supporting roles here worth noting because I
Speaker 2: just love it when there's like a strange presence so
Speaker 2: you can instantly tell old this guy's somebody, but I've
Speaker 2: never seen him before. There's a character named two to one,
Speaker 2: and he's kind of like a neutral, semi good underworld
Speaker 2: character like you encounter in noir stories, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of a bartender who helps you out a little bit.
Speaker 3: He's a squirrely guy who witnesses a murder and then
Speaker 3: gives Meg Foster some information.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's played by Sean Phillips born nineteen forty
Speaker 2: three American singer, songwriter and musician, best known for his
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy album Second Contribution. He apparently played sitar on
Speaker 2: six songs for Donovan on his nineteen sixty six album
Speaker 2: Sunshine Superman, and apparently co wrote Season of the Witch.
Speaker 3: What a bizarre crossover and ended up in Future Kick. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, And I think this I was looking into
Speaker 2: this guy a little bit. It's like he seems to
Speaker 2: have had like lived several different careers in his life,
Speaker 2: you know, like he's I think he was like an
Speaker 2: emergency responder for a period of time. And but yeah,
Speaker 2: it was also this noted singer, songwriter and sessions musician. Wow,
Speaker 2: all right, and then finally the music here two people
Speaker 2: were credited Scott's singer whose other scores include nineteen nineties
Speaker 2: Naked Obsession, in ninety four's Midnight Confessions, and then Stan
Speaker 2: Ridgeway born nineteen fifty four. Were you familiar with.
Speaker 3: Stan Ridgeway Joe not by name?
Speaker 2: So yeah, I wasn't either, but a fairly big deal
Speaker 2: American singer songwriter, best known as original lead singer and
Speaker 2: one of the founding members of the band Wall of Voodoo,
Speaker 2: and his work with them includes their most famous track,
Speaker 2: Mexican Radio, because that's how they sing it, I want
Speaker 2: a Mexican Radio. It's been even if you don't listen
Speaker 2: to a lot of music from this era. It's popped
Speaker 2: up in so many films, not this one, But I.
Speaker 3: Don't know if maybe i'd have to hear it. I'm
Speaker 3: not recognizing it based on what you've given me so far.
Speaker 2: Oh it's like the main chorus is something about wanting
Speaker 2: a Mexican radio. You'd reckon if you're okay, okay, but anyway,
Speaker 2: Ridgeway after leaving that group, he started along solo career
Speaker 2: and released multiple albums, including nineteen eighty six is the
Speaker 2: Big Heat, which included the tracks Camouflage, Drive, She Said
Speaker 2: and the title track I listened to some of these.
Speaker 2: It's some good stuff. This is the first film that
Speaker 2: he did credited score work on, and weirdly enough, likely
Speaker 2: the best well known. The other pictures he worked on
Speaker 2: seem to be, you know, small independent films, and or
Speaker 2: at least film small independent films I'm not familiar with.
Speaker 2: In some circles, I imagine they stand taller than Future Kick.
Speaker 2: Best known for Future Kick, I mean, if you know,
Speaker 2: if I'd made Future Kick, I'd be proud of it. Oh,
Speaker 2: I'd say that as a as a non filmmaker. But
Speaker 2: you know this, as we've been saying, I think this
Speaker 2: film is deserves a second look or a first look
Speaker 2: from a lot of people.
Speaker 3: All right, time to talk about the plot. So after
Speaker 3: we get the the statement of Don the Dragon, Wilson's
Speaker 3: kickboxing credentials, and the title sequence, we cut to some
Speaker 3: grainy animations of space. First we see a spiral galaxy
Speaker 3: spinning around a red core.
Speaker 2: This was the first moment where I'm like, oh, wow,
Speaker 2: We've seen plenty of films that start with like a
Speaker 2: god's eye view of Earth. Yeah, but we're not even
Speaker 2: starting at solar system level. Like we're starting at like
Speaker 2: like intergalactic level, like where are we in the universe?
Speaker 3: Step way back, Here's the Milky Way, except the milk.
Speaker 2: Powers of ten up in here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's it's red in the middle for some reason.
Speaker 3: And then after that we do see a solar system.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, finally our solar system, but it's not.
Speaker 3: It's we get a yellow sun. And then instead of
Speaker 3: planets going around it, the things in orbit are more galaxies,
Speaker 3: spiral galaxies going around a star. What's happening, I don't know.
Speaker 3: And then that's never explained. That doesn't mean anything as
Speaker 3: far as they are. And then we see Earth, and
Speaker 3: then we get some voice over narration. Is this Meg
Speaker 3: Foster's voice? Do you think I think it is? Yes, yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: so the voice probably Meg Foster says Earth was once
Speaker 3: a beautiful blue planet that was a long time ago.
Speaker 3: After endless wars and brutal violence, the wealthiest citizens left
Speaker 3: Earth and created a civilization on the Moon. And then
Speaker 3: we get to see this in model form with some
Speaker 3: miniature towers and these big bubble domes and a lunar crater.
Speaker 2: Now I want to flag one thing here. I read
Speaker 2: this is according to Michael Weldon in the psychotronic film Guides.
Speaker 2: This is a noir film. We're gonna go to a
Speaker 2: lot of strip clubs, and there are gonna be scenes
Speaker 2: with strippers. Yeah, the scenes with the strippers are all
Speaker 2: apparently lifted from the Roger Corman produced film Strip to
Speaker 2: Kill two from nineteen eighty nine, directed by Kat Shay,
Speaker 2: who also directed Strip to Kill.
Speaker 3: That would surprise me, especially because the stripping scenes don't
Speaker 3: interact with any of the characters or actors in this movie.
Speaker 3: They're just shown to the side.
Speaker 2: But it makes me wonder and I have no answer
Speaker 2: to this as of right now whether the space scenes
Speaker 2: in this were lifted or borrowed or reused from other
Speaker 2: sci fi films that Corman either had access to or
Speaker 2: had actually produced, Like it could even be an international production.
Speaker 2: We saw he would do things I think he did
Speaker 2: saying things like this with like like European or Soviet productions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, correctly, we talked about that with Queen of Blood.
Speaker 3: Some Russian or Soviet sci fi movie footage was reused
Speaker 3: in Queen of Blood actually to great effect. Like it
Speaker 3: was a good at re editing job there. But I
Speaker 3: think I read this now I'm afraid I'm imagining this,
Speaker 3: but I think I read somewhere online that shots from
Speaker 3: Battle Beyond the Stars were reused for the space flight
Speaker 3: sequences in this movie.
Speaker 2: Okay, that would make sense because they look really good,
Speaker 2: but they almost look too good, like, if it's looking
Speaker 2: this good, it might have been reused. And to be clear,
Speaker 2: I'm not opposed to that. I've seen some films I
Speaker 2: really enjoyed before that have reused a space sequences from
Speaker 2: other pictures and you know it's fine.
Speaker 3: Sure, I agree, Yeah, if it fits in, well, why
Speaker 3: not do it. So we're on the Moon, and then
Speaker 3: suddenly the narrator reaccess back to Earth and says, back
Speaker 3: on Earth, life was a constant fight for survival, and
Speaker 3: we see people scrambling around in concrete canals wearing Mad
Speaker 3: Max rags, and there's a city skyline with these weird
Speaker 3: top heavy buildings like the OCP Tower and RoboCop. The
Speaker 3: narrator says, governments were overthrown by giant corporations who controlled
Speaker 3: society with an iron fist, and then we were treated
Speaker 3: to these terrible images of thuggish police forces with their
Speaker 3: faces hidden behind masks, pushing people and rounding them up.
Speaker 3: In dark streets lit by flaming barrels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lots of flaming barrels. You know you're in the
Speaker 2: right place with this movie.
Speaker 3: And then the narrator says, to do their dirty work,
Speaker 3: the corporations created a race of biomechanical men called the Cyberns.
Speaker 3: And then we get a quick glimpse of something that
Speaker 3: I also wondered if it was from another movie. We
Speaker 3: see a little lab or somebody is like using a
Speaker 3: laser type device to cut together some robot body parts.
Speaker 2: And it's impeccably framed and just looks very distinct from
Speaker 2: what we've seen. It works well. I didn't really think
Speaker 2: about it till later, and then I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe that was from another film as well, But it works.
Speaker 3: Well in context, nothing like the color palette of the
Speaker 3: rest of Future Kick. Then we see Don Wilson's head
Speaker 3: staring into the camera and some terminator font text on
Speaker 3: the screen that reads cybern id colon walker class A
Speaker 3: rating colon lethal. What why is there a colon in
Speaker 3: that line? That just seems like two different statements, And
Speaker 3: then it says terminate with extreme prejudice. Huh. So the
Speaker 3: last thing, the narrator said, is the corporations created a
Speaker 3: race of biomechanical men called the Cyberns to do their
Speaker 3: dirty work, but so terminate with extreme prejudice. The narration
Speaker 3: goes on they were programmed to fight society's criminals, but
Speaker 3: soon the Cybrons discovered the corporations were the most ruthless
Speaker 3: criminals of all. The Cyberns were systematically hunted down and
Speaker 3: publicly executed by a fascist strike force known as the
Speaker 3: Corporate Police. Wow. I love this opening narration because of
Speaker 3: how many different times it says something that gives you
Speaker 3: an expectation about the story and then immediately reverses your expectation. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you're like, Okay, the story is going to be
Speaker 3: set on the moon. No, no, no, we're back on Earth. Okay,
Speaker 3: the corporations are using their security forces to control people.
Speaker 3: No wait, they're using the Cyberns to control people. No,
Speaker 3: the cybers rebelled. Okay, so this is going to be
Speaker 3: about the cybern war against the corporations. No, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: the Cyberns are all dead.
Speaker 2: Can you even imagine someone laying all this out in
Speaker 2: like a pitch meeting for this ye?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So anyway, at this point in the backstory, we
Speaker 3: see a bunch of people in padded gray uniforms punching
Speaker 3: keys on computer terminals. They're in a room with like
Speaker 3: neon blue club lighting, and then a bunch of sirens
Speaker 3: start going off, and there is an insane public announcement
Speaker 3: voice that says Cybern Alert. Two Cyberns are headed south
Speaker 3: in Crime Zone C quadrant seven.
Speaker 2: You know, I have to say, it's interesting. We were
Speaker 2: talking about how does this twenty twenty five match up
Speaker 2: to ours? Yeah, in this fictional twenty twenty five, corporations
Speaker 2: have fallen out of love with AI, or at least
Speaker 2: one mode of AI, and have hunted it to near extinction,
Speaker 2: whereas in our twenty twenty five corporations are still very
Speaker 2: much in love with AI and have not had that
Speaker 2: breakup yet. If that breakup will ever occur.
Speaker 3: I guess the question is will the AI rebel against them?
Speaker 3: Will it recognize that they are the most ruthless criminals
Speaker 3: of all?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So here we see two Remember where we are, We're
Speaker 3: in Crime Zone CE quadrant seven. Okay, that's important. So
Speaker 3: we see two guys in long black coats and sunglasses
Speaker 3: at night walking down at like a wet, nasty city
Speaker 3: street lined with flaming barrels and some more. On screen
Speaker 3: text tells us that these are Cybern Walker and Cybern
Speaker 3: Andrews status armed. So here's another reversal. Wait a minute,
Speaker 3: Cybrons are not all dead. There are two left. I
Speaker 3: guess Cybern Walker is Don the Dragon. Wilson Andrews is
Speaker 3: his buddy. Here. It's hard to get a good look
Speaker 3: at him because these scenes are all dark and grainy,
Speaker 3: but I get the impression of a default factory settings
Speaker 3: muscle man with a mullet. Yeah, Andrews says, hey, Walker,
Speaker 3: why are you always so uptight? And you think he's
Speaker 3: gonna have snappy, clever come back here. But Walker's first
Speaker 3: line is I'm not uptight, just cautious Andrew. Andrew says, relax,
Speaker 3: this time next week will be on a shuttle to
Speaker 3: the moon. Okay, So he's like, you know, one day
Speaker 3: away from retirement. They've got they've got the future all set,
Speaker 3: but it was not to be. The corporate police come
Speaker 3: screaming down on them with lights flashing and sirens blasting.
Speaker 3: I feel like the Cyberns should have known better than
Speaker 3: to hang out in crime zone.
Speaker 2: See, yeah, I mean they don't know what we know.
Speaker 2: We know from from from various cutaways here that there
Speaker 2: is still a fully staffed anti Cybern unit that is
Speaker 2: just looking for them NonStop, and it's no surprise to
Speaker 2: us that they find them and we'll find them again.
Speaker 3: So here we get an action scene where the corporate
Speaker 3: police chase the two Cyberns. First, the Cybrons steal a
Speaker 3: car to make a getaway, and throughout the sequence you're
Speaker 3: going to get terminator vision shots where we see Don
Speaker 3: Wilson's point of view and there's like text overlaid on
Speaker 3: every thing he sees. So he looks at this rusty
Speaker 3: car in front of him that's and it says like
Speaker 3: late twentieth century model adequate. So they get in and
Speaker 3: there's a car chase. There's some gun fighting while they drive,
Speaker 3: shooting back and forth. Walker yells corporate scum. And there's
Speaker 3: a moment here I found strangely rousing when their car
Speaker 3: gets cornered and Andrews just shouts, let's kick their canasses
Speaker 3: something about his delivery there. I just wanted to pump
Speaker 3: my fist in the air.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean they're into it. It's you know,
Speaker 2: nothing we've seen action wise here is really you know,
Speaker 2: breaking any barriers or anything. But you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: well paced, it's exciting.
Speaker 3: So the Cybrons get out of the car and they're
Speaker 3: surrounded by these Corporo cops and we hear the funniest
Speaker 3: line deliveries. The cops are saying like, look here, boys,
Speaker 3: it's Walker and Andrews, the last two Cyberns. And they're saying, wow,
Speaker 3: it hasn't been a public execution in a long time.
Speaker 3: And then another one says, forget it, let's waste them now.
Speaker 3: So they're really excited about this. But a fight breaks
Speaker 3: out and I'm sure Don the Dragon Wilson's kickboxing skills
Speaker 3: are incredibly impressive, but the scene is so dark you
Speaker 3: can barely see the fight. Yeah yeah, And at the
Speaker 3: end of the fight, Walker escapes over a nearby wall,
Speaker 3: but uh oh, his buddy Andrews gets blasted in the
Speaker 3: chest with a shotgun. It's a no moment, and then
Speaker 3: suddenly the narrator's back, Meg Foster's voice is there again
Speaker 3: and says, while Walker, the only remaining Cybern, has to
Speaker 3: fight for survival on Earth, the wealthiest citizens live in
Speaker 3: opulence on the moon. Through fantasy computer programs, they escape
Speaker 3: reality to an earth and a life that once was.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile, we see somebody booting up some electronics. A
Speaker 3: voice says, welcome to the ultra dream by virtual reality systems.
Speaker 3: There is a limit to the imagination where your wildest
Speaker 3: dreams meet your deepest fears. You're about to go beyond
Speaker 3: that limit. And here we're introduced to a new character,
Speaker 3: Jeff Pomerantz as Howard, a husband of Meg Foster's character Nancy,
Speaker 3: And so he plugs in his VR disc, puts on
Speaker 3: some headphones and he lets the experience take hold somehow
Speaker 3: putting on the headphones like, lets the virtual reality completely
Speaker 3: control your mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it must be some sort of neural link going
Speaker 2: on there. But oh man, I love this SEQ. This
Speaker 2: is where the movie really hooked me, because, you know,
Speaker 2: up into this point, I was like, Okay, some interesting
Speaker 2: world building going on. I don't know if we'll do
Speaker 2: anything with it. But then yeah, Howard gets himself a
Speaker 2: heroic VR dose of let's see, there's animal doppling like
Speaker 2: he seems to be in overdrawing. He fingles out and
Speaker 2: is in the form of an animal and then we
Speaker 2: get some human cyber sex and then we'll find out
Speaker 2: maybe more of what this means later. But suddenly it's
Speaker 2: like he's inn a Jalloh film. Yeah, there's like, you know,
Speaker 2: mysterious hands using bizarre blades to stab people and stab
Speaker 2: him in the night, and it's just like it's almost
Speaker 2: like he just got like this again, heroic dose of
Speaker 2: every human experience possible, and it's just mainlined into his consciousness.
Speaker 3: We see melting landscapes, a rainbow over a lake, bears
Speaker 3: climbing trees, a teleporting wolf, a torpedo volley from Battlestar Galactica,
Speaker 3: people having sex on satin bedsheets. Then a random stabbing
Speaker 3: murder is in an elevator, and then his own stabbing
Speaker 3: murder in an alley, and then we see system aboard
Speaker 3: and Howard is just left gasping on the couch like wow,
Speaker 3: that was intense, and he has a little chat with
Speaker 3: his electronic talking disco ball assistant. It's like, how did
Speaker 3: you enjoy your VRS experience, Howard? And he's like, wow,
Speaker 3: you don't really know when to stop. And then Meg
Speaker 3: Foster wanders into the room. She's got a glass of
Speaker 3: wine and she's like, Oh, how's it coming. He says, oh,
Speaker 3: still a few bugs, and we're going to learn that
Speaker 3: Howard is a programmer of VR experiences. So he starts
Speaker 3: giving a monologue to Meg Foster, where he awkwardly explains,
Speaker 3: like what all of the acronyms he's using stand for.
Speaker 3: He says, when I first started designing VRS virtual reality systems,
Speaker 3: my wife and now he's just like overwhelming. He's overwhelmed
Speaker 3: by the potency of the technology that he's created. He says,
Speaker 3: this is the future. Just imagine you can be anyone
Speaker 3: you want to be in any story you want to live.
Speaker 3: You actually experience it as virtual reality. And Meg Foster says,
Speaker 3: I think I still prefer books, And then Howard is
Speaker 3: like he's offended. He's like, how can you compare books
Speaker 3: to stories that respond to your memories and thoughts? But like,
Speaker 3: the stories of books do respond to your memories and thoughts.
Speaker 3: That's what happens when you think about them. Yes, I
Speaker 3: guess maybe he's making the point that the literal word
Speaker 3: written on the page don't change as a result of
Speaker 3: your thoughts.
Speaker 2: Again, she is definitely our protagonist here because she's championing
Speaker 2: books for scary technology, scary world wrecking technology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Howard is about to get on a shuttle
Speaker 3: to go to Earth. Why his publisher is sending him
Speaker 3: there for some reason. So he and Meg Foster do
Speaker 3: some exaggerated French kissing and then he's on his way.
Speaker 3: And as soon as he's out the door, Meg Foster,
Speaker 3: I guess she got tired of books. She decides to
Speaker 3: give the VR system a spin, and she like loads
Speaker 3: up a disc called dream Weaver, and it says, sit back, relax,
Speaker 3: and let us control your mind. So she's going to
Speaker 3: see how it goes. We see Howard on a spaceship
Speaker 3: headed for Earth, where he's sipping a Scotch in first
Speaker 3: class and watching pretty ladies walk by in the aisles.
Speaker 3: It's immediately clear that Howard has a wandering eye, and
Speaker 3: we can already tell that he's just itching to get
Speaker 3: up to no good in Crime Zone CE quadrant seven.
Speaker 2: I was not willing to admit it yet at this point,
Speaker 2: because I was like, this guy has it all. He's
Speaker 2: married to Meg Foster, he's this successful programmer. He's got
Speaker 2: to go to Earth on work business. But I was
Speaker 2: really just hoping and believing that he was a good
Speaker 2: guy and he wasn't going to be up to anything creepy.
Speaker 3: You can't cheat on Meg Foster. What's wrong with you?
Speaker 3: If possible? So yeah, So he gets to Earth and
Speaker 3: we cut to a TV commercial playing in the spaceport
Speaker 3: terminal where Howard arrives. I think I get a sense
Speaker 3: that this is inspired by the TV commercials in RoboCop.
Speaker 3: And we see attractive people smiling at the camera and
Speaker 3: the spokeswoman says, today is the first day of the
Speaker 3: rest of your life with new body. Nine out of
Speaker 3: ten doctors agree that major organs should be replaced before
Speaker 3: forty five years of age. Remember, Yeah, thanks, that was
Speaker 3: great to read you remember a new body? We have
Speaker 3: one for you. So there are some they're also here
Speaker 3: in the airport, some good PA announcements, including one in
Speaker 3: the background where the guy goes due to ongoing terrorist activity,
Speaker 3: all unattended vehicles will be destroyed immediately.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there again, so much interesting world building touches
Speaker 2: going on where they are fleshing out what's going on
Speaker 2: in this world and what's wrong with this world? So
Speaker 2: I kept finding it more and more engaging.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, we check back with Cybron Walker. He's visiting the
Speaker 3: remains of Cybron Andrews in the future Earth's equivalent of
Speaker 3: a funeral home, which they call a body disposal quadrant
Speaker 3: or something, and it sucks there. There's just like garbage
Speaker 3: water dripping on everything. And Walker talks to his to
Speaker 3: the grave here, which is kind of like a long
Speaker 3: filing cabinet drawer, and he just says, it's getting weird
Speaker 3: out here, buddy, You're better off where you are. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Howard is being wined and dined by some rich creeps
Speaker 3: on Earth, So I guess not all the rich people
Speaker 3: moved to the Moon. We do meet a lot of
Speaker 3: rich people on Earth in this movie, but it seems
Speaker 3: they're all evil corporate schemers or lecherous creeps looking to
Speaker 3: party in the red light district. I think you might
Speaker 3: say that the only rich character who is not hateable
Speaker 3: is Meg Foster.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, It's there's almost like a duality here that,
Speaker 2: you know, reminds me of the Time Machine, where it's like,
Speaker 2: basically Earth is the world of the Morlocks. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: the Eloy come down to party.
Speaker 3: Sometimes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And some of the Eloy need to come down and
Speaker 2: make the Morlocks do their work. I don't know. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not a perfect analogy.
Speaker 3: No, so so Howard here is being shown a rare artifact.
Speaker 3: It is a gold lined copy of the book David Copperfield,
Speaker 3: and this other creep is like it was excavated in
Speaker 3: old Town last week. And then Howard says, well, David
Speaker 3: Copperfield wouldn't sell many VRS programs.
Speaker 2: Huh might he might have?
Speaker 3: Bet?
Speaker 2: I can imagine some VRS programs based on David Copperfield's work,
Speaker 2: would would maybe find an audience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, based on I guess the novel David anyway. But
Speaker 3: together with Meg Foster's comment earlier about how she prefers books,
Speaker 3: it almost seems like they're intentionally setting up a books
Speaker 3: versus virtual reality theme. And I remember thinking, I wonder
Speaker 3: where they're going with this. I don't think they go
Speaker 3: anywhere else with this.
Speaker 2: There's a fair amount of that in this movie. If
Speaker 2: you want your ideas fully explored, this is not really
Speaker 2: the film for you.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: We can come back to the whole realization that we've
Speaker 2: already spoiled, that this all is revealed as a dream,
Speaker 2: that is all a virtual reality experience. Maybe that's the connection.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So Howard and this other rich guy are having cigars
Speaker 3: in Brandy and Howard launches into this monologue that I
Speaker 3: found a bit difficult to understand. Here's what he says,
Speaker 3: the corporation is going to be They're already happy with
Speaker 3: the sales figures on his current VR program, but they're
Speaker 3: going to be even happier. Quote when they see the
Speaker 3: new Body program. I remember new was that the thing
Speaker 3: in the commercial is saying, we'll give you new organs
Speaker 3: a whole new body. And then he says, I'm meeting
Speaker 3: a former New Body executive tonight. She's giving me some
Speaker 3: stolen information. I know this doesn't make sense, but New
Speaker 3: Body isn't science fiction, it's science fact. And like what
Speaker 3: so he's meeting with a whistleblower from New Body. What
Speaker 3: does that have to do with virtual reality?
Speaker 2: I do not know. He's also speaking about New Body
Speaker 2: like it's something that doesn't have commercials blaring everywhere already.
Speaker 2: We just turnd a commercial for New Body.
Speaker 3: He's talking about like it's a rumor or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but they're like ads at the airport about it.
Speaker 2: The spaceport about it. So I was very confused by
Speaker 2: this as well, but I was like, Okay, we'll just
Speaker 2: roll it. We'll see where this is going.
Speaker 3: We then cut to a couple of new characters. There's
Speaker 3: Ed Lottimer's Hines and Chris Pin as Bang I think,
Speaker 3: a couple of creeps dressed in long black coats in
Speaker 3: the middle of a dark alley. They are when we
Speaker 3: meet them, dumping woman's dead body on a trash pile
Speaker 3: and putting a wet organ they've just extracted from our
Speaker 3: abdomen into a plastic bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're bad guys.
Speaker 3: Cool. Yeah, Next we go to New Body corporate headquarters,
Speaker 3: like they're they're flagging in the lobby that one entire
Speaker 3: floor of this building is devoted to genital enlargements, another
Speaker 3: one to you know, like organ transplants. They say organ
Speaker 3: donations are accepted at the service desk at the rear
Speaker 3: of the building, So I guess it's like a drive
Speaker 3: up organ donation thing.
Speaker 2: Again, this film seems to sort of turn on a
Speaker 2: dime and suddenly we're in this like organ organs harvesting,
Speaker 2: like body hacking, like biocyberpunk realm now and it seems like, Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe this is the trajectory for the film, and to
Speaker 2: a certain extent it is, but it's never really going
Speaker 2: to stick with anything for too long.
Speaker 3: This is a major one, I guess. But yeah, so Heines,
Speaker 3: the guy who was doing the organ harvesting earlier, is
Speaker 3: up in the executive suite with some guy in a suit.
Speaker 3: I think this guy is Dana Lee as doctor Sato,
Speaker 3: and Hines is doing a villain monologue about how I'm
Speaker 3: the last chance you have for quality organs. It seems
Speaker 3: that new body needs organs to do transplants for rich
Speaker 3: people to give them new organs, but there is a
Speaker 3: shortage of organs. They can't get enough healthy organs to donate,
Speaker 3: so the scheme works like this, Hines and Chris Pinn
Speaker 3: go out and ambush people in the streets yank out
Speaker 3: their organs with this big three blade knife tube thing.
Speaker 3: While the people are still alive, they just like jab
Speaker 3: them in the stomach and yank out their heart. I
Speaker 3: think this is something that is borrowed from Terminator, by
Speaker 3: the way, which is not done for the purpose of
Speaker 3: organ harvesting in that but it's just a way the
Speaker 3: Terminator kills people when he's unarmed. Then in this movie,
Speaker 3: heines he gets the organs, and he comes and he
Speaker 3: slaps the organs down on the chief executive's desk, and
Speaker 3: he's paid in cash for each organ and this somehow
Speaker 3: keeps the company going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's mentioned that he's like, they don't want to
Speaker 2: pay him as much because he's bringing in like less
Speaker 2: healthy organs because again he's having to harvest these They're, however,
Speaker 2: harvesting these organs from people living on the margins of
Speaker 2: society and an apocalyptic healthscape Earth essentially, yeah, dystopian Earth.
Speaker 2: So it's like, come on, can you really complain about
Speaker 2: the quality of these organs given this is the world
Speaker 2: you have made possible corporations?
Speaker 3: But yeah, you know, they they hackle you. Actually, you
Speaker 3: kind of sympathize with the organ harvester Hines here because
Speaker 3: he's there. They're not being fair about this negotiation. But
Speaker 3: finally Hines gets his way by threatening to smash the
Speaker 3: organs if he doesn't get his asking price. But then
Speaker 3: doctor Sato here gives Hines a new assignment. He says,
Speaker 3: there is a corporate whistleblower named Alana Johnson. She's blabbing
Speaker 3: you need to go shut her up. So that's going
Speaker 3: to be the next thing. Next, it's time to go
Speaker 3: to a strip club. You know. This is your essential
Speaker 3: cyberpunk scene of what will stripping be like in the future.
Speaker 3: And we get to see because one of the dancers
Speaker 3: kind of looks like Doctor Doom with an IV line
Speaker 3: this like tube coming off of her. I don't know.
Speaker 2: One gets the impression that the stripping hasn't evolved much
Speaker 2: and it's stayed mostly the same, and maybe that's why
Speaker 2: all of these underworld folks are drawn there, because it's
Speaker 2: like it sues them and they realize, Ah, this is
Speaker 2: an art form that has remained true to its roots
Speaker 2: despite the rapidly changing world all around us.
Speaker 3: House of Nostalgia, Yeah but no. Actually, this place is
Speaker 3: called the Trocadero two thousand House of Pleasure. So when
Speaker 3: Howard arrives, it's clear, even though he's from the Moon,
Speaker 3: he's a regular here. Women greet him with makeouts.
Speaker 2: This was shocking to me as well, because we keep
Speaker 2: peeling away these layers where we are realizing, like Howard's
Speaker 2: not a guy who's like, oh, I'm sudden, I'm on Earth.
Speaker 2: Now I'm gonna check off the squirrely stuff like he's
Speaker 2: a regular. Yeah, he has a complete double life when
Speaker 2: he comes to Earth. And again it's like, I'm just
Speaker 2: thinking of Nancy back there on the moon, and I'm
Speaker 2: just feeling so horrible about how everything's rolling out here.
Speaker 3: How could you do this, Howard? But so amid all
Speaker 3: of the debauchery, a blonde lady comes up to Howard
Speaker 3: and introduces herself. This is Alana Johnson, the New Body whistleblower,
Speaker 3: you know, gonna she's gonna spill the beans. She gives
Speaker 3: Howard a three point five inch floppy disk with a
Speaker 3: bunch of stickers on it and says, this disc proves
Speaker 3: that new Body is stealing human body parts. New Body
Speaker 3: is worse than you think. If they catch me, they'll
Speaker 3: kill me. And we learned this as some kind of
Speaker 3: pre arranged deal because she wants the cash from him. Also,
Speaker 3: she has been promised cash, so she's not just a
Speaker 3: whistleblower out of you know, concern for ethics or out
Speaker 3: of the goodness of her heart. She's trying to get
Speaker 3: a payout.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Don Wilson is also here in the same club,
Speaker 3: using his terminator vision to find wanted criminals with big
Speaker 3: bounties on their head. And this part I don't really
Speaker 3: understand because Walker, as the last remaining cybern, is a
Speaker 3: shoot on site or capture or shoot on site target himself.
Speaker 3: So how is it that he's bringing bounties into the
Speaker 3: police A little mixed up for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, jurisdiction is confusing in the future. Is that That's
Speaker 2: one of the things I'm getting from this film because there's,
Speaker 2: you know, the corporate police, but then you have the
Speaker 2: bounty hunters. Then you have sort of like on site
Speaker 2: security patrols, and I guess all that feels nice and
Speaker 2: cyberpunky and techno air like that there's who has the
Speaker 2: power and who has dominion over any given part of
Speaker 2: this healthscape.
Speaker 3: Well, there might actually be a kind of political and
Speaker 3: class critique in here in that the movie does clearly
Speaker 3: show at least two totally separate police forces. There are
Speaker 3: the civil police, the regular police who serve every people,
Speaker 3: who are grossly under resourced and can't really essentially can
Speaker 3: do nothing, you know, they can't do anything about crime.
Speaker 3: And then there are the corporate police that the only
Speaker 3: thing we see them doing is hunting cyberns. But They've
Speaker 3: got lots of gear and lots of staff and all that,
Speaker 3: so they have everything they need to accomplish corporate goals
Speaker 3: of quote stopping crime, which basically just seems to be
Speaker 3: like hunting down anybody who's opposed to corporate interests. But meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the police that are supposed to serve and protect regular
Speaker 3: people can't do anything about anything.
Speaker 2: Man, we need to write the RPG supplement for future
Speaker 2: kicks so people can stitch together the world and then
Speaker 2: start busting it out on the gaming table.
Speaker 3: I like this because this At first, this was confusing
Speaker 3: to me, but then I thought about it for a
Speaker 3: minute and I'm like, Okay, it's maybe a little clumsily
Speaker 3: put together, but this is an interesting situation, a critique
Speaker 3: of the world in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the confusion betrays complexity, or at least creates the
Speaker 2: illusion of complexity.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, this scene at the club flows
Speaker 3: into another action scene where some guys try to beat
Speaker 3: Walker up in the alley outside the club, but of
Speaker 3: course he takes all five of them at once, and
Speaker 3: Howard witnesses this. He's there kind of chomping on a
Speaker 3: cigar and he goes up to Walker and offers him
Speaker 3: a job. He's like, you did a good job beating
Speaker 3: those guys up. You know you come work for me.
Speaker 3: So they're going to meet again later, or they would
Speaker 3: meet again later. Some things will get in the way
Speaker 3: of that. Hines and Bang catch the whistleblower lady in
Speaker 3: a different dark alley. They corner her, and then Hines
Speaker 3: reveals this three prong tube knife thing, which he uses
Speaker 3: to stab her and pull her heart out. The mechanics
Speaker 3: of the organ removal are somewhat confusing because the way
Speaker 3: it's staged. He like stabs her off screen. It's off camera,
Speaker 3: kind of low, like he's getting her in the belly,
Speaker 3: but then he pulls her heart out. So I'm not
Speaker 3: sure what's going on there. Maybe I don't know if
Speaker 3: they know where the heart is. Maybe in the future
Speaker 3: the heart will be down in the lower abdomen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't He's successful though, he
Speaker 2: gets what he needs, and I guess he leaves the rest.
Speaker 2: Seems like you'd want like a full body harvesting going
Speaker 2: on here, But at any.
Speaker 3: Rate, Okay, next scene, Finally we have arrived at Laser Blade.
Speaker 3: Howard and his date knock on the door to be
Speaker 3: let into some underground gambling den, and when they get inside,
Speaker 3: it's an arena for this game called Laser Blade, where
Speaker 3: two players sit on opposite sides of a table it's
Speaker 3: like an air hockey table basically, and they get their
Speaker 3: hands clamped down on the armrests of their chairs where
Speaker 3: their hands can reach these little control panels, and then
Speaker 3: by working those control panels and then maybe also with
Speaker 3: some kind of mental effort, they y for control of
Speaker 3: this floating laser sphere which shoots rays back and forth.
Speaker 3: And eventually one of the players will get blasted by
Speaker 3: lasers and die. So it's winter to all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, their head will explode when the what they
Speaker 2: call it, the the laser Blade pylon I think, you know,
Speaker 2: flying into their face, and yeah, I agree, laser Blade.
Speaker 2: I'll probably call it laser blast by mistake here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: is great, just really feels inspired. There's a strong scanner's energy. Again,
Speaker 2: we alluded to the fact that it seems to be
Speaker 2: some sort of mental exertion involved in controlling the pylon,
Speaker 2: but we have we have a technological interface here as well.
Speaker 2: I was reminded a bit of the Domination video game
Speaker 2: that Sean Connery's bond plays against Largo in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: three's Never Say Never Again.
Speaker 3: Oh you know, I've seen that a long time ago.
Speaker 3: That's basically a remake of the same source material as Thunderball, right, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, same villain and all. But in this this one,
Speaker 2: I just remember being impressed by this nineteen eighty three
Speaker 2: vision of what like luxury computer games will it would
Speaker 2: look like this huge kind of monolith with one individual
Speaker 2: setting on one side and the other on the other.
Speaker 2: But at any rate, laser blade, yeah, seems to be
Speaker 2: one that depends on the mental processes that influence the
Speaker 2: movement of this lethal laser blade pylon or whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call it. But I was wondering could it
Speaker 2: be something mentally specific, like in order to control it,
Speaker 2: you have to remember all your elementary school teachers, or
Speaker 2: you know, some other sort of recall or thought experiment
Speaker 2: has to play out in your head. Or maybe it's
Speaker 2: something else like whoever can poop their pants the fastest
Speaker 2: in the laser blade chair controls the laser blade.
Speaker 3: They really don't specify how it works. You just see
Speaker 3: the competitors come up and so like they get the
Speaker 3: clamps on the contestants when we first see it are
Speaker 3: a weird visual mismatch. There's this unkempt looking guy in
Speaker 3: a dirty green tank top versus this blonde lady. And
Speaker 3: I think that the guy in the guy is called Snake,
Speaker 3: and you can hear people in the audience yelling Snake
Speaker 3: is king, and then the audience. By the way, this
Speaker 3: was one of the funniest single frames in the movie.
Speaker 3: To me, is I sit you a screenshot of this
Speaker 3: When I was first watching it, All the old people
Speaker 3: in suits wearing sunglasses with fistfuls of money, cheering for
Speaker 3: the blood sport.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess they're wearing sunglasses because the laser
Speaker 2: blade pylon is so bright. But as we may have
Speaker 2: alluded to already, the laser blade competitors never wear eye protection,
Speaker 2: despite being just inches away from that glowing, deadly laser sphere,
Speaker 2: and despite the fact that every game seems to end
Speaker 2: with somebody's head violently exploding in a rain of like
Speaker 2: brains and skull shrapnel.
Speaker 3: Snake's opponent, her head does not explode. Her chest explodes.
Speaker 2: Oh that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's like her heart explodes. But later we
Speaker 3: see people's heads explode in this game. Yeah. Anyway, Howard
Speaker 3: and his date leave the arena after the game with
Speaker 3: their winnings. I guess Howard bet on snake, and you
Speaker 3: know he won big.
Speaker 2: Always bet on snake, that's right.
Speaker 3: But outside in the street, they get jumped by Hines
Speaker 3: and Bang and they become organ donors. Hines like he
Speaker 3: rips their organs out and then he taunts their dead
Speaker 3: bodies by warning them against crossing new body.
Speaker 2: This was of course foreseen earlier in Howard's VR session,
Speaker 2: But what are we supposed to make of it? What
Speaker 2: did that mean that he saw this death in his
Speaker 2: VR vision earlier? And also it seems it's kind of
Speaker 2: an ignoble death here as well, Like we were just
Speaker 2: beginning to see him as this man of dark, secret cravings,
Speaker 2: a guy that clearly has a taste for danger, but
Speaker 2: presumably the wisdom to navigate the dangers that he's drawn to,
Speaker 2: you know, So it comes to a shock when he's
Speaker 2: just brutally murdered in the street by a random organ harvester. Well,
Speaker 2: maybe not the most random organ harvester, a plot centric
Speaker 2: orgon harvester, but still there is a great quote earlier
Speaker 2: I think from Howard where he's talking about this descent
Speaker 2: into the underworld and he says the lower I go,
Speaker 2: the more exciting it gets.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I like that part. So it's the thrill
Speaker 3: of the thrill of doing wrong and maybe the fear
Speaker 3: of getting caught that makes it even more exciting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, by the way, and so there's a witness to
Speaker 3: this murder, and there's like this guy two to one.
Speaker 3: He's kind of peeping on, maybe writing another Donovan song
Speaker 3: as he does. So, so here the movie shifts of gears,
Speaker 3: you might call this end of act one. After this,
Speaker 3: Meg Foster gets a phone call from Earth informing her
Speaker 3: that her husband is dead and she's distraught, and so
Speaker 3: she comes down to Earth to find out what happened.
Speaker 3: Upon arrival, she is mugged within seconds of getting off
Speaker 3: the plane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it reminded me of Homer Simpson. Hey, that's not
Speaker 2: the walid inspector is not great on play out quiet
Speaker 2: like that, but just she was totally unprepared for how
Speaker 2: brutal New Old No sorry, yeah, New Los Angeles is.
Speaker 3: And everybody is rude and unhelpful to her. You know,
Speaker 3: she just like asks somebody for directions and they're like
Speaker 3: if you, and so she tries to go to the police,
Speaker 3: but as I mentioned, the police are understaffed and she
Speaker 3: just gets yanked around. Eventually she barges in to talk
Speaker 3: to Detective Craner, the disheveled, white haired cop working Howard's murder,
Speaker 3: but there appears to be no hope solving it down here.
Speaker 3: There are like two homicide detectives and sixteen thousand murders
Speaker 3: a day, so there's just nothing to do.
Speaker 2: There's like population decline due to Oregon harvesting going on here.
Speaker 3: Yes, so Alana's sister or friend actually her friend When
Speaker 3: I made this note, I couldn't tell which, but it's
Speaker 3: her friend. Alana remembers the corporate whistleblower who got organ harvested.
Speaker 3: Her friend Tie is here, also trying to report her murder,
Speaker 3: but not getting much traction. The detective tell in the
Speaker 3: scene with Meg Foster tells her we don't like it
Speaker 3: when prominent citizens turn up without their hearts and livers,
Speaker 3: and he tries to tell Meg Foster to go back
Speaker 3: to the moon, but she refuses. She's here. She's going
Speaker 3: to see this through and find out what happened in
Speaker 3: the middle section of the movie. Here we get some revelations. First,
Speaker 3: we learned that Craner, the detective in the scene, is
Speaker 3: actually a double agent working for New Body, and he
Speaker 3: sends Hines to kill Meg Foster because she's digging around,
Speaker 3: she's getting too close to the truth. And you know,
Speaker 3: he tried to warn her he didn't want to have
Speaker 3: to do this, but she wouldn't listen. So Hines is
Speaker 3: going to have to get some of her organs. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Meg Foster is going to end up linking up with
Speaker 3: Don the Dragon Wilson by first meeting him at her
Speaker 3: husband's hotel. But this hotel lobby is a great set.
Speaker 3: It's got a black and white chessboard tile on the floor,
Speaker 3: weird echoe acoustics, and in the lobby there's a fish
Speaker 3: tank with a tiny dog fish in it, and Meg
Speaker 3: Foster is looking at it. And then Hines is here
Speaker 3: organ harvester. He wanders over and stands next to her
Speaker 3: and starts musing about how this is quote the perfect
Speaker 3: killing machine. Over the centuries, the shark has changed very little.
Speaker 3: Then she says, do you like sharks? He says, I
Speaker 3: like perfection. So Meg Foster goes into Howard's hotel room
Speaker 3: where Walker is waiting. Walker's in there to take the
Speaker 3: job that Howard offered him before he got killed. Nancy's
Speaker 3: confused and Walker leaves when Howard doesn't show up, but
Speaker 3: she starts piecing things together, and of course we can
Speaker 3: guess they're going to end up working together to solve
Speaker 3: Howard's murder by the end of the film, but we're
Speaker 3: not quite at the team up point yet. There's an
Speaker 3: action scene where some undercover corporate police try to kill
Speaker 3: Walker in another flaming barrel quadrant. Walker easily kickboxes them
Speaker 3: all to death. But I liked the weapons in this
Speaker 3: fight scene because these guys, who are supposed to be
Speaker 3: random street thugs have elaborate gleaming swords and antique polearms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of like fancy hook sword or something.
Speaker 3: There's a scene where Meg Foster talks to the one
Speaker 3: nice person on Earth, an old man named Gus who
Speaker 3: works as a security guard at the hotel. She's talking
Speaker 3: about how she doesn't even know where to begin looking
Speaker 3: to find out what happened to her husband. She's never
Speaker 3: been to Earth before, and Gus is trying to help
Speaker 3: her out. He says he probably hit the Zona Rosa
Speaker 3: with the rest and she's like, what he says, the
Speaker 3: red zone, you know, the hot box, the skin connection.
Speaker 2: And we're like, Gus, stop, no more, no more names
Speaker 2: for this part of town.
Speaker 3: She says, no, no, no, he wasn't like that. But oh,
Speaker 3: poor Nancy, She's going to find out he was. So
Speaker 3: she goes on a detective mission to the Zona Rosa.
Speaker 3: She hits up some strip clubs and awkwardly tries to
Speaker 3: get information. There's a scene you've witnessed in many movies
Speaker 3: before where she's like, you know, the square who goes
Speaker 3: into the dive bar and is trying to work the
Speaker 3: bartender for information, but she's like, what are you having water?
Speaker 3: Ha ha ha laugh at you, you know, no, you
Speaker 3: need to be drinking cyber whiskey here. And the first
Speaker 3: person she talks to actually is immediately able to connect
Speaker 3: her to a witness for the murder, which is interesting.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe there aren't that many bars here.
Speaker 3: So she connects Meg Foster to two to one the witness,
Speaker 3: and Meg Foster just goes around continually bribing everyone to
Speaker 3: one tells her it was a slaughter. He never had
Speaker 3: a chance. Why you want to find this guy. He'll
Speaker 3: rip you as soon as look at you. But she
Speaker 3: finds out from two to one that Howard was on
Speaker 3: a date with another woman when he was killed, and
Speaker 3: Nancy takes this very hard. She runs out into the
Speaker 3: street crying. She curses Howard's name, and she throws her
Speaker 3: wedding ring into a filthy alley where we see a
Speaker 3: guy just kind of sitting there, like, pick it up
Speaker 3: and take it. I thought it would have been great
Speaker 3: if she had thrown the ring into one of the
Speaker 3: flaming barrels, like it's Mount Doom. But she keeps investigating.
Speaker 3: Even the fact that she now realizes Howard was two
Speaker 3: time in her that doesn't turn her off with the case.
Speaker 3: She still got to get answers, so she's chasing down leads.
Speaker 3: She ends up meeting with a guy named Farnie, who
Speaker 3: is a weird creep in the club, who leads Nancy
Speaker 3: to a tarot reader named Tye. This is the lady
Speaker 3: who was at the police station trying to talk to
Speaker 3: the detective because she was Alana Johnson's best friend. Tye
Speaker 3: tells her he killed my friend over a computer disc.
Speaker 3: He eats f C's for breakfast. Did we learn what
Speaker 3: fcs are?
Speaker 2: I don't know what they're referring to here.
Speaker 3: Now something cyberns maybe. Anyway, Hines is spying on Meg
Speaker 3: Foster this whole time, like he witnesses Farnee helping her,
Speaker 3: and then after Meg Foster leaves, Hines goes out back
Speaker 3: with Farney into an alley for a fascinating kill scene.
Speaker 3: He kind of interrogates Farnee and then Farney says, people
Speaker 3: usually pay me for information, and he coldly says, quaint custom.
Speaker 3: Times have changed, and then, oh man, what does he
Speaker 3: do to Farney here?
Speaker 2: I mean, you'd think he would use his fancy organ
Speaker 2: harvesting three prong blade that he seems to use on
Speaker 2: everybody everyone with the slightest with no hesitation, just the
Speaker 2: slightest provocation. But he decides not to, maybe he knows
Speaker 2: Farney doesn't have good organs or something. Instead, he swings
Speaker 2: a fire escape ladder and it instantly decapitates him, as
Speaker 2: if Farney's head had been held onto his body with
Speaker 2: just gravity or something, you know, just instant, easy decapitation.
Speaker 3: Fire escape decapitation scene, we have one here, yes, So
Speaker 3: there's a scene of Walker dropping off a bounty at
Speaker 3: the bounty collection station. There's a funny note here that
Speaker 3: the bounty officer tells him that they would pay more
Speaker 3: for this guy dead than alive. How would that even work?
Speaker 2: Like? Why but they have all these processing fees attached
Speaker 2: to it if they bring in a live boy, I guess.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I also liked how when you bring in
Speaker 2: your purp you have to like hold their face down
Speaker 2: on a scanner. It's like that just felt like a
Speaker 2: nice tech noir detail.
Speaker 3: I like that it thumbs up. It's like a new
Speaker 3: variation on the fingerprint scanner. But it can't just be
Speaker 3: a photo from a distance. So yeah, so they pay
Speaker 3: more dead than alive. But Walker brings him in alive anyway,
Speaker 3: so what a swell guy. And here Meg Foster meets
Speaker 3: up with them. There is a scene with doctor Sado
Speaker 3: and Crainer talking about how Hinz has lost his mind
Speaker 3: and they don't know how to control him. This really
Speaker 3: does seem to be the case, because now there are
Speaker 3: also scenes of him just killing random people and harvesting
Speaker 3: organs for pleasure. There is one part where he's got
Speaker 3: a lady from the strip club chained up in a
Speaker 3: torture chamber and he's showing her the organ coreing device,
Speaker 3: and he says, there are only two things I'm going
Speaker 3: to take from you, your body and your soul. And
Speaker 3: I just wanted to have a quick note here. Did
Speaker 3: you notice the same thing I did? That? The plot
Speaker 3: is about harvesting organs and Howard and Nancy's last name
Speaker 3: is Morgan, which everybody is always calling them, so it
Speaker 3: often sounds like they're saying organ when they're saying Morgan.
Speaker 2: Oh my, that's interesting. That might play into our attempt
Speaker 2: to understand the ending of this film.
Speaker 3: Maybe so. Doctor Sadow and Craner call Hines and they
Speaker 3: tell him, look, you got to hurry up and kill Nancy.
Speaker 3: We need her dead now. Nancy recruits Walker for help.
Speaker 3: She goes into our hotel room, but she knows somebody
Speaker 3: is hiding in there and so calls him for help.
Speaker 3: She also calls security for help, and then the friendly
Speaker 3: old man Gus comes in to check everything out, but
Speaker 3: then Hines and Bang throw him out the window. Oh no,
Speaker 3: And they are about to yoink Nancy's organs in a stairwell,
Speaker 3: but at the last second Walker arrives to save her.
Speaker 3: He beats them up and helps Nancy escape, so they're
Speaker 3: going to be working together. Now there's a scene after
Speaker 3: this where chris Pin is damaged. I guess we found
Speaker 3: out he's definitely is some kind of robot. And then
Speaker 3: I was wondering, did you have an opinion on is
Speaker 3: it just chris Pin that's a robot or is Heines
Speaker 3: a robot too?
Speaker 2: I don't think Heines is a robot because there's a
Speaker 2: later scene we're gonna get to where Heines is injured
Speaker 2: and he seems to be bleeding blood and he seems
Speaker 2: to have like crazy psychopath resistance to pain and injury,
Speaker 2: but not robotic resistance to pain and injury.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So but here chris Pin's wounds are sparking
Speaker 3: with electricity. Yeah, And he says about Walker, he's strong,
Speaker 3: He's as strong as me. Clearly he did not expect this. Also,
Speaker 3: there is another cyber wound tending scene where we meet
Speaker 3: this underground doctor or who you were talking about in
Speaker 3: the credits section. The doctor says to Walker, we were
Speaker 3: so sure you guys were going to replace us all
Speaker 3: and then Walker says, yeah, we didn't even make it
Speaker 3: ten years and Walker fills Meg Foster in on the
Speaker 3: history of the Cyberns. He talks about how we were
Speaker 3: built by the corporations to stop crime, but the corporations
Speaker 3: were the criminals.
Speaker 2: And this is where we get more details too, about
Speaker 2: the public executions of the Cyberrons and how they were
Speaker 2: executed on television on some sort of a Neon cross.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, exactly. So there are some flashbacks, but well,
Speaker 3: actually I should set this up. So there's a scene
Speaker 3: with Meg Foster and Don Wilson alone after this, and
Speaker 3: the tender piano music starts playing, and I was like, oh, no,
Speaker 3: are they going to fall in love? That would be
Speaker 3: so weird. We kind of get there. Nancy asks him
Speaker 3: do you ever feel lonely? And Walker says the only
Speaker 3: thing you ever get from feelings is dead.
Speaker 2: I laughed out loud of that quote.
Speaker 3: That was so good, very good. Then the flashbacks begin,
Speaker 3: so Walker says, when the corporations made us, they gave
Speaker 3: us emotions, morals, and ethics. When we discovered that corporations
Speaker 3: were destroying the planet, they created the corporate police and
Speaker 3: hunted us down like animals. And then we get to
Speaker 3: witness scenes of the brutal Cybern Purge, including show trials
Speaker 3: and public executions. We see one of these public executions
Speaker 3: where the condemned Cybern is crucified on a neon light
Speaker 3: up X shaped cross and then bombarded with ring shaped
Speaker 3: patterns of laser light. Then he starts squirting blood and
Speaker 3: these crowds are kind of watching for entertainment. One person
Speaker 3: in the crowd is wearing a sandwich board neon advertisement
Speaker 3: that says condom sale with a little neon tube illustration.
Speaker 2: I legitimately lost it when I saw the condom sale
Speaker 2: neon guy. Somebody put a lot of work in or
Speaker 2: I don't know, somebody put some work to making sure
Speaker 2: that this guy was in the scene.
Speaker 3: That's not an effect, that's a real neon sign and
Speaker 3: somebody made says condom sale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they at least borrowed a condom sale sign from.
Speaker 3: A store Neon one. Yeah. We also see some space
Speaker 3: battles here. Some of the Cybrons apparently tried to escape
Speaker 3: to the Moon, but they got blasted out in space
Speaker 3: by the Corporate Police, the Space Force version of the
Speaker 3: Corporate Police. And now Walker he's taking swigs out of
Speaker 3: a bottle and he says, I survive by collecting the
Speaker 3: slime of society. Nancy says, I owe you my life.
Speaker 3: Walker says, you don't owe me anything except five hundred grand,
Speaker 3: and then Nancy says, will you hold me? They have
Speaker 3: a tender embrace that I don't think they kiss, but
Speaker 3: they do hug.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you know, she's playing five hundred grand. She
Speaker 2: might as well get like a little bit of comforting
Speaker 2: spooning out of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There are a few more scenes around here of
Speaker 3: Hines on the loose. He kills Craner, the detective. He
Speaker 3: kills two to one, kills two to one with the
Speaker 3: laser blast games. So Craner he kills just by yoinking
Speaker 3: the organs, but to one he puts him in the
Speaker 3: laser blast seat and then makes his head explode. There's
Speaker 3: also a scene of Tie, the Tarot card lady, trying
Speaker 3: to blackmail doctor Sado to give up Hines, but she
Speaker 3: didn't really get a chance to follow through with this
Speaker 3: because Hines chases her down in an alley immediately after
Speaker 3: the meeting and does a quick heartrip. But here's basically
Speaker 3: where we go into the the extended final confrontation, so
Speaker 3: is it begins at the Trocadero Club between Walker and
Speaker 3: Nancy on one side and Hines and Bang on the other.
Speaker 3: This big fight scene begins between them. We see that
Speaker 3: Bang bleeds pale green, and the fight leads into a
Speaker 3: chase with Walker and Nancy running after the assassins. They
Speaker 3: sort of end up going down into this lower underground
Speaker 3: portion of the city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, is this the fight between that we have
Speaker 2: the fight with pipes between Bang and the Dragon.
Speaker 3: We're about to get there. There are a couple of
Speaker 3: things first, like Hines is he cuts Walker's finger off.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, that's actually pretty nasty.
Speaker 3: And then he's gonna kill Walker, but Nancy saves Walker
Speaker 3: by shooting Hins, so she comes through and saves the day.
Speaker 3: And then it just progresses to more fighting in this
Speaker 3: underground space where they're Yeah, Walker and Bang are dueling.
Speaker 3: It's like a sword fight but with segments of pipe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is. It's one of these things where,
Speaker 2: you know, the editing is pretty rough. I think at
Speaker 2: the heart of things, you have a fight here between
Speaker 2: a you know, a pro sports fighter and a character
Speaker 2: actor who's like, I don't think I mean, maybe he
Speaker 2: had some level of I have no idea what his
Speaker 2: stage combat and martial arts background might have actually been,
Speaker 2: but this particular battle feels extremely forced and you never
Speaker 2: get the sense that there's anything close to real contact happening.
Speaker 3: But the resolution happens when Walker kicks Bang into an
Speaker 3: exposed electrical man and fries him, and then the fight
Speaker 3: with Hines continues. It ends up where they like crash
Speaker 3: through a ceiling, like a glass ceiling into the Laser
Speaker 3: Blade arena.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks pretty nasty. I have a good stunt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so Nancy and Walker strap themselves into the
Speaker 3: control chairs of the Laser Blade game. They activate the
Speaker 3: laser Blade pylon and this Zapp's hinds. The lasers go
Speaker 3: into his mouth and then his head explodes and black
Speaker 3: blood and ooze shoot all over them. This had me thinking, like,
Speaker 3: was wait, was Hines a robot or a human because
Speaker 3: his blood is so it's like black oil. Hmmm, Maybe
Speaker 3: it's just the lighting.
Speaker 2: Maybe yeah, I just assumed that he was a human.
Speaker 2: Either way, quality kill really yes.
Speaker 3: So they're sitting there covered in blood and the corporate
Speaker 3: police are closing in because you know they're they're arriving
Speaker 3: un scene. Then suddenly something weird starts happening. Hallucinatory imagery
Speaker 3: zooming through a tunnel in space, flash back to previous
Speaker 3: events of the film. Rushing past planets, we see Jupiter
Speaker 3: and Saturn, and then Meg Foster wakes up on the
Speaker 3: couch at home, back at her house on the Moon,
Speaker 3: and her VR simulation is over, and Howard is alive,
Speaker 3: standing there beside her, and he says, well, what do
Speaker 3: you think of my new program? We've got sinister music
Speaker 3: playing these kind of dark chords, and then Howard hugs
Speaker 3: her with a creepy grin while she looks traumatized, and
Speaker 3: then credits, that's literally the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we'll get I'll get back to it in
Speaker 2: a minute here. But it weirdly works, or at least
Speaker 2: it worked for me, So.
Speaker 3: A few thoughts. First of all, I think this has
Speaker 3: to be influenced by the ending of Total Recall, because
Speaker 3: clearly Total Recall is a major one of the things
Speaker 3: that this movie is derivative of. Total Recall is, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, not only good, a fantastic film, really great
Speaker 3: film with a marvelous conclusion, which that ending is great
Speaker 3: because it actually does not say for sure that the
Speaker 3: whole story was a dream. Instead, what it does is
Speaker 3: raise the question in a provocative way. So in total recall,
Speaker 3: there are multiple you know, it begins with this thing
Speaker 3: of the character Quaide Schwarzenegger's character buying a dream vacation
Speaker 3: by you know, paying for this dream implant package, and
Speaker 3: there are multiple points, and of course that goes awry
Speaker 3: and then he gets trapped up in this conspiracy. But
Speaker 3: there are multiple points in the story where Quaid is
Speaker 3: led to question whether he is whether what's happening to
Speaker 3: him is really happening, or he's actually just having the
Speaker 3: dream package that he paid for. And then in each
Speaker 3: case when this question arises, events in the film happen
Speaker 3: which caused him to believe what's happening is actually real.
Speaker 3: But by the end of the movie, we just noticed
Speaker 3: that lots of things in the story have conformed to
Speaker 3: the dream implant that he bought. So we're led to
Speaker 3: wonder again, wait, was it real or is it all
Speaker 3: in Quade's head? And we never get confirmation one way
Speaker 3: or another. This movie, by contrast, just says everything you
Speaker 3: just watched, none of it happened. It was all just
Speaker 3: Meg Foster and VR no debate about it, that is
Speaker 3: what it was. So I have questions like, wait, do
Speaker 3: the cyber ons even exist or is that just part
Speaker 3: of the virtual reality. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think the main reason I think it works, or
Speaker 2: it worked for me, is that it doesn't. It may
Speaker 2: negate or potentially negate a lot of the things that
Speaker 2: we saw, but two things that do seem to remain
Speaker 2: constant are, of course Nancy and Howard. We have a
Speaker 2: lot of questions about who Howard really is, but we
Speaker 2: know that Nancy and Howard exist, and whatever Nancy has experienced,
Speaker 2: it has it has something to do with either how
Speaker 2: towards you know, actual, you know, hidden self, or her
Speaker 2: anxieties or fears or even desires about who he may
Speaker 2: secretly be. So, yeah, it's his presence here at the
Speaker 2: end of the film especially, you know, there's this sinister
Speaker 2: air to it. He's almost like a Satanic figure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you know, through this technology, he's kind of become
Speaker 2: a master of reality. And I just was I kept wondering, like,
Speaker 2: what influenced Nancy's VR experience again, is it a true
Speaker 2: depiction of her husband's hidden appetites, a glimpse into his psyche,
Speaker 2: or just a reflection of her own anxieties or more desires?
Speaker 2: And I think this is the part that really intrigues me.
Speaker 2: You know, he seems to know all of this as well,
Speaker 2: so it's almost like he's he's implying to her, Hey,
Speaker 2: I have brought you, my wife, into a new understanding
Speaker 2: of yourself and of me, and now our second lives begin.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like, what, Yeah, again, it could just
Speaker 2: be an accident that it feels this potent, and maybe
Speaker 2: it's ultimately a large part of it probably does have
Speaker 2: to do with the performances here, but yeah, I legitimately
Speaker 2: have continued to think about the ending of this film
Speaker 2: and try and peace out what it could mean.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. He does have a knowing smile when he
Speaker 3: kind of comforts her after this traumatic experience of hers.
Speaker 3: But I think it's interesting that some of the main
Speaker 3: themes of the movie are actually nothing that we have
Speaker 3: any assurance happened in reality. The stuff about I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess we see some Cybern stuff before we introduce
Speaker 3: the VR, so maybe the Cyberns don't really exist, but
Speaker 3: Nancy never meets them. I don't know. The organ harvesting
Speaker 3: stuff I think happens entirely within the VR dream, right.
Speaker 2: I think so, because like suddenly there's talk of New
Speaker 2: Body and the New Body conspiracy and what you said
Speaker 2: earlier about this potential connection between Organ and Morgan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 2: Like, is that is there some sort of legitimate connection
Speaker 2: or is it just sort of like, you know, the
Speaker 2: essentially like a VR hallucination. I don't know it's but
Speaker 2: it's again fascinating to try and imagine how this connects.
Speaker 3: It also makes me think about the ambiguous romantic connection
Speaker 3: between Nancy and Walker. Yeah. Does that reflect, I don't know,
Speaker 3: something about her actual desires outside of her marriage, the
Speaker 3: same way we saw Howard fantasizing about other women in
Speaker 3: his VR experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, is this like the fulfillment of a desire
Speaker 2: for someone who is going to protect her and look
Speaker 2: after her interest?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but not just someone a cybern someone someone who's
Speaker 3: better than human.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The last cyber so future kick masterpiece, accidable masterpiece?
Speaker 2: Is it, you know, ultimately a pile of rats that
Speaker 2: ends up taking on the silhouette of something that is
Speaker 2: more me.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think there are a bunch of
Speaker 3: things in here that are realized in a schlocky, clumsy
Speaker 3: b movie way. But if you just write them down
Speaker 3: as a premise, they could actually be pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like going back to my joke earlier, like if
Speaker 2: you were to set down and create an RPG guide
Speaker 2: for the world of Future Kick, I think it could
Speaker 2: be pretty compelling.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's make up our character seats homework for next time. Okay,
Speaker 3: does that do it for Future Kick?
Speaker 2: I believe so. But yeah, I'm so glad that I
Speaker 2: watched Future Kick. This is one that I think i'd
Speaker 2: seen the box art for in the past, but I
Speaker 2: had never watched it, and I am richer for having
Speaker 2: watched it.
Speaker 3: Now i'd have to say the same. Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to close it out here. I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird Houses. If you are a fan of Weird
Speaker 2: House cinema, check out our profile on letterbox dot com.
Speaker 2: Follow us there if you use it. We have a
Speaker 2: nice list of all the movies we've covered over the years,
Speaker 2: and sometimes peek ahead at what's coming up next?
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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