Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and today we have an episode that originally
Speaker 1: published one three, twenty twenty five. This episode features a
Speaker 1: guest host. My friend David Streepy of Talkin' Tofu the podcast,
Speaker 1: returned to the show and discussed with me the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven miniaturization film Interspace, directed by Joe Dante and
Speaker 1: starring Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan. A movie
Speaker 1: that I loved as a kid and has just a
Speaker 1: fabulously weird love triangle at the heart of it. So
Speaker 1: let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb,
Speaker 1: and today I have a returning special guest co host.
Speaker 1: We're joined once more by David Streepy of the Talking
Speaker 1: TOFU podcast. Dave, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thanks for having me back, and hello to
Speaker 3: all the stuffies. I think I think we agreed that
Speaker 3: they're called, so hello again to all of you. Glad
Speaker 3: to be back.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're gonna be talking about the gate three right, yes, no,
Speaker 1: I wish.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, could you imagine Old Man Terry now?
Speaker 1: Instead, we're gonna be We were talking about like a
Speaker 1: handful of potential movies and we ended up going with
Speaker 1: the one. I think this one was probably the one
Speaker 1: that you brought up that was the most holiday friendly,
Speaker 1: and I think might be a stealth holiday film because
Speaker 1: I did see a Santa Claus at one point.
Speaker 3: That's all it takes to qualify, really, and this did
Speaker 3: happen in California, so really you're only cues that it
Speaker 3: is the holidays and a West Coast movie are from
Speaker 3: the decorations and not from climate or any anything else
Speaker 3: that's going on. Yeah, we did have we had a
Speaker 3: bunch of really strong contenders for possibilities, but I think
Speaker 3: this one, in addition to its appropriateness, it's the it's
Speaker 3: a big one, but it kind of made a small
Speaker 3: splash and a big splash at the same time. It's
Speaker 3: really really unique.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't feel like Interspace, the movie you're talking
Speaker 1: about in nineteen eighty seven's Interspace. This is Joe Dante.
Speaker 1: Film got a great cast, I mean, starring Dennis Quaid,
Speaker 1: Martin short, Meg Ryan. I mean, it came out big
Speaker 1: summer special effects movie apparently made money. This was not
Speaker 1: a box office bomb by any stretch, and it amazed
Speaker 1: a lot of kids. I was one of those kids
Speaker 1: who watched this film multiple times. I guess I maybe
Speaker 1: saw it on TV the first time and then maybe
Speaker 1: just rented it a bunch of times after that on VHS.
Speaker 1: But I was super into this picture. I would make
Speaker 1: little lego models roughly based on the two main submarine
Speaker 1: bots in the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that you're right this one definitely. I
Speaker 3: don't think it was a flop at the box office,
Speaker 3: but maybe had higher hopes given the pedigree of everybody involved.
Speaker 3: But I think it was a big renter. It was
Speaker 3: a big VHS. I remember having a huge presence at
Speaker 3: the video store, both in cardboard cutout, but also the
Speaker 3: number of copies that were on the shelves. The availability
Speaker 3: of the copies that were on the shelves. This movie
Speaker 3: seemed to turn up quite a bit in sleepovers on
Speaker 3: trips where you would get five bucks to go to
Speaker 3: the video store and pick something out. I just remember
Speaker 3: seeing this movie a lot, a lot, and I think
Speaker 3: I mentioned this too. I texted you this while I
Speaker 3: was rewatching recently there's like a whole hour of this
Speaker 3: movie that I completely forgot about in the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's easy to expect with an
Speaker 1: effects film like this, you have your big effects sequences,
Speaker 1: you have your big finale. Those are the ones that
Speaker 1: certainly stuck in my head the most. Also, some of
Speaker 1: the like the Martin Short over the top freak out moment,
Speaker 1: which I mean, if you're going to hire Martin Short,
Speaker 1: especially you know during the eighties or the nineties or
Speaker 1: well or subsequent decades, you're going to want at least
Speaker 1: a little of that.
Speaker 3: Or even now. Yeah, I think that's that's still a
Speaker 3: stock in trade, and I think that, you know what,
Speaker 3: I kind of maybe tuned out and we'll get to it,
Speaker 3: of course. But what didn't really stick on my memory
Speaker 3: was all the work needed to move Martin Short around
Speaker 3: the board. Yes, and upon a rewatch, it's pretty compelling
Speaker 3: stuff that's moving him around the board, But like you said,
Speaker 3: I'm more fascinated with what's going on inside his body,
Speaker 3: what the tech looks like, how he got there in
Speaker 3: the first place, and how he's going to get out
Speaker 3: of that situation. And there's a huge chunk in the
Speaker 3: middle of that sandwich that I wasn't really thinking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a film that is, it's constantly in motion.
Speaker 1: It keeps adding new elements, often wild elements, on top
Speaker 1: of characters. Yeah, new characters. There's a whole whole cast
Speaker 1: of villains in this picture, as we'll discuss. So it's
Speaker 1: it's never boring. It's in constant motion. It is like
Speaker 1: Martin Short as a film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Martin Short
Speaker 3: film film modified.
Speaker 1: Now, this is, of course a miniaturization film if you're
Speaker 1: I think everyone out there is familiar with this subgenre
Speaker 1: of science fiction by now, with the classic example being
Speaker 1: Fantastic Voyage. This is essentially Fantastic Voyage through Martin Short.
Speaker 1: I don't know that we've had a menturization film recently.
Speaker 1: It seems like more recently you tend to see it
Speaker 1: pop up like as a treatment on some sort of
Speaker 1: a science fiction show. I think Rick and Morty did
Speaker 1: a miniaturization episode years back, and I don't know that
Speaker 1: we've had any kind of like big Fantastic Voyage style
Speaker 1: adventure recently.
Speaker 3: I think the one that stands out to me, and
Speaker 3: it's not a movie, but the Futurama episode where Fry
Speaker 3: eats an egg salad sandwich from a gas station. That's
Speaker 3: a great one. The parasites from the sandwich colonize his body,
Speaker 3: become super intelligent and have a whole civilization in there,
Speaker 3: and they have to go inside to reconcile that.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's a great one because it's it's fantastic voyage themed,
Speaker 1: but it is also a Flowers for Algernon themed episode,
Speaker 1: so it has a fair amount of depth to it
Speaker 1: as well. And then just a lot of great jokes,
Speaker 1: and there's the whole worm thing, like why are people
Speaker 1: came over on the sandwich? Great stuff? All right, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and listen to at least some of the
Speaker 1: trailer audio here. Let's let it roll.
Speaker 4: Test pilot Tuck Pendleton wants to make history. Supermarket clerk
Speaker 4: Jack Putter needs a vacation. I'm very late.
Speaker 1: That's not good.
Speaker 3: You know, it's coupon day.
Speaker 4: Lieutenant Pendleton is about to be miniaturized, placed into this needle,
Speaker 4: and then injected into this.
Speaker 3: Rabbit rock and roll. But something went wrong.
Speaker 4: And Tuck's about to get a new destination inside. Jack Putter.
Speaker 4: Give yourself a shot of Adventure Inner Space.
Speaker 1: All right, David, I see you had a note here
Speaker 1: about the music in the trailer, possibly the trailer we
Speaker 1: used here, but possibly another trailer. But still, this is
Speaker 1: a great point regarding the music.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the music used for the Fertelly chase
Speaker 3: scene in Goonies, the dun dun't dun't dun't. It's always
Speaker 3: great when a podcast guest just like hums a line, no,
Speaker 3: timelessly for you. But it's really really it's the opening
Speaker 3: scene of Gooney. It's really iconic bit of music. Cool
Speaker 3: to see it here, but also a little bit strange
Speaker 3: to see it here too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like when you encounter a trailer where they're
Speaker 1: clearly using the Aliens theme song. You know, it's like,
Speaker 1: that's great, you're really getting me amped up, but amped
Speaker 1: up for a different movie, right.
Speaker 3: Just kind of duck through the drawer for it and
Speaker 3: got something that you knew I would recognize and knew
Speaker 3: would pull me in.
Speaker 1: I guess they still do this today, right, use because
Speaker 1: the music's not always together when you're putting together a trailer,
Speaker 1: or you're just like, well, we have rights to better music,
Speaker 1: let's sell this puppy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's you know, the marketing can be
Speaker 3: that detached from the actual production that unless you've got
Speaker 3: the Star Wars theme ready to go with your Star
Speaker 3: Wars trailer, you're gonna take some liberties. And it really,
Speaker 3: you know, matches the tone of the movie in a
Speaker 3: way that if you weren't again hyper familiar with Goony
Speaker 3: is the way that I was as a kid. That
Speaker 3: was the other video that I was renting. The music
Speaker 3: fits the tone of the trailer, fits the tone of
Speaker 3: the movie really really well. It's a wacky, wacky movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, all right. So some of you might be wondering, well,
Speaker 1: where can I watch Innerspace before proceeding with the rest
Speaker 1: of the episode. Well, luckily for you, this was a
Speaker 1: major motion pictures it has not been entirely forgotten it
Speaker 1: to make not as celebrated as it should be. But
Speaker 1: you can find streams of it, you know, digital rentals
Speaker 1: and purchases. A Blu Ray edition is out there, and
Speaker 1: I do notice that it has an older director's commentary
Speaker 1: on it with director Joe Dante, producer Michael Finnell, co
Speaker 1: stars Kevin McCarthy and Robert Piccardo, and also visual effects
Speaker 1: supervisor Dennis Murrean obviously an older director's commentary. I haven't
Speaker 1: listened to it, but I don't think I've ever listened
Speaker 1: to a Joe Dante commentary track. But he's one of
Speaker 1: those guys that's so knowledgeable. I bet it's bet it's
Speaker 1: pretty great.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting that Kevin McCarthy and Robert Piccardo would
Speaker 3: be the sit ins on that commentary and not Quaid
Speaker 3: or Short or even Meg Ryan.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, sometimes you can't get the big fish.
Speaker 1: They move on to other projects.
Speaker 3: I don't know, and there are their presence in the
Speaker 3: movie is pretty significant. These guys are not bit players
Speaker 3: at all. They're they're huge parts of the movie.
Speaker 1: Plus with Joe Dante, you know that he loves like
Speaker 1: an old, older act, you know, from classic Hollywood pictures.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's Kevin McCarthy, and then he loves
Speaker 1: to cast Robert Riccardo and put him in strange romantic
Speaker 1: situations such as with the made up Grimlin from Grimlins Too'.
Speaker 3: He's so weird in this movie is character.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get into that character. Yeah all right,
Speaker 1: well let's talk a bit more about the people involved here,
Speaker 1: starting with Joe Dante born nineteen forty six. Joe and
Speaker 1: I have previously discussed Joe Dante on Weird House Cinema
Speaker 1: because we talked about Grimlins too. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I pointed out, just sort of to try and
Speaker 1: sum him up, is that he's one of these guys
Speaker 1: that seems to have a foot in two worlds, Like,
Speaker 1: on one hand, he's like a horror legend, and on
Speaker 1: the other hand he's this, you know, obvious Spielbergian Amblin
Speaker 1: entertainment guy. And you see more of the second, but
Speaker 1: also a little the first in this one. On the
Speaker 1: horror front, you have the likes of the Howling from
Speaker 1: eighty one, Piranha from seventy eight, and then you get
Speaker 1: into that Grimlin zone, which is kind of crossing the threshold.
Speaker 1: He directed the segment It's a Good Life in Twilight Zone,
Speaker 1: the movie from nineteen eighty three, But then he also
Speaker 1: did things like nineteen eighty five, It's The Explorers, eighty
Speaker 1: nine's The Birds, nineteen ninety three, He's Manatee, and this
Speaker 1: film especially, Yeah, it is definitely in that ambulance zone.
Speaker 1: It is an ambulin entertainment picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's definitely. You know, he's he's this sounds like
Speaker 3: a dig but I don't mean it that way. He
Speaker 3: is like a ranch dressing of a director in that
Speaker 3: he can go in any direction. I think he's got
Speaker 3: strong horror chops, but he really shines when he's bringing
Speaker 3: a bunch of different elements to a bunch of different
Speaker 3: genres to the movie and creating something that's completely unique.
Speaker 3: See it in Grimlins one hundred percent, and you really
Speaker 3: see it here where the slapstick wouldn't work without the
Speaker 3: spy espionage angle, without the tech angle, without the sci
Speaker 3: fi element of it, Like it all blends together and
Speaker 3: creates something that is really his signature, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I would argue that it even feels more
Speaker 1: cohesive than Grimlin's. Grimlin's certainly a better known film, but
Speaker 1: that's one that I always felt like it didn't completely
Speaker 1: know what it wanted to be. This film, I feel
Speaker 1: like it balances everything pretty nicely. You know, nothing feels
Speaker 1: out of step.
Speaker 3: I agree. I think that he's having fun here, and
Speaker 3: not to say that Grimlins is not fun, but Grimlins
Speaker 3: feels like it's trying to send you a message as well.
Speaker 3: And I think there's no message here. The message is
Speaker 3: what if this happened?
Speaker 1: Let's watch and let's keep upping the anti Yeah, yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: I have a post editing insertion to make here. You
Speaker 1: might have caught my mistake there. I just referenced a
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three Joe Dante movie that I said was
Speaker 1: called called Manatee. The film is, of course Mattine. But
Speaker 1: I left the mistake in because I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I'm suddenly really fascinated with the idea of a
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three Joe Dante film about manates Who knows
Speaker 1: what that would have consisted of. All right, now, let's
Speaker 1: get back into the episode. Let's see getting into the
Speaker 1: writers on this. Jeffrey Boehm, who lived nineteen forty six
Speaker 1: through two thousand, has I believe the main screenplay credit here.
Speaker 1: Accomplished American screenwriter whose credits include seventy eight Straight Time,
Speaker 1: eighty three's The Dead Zone, eighty seven's The Lost Boys,
Speaker 1: eighty nine's Indiana Jones, and In the Last Crusade, as
Speaker 1: well as a couple of lethal weapon movies. He also
Speaker 1: directed and wrote one episode of Tales from the Crypt
Speaker 1: titled Creep Course.
Speaker 3: Wow. I mean this is just home Run after Home Run. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was involved in a lot of big projects.
Speaker 1: The other name on the screenplay also a story and
Speaker 1: co producer credit Chip Prosser born nineteen forty six, writer
Speaker 1: and director, probably best known for this film that we
Speaker 1: also work in the screenplay for to some degree. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not sure to what degree with nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: is Iceman?
Speaker 3: So is this a Top Gun prequel?
Speaker 1: No, it is an unfrozen cave man movie, all right.
Speaker 1: Now getting into the cast for Innerspace, it is pretty
Speaker 1: extensive with some great bit parts and cameos, which is
Speaker 1: pretty standard for Joe Dante. So I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to either go light on a number of them and
Speaker 1: just skip some as well, and then also maybe come
Speaker 1: back just in passing to some of the cameos as
Speaker 1: they turn up. But the star, and I mean, really
Speaker 1: this is this is a picture that has a trio
Speaker 1: of leads. But Top Build anyway, is Dennis Quaid playing
Speaker 1: Tuck Pendleton?
Speaker 3: What a name?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the names are pretty great. Tuck Pendleton is the
Speaker 1: you can guess he is like a test pilot. He
Speaker 1: would be at home in Top Gun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's definitely. Look, kid, me couldn't get much
Speaker 3: cooler than this actor in this role. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: he in all the worst ways too. I think as
Speaker 3: an adult, I'm a little bit repulsed by his demeanor,
Speaker 3: his swagger. But as a kid, this was eighties cool.
Speaker 3: With a little bit of reflection, I can see what
Speaker 3: a rip on Tom Cruise this, this delivery is, and
Speaker 3: it really seems like it's trying. He's trying for a
Speaker 3: Maverick type thing, almost Maverick and Iceman merged together to
Speaker 3: be a competent pilot who is also just a big
Speaker 3: jerk as well.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, I didn't even think about the Top
Speaker 1: Gun connection, about this being a riff on Top Gun.
Speaker 1: That's a film that kind of for me, it kind
Speaker 1: of stands out of time for me, like I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily think about it in connection to other projects. But
Speaker 1: now that you've pointed out, yeah, I can't unsee it.
Speaker 3: I think that you know, I made the mistake of
Speaker 3: using these films as cues for how to act in
Speaker 3: real life, which I think is a frequent eighties kid misstep.
Speaker 3: But because of the frequency of viewing of this interspace
Speaker 3: goonies Top Gun, it created a person that was very
Speaker 3: not organic to me and and stuck out like a
Speaker 3: soort of thumb whenever I would try to use it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he's not the it's not the worst
Speaker 1: role model you could latch onto as far as a
Speaker 1: lead character in an eighties picture. But yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: obnocked right right from the get go. He's obnoxious, he's drunk,
Speaker 1: He clearly is a mess, and but he's he's portrayed
Speaker 1: as a likable man, a lovable mess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very very kind and funny take on
Speaker 3: alcohol because he's drunk for a lot of the movie,
Speaker 3: and alcohol is his motivation in a lot of cases.
Speaker 3: He will get to it, but designs a robot to
Speaker 3: pour a drink for him and does it poorly. One
Speaker 3: of his big orders of business for Martin Short is
Speaker 3: to pour some outlcohol for him. He's really booze centered.
Speaker 1: Just drinking giant molecules of whiskey, as we'll get back to.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, Dennis Quaid, this is not an
Speaker 1: actor that we really need to introduce much. I think
Speaker 1: everybody knows who Dennis Quaid is, famous leading man brother
Speaker 1: of Randy. Credits go back to the mid seventies, and
Speaker 1: he's really been in all sorts of stuff, Like it's
Speaker 1: really weird to look through his filmography, like just looking
Speaker 1: at twenty twenty four. He managed to star in the
Speaker 1: GOP Cinematic Universe film Reagan as Reagan, and he played
Speaker 1: a major role in the body horror film The Substance.
Speaker 3: Oh, I have not seen The Substance yet. I'm excited
Speaker 3: to though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't seen anither of him yet. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I probably need to do him back to back. But yeah,
Speaker 1: his career that was full of stuff like this, Like
Speaker 1: it's a mix of genre films and mainstream dramas and
Speaker 1: comedies as well as biopicks. I think he played Jerry
Speaker 1: Lee Lewis in a biopick at one point, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to pin him down. I think,
Speaker 1: for my money, when I think of Dennis Quaid films, though,
Speaker 1: I instantly think of nineteen eighty five's Enemy Mine, where
Speaker 1: it's it's Dennis Quaid Lewis gossip junior, human and alien
Speaker 1: on a strange alien world. I was always very captivated
Speaker 1: by that one.
Speaker 3: For me, it's this movie. This is the image that
Speaker 3: instantly comes to mind is his image from the poster,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, he looks very handsome. He's got
Speaker 3: a joker gran a Jack Nicholson joker grin that's maybe
Speaker 3: digitally enhanced to be a little bit bigger than it
Speaker 3: should be, and it just really sells his swagger. You know,
Speaker 3: that look on his face, the way it's on the
Speaker 3: poster really sells who he is in this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, he's having a great time. Yeah all right.
Speaker 1: Our other main character that Dennis Quade's character is going
Speaker 1: to be inside of in a miniaturized form is the
Speaker 1: character Jack Putter, played by Martin Short born nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: another name that scarcely requires introduction. Martin Short is just
Speaker 1: a comedy legend.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know what to say about Martin Short,
Speaker 3: so sorry that you had me on your podcast, But
Speaker 3: he's just great. I mean, he's he's been a part
Speaker 3: of my comedic sensibility since I was very very young.
Speaker 3: In every role that he's in, from Three Amigos all
Speaker 3: the way to only Mergers in the Building, he's just
Speaker 3: fantastic and he is himself. He delivers every time, and
Speaker 3: he's a chameleon in appearance. But his sensibility, his timing,
Speaker 3: his slapstick is always very very Martin Short specific. I
Speaker 3: think my favorite role of his has got to be
Speaker 3: Jiminy Glick, a huge Click fan, and I was delighted
Speaker 3: this past year when he reprised the role and did
Speaker 3: a few more bits of him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, he's one of those actors that when
Speaker 1: I when I think of Martin Short, I instantly think
Speaker 1: of those really you know, over the top in high
Speaker 1: energy characters. I think of of Glick, I think of
Speaker 1: Ed Grimley, of course, his character on Arrested Development, Jack Dorso,
Speaker 1: you know, and he's he's great at that, and he's
Speaker 1: great at those like freak out performances in a way
Speaker 1: that they are very I feel like there are very
Speaker 1: few actors I would even compare him to, like maybe
Speaker 1: you know, compare him to the likes of you know,
Speaker 1: Robin Williams or or Jim Carrey even you know where
Speaker 1: they can they can hit that level of intensity, comedic intensity.
Speaker 1: But then I would also compare him to the other
Speaker 1: two in that, especially when you look at some recent
Speaker 1: Martin Short performances, like he's he's a really strong actor,
Speaker 1: you know, he's he's really great in these smaller non
Speaker 1: comedic roles or stretches as well. And I think you
Speaker 1: really see that on Only Murders in the Building, a
Speaker 1: great TV series, obviously comedic series that doesn't take itself
Speaker 1: itself too seriously, and he's surrounded by great actors and actresses,
Speaker 1: but I am most frequently impressed by the smaller moments
Speaker 1: with his character on that show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, especially in Only Murders in the Building,
Speaker 3: I think he does a really good job of representing
Speaker 3: not just the comedic bits, but the building itself and
Speaker 3: life in the building and what it means to be
Speaker 3: at that stage of your life in that building and
Speaker 3: getting on in years, and what that means for your
Speaker 3: relationship with your family. And yeah, that's never, not never,
Speaker 3: it's rarely the focus. But when it is, or when
Speaker 3: it turned to that, it doesn't seem out of character
Speaker 3: or a stretch for him to be believable in those
Speaker 3: somber moments.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I don't think we see as much from
Speaker 1: him along those lines in interspace, but again, certainly in
Speaker 1: other projects, he was also really good. Recently in the
Speaker 1: series of The Morning Show, he had a small part
Speaker 1: as a disgrace director named Dick Lundy and the name
Speaker 1: sounds like a Martin short character, but it's like a
Speaker 1: really serious, like creepy kind of character, a charismatic, charming,
Speaker 1: sexual predator, sort of a guy.
Speaker 3: Wow. Going back to comparing him with Robin Williams and
Speaker 3: Jim Carrey almost called him James Carrey, Jim Carrey.
Speaker 1: I think you know it's James Now, he's son.
Speaker 3: That's right. I think he the roles the characters that
Speaker 3: he creates, and I think this movie is a great example.
Speaker 3: You can't imagine anybody else being these characters. And that's
Speaker 3: true of Robin Williams and James Carey. You can't imagine
Speaker 3: somebody else doing the mask or ace Ventura, you know,
Speaker 3: you know. I was reading somewhere. I don't know if
Speaker 3: this is true or not, but early versions of this
Speaker 3: movie were pitched as Michael J. Fox enters the body
Speaker 3: of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I think it's a good one
Speaker 3: two to show the difference in those characters in the movie.
Speaker 3: But taking that literally, what a different experience that would
Speaker 3: have been, you know what I mean? And even I'm
Speaker 3: assuming in that scenario that Michael J. Fox would be
Speaker 3: playing the Martin short role. Even if the miniaturization were reversed,
Speaker 3: it would have been a completely different read, completely different character.
Speaker 3: No shade on Michael J. Fox, of course, he's brilliant,
Speaker 3: but it would have hit completely differently, been a completely
Speaker 3: different kind of movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agreed, absolutely. All Right, get into the rest
Speaker 1: of the cast. Here we have Meg Ryan playing Lydia Maxwell.
Speaker 1: Meg Ryan born nineteen sixty one, another huge name that
Speaker 1: I think most everyone's familiar with, mostly known for. I
Speaker 1: guess her biggest successes were a handful of just highly
Speaker 1: successful rom coms of the eighties and nineties. Eighty nine's
Speaker 1: When Harry Met Sally ninety three, Sleepless in Seattle ninety eight,
Speaker 1: So You've got mail, So pretty big deal. She's been
Speaker 1: in other things, for sure. She was in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three's Amityville three D, for example, the one with the
Speaker 1: claw busting out of the VHS cover.
Speaker 3: Also in Top Gun. Oh well, yeah, his wife. I
Speaker 3: think I kind of feel like this is a Top
Speaker 3: Gun episode. Rob, I'm gonna do best in a Top
Speaker 3: Gun episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, Yeah, she's great in this. We'll get into.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting role. There is an interesting love triangle
Speaker 1: in this picture that I was totally lost on me
Speaker 1: as a kid, but watching it as a grown up
Speaker 1: is just it's deeply weird. It's strange that they ever
Speaker 1: even went for all of this, even with all the
Speaker 1: restraint they show that it's a strange love triangle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she's great. She has great chemistry with everyone, including
Speaker 1: Dennis Quaid, who she would end up marrying after this picture.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: And spoiler, she marries his character at the end of
Speaker 1: this movie.
Speaker 3: So I got I got a lot to say about that.
Speaker 3: That guest list is wild.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it feels like a rap party.
Speaker 3: We'll get back all right.
Speaker 1: Now, getting into the many, many villains of this picture,
Speaker 1: We'll start with the villain that we eventually are introduced to,
Speaker 1: and that is a Victor Scrimshaw played by Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 1: who of nineteen fourteen through twenty ten American actor nominated
Speaker 1: for an Oscar for his performance in the nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: two adaptation of Death of a Salesman, but I think
Speaker 1: known to many out there for his just wonderful paranoid
Speaker 1: performance in nineteen fifty six is Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Speaker 1: The original Black and white One, also perhaps known to
Speaker 1: many of you for his role in eighty nine's UHF.
Speaker 1: I assume I don't remember who he played in UHF.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it was a villain, like a studio TV
Speaker 1: studio villain of some sort.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't recall. That's maybe we'll do UHF next time, Rob,
Speaker 3: that's such a great movie that it's been way too
Speaker 3: long since I've seen.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Clearly though, Kevin McCarthy was a favorite of Joe
Speaker 1: Dante's because some of his other credits include The Howling
Speaker 1: the Burbs Piranha. He also pops up in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one's Eve of Destruction. That's one that I never saw,
Speaker 1: but saw the trailers for all the time. It has
Speaker 1: like a killer lady terminator in it.
Speaker 3: I remember him most specifically from The Distinguished Gentleman, the
Speaker 3: Eddie Murphy movie from nineteen ninety two, where great premise,
Speaker 3: Eddie Murphy runs for Congress using he has the same
Speaker 3: name as a deceased congress person and uses the fact
Speaker 3: that nobody knows whether the congressman died or not to
Speaker 3: get elected.
Speaker 1: But that I have never heard of this movie.
Speaker 3: Amazing premise. Yeah, great, it's pretty fun movie, pretty fun movie.
Speaker 3: It's part of that Eddie Murphy era with Boomerang early nineties,
Speaker 3: but another great movie. But Kevin McCarthy plays a seasoned
Speaker 3: congress person who knows the grift very well, kind of
Speaker 3: takes Eddie Murphy under his wing and shows him how
Speaker 3: to how to grift in in the right way, which
Speaker 3: is to say, the political way.
Speaker 1: All right, No, that it sounds for fun.
Speaker 3: Really slimy guy. McCarthy plays him really well.
Speaker 1: Yeah he is. He's really good at playing a slimy villain,
Speaker 1: all right. Other villains include his kind of partner in crime.
Speaker 1: Here is doctor Margaret Kanker. Canker played by Fiona Lewis
Speaker 1: born nineteen forty six, British actress who we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the show before because she was in nineteen seventy two's
Speaker 1: Doctor Phibes Rises Again starring Vincent Price, and her other
Speaker 1: credits include sixty seven's To Fearless Vampire Killers, seventy three's
Speaker 1: Blue Blood with Oliver Reed, the nineteen seventy four Dracula
Speaker 1: starring Jack Palance, seventy five Listomania, seventy seven's Tintoria, Killer Shark,
Speaker 1: seventy eight's The Fury and eighty three Strange Invaders. This
Speaker 1: was her last film role before her retirement.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I wasn't familiar with her, but I felt like
Speaker 3: I was. She looked so familiar, her performance was so
Speaker 3: familiar to me, but I could not place it even
Speaker 3: through an IMDb. I couldn't remember what she stood out
Speaker 3: me from. But fantastic role, fantastic performance, and just something
Speaker 3: It's gonna nag me until the day I die. What
Speaker 3: I remember it from?
Speaker 1: All Right? The next villain, Oh, this is This is
Speaker 1: the one of the big ones, if not the biggest one.
Speaker 1: This is the one I think everyone remembers. This is
Speaker 1: mister Igo played by Oh they always intimidating. Vernon Wells
Speaker 1: born nineteen forty five Australian actor, best known for playing
Speaker 1: heavies for that like signature mug of his and he's
Speaker 1: played some really iconic ones.
Speaker 3: He's he's bad news. Yeah, he's just in this movie
Speaker 3: in particular, the most fun kind of bad news, but
Speaker 3: menacing without all right, there are a few tells that
Speaker 3: he had, like really specific tells through the movie, but
Speaker 3: most of it is just the aura that he brings
Speaker 3: to the screen. He's he's a menace. He's one to
Speaker 3: watch out for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll discuss like his character is probably one
Speaker 1: of the better sort of terminator esque villains, like a
Speaker 1: spin on terminator without going too hard on the terminatorness,
Speaker 1: you know, like, yeah, he's not really a cyborg, but
Speaker 1: he's got like this cool prosthetic hand and I was
Speaker 1: always like all in unprosthetic hand villains at this at
Speaker 1: this age when I was a kid, you know, And
Speaker 1: this guy's got all sorts of cool gadgets.
Speaker 3: He does feel like more of a little stinker in
Speaker 3: his actual actions than than he is a terminator that
Speaker 3: will end your life even Yeah, that's always the threat
Speaker 3: whenever he's around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he'll also just pop a clowns balloon for
Speaker 1: no reason except that he hates fun. So yeah, Wells,
Speaker 1: Vernon Wells, he had some great roles. He played Wez
Speaker 1: that's the mohawk, the mohawk guy in eighty one's The
Speaker 1: Road Warrior. He was the Lord General in eighty five's
Speaker 1: Weird Science, and then a big one. He's he's been it,
Speaker 1: the guy with the mustache and commando amazing. He's the
Speaker 1: one that he kills laughs because he likes him the most.
Speaker 1: I can't I can never remember how that that's right.
Speaker 1: But yeah, his Australian TV credit go back to the
Speaker 1: mid seventies and he's one of these guys that remains
Speaker 1: highly active in genre pictures. He's got like, you know,
Speaker 1: like three dozen upcoming projects. That's sort of cheez. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he's great. But then we're not done with the villains.
Speaker 1: We also have one more and it's another very memorable one,
Speaker 1: and it is the Cowboy, played by Robert Picardo born
Speaker 1: fifty three, frequently cast by Joe Dante in a variety
Speaker 1: of roles. He gets to play a bad guy here,
Speaker 1: though with plenty of comedic elements, and I just have
Speaker 1: to say an accent of unknown origin. I have no
Speaker 1: idea what they were going for here. I think it's
Speaker 1: inoffensive because I have no idea, like what part of
Speaker 1: the globe it's supposed to be. Like, I always thought
Speaker 1: he was maybe supposed to be Russian, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I saw some write ups online where people make arguments
Speaker 1: for other corners of the world.
Speaker 3: You know you're gonna get mad at me, rob But
Speaker 3: this is exactly like the bad Guy Meg Fighters and
Speaker 3: Top Gun, where they're from somewhere else. They're not gonna
Speaker 3: tell you what they're from because they don't want to
Speaker 3: get at that country upset. But they're just kind of other,
Speaker 3: you know. I think that in Robert's case, this accent
Speaker 3: is either super offensive or engineered to be as inoffensive
Speaker 3: as possible, because it could not be real and could
Speaker 3: not harken to any specific existing accent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then on top of that, he has this
Speaker 1: like old Hollywood cowboy persona that he has completely taken on.
Speaker 1: So he's always wearing the cowboy boots, often on the
Speaker 1: other bells and whistles as well. It's it's a fun
Speaker 1: and perplexing villain role.
Speaker 3: He's I kept having to remind myself that he was
Speaker 3: a villain. He doesn't seem villainous. Most of his scenes
Speaker 3: are pretty silly, and I keep I kept having to
Speaker 3: remind myself of what he was there to do, yes,
Speaker 3: and why they needed to stop him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is. The plot is fairly complex, but basically
Speaker 1: he represents a buyer for stolen technology. We don't know
Speaker 1: exactly who he's representing, but he's the bag man, right,
Speaker 1: He's the guy with the money.
Speaker 3: He's just going to go out and dance when he's
Speaker 3: in town.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's he's also going to party. He's he's up
Speaker 1: to like sleep with any of the leads of this picture,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter to him. But yeah, he doesn't
Speaker 1: really do anything bad. I don't think he tries to
Speaker 1: kill anybody, right, He's.
Speaker 3: No, he's pretty pretty silly guy. Uh, just good at
Speaker 3: his job. I guess we don't really see that, but
Speaker 3: we're told that he's good at his job, and he
Speaker 3: seems pretty confident all things, you know, considered. He's a
Speaker 3: pretty confident guy who knows himself, knows what he likes
Speaker 3: and pursues it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, Pagardo is a familiar face I think to
Speaker 1: film and TV viewers in general because on the TV front,
Speaker 1: he was on The Wonder Years, or he had some
Speaker 1: roles on The Wonder Years, and he wasn't I don't
Speaker 1: think he was main cast. He's in China Beach, Star
Speaker 1: Trek Voyager of course, and Stargate and then films. You know,
Speaker 1: we have The Howling We all total recall he was
Speaker 1: Johnny Cabb in nineteen ninety and he's also part of
Speaker 1: the cast of twenty sixteens Cohen Brothers, The Coen Brothers
Speaker 1: film Hail Caesar, but that has everybody in it, so
Speaker 1: I don't know that we really need to single him
Speaker 1: out for that. But yeah, he's always a terrific presence,
Speaker 1: fun act.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a big, big fan of his from Star
Speaker 3: Trek and Total Recall of course, probably my favorite movie
Speaker 3: of all time. But a role that was created for him,
Speaker 3: the Johnny Cabb, I believe, was molded in his image
Speaker 3: before he was even signed on to the project. They
Speaker 3: wanted him to be the Johnny Cab that badly.
Speaker 1: You take Johnny Cab out of that picture, the whole
Speaker 1: thing falls apart too.
Speaker 3: It truly is the glue.
Speaker 1: All right. And then the final main character supporting character
Speaker 1: I guess really i'll mention is Wendy Shall, who plays
Speaker 1: a character named Wendy. This is Jack's co worker at
Speaker 1: the grocery. Born nineteen fifty four. I'm mentioning her mainly
Speaker 1: because she was in Creature for eighty five, an alien
Speaker 1: knockoff that Joe and I discussed on Weird House Cinema here.
Speaker 1: She did a lot of TV, but her later film
Speaker 1: credits include Oh, nineteen eighty seven's Munchies. It's a Gremlin's
Speaker 1: knockoff a Gromlins movie. You got batteries not included. Eighty
Speaker 1: nine is The Burbs, and she did a lot of
Speaker 1: TV as well, X File six Feet under Star Trek Voyager,
Speaker 1: and she's also done a lot of voice acting for
Speaker 1: a family guy in American Dad.
Speaker 3: Great job here too, being she does a lot with
Speaker 3: a little doesn't have a ton of screen time, but
Speaker 3: you really get a vibe of exactly who she is
Speaker 3: from very few lines and just kind of her presence
Speaker 3: and reaction to things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Now, on the effects end of things,
Speaker 1: this was a big industrial light and magic special effects movie,
Speaker 1: so it involved just an army of talented professionals and
Speaker 1: it won an OSCAR in nineteen eighty eight for Best
Speaker 1: Special Effects, beating out Predator. So Predator versus Interspace Interspace
Speaker 1: wins clearly. So, yeah, an army of people involved here.
Speaker 3: It's no surprise this is a really well done movie
Speaker 3: effects wise, and that you don't notice half of the
Speaker 3: effects that are happening. They're so organic. Particularly for me,
Speaker 3: anytime he's inside the body or we're seeing inside the body,
Speaker 3: I'm not even clocking that as an effect. Most of
Speaker 3: the time, there are a few set pieces inside of
Speaker 3: the body that are tremendous, and we've got to talk
Speaker 3: about those. But for the most part, you just kind
Speaker 3: of believe that he's inside of body and that he's
Speaker 3: on the other side of an ear or an eye,
Speaker 3: and you know, you don't clock the amount of work,
Speaker 3: or I don't clock the amount of work that's going
Speaker 3: into creating an effect like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I thought the effects held up really well.
Speaker 1: This is not a film where I felt like I
Speaker 1: saw any wires, any scenes. You know, it all holds
Speaker 1: up extremely well, so, you know, well deserving of that.
Speaker 1: Oscar Dennis Murren was the visual effects supervisor for ILM
Speaker 1: and I also mentioned in passing that Rob Boteen I'm
Speaker 1: born nineteen fifty nine, a special makeup effects designer and
Speaker 1: creator on this picture. He was involved in a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, squirmy and drippy special effects pictures, the
Speaker 1: likes of Squirm, the Howling, the Thing, RoboCop and Total Recall.
Speaker 3: So he made the worm face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he was involved in the worm face. I
Speaker 1: didn't get a chance to look up exactly what he
Speaker 1: did on this picture, but I obviously I highly suspect
Speaker 1: that it is the morphing the face morphing Seine that
Speaker 1: we'll get into, because that's one of those that is
Speaker 1: it's not grotesque unless you stop and really look at it,
Speaker 1: and then you start really, oh this is this is grotesque.
Speaker 3: But there's one that there are two big morph scenes
Speaker 3: that I that I have in mind, and one of
Speaker 3: them is a full blown you can see that that
Speaker 3: is an effect set piece.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh, that's the remorph.
Speaker 3: I think, yes, yes, the full head goes on for
Speaker 3: a long time. But just there are scenes with Martin
Speaker 3: Short's mouth work where it's just his mouth and it's
Speaker 3: Martin Short. It's not a prosthetic, it's not you know,
Speaker 3: a stand in dummy head where it's just remarkable, how
Speaker 3: believable an effect like that is?
Speaker 1: All right? And then finally the music. It's a Jerry
Speaker 1: Goldsmith score who lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, film music legend. His other scores, of course,
Speaker 1: include the likes of Grimlins and Alien from nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3: Amazing and great stuff here. I think even right from
Speaker 3: the jump the synth and the opening credits is incredible.
Speaker 1: Let's get into those opening credits because this is. I
Speaker 1: did remember the opening credits from because this one really
Speaker 1: blew my mind as a kid, because you go into innerspace,
Speaker 1: you're expecting all that, you know, the beautiful inner wonders
Speaker 1: of a micro world, and that is where we are.
Speaker 1: But as we zoom out, we realize we've just been
Speaker 1: inside cocktail Ice for the whole opening of the credits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a tremendous effect. I think it's really really
Speaker 3: well done and not really a trick either, because it
Speaker 3: shows you the molecular level of what a glass of
Speaker 3: ice would be. You just you're kind of entranced by
Speaker 3: the pre science of it all.
Speaker 1: And we realized that this cocktail Ice is at some
Speaker 1: sort of a party, some sort of a formal get
Speaker 1: together of military test pilots. There's cake there, models of
Speaker 1: planes there, a bunch of a very top gun s
Speaker 1: test pilot dudes. And then in to the fray enters
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Tuck Pendleton. This is our main character, and he
Speaker 1: is again already completely wasted. A big embarrassing scene follows
Speaker 1: where he falls through a table. He gets into a
Speaker 1: fight with the other flyboys in the kitchen, and clearly
Speaker 1: he has a number of monkeys on his back here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The one thing that stood out to me during
Speaker 3: this sequence is the fight choreography inside the kitchen. This
Speaker 3: is another thing like it didn't need to be a
Speaker 3: well choreographed fight, but it actually is well blocked. It's tight.
Speaker 3: There is interesting action happening here. It could just be
Speaker 3: this drunk guy pushes off a couple of guys, get subdued,
Speaker 3: and Lydia takes him home. But it's more than that.
Speaker 3: It's an actual interesting action sequence that doesn't really have
Speaker 3: a lot of business in this movie. And you see
Speaker 3: that happening a few more times throughout the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the stunt team knew they weren't going
Speaker 1: to have many fisticuff scenes, so they were going to
Speaker 1: really sell them yeah when they had them. So we
Speaker 1: also see Lydia Maxwell. This is Meg Ryan's character. She
Speaker 1: is his girlfriend, I believe, but she's also a reporter.
Speaker 1: I don't know if she is here as a reporter
Speaker 1: or as his girlfriend, but she kind of serves in both.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like there's an estrangement here, so I
Speaker 3: think it's a former girlfriend. I'm not sure how recent
Speaker 3: the formerness is, whether it's a fresh breakup, or an
Speaker 3: on again, off again relationship, but this embarrassment, her responsibility
Speaker 3: for him from this embarrassment. Maybe that's just a gesture
Speaker 3: of kindness to everybody else in the room of being
Speaker 3: I'm the one who can get him out of this situation,
Speaker 3: or more of a responsibility of this is my date
Speaker 3: and I need to get him out of here. There's
Speaker 3: definitely a strong connection between the two and Tuck we
Speaker 3: see in the next scene kind of wishes that it
Speaker 3: were more.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So she drags Tud back to his pad, and
Speaker 1: this is you know, is you're figuring out who these
Speaker 1: characters are, it becomes really apparent that this is his place,
Speaker 1: this is not their place, because there are photos of SR.
Speaker 1: Seventy one Blackbirds on the walls. There's also all this
Speaker 1: bunny memorabilia that's going to make a lot more sense
Speaker 1: here in a little bit. There's a Santa Claus on
Speaker 1: the desk, so you know, holiday movie confirmed, or is
Speaker 1: this guy's pad just so sloppy that there's a Sanda
Speaker 1: up year round?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, And right in the middle of the apartment
Speaker 3: on the table, huge nineteen eighties robotic arm and anybody
Speaker 3: who was alive during the eighties knows exactly what this
Speaker 3: robot arm is. It's got one hinge and it's got
Speaker 3: a pincher as it's hand. It's meant to pinch things,
Speaker 3: pick them up, move them somewhere else, and release the
Speaker 3: pinch here. He's got it built to pick up a
Speaker 3: bottle of booze, turn it over to pour it into
Speaker 3: a glass. He does it poorly, or whoever's controlling this
Speaker 3: robot does it poorly, obviously meant to convey that Tuck's
Speaker 3: doing a bad job of it, probably because he's wasted.
Speaker 3: But somebody on this team is really good at articulating
Speaker 3: a robot an eighties robot arm, because you see it
Speaker 3: happen a few more times throughout the movie, and it's
Speaker 3: done very elegantly every other time.
Speaker 1: Now, would would this have been before the or after
Speaker 1: the nes arm that played the Little Spin Top game?
Speaker 3: Oh? So, this would have been after the Robotic Operating
Speaker 3: Buddy rob for the Nintendo Entertainment System, where it's a
Speaker 3: similar thing. You had to use the controller to make
Speaker 3: the robot pick up a spinning gyro and drop it
Speaker 3: onto either a red button or a blue button, which
Speaker 3: would affect the level on the screen. That you are
Speaker 3: trying to play and allow your guy to pass through.
Speaker 3: Terrible game, terrible concept, but I think similar idea of, hey,
Speaker 3: we're supposed to be a robotic society at this point,
Speaker 3: we'd better start acting like it and developing all of
Speaker 3: these things that were just clunky executions of what a
Speaker 3: robotic society would do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that energy is very strong in this picture
Speaker 1: for sure. So they get settled in for the evening
Speaker 1: and in more or less we're picking up the next
Speaker 1: morning because that's when Cabby Dick Miller a frequently mentioned
Speaker 1: actor on Weird House Cinema because he pops up in everything.
Speaker 1: I think he has popped up in more films than
Speaker 1: than than than any other actor that we've covered here
Speaker 1: on the show. But he's there as a Cabby to
Speaker 1: pick Lydia up in the morning. She is trying to
Speaker 1: sneak out, leave a note and leave Tuck behind forever.
Speaker 1: And we get this, we get this, you know, comedic
Speaker 1: but but very very hunky scene where Tuck comes out
Speaker 1: wearing only a towel and he's going to try and
Speaker 1: talk her out of leaving. The towel gets stuck in
Speaker 1: the door. Cab rides off, towel goes with the cab
Speaker 1: full backside exposed. Yeah, so there's there's a lot more
Speaker 1: beefcake in the picture than I remember.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a really really hunky scene. A lot
Speaker 3: of hunks in this movie, a lot of honky activity,
Speaker 3: and even Martin Short gets to participate in and be
Speaker 3: a hunk a little bit later. One thing I think
Speaker 3: it's important to point out here is that Lydia did
Speaker 3: try to leave the night before and a drunk Tuck
Speaker 3: blocked her exit. So big red flag there does it casually,
Speaker 3: which shows again what a lithario this guy is and
Speaker 3: maybe gives a little bit of insight into his character.
Speaker 3: But he, either for concern for his well being or
Speaker 3: because he is such a wooer, plays the old timy
Speaker 3: song Cupid for Lydia, which I guess is their song,
Speaker 3: and that convinces her maybe to stay the night. I
Speaker 3: don't know that that's what does it, but to your point,
Speaker 3: we see her leaving the next morning and trying to
Speaker 3: get away for good, so it at least satisfied what
Speaker 3: Tuck was trying to get at that night. But the
Speaker 3: song Cupid comes back into play a little.
Speaker 1: Bit later yes, that one will be important. Now at
Speaker 1: this point we switch over to our other main character,
Speaker 1: because here we have Jack Putter played by Martin Short,
Speaker 1: in to see his doctor, and this is some pretty
Speaker 1: fun character work with the guy playing the doctor is
Speaker 1: William Shallart who lived nineteen twenty two through twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: who did a lot of TV shows. But basically we
Speaker 1: catch on pretty quickly that Putter is a hypochondriac that's
Speaker 1: coming in all the time. It's clearly dealing with a
Speaker 1: lot of very serious anxiety issues regarding his work. And
Speaker 1: he starts telling this story about what this nightmare he
Speaker 1: keeps having that he's very concerned about, in which he
Speaker 1: is hideously overcharging this woman at the checkout register at
Speaker 1: the grocery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the doctor's prognosis or prescription to this grocery
Speaker 3: store clerk is you should simply go on a vacation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you should simply go on a lavish vac cation. Which
Speaker 3: how times have changed. Really that that's just that's the
Speaker 3: that's the direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy's having a mental health crisis, like at
Speaker 1: this point, like he's he he is having a very
Speaker 1: hard time and it's just like here's a prescription for
Speaker 1: a trip to Mexico.
Speaker 3: Right, you can probably afford it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So you know at this point, okay,
Speaker 1: the pieces, the main pieces are on the table concerning
Speaker 1: our protagonists. But then we got to get into the
Speaker 1: real plot. How are we going to get miniaturization involved here?
Speaker 1: So we pick up with Silicon Valley dudes stuck in
Speaker 1: traffic discussing a project. We have one of the guys
Speaker 1: from the Top Gun Academy graduation thing earlier, and it's
Speaker 1: there he's like, well, who have you hired to pilot
Speaker 1: this prototype or whatever? And they're like, oh, we got
Speaker 1: Tuck Pendleton. We hear he's great, And this dude's like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound too great for me to me, Tuck Pimpleton,
Speaker 1: not a great get for whatever you do we're doing here.
Speaker 1: And then we kind of like fast forward a bit
Speaker 1: and then here's here's Tuck Pendleton getting ready to jump
Speaker 1: into the We don't know yet it's going to be
Speaker 1: a pod of some kind, but he's getting himself amped
Speaker 1: up with slaps to the face as well as as
Speaker 1: well as with a fair amount of inappropriate coworker flirting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really strange the way that he walks in,
Speaker 3: I believe one of the scientists or tech workers kisses
Speaker 3: him on the cheek. He doubles back and does a
Speaker 3: full blown mouth kiss with her. Just a real again,
Speaker 3: the Fario level of swagger coming into this test pilot job.
Speaker 3: You know, while the Silicon Valley dudes were arguing in
Speaker 3: the car, he was defending Tuck as being somebody who
Speaker 3: did his homework and can do the job. And you
Speaker 3: see that, Like, that's the duality that we get with him,
Speaker 3: is that he is a mess in every other realm
Speaker 3: of his life, but he's a good test pilot. He
Speaker 3: might be a drunk test pilot, but he's a good
Speaker 3: test and he reinforces that kind of on his walk in,
Speaker 3: and once he gets into mind is down to business.
Speaker 3: He knows exactly the right questions to ask, the right
Speaker 3: things to check. He's the voice of authority.
Speaker 1: And it becomes clear pretty quickly that what they're about
Speaker 1: to do is he's going to get in this pod
Speaker 1: that is pretty really cool looking, looks like a cross
Speaker 1: between a submarine and some spaceship, and they're going to
Speaker 1: miniaturize him and inject him into a rabbit. Now, one
Speaker 1: would assume that this is there have been multiple phases
Speaker 1: before this that they have tests, you know, unmanned miniaturization,
Speaker 1: that they have tested manned miniaturization, and they've also injected
Speaker 1: miniaturized objects into test animals, and that now we're only
Speaker 1: finally getting to the point where they're going to send
Speaker 1: in human being into a rabbit. But who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: they're just really having to push this project along and
Speaker 1: this is just test number one. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is where we learned reason that rabbits
Speaker 3: were so prominent in his apartment, and I get it,
Speaker 3: but all the rabbit stuff in his apartment was like
Speaker 3: a fan of rabbits, not somebody who's studying rabbits intensely.
Speaker 3: It's somebody who like bugs. Bunny is in there and
Speaker 3: things like that. And so this guy likes rabbits a
Speaker 3: lot more than he really needs to to perform his
Speaker 3: scientific role of being inside of a rabbit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's researching at the wrong scale.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: Now, I do really love these scenes where he's getting
Speaker 1: into the cockpit of the pod. I think feel like
Speaker 1: this is all really well done. It has a great
Speaker 1: textured and believable NASA feel to it.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, it's a very busy, very eighties in
Speaker 3: the sense that it feels cramped. There's so much machinery
Speaker 3: on top of itself, and the space is not you know,
Speaker 3: a designer friendly lab, which I think you'll see a
Speaker 3: contrast to that later on in the movie, but here
Speaker 3: it just seems like these guys are scientists. They're bleeding
Speaker 3: edge R and D. And then once you see the
Speaker 3: space that the pod is in, it's Mylar city in
Speaker 3: the best way. There's that gold Nasa milar wrapping the
Speaker 3: entire room. All of the reflections off of that mylar
Speaker 3: are heightening the effect. It's really really perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can get and then inside and outside you
Speaker 1: have like all these pixelated computer screens, video feeds. I
Speaker 1: feel like there are more robot arms and whatever robot
Speaker 1: arms are up to. So yeah, it all feels very real.
Speaker 1: Love the look of all of this, and I feel
Speaker 1: like it's aged really well and in a way that's
Speaker 1: something that non analog wouldn't have, you know, if it
Speaker 1: was all touch screens and you know, next generation stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a little bit of what you could arguably
Speaker 3: say as a Hokier design tactic or effects tactic. That
Speaker 3: has lights superimposed on the pod while it's being miniaturized.
Speaker 3: It looks a little bit and off compared to all
Speaker 3: of the other effects work that's going on, but again
Speaker 3: it works. It's in that milar space. It's supposed to
Speaker 3: be crackling and electrifying, similar to how the DeLorean does
Speaker 3: right before it's about to jump through time, and so
Speaker 3: it works. It's just a little bit lower five than
Speaker 3: some of the other stuff we see, and they.
Speaker 1: Seem to pull it off. They spin the thing around
Speaker 1: in a centrifuge. They shrink it down to size. Now
Speaker 1: the pod is this tiny speck inside of a syringe.
Speaker 1: They use a magnification effect to take a look at it.
Speaker 1: The lead doctor does. But you know that something is
Speaker 1: going to shake things up, and that takes the form
Speaker 1: of an attack by gas mask wearing goons. They come
Speaker 1: in with an acid key card to like short out
Speaker 1: the lock, and they're clearly trying to take over the operation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The thing I love about this takeover is that
Speaker 3: they got these gas masks, but they're not flooding the
Speaker 3: space with gas. They're using a fire extinguisher type device
Speaker 3: to point the gas set. Somebody shoot a blast of
Speaker 3: gas directly at them so that only that person is
Speaker 3: knocked out by it, which is genius, Like, yeah, that's
Speaker 3: how gas warfare would be, should be. I am not
Speaker 3: advocating for gas warfare, but I were, that's how you
Speaker 3: would do it.
Speaker 1: They have a pretty non violent approach, like they're clearly
Speaker 1: trying to cut down on casualties, though they do punch
Speaker 1: a few people, which seems uncalled for if you have
Speaker 1: those great gas cannons on hand. But still they quickly
Speaker 1: take over things, and this is where we first see
Speaker 1: Fiona Lewis's doctor Kinker taking control of the computers. There.
Speaker 3: That's right. Clearly the bad guys have invaded this space,
Speaker 3: but I did it did occur to me at this moment.
Speaker 3: Were the other guys the good guys? I don't know
Speaker 3: what the purpose of this project was. They don't really
Speaker 3: state what they're going to do after they've successfully completed
Speaker 3: the Rabbit project, but we're just supposed to assume that
Speaker 3: their intentions were good. These guys' intentions were bad. And
Speaker 3: I think you know, I mentioned that Gremlins was trying
Speaker 3: to tell you a message in this movie is not
Speaker 3: Maybe this movie is trying to tell you a message
Speaker 3: about early Silicon Valley tech espionage and that it's really
Speaker 3: just bad guys versus bad guys, and it's a question
Speaker 3: of which one are you rooting for.
Speaker 1: I did have a fun time trying to piece together
Speaker 1: like the intended endpoint for this research, and we can
Speaker 1: we can kind of feel it out a little bit
Speaker 1: by seeing the capabilities of the pod. So the pod
Speaker 1: allows the pilot to ultimately see and hear through the
Speaker 1: host and or communicate with them, though I guess that
Speaker 1: that's not necessary, and then also deliver a powerful electromagnetic
Speaker 1: pulse that can like destroy electronics within a short term radius.
Speaker 1: And so it seemed to me I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can imagine that this is building up maybe to
Speaker 1: having a human pilot a rat into a sensitive environment
Speaker 1: and then set off that pulse, or of course, ultimately
Speaker 1: to some extent, like is planting a spy inside of
Speaker 1: a human being and potentially doing that electromagnetic pulse elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But oh then we see other capabilities that shake things
Speaker 1: up even more, which we'll get do later.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think it's probably says more about me than
Speaker 3: it does about the movie. But every application of this technology,
Speaker 3: I could think of was a really dark and depressing
Speaker 3: one that used another living being as a vessel to
Speaker 3: achieve something via a smaller human being inside of that
Speaker 3: vessel that might be small enough to escape whatever situation
Speaker 3: it's putting the larger vessel into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they kind of They definitely allude to
Speaker 1: these espionage applications, but they never even once hint at
Speaker 1: a medical application, not directly. I mean, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of jokes, but for the most part, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea that you would have a little submarine inside of
Speaker 1: person is not even explored. Is a medical breakthrough here?
Speaker 3: Well, Tuck casually turns Putter into we're getting ahead of ourselves,
Speaker 3: but he casually turns them into like a superhuman. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because it's convenient for that scene. So the technology is
Speaker 3: very easy to do once you're in there, apparently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, once you're inside at that scale, you can do
Speaker 1: anything you want, change faces up, cure diseases, I guess,
Speaker 1: but also make computers explode, and that seems to be
Speaker 1: the prime focus here. All Right, So what happens? Okay,
Speaker 1: so we have the ministure I sub it's in a syringe.
Speaker 1: They were going to inject it into the rabbit. But
Speaker 1: then all hell breaks loose. The doc, the main doctor here,
Speaker 1: escapes with the syringe, and then our villain, doctor Canker,
Speaker 1: calls for mister Igo to chase after him. So we
Speaker 1: get this big car bike chase, a number of big
Speaker 1: chase scenes that take place in the picture. On all
Speaker 1: heads to the mall and hey, that is where Jack
Speaker 1: is trying to book relaxing vacation, and I think you
Speaker 1: know where all this is going to come together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I just got to say, this car chase
Speaker 3: on the freeway again, way more elaborate, way more action packed,
Speaker 3: way more elegant than it needs to be. It could
Speaker 3: have been a quick shot that gets you to the mall,
Speaker 3: but it's really fun. And there are convertibles, there are
Speaker 3: this is actually happening on a busy freeway. It's really
Speaker 3: really exciting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, we get to the mall, Mister I
Speaker 1: goes using He's is the finger gun, which I remember
Speaker 1: just thinking was super cool when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: This crazy robot hand of his that he can make
Speaker 1: the make the finger guns and then actually fire the
Speaker 1: finger gun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very inspector gadgety in the way that the
Speaker 3: tip of the finger kind of comes off to reveal
Speaker 3: the gun. But I mean, aside from that, like malls,
Speaker 3: this mall in particular, this is the height of malls
Speaker 3: at nineteen eighty nine. You know, you get not just
Speaker 3: a really busy, active, vibrant mall. You get one that's
Speaker 3: got mascots walking around, giving away or selling balloons, a
Speaker 3: lot of strange things happening for the scientist and mister
Speaker 3: Igo to disrupt from this chase, you know, they're really
Speaker 3: knocking a lot of people out of the way, ruining
Speaker 3: a lot of these mascots days. One of the mascots
Speaker 3: is a penguin who's giving away balloons to a pair
Speaker 3: of nuns, which is a very very funny visual throwaway.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, this whole sequence is feels very Joe Dante,
Speaker 1: like the bit where the doctor with the syringe. He
Speaker 1: ends up injecting Martin short in the buttock and then
Speaker 1: falls into the arms of three or four different mascots
Speaker 1: and dies and we get that hazy POV of him
Speaker 1: looking up at the mascots looming over him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Fantastic.
Speaker 1: So at this point we have miniaturized Pendleton tuck of
Speaker 1: full sized Jack Martin short and that and we're off
Speaker 1: to the race. It's like, this is the this is
Speaker 1: the plot. It's we're going to get into this whole
Speaker 1: situation of how does Pendleton make Jack aware of his
Speaker 1: presence inside him? What kind of gadgets are going to
Speaker 1: allow that to happen? And then how are they going
Speaker 1: to figure out, you know, what sort of plot is
Speaker 1: going on, and how they're going to maneuver their way
Speaker 1: out of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I you know, throughout this whole. Basically from this
Speaker 3: point on, I have a tough time reconciling how big
Speaker 3: Tuck and the pod are supposed to be inside of
Speaker 3: the syringe and inside of Martin George's or Putter's body.
Speaker 3: The there are points at which the action is high
Speaker 3: and the pot is shaken around, so it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: so you must be big enough to be like moving,
Speaker 3: to be moved along by by the motions of the body.
Speaker 3: But then there are points where Tuck is so so
Speaker 3: so small that he and get through. He's at the
Speaker 3: atomic level to where he wouldn't be impacted by these
Speaker 3: other things. And this is me trying to apply my
Speaker 3: people outside and like trying to unsuspend my disbelief and
Speaker 3: pick it apart. But they do lean on just he's
Speaker 3: just small enough, Okay, They lean on you to just
Speaker 3: accept that fact and just go along for the ride. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm happy to do.
Speaker 1: The pod is as small or as large as the
Speaker 1: plot requires it to be. Can it be grabbed with
Speaker 1: a pair of tweezers? Yes?
Speaker 3: Can it?
Speaker 1: Can it cut its way through the wall of an
Speaker 1: artery without causing any kind of trouble inside the body? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: All right, So at this point we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: proceed with like a little less attention to every little
Speaker 1: detail here, but we want to talk, certainly in broad
Speaker 1: strokes about like the central piece of technology here, the pod.
Speaker 1: I definitely want to talk about the love triangle and
Speaker 1: the big finale and any other moments that stand out
Speaker 1: to us. But yeah, the big, the big thing of
Speaker 1: about the pod, and this was something that you know
Speaker 1: I loved as a kid, is that we get like
Speaker 1: this this first contact between Tuck Pendleton and Jack where
Speaker 1: you know you can use well, For first of all,
Speaker 1: he uses a device like fires a harpoon into the
Speaker 1: inside of his eyes so that he can see out
Speaker 1: of his his eyes see what Jack sees, and then
Speaker 1: later he also uses some sort of a harpoon type
Speaker 1: device inside of his ear so that he can hear
Speaker 1: him as well. And then at that point, like Tuck
Speaker 1: Pendleton is just completely jacked into the whole system. He
Speaker 1: can do all sorts of things as we'll see. You know,
Speaker 1: he can he can adjust like is adrenaline and then
Speaker 1: ultimately change his face. One of them really in addition
Speaker 1: to the electro magnetic pulse thing, changing his face, shifting
Speaker 1: his face into the face of another person, Well, that
Speaker 1: one really up the ante here. It's like, Wow, he
Speaker 1: can do anything in there.
Speaker 3: That one is more okay. I feel like the effects
Speaker 3: of hooking into the eye looked painful, and you know
Speaker 3: that's an effects success as far as I'm concerned. Same
Speaker 3: with the ear, but those all seem like I could
Speaker 3: wrap my head around those. And then yeah, he changes
Speaker 3: his face, which it's like, I feel like you need
Speaker 3: outside pieces to do that. You're not just read or
Speaker 3: rearranging cells at that point. You know, you're trying to
Speaker 3: take on an appearance and give a hair color and
Speaker 3: a hair consistency that he doesn't or I guess he
Speaker 3: had his original hair or he had Jack's hair. Still,
Speaker 3: but it just seemed like a huge leap of technology
Speaker 3: to be able to do that, and all of a
Speaker 3: sudden Tuck knows how to do this. Yeah, this is
Speaker 3: his first voyage too, or maybe not maybe his was
Speaker 3: it his first voice?
Speaker 1: Well, he was planning for rabbits, so he should if anything,
Speaker 1: he should be okay, but not particularly experienced with shifting
Speaker 1: rabbit faces around it. But a full blown Martin short
Speaker 1: face that seems like a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he should have been able to turn the rabbit
Speaker 3: into the cowboy. Yeah, but not Jack Putter into the cowboy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's a very expressive face to change into
Speaker 1: another very expressive face. You need something a little plainer,
Speaker 1: I think for your first big hurrah.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly. I think, you know, I blame this movie
Speaker 3: as a child for my impression that I still have today,
Speaker 3: where my instinct is that there's a lot of empty
Speaker 3: space in the human body, and you can travel between
Speaker 3: the organs with you know, the same way that you're
Speaker 3: traveling between planets and the Solar System, that there's just
Speaker 3: a lot of dead space there, which is not true.
Speaker 3: Anybody who's seen a diagram of what's going on inside
Speaker 3: a human body knows how just packed together absolutely everything is.
Speaker 3: But my child mind saw the human body as spacious,
Speaker 3: well lit, lots of areas between your vital organs that
Speaker 3: you could just kind of hang out in and fly between.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's inner space, inner goop.
Speaker 3: That's right, exactly exactly, and the title yeah supports that
Speaker 3: backs that up. I will say that I don't know
Speaker 3: how big or small this pod is. I'm ready to
Speaker 3: move away from that gripe. But he's able to get
Speaker 3: around that body real fast.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Like he starts off in the buttock and
Speaker 1: is almost immediately at the optic nerves. Maybe they cut something,
Speaker 1: but maybe he also he is just like firing through
Speaker 1: those blood vessels.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he gets into blood vessels and somehow is able
Speaker 3: to because it seems like a blood vessel is like
Speaker 3: a highway. Like the vessel goes to one part of
Speaker 3: your body and maybe has some off ramps on the
Speaker 3: way there, but you don't have full agency of where
Speaker 3: else to go in the body unless you kareene out
Speaker 3: of that blood vessel, which you're gonna start causing damage
Speaker 3: to your host at that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does make the host uncomfortable at times. There's
Speaker 1: some related symptoms.
Speaker 3: I'm shocked that Martin Short did not display any sort
Speaker 3: of existential I mean, he had some existential dread at
Speaker 3: the beginning before he realized that there was a pod
Speaker 3: inside of him. To me, that would have just heightened
Speaker 3: the existential dread that there's now something, an actual thing
Speaker 3: inside of me that's talking to me and manipulating my
Speaker 3: body without me being able to stop it, if I,
Speaker 3: if I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Now some important plot stuff that you mentioned too, is
Speaker 1: that eventually Okay, Well, first of all, character wise, Jack
Speaker 1: and Pendleton, Jack and Tuck, they come together, they end
Speaker 1: up bonding over things like it becomes a very close relationship,
Speaker 1: not only because one is literally inside of the other,
Speaker 1: but but you know, they're they're the only people who
Speaker 1: can talk to each other, you know, they can They
Speaker 1: have this this very intimate relationship, which I think the
Speaker 1: movie does a good good job with, you know, building
Speaker 1: this relationship between the two. And then of course is
Speaker 1: ultimately going to introduce Meg Ryan's character Lydia, And then
Speaker 1: this is where we're gonna end up with this love triangle,
Speaker 1: which I have to say is one of the stranger
Speaker 1: love triangles I've ever seen, because again we have Jack
Speaker 1: in large, we have Tuck in small. She is Tuck's X.
Speaker 1: Tuck ends up essentially being like the romance whisperer for Jack,
Speaker 1: helping him to pursue his ex at the same time
Speaker 1: like he still has feelings for Lydia and they and
Speaker 1: also Lydia, I'm sorry. Also Jack and Tuck end up
Speaker 1: kind of bunding butting heads over this as well. It's
Speaker 1: it's bizarre and and and at the same time was
Speaker 1: completely lost on me as a kid. But it has
Speaker 1: to be one of the stranger love triangles I've ever
Speaker 1: seen in a picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's tricky because you don't really get a clear
Speaker 3: picture of what Jack's steaks are and emotionally, and I
Speaker 3: mean you get you get the idea of his physical stakes,
Speaker 3: but you don't know he's obviously attracted to Lydia, but
Speaker 3: he's characterized as somebody who does not need a lot
Speaker 3: of convincing to help Tuck out. And sure that's motivated
Speaker 3: by the fact that Tuck is in his body and
Speaker 3: he and Tuck needs him, and maybe that is something
Speaker 3: that Jack wants as well as somebody to need him
Speaker 3: or need his help. But he's pretty willing both motivated
Speaker 3: by fear of the spies catching up to him, trying
Speaker 3: to get Tuck out of him their way, which is
Speaker 3: going to be ugly, trying to find a better way
Speaker 3: to do that, but also trying to help him, like
Speaker 3: you say, romantically convinced Lydia to trust him and to
Speaker 3: trust that Tuck needs her help as well. It's really
Speaker 3: interesting and kind of puts Jack in the middle in
Speaker 3: a way that supports kind of his warming warm he
Speaker 3: is not the right word, but the fact that people
Speaker 3: push him around on a regular basis. He's kind of
Speaker 3: being moved around as well, emotionally and not just physically
Speaker 3: the way that Tuck is doing to him with the pod.
Speaker 3: But I do think we've got a ticking clock here
Speaker 3: that we didn't speak about, which is tux oxygen is
Speaker 3: running out.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, that's the pot Tuck. You guys running out.
Speaker 1: He's eventually going to die in there if he doesn't
Speaker 1: get out right.
Speaker 3: So you've got ticking clock a which is there's these
Speaker 3: guys on your tail that you don't want them to
Speaker 3: catch you because they're happy to kill Jack to get
Speaker 3: Tuck out of him if they need to. B If
Speaker 3: you want Tuck to succeed at again, whatever he's doing,
Speaker 3: you need to get back to the Good Lab quote
Speaker 3: unquote good Lab before tucks oxygen runs out and it
Speaker 3: gets real close and then you somehow have to save
Speaker 3: Tuck and Lydia's relationship. That's the sea ticking clock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we also learn that there are like two little
Speaker 1: chips that are involved in the miniaturization process. There are
Speaker 1: other groups out there who have been working on miniaturization
Speaker 1: and they can miniaturize things, but apparently relargifying things is
Speaker 1: the hard part, and that's where you need both chips.
Speaker 1: The chip that is out here in the full sized
Speaker 1: world and the chip that is now on that pod
Speaker 1: inside of Jack's body. And so that's what the bad
Speaker 1: guys want. They need to get that chip off of
Speaker 1: that pod, and as we'll learn, they'll do anything in
Speaker 1: their power to do so.
Speaker 3: So that's where Robert Piccardo comes in as the Cowboy,
Speaker 3: the agent employed to retrieve one of the chips, and
Speaker 3: their plan is to appropriate the cowboys face onto Jack's
Speaker 3: face and then infiltrate the meeting with Scrimshaw to get
Speaker 3: that chip to take back to the quote unquote Good
Speaker 3: Lab so that they can re enlarge Tuck and save.
Speaker 1: Him, right, But then at the same time already had
Speaker 1: some run ends with the Good Lab where they've overheard
Speaker 1: the good scientists saying, you know, it's actually easier if
Speaker 1: we just let him die inside of Jack's body because
Speaker 1: nobody can get to that thing. It's miniaturized. Just let
Speaker 1: it go. You know, he'll get I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: excreted one way or another from Jack's body and it'll
Speaker 1: just be lost to time. And maybe that's easier.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I gotta say, all things being equal, taking humanity
Speaker 3: out of the equation altogether, which is what these scientists
Speaker 3: are doing, that's not a bad case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and especially considering what mister Scrimshaw wants. We have
Speaker 1: a great later. So Drag gets abducted at least twice.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's like he's constantly escaping and re
Speaker 1: escaping and getting caught. There's one scene where mister scrimshow
Speaker 1: it's this great villain monologue about like, you know, nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons aren't theren't the future. Space is in the future.
Speaker 1: It's miniaturization. So great villain monologue there. But then we
Speaker 1: get what we also get time and time again, and
Speaker 1: a Pendleton Tuck assisted escape by Jack. So Jack's not
Speaker 1: necessarily he didn't realize when he's been trapped or see
Speaker 1: the light of the escape route. But that's where Tuck
Speaker 1: comes in. Tuck has his great gut instinct where he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: punch now, kick now, jump out of the moving vehicle now,
Speaker 1: And so you know, the movie stays in constant motion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jack gets a lot of heroic stunt opportunities to
Speaker 3: really look like like the hero, you know, and it's
Speaker 3: a lot of it's driven by Tuck, but he's the
Speaker 3: one doing it. It's not that Tuck's making his body move.
Speaker 3: Tuck's just guiding him through what to do. And that's
Speaker 3: kind of a Dumbo feather to Jack, where he's he
Speaker 3: has the confidence to actually execute on a lot of
Speaker 3: those things and he's successful at it.
Speaker 1: So at this point I don't know which thread to follow.
Speaker 1: We have more of the love triangle plot when that
Speaker 1: is propelling Jack ever closer to a sexual encounter with Lydia.
Speaker 1: It would seem though, again this is a PG film,
Speaker 1: so we're dealing in very broad strokes here, and a
Speaker 1: lot is implied and then and then we have the
Speaker 1: whole scheme to figure out what cowboy is up to. Uh.
Speaker 1: To seduce cowboy and then and then take advantage of him,
Speaker 1: and then the morphing of the face, the infiltration of
Speaker 1: the batties. Uh. And this is of course going to
Speaker 1: involve another round of chasing and escaping and everyone going
Speaker 1: after those chips.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it, you know, just to quickly top
Speaker 3: line the cowboy thread, I think they realized or they
Speaker 3: learned that the cowboy goes to a Club Inferno whenever
Speaker 3: he's in town because he loves to go dancing and
Speaker 3: meet women. So they go to Club Inferno as well.
Speaker 3: That's where Jack runs into Wendy from the grocery store.
Speaker 3: Wendy sees a new bad boy side of Jack that
Speaker 3: that piques her interest. But the long story short there
Speaker 3: is that Lydia is able to seduce the cowboy bring
Speaker 3: him back to the hotel. That's where they're able to
Speaker 3: knock him out and appropriate his face to go to
Speaker 3: the meeting with Scrimshaw. That disguise starts to fall apart
Speaker 3: in the middle of that meeting. I think that the
Speaker 3: cowboy has a gold toothcap that falls out of fake
Speaker 3: Cowboy's mouth, which tips Scrimshaw off gets all of the
Speaker 3: bad guys up in arms to capture Jack. Which there's
Speaker 3: a great line in lieu of champagne. How about some
Speaker 3: real pain pro pain. I had to give it a
Speaker 3: lot of flowers for going past. How about some real
Speaker 3: pain and add another pain to the line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we get some more inspector gadget Shenanigans for
Speaker 1: mister Igo because he pulls out the blowtorch. Uh, that's right, appended.
Speaker 1: Or maybe the blowtorch is just always in there as
Speaker 1: part of this Swiss army hand. But they're gonna they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, the cowboy is known for his incredible pain tolerance,
Speaker 1: so let's just get an example of that here.
Speaker 3: That's right, And this is where the actual grotesque transformation
Speaker 3: scene from Cowboy face back to jackface happens. It freaks
Speaker 3: out everybody in the room. Scrimshaw's terrified, and rightly so,
Speaker 3: because it's it's a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It's very well done. Because if you
Speaker 1: slow it down or watch it twice, you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this seems like bouteine material right here, like
Speaker 1: this is the thing, but it is, but it's it's
Speaker 1: blurry and sped up in a very comedic Looney Tunes fashion,
Speaker 1: and that ultimately like overwhelms the horrific aspects of it,
Speaker 1: but it's very well done.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Another thing to point out, they obviously, you know,
Speaker 3: escape this this scenario, Lydia helps them escape. Jack transfers
Speaker 3: Tuck to Lydia through a French kiss, yes, which again
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna say, yeah, that works, you can do
Speaker 3: that first try. You know. While that happens, Tuck is
Speaker 3: inside Lydia's body, sees that Lydia is pregnant, presumably with
Speaker 3: his child. But the thing that gets me is that
Speaker 3: they then transferred Tuck back to Jack through another French kiss,
Speaker 3: which is like, I'm just this good at it that
Speaker 3: we can do this again. And it happened so quickly
Speaker 3: that it's like, I guess Tuck was just there at
Speaker 3: the mouth ready to go.
Speaker 1: French kisses work. French kisses are a complete exchange of
Speaker 1: all saliable content of the mouth and esophagus, right, That's.
Speaker 3: What we were warned about when we were younger.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, but again, like the whole the baby, the pregnancy,
Speaker 1: like this love triangle is very complex. Yeah, one might
Speaker 1: even argue too complex for a picture that is just
Speaker 1: trying to be a big summertime explosion of special effects.
Speaker 1: But it's one of his charms that it's all there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it is. It does serve the
Speaker 3: function of while Tuck is in Lydia's body, Jack's not
Speaker 3: necessarily aware of that yet, and he is still acting
Speaker 3: like a heroic, you know, fighter. He's knocking people out, he's,
Speaker 3: you know, doing all of the things that Tuck told
Speaker 3: him to do. Once he realizes that Tuck's not inside him,
Speaker 3: is inside Lydia, he loses that. He loses that Dumbo
Speaker 3: feather and the confidence kind of quickly.
Speaker 1: At that Dumbo feather exactly. Yeah. So all that's really
Speaker 1: well executed. But I know that those of you who
Speaker 1: grew up watching Innerspace are you've been waiting for us
Speaker 1: to get to the big showdown. The big showdown is
Speaker 1: twofold because so basically they bring captive Jack back to
Speaker 1: the bad Guy Lab, which is super sleek and very military.
Speaker 1: We'll describe their pod here minute. But of course Lydia
Speaker 1: is able to take control. She built out a handgun,
Speaker 1: but after they have already injected a new villain into
Speaker 1: Jack's body, they'll wait. At the same time, Tuck is
Speaker 1: not in Jack anymore at this point, right, Tuck is
Speaker 1: in Lydia. But they inject mister I go inside of
Speaker 1: just a frightening like military combat pod with big claws,
Speaker 1: an amazing design here. They injected that into him to
Speaker 1: go after the original pod, to get those chips and
Speaker 1: to kill Tuck.
Speaker 3: That's right. This enemy lab, it looks like the TV
Speaker 3: room from Willy Wonka's Coca factory. Of it's just all
Speaker 3: white and tons of space in contrast to the other lab,
Speaker 3: which has just stacks of machinery on top of stacks
Speaker 3: of machinery. But yeah, this this exopod, it's a suit.
Speaker 3: Whereas the you know, Tuck's in a little chair inside
Speaker 3: of a small room. It feels like this is a
Speaker 3: scuba suit that has attachments. It's a lot more menacing.
Speaker 3: Presumably this guy can whip around more quickly within the body,
Speaker 3: and he is designed to cause damage. That's what the
Speaker 3: suit is for, you know, so pretty scaring. Of course,
Speaker 3: it's all black compared to the silver white pod that
Speaker 3: that Tuck is in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's frightening, and you've got the one portal so
Speaker 1: you can have mister IGO's face, like the horrifying mug
Speaker 1: of his, like sneering through it and grinning. Yeah, terrifying pod.
Speaker 1: Enemy pod here, like a fighter pod that they have
Speaker 1: now injected into Jack, miniaturized and injected. And we get
Speaker 1: a nice bit from Scrimshaw where he turns to doctor
Speaker 1: Canker and he's like, you know, it's going to be
Speaker 1: easier if we just re enlarge him inside Jack's body afterwards,
Speaker 1: which is which is like, we never see something like
Speaker 1: that happen in the show, but just by mentioning the idea,
Speaker 1: it does bring about a certain amount of menace.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. Again, take the humanity out of it,
Speaker 3: and these are all sound These are as sound ideas
Speaker 3: as any other suggestion. At this point, Lydia gets Tuck
Speaker 3: back into Jack with an intentional kiss to get him in.
Speaker 3: That's where Tuck can help Jack fight off mister Igo.
Speaker 3: Lydia also forces all of the scientists Scrimshaw and Canker
Speaker 3: into the miniaturization pod or into the miniagurization chamber and
Speaker 3: shrinks them all. Does not shrink them all to a
Speaker 3: microscopic size, which they are for the rest of the movie.
Speaker 1: Yes, so the big showdown then is twofold in the
Speaker 1: world at large. We have Jack and Lydia driving uh
Speaker 1: you know, down the highway in San Francisco, and then
Speaker 1: Scrimshaw miniaturize Scrimshaw and doctor Canker attack from the back seat,
Speaker 1: so they're wrestling them in the front and back seat. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: inside of Jack's body on his esophagus, there is now
Speaker 1: a battle between the original pod and the new pod,
Speaker 1: between a Tuck and mister Igo. And this is just
Speaker 1: a really cool battle. I'm not saying it's like RoboCop
Speaker 1: RoboCop two level, but it's pretty great, with lots of
Speaker 1: gadget arms and cutting of robotic components, some nice back
Speaker 1: and forth.
Speaker 3: Well, and it moves to the stomach for the final
Speaker 3: blows of the scene, and that is probably my favorite
Speaker 3: set piece of the entire movie. It's this raging sea
Speaker 3: of stomach acid at the bottom. Again a ton of
Speaker 3: distance from the top of the esophagus where they enter
Speaker 3: the stomach to where the acid is. And Tuck has
Speaker 3: to get Jack's allergies. A Chekhov's gun that was introduced
Speaker 3: earlier in the movie needs to get him. I forget
Speaker 3: what he's specifically allergic to, but needs him to activate
Speaker 3: his allergies to get his stomach acid going.
Speaker 1: This is a great set piece for the finale. Here
Speaker 1: the stomach is like this. Like you said, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of space there is. It's very well lit. That's
Speaker 1: another thing about the inside of the body. You just
Speaker 1: go by innerspace and fantastic voyage. It's like a well
Speaker 1: lit nebula in there, which works. It is an inner
Speaker 1: space and so it should look like some of our
Speaker 1: most colorful visions of outer space, whereas in reality it's
Speaker 1: like that old saying, like a man's best friend outside
Speaker 1: of a book is a dog, and inside of a
Speaker 1: dog it's too dark to read.
Speaker 3: It's very dark and so well and I misspoke. It's
Speaker 3: not his allergies that he needs to trigger. He stresses
Speaker 3: Jack out to the point where he gets refluxed from
Speaker 3: the ayesh yes, and that's what causes the churn to
Speaker 3: which the fight then leads mister I go down into
Speaker 3: the stomach acid where he is eaten up down to
Speaker 3: a skeleton an aka ka ka kak bones skeleton, which.
Speaker 1: Is a skeleton, and the remains the prothetic arm trying
Speaker 1: to drill through the portal of the original pod. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so good, great, great, and kill quality kill here all
Speaker 1: the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. So they get back to the good lab,
Speaker 3: they can't get Tuck out, or they can't quickly get
Speaker 3: Tuck out. The oxygen is at zero. At this point,
Speaker 3: they think they've lost all hope. Jack realizes that he's
Speaker 3: allergic to hairspray, which is the element that was introduced
Speaker 3: earlier in the movie. Is given some hairspray, sneezes Tuck
Speaker 3: out onto one of the scientist's glasses.
Speaker 1: And then they tweezer it. They tweezeerr it, and they
Speaker 1: get it back into the chamber. They resize him, they
Speaker 1: re enlarge him, and we get our big happy ending,
Speaker 1: which is of course a wedding in true Shakespearean fashion.
Speaker 1: We end with a lavish wedding. But who's going to
Speaker 1: be married, Well, we know who's going to be married, right,
Speaker 1: It's going to be tucking Lydia.
Speaker 3: It's tucking Lydia. Jack is the best man, which again
Speaker 3: just met these guys, but they've been through a lot together,
Speaker 3: so I kind of understand that. What I don't understand
Speaker 3: is why Wendy is at the wedding. Don't understand why
Speaker 3: mister Wormwood, the boss at the grocery store, is at
Speaker 3: the wedding. What I don't understand is why the doctor
Speaker 3: who prescribed the vacation for Jack is at the wedding.
Speaker 3: This is not Jack's wedding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the jerky military guy is there, apparently with his son.
Speaker 1: It's this. The events of this film just brought everyone
Speaker 1: together into this like tight knit community, this tight knit family,
Speaker 1: in ways that are perhaps a little inexplicable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so it seems like a happy ending, but
Speaker 3: not quite. We see that the cowboy is the limo driver,
Speaker 3: and that I believe Scrimshaw and Margaret are inside of
Speaker 3: the suitcase. Yes, and are being placed into the trunk.
Speaker 3: So they're driving off on their happy wedding honeymoon drive
Speaker 3: down a twisty mountain road, and Jack realizes that the
Speaker 3: job's not done and he needs to help them out.
Speaker 1: That's right. Oh, and we also find out that Tuck
Speaker 1: has the chips, the very coveted dangerous technology chips are
Speaker 1: his cufflings. So they set up a sequel here that
Speaker 1: of course never happened. But I remember at the time
Speaker 1: as a kid, I just thought, if you set up
Speaker 1: a sequel like this, it will happen. It's going to happen.
Speaker 1: I feel like I spent spent a fair amount of
Speaker 1: time just assuming Interspace too was coming right down the pipe,
Speaker 1: and then it was coming up next never happened.
Speaker 3: I kind of love the and then the adventures continued
Speaker 3: layer of it. I wish that more franchise films took
Speaker 3: that under advisement. I think it's okay to say Indiana
Speaker 3: Jones went on more adventures after this one, and that,
Speaker 3: you know what, I don't really need to show you
Speaker 3: what the last one is or the second to last
Speaker 3: one is, or continue that storyline if I don't want to.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's fun to just say. And their lives continued
Speaker 3: to be that exciting, and so I agree with you.
Speaker 3: I think that there was this left a door opened
Speaker 3: to a sequel, and there seemed to be a lot
Speaker 3: of enthusiasm for that. Maybe the box office return diminished
Speaker 3: that hope, but I kind of like it where it is,
Speaker 3: where if the job's not done, they're still gonna have
Speaker 3: more fun. This guy's life has been inexplicably changed for
Speaker 3: and put on a different path that he didn't choose,
Speaker 3: but he's gonna roll with it. You know, he's a
Speaker 3: different person now, and I kind of really like that
Speaker 3: for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's like, I think it's great you have
Speaker 1: to set up these sequels that never happened. As long
Speaker 1: as you told a complete story, you put everything on
Speaker 1: the table, then I'm fine with just sort of dreaming
Speaker 1: about what else could have been possible. And this is
Speaker 1: a film that does leave everything on the table and
Speaker 1: busts out all of its tricks. So yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: feel like they held anything back with inner Space. They
Speaker 1: just left that window open to potentially dream up innerspace too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very strict. I mean, it's such a bizarre
Speaker 3: fever dream of an ending scene where all of the
Speaker 3: characters from the movie are invited to the wedding of
Speaker 3: somebody who most of the characters have never met, and
Speaker 3: then all of the bad guys are also at the
Speaker 3: wedding in disguise to attack these two characters. After the wedding,
Speaker 3: what are they going to do to Tug? I guess
Speaker 3: they're good they I guess they know about the cup leakes.
Speaker 1: Yep, somebody's gonna get minurized again. It's they're gonna be Shenanigan's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great time twist in the night away takes us
Speaker 3: into the credits. The credits are actually a pretty tight
Speaker 3: credit roll where you're not it's not ten minutes long.
Speaker 3: It's like a good three to five minutes credits twist
Speaker 3: AND's playing the entire time and then you're out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's inner space.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fun, fun time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I really enjoyed revisiting this one, and I feel
Speaker 1: like it largely held up. Yeah, you know, it was
Speaker 1: still very entertaining today. The effects were tremendous, performances were great.
Speaker 1: You know, you never know exactly what it's going to
Speaker 1: be like going back to a film from you know,
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, mid nineteen eighties and see how everything lands.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this was a fun one. Good pick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, this one for me, it like we were
Speaker 3: saying at the top, it's stitched into my memory of
Speaker 3: being a certain age because of how much I saw
Speaker 3: it at that age, and even though I did drop
Speaker 3: out a significant chunk of it from my memory, a
Speaker 3: lot of it took me back into that spare bedroom
Speaker 3: at my grandmother's house, sitting and watching it on a
Speaker 3: tiny TV. And to that point, it's not just the
Speaker 3: nostalgia of that viewing it holds up. It's fun. I'm
Speaker 3: having the same kind of fun that I was having
Speaker 3: back then watching it again.
Speaker 1: All Right, Dave Boy, As we begin to lead out here,
Speaker 1: let's talk Talking Tofu for a minute here in case
Speaker 1: listeners don't remember from last time, tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about what Talking Tofu is and tell us what
Speaker 1: has come out recently in the podcast and what's coming
Speaker 1: out in the future.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, So Talking Tofu is myself and my co
Speaker 3: host slash wife Becky Streepy. We're both vegans and we
Speaker 3: felt like there's not a lot of fun vegan content
Speaker 3: out there. Some of the stuff that you see about
Speaker 3: being vegan can be kind of hard handed in the
Speaker 3: way that it convinces you of the value and the
Speaker 3: virtue of adopting a different lifestyle, whereas we don't really
Speaker 3: think about that much on a day to day basis.
Speaker 3: We just have a lot of fun with it. We
Speaker 3: love food, we love eating food, we love trying new food,
Speaker 3: we love crusting out on junk food, and so our
Speaker 3: podcast is a lot of that. It's us trying new things,
Speaker 3: trying new foods. Usually each episode we'll talk about some
Speaker 3: takeout or a restaurant that we went to, whether it's
Speaker 3: in town or on one of our travels. We travel
Speaker 3: quite a bit, and we'll usually try a new snack
Speaker 3: on the pod, and then we'll spend the other seventy
Speaker 3: percent of the time talking about whatever BS has happened
Speaker 3: to us that week, whatever show we watched that week,
Speaker 3: what movies were into. We just talked about Wicked at length,
Speaker 3: which we both saw in the theater and loved it
Speaker 3: and has a very strong pro animal message unintentionally, I think,
Speaker 3: but just a lot of fun some of the stuff
Speaker 3: that we've talked about lately. We just went to Disneyland
Speaker 3: reas and did a round up of all the vegan
Speaker 3: snacks and food you can eat at Disneyland in and
Speaker 3: around those parks. We've traveled to Vegas recently, did a
Speaker 3: couple of trips to Vegas and a few Vegas episodes.
Speaker 3: We are traveling this weekend to New York City. Probably
Speaker 3: come out with a New York City roundup. Obviously will
Speaker 3: not be comprehensive, as there are lots of vegan options
Speaker 3: in New York City, but just kind of a rundown
Speaker 3: of what we did while we were up there, and
Speaker 3: again we're just having fun and keeping it light and
Speaker 3: showing that it's fun to be vegan. So yeah, that's that's,
Speaker 3: that's what we're up to.
Speaker 1: All right, that's talking to That's t a l k
Speaker 1: I n Apostrophe TOFU podcast. That's right, So look that up.
Speaker 1: You can find that wherever you get your episodes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we gotta get you on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anytime. All right, all right, we're gonna gohe and
Speaker 1: close out this episode. But I'll just remind everyone out
Speaker 1: there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 1: science and culture podcast, with core episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set
Speaker 1: aside most serious concerns to just talk about weird films
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema, and if you want a full
Speaker 1: list of the movies we've covered over the years, you
Speaker 1: can find them on letterboxed. Our user name there is
Speaker 1: weird House. Got a nice list there, so you can
Speaker 1: just dive in there and see what we've chatted about
Speaker 1: in the past. As always, thanks to the great JJ
Speaker 1: Possway for producing and editing the show, stitching everything together
Speaker 1: and making it sound right. And if you want to
Speaker 1: reach out to me, to Joe, to JJ, or if
Speaker 1: you want to reach out to Dave, I'll shoot that
Speaker 1: on todave as well. That you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows