Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
Speaker 2: and today I have a returning special guest co host.
Speaker 2: We're joined once more by David Streepy of the Talkin'
Speaker 2: 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 we agreed that they're called,
Speaker 3: so hello again to all of you. Glad to be back.
Speaker 2: That's right, we're gonna be talking about the Gate three.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, no, I wish, Oh my god, could you
Speaker 3: imagine old Man Terry now?
Speaker 2: Instead, we're gonna be We were talking about like a
Speaker 2: handful of potential movies and we ended up going with
Speaker 2: the one. I think this one was probably the one
Speaker 2: that you brought up that was the most holiday friendly
Speaker 2: and I think might be a stealth holiday film because
Speaker 2: they 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, your 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 it's the
Speaker 3: it's a big one, but it kind of made a
Speaker 3: small splash and a big splash at the same time.
Speaker 3: It's really really unique.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't feel like Interspace, the movie you're talking
Speaker 2: about in nineteen eighty seven's Interspace. This is Joe Dante.
Speaker 2: Film got a great cast, I mean, starring Dennis Quaid,
Speaker 2: Martin Short, Meg Ryan. I mean, it came out big
Speaker 2: summer special effects movie, apparently made money. This was not
Speaker 2: a box office bomb by any stretch, and it it
Speaker 2: amazed a lot of kids. I was one of those
Speaker 2: kids who watched this film multiple times. I guess I
Speaker 2: maybe saw it on TV the first time and then
Speaker 2: maybe just rented it a bunch of times after that
Speaker 2: on VHS. But I was super into this picture. I
Speaker 2: would make little lego models roughly based on the two
Speaker 2: main submarine 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 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's easy to expect with an
Speaker 2: effects film like this, you have your big effects sequences,
Speaker 2: you have your big finale. Those are the ones that
Speaker 2: certainly stuck in my head the most. Also, some of
Speaker 2: the like the Martin Short over the top freak out moments,
Speaker 2: which I mean, if you're going to hire Martin Short,
Speaker 2: especially you know during the eighties or the nineties or
Speaker 2: well or subsequent decades, you're going to want at least
Speaker 2: a little of.
Speaker 3: That or even now. Yeah, I think that's that's still
Speaker 3: a 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 2: Yeah, it's a film that is, it's constantly in motion.
Speaker 2: It keeps adding new elements, often wild elements on top
Speaker 2: of the shu. Yeah, new characters. There's a whole whole
Speaker 2: cast of villains in this picture, as we'll discuss. So
Speaker 2: it's never boring, it's it's in constant motion. It is
Speaker 2: like Martin Short as a film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Martin Short
Speaker 3: film film modified.
Speaker 2: Now this is of course a miniaturization film. If you're
Speaker 2: I think everyone out there is familiar with this subgenre
Speaker 2: of science fiction by now, with the classic example being
Speaker 2: Fantastic Voyage. This is essentially Fantastic Voyage through Martin Short.
Speaker 2: I don't know that we've had a menturization film recently.
Speaker 2: It seems like more recently you tend to see it
Speaker 2: pop up like as a treatment on some sort of
Speaker 2: a science fiction show. I think Rick and Morty did
Speaker 2: a miniaturization episode years back, and I don't know that
Speaker 2: we've had any kind of like big Fantastic to Voyage
Speaker 2: style 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
Speaker 3: body and become super intelligent and have a whole civilization
Speaker 3: in there, and they have to go inside to reconcile that.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a great one because it's it's Fantastic Voyage themed,
Speaker 2: but it is also a Flowers for Algernon themed episode,
Speaker 2: so it has it has a fair amount of depth
Speaker 2: to it as well, and then just a lot of
Speaker 2: great jokes, and there's the whole worm thing why people
Speaker 2: came over on the sandwich. Great stuff. All right, let's
Speaker 2: go ahead and listen in to at least some of
Speaker 2: the 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. Late.
Speaker 2: That's not good, you know.
Speaker 4: It's Lieutenant Pendleton is about to be miniaturized, placed into
Speaker 4: this needle, and then injected into this.
Speaker 3: Rabbit back 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 2: All right, David, I see you had a note here
Speaker 2: about the music in the trailer, possibly the trailer we
Speaker 2: used here, but possibly another trailer. But still, this is
Speaker 2: 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 dunt dun dun't. It's always
Speaker 3: great when a podcast guest just like hums a line
Speaker 3: nolesly for you. But it's really really it's opening scene
Speaker 3: of Gooney. It's really iconic bit of music. Cool to
Speaker 3: see it here, but also a little bit strange to
Speaker 3: see it here too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like when you encounter a trailer where they're
Speaker 2: clearly using the Aliens theme song, you know, it's like,
Speaker 2: that's great, you're really getting me amped up, but amped
Speaker 2: up for a different movie.
Speaker 3: Right, just kind of dug through the drawer for it
Speaker 3: and got something that you knew I would recognize and
Speaker 3: knew would pull me in.
Speaker 2: I guess they still do this today, right, use because
Speaker 2: the music's not always together when you're putting together a trailer,
Speaker 2: or you're just like, well, we have rights to better music,
Speaker 2: 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 goonies
Speaker 3: the way that I was as a kid. That was
Speaker 3: the other video that I was renting. The music fits
Speaker 3: the tone of the trailer, fits the tone of the
Speaker 3: movie really really well. It's a wacky, wacky movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, all right, So some of you might be wondering, well,
Speaker 2: where can I watch innerspace before proceeding with the rest
Speaker 2: of the episode. Well, luckily for you, this was a
Speaker 2: major motion picture. It has not been entirely forgotten. It's
Speaker 2: maybe not as celebrated as it should be, but you
Speaker 2: can find streams of it, you know, digital rentals and purchases.
Speaker 2: A Blu Ray edition is out there. And I do
Speaker 2: notice that it has an older director's commentary on it
Speaker 2: with director Joe Dante, producer Michael Finnell, co stars Kevin
Speaker 2: McCarthy and Robert Piccardo, and also visual effects supervisor Dennis Murreen.
Speaker 2: Obviously an older director's commentary. I haven't listened to it,
Speaker 2: but I don't think I've ever listened to a Joe
Speaker 2: Dante commentary track. But he's one of those guys that's
Speaker 2: so knowledgeable. I bet bet it's pretty great.
Speaker 3: It'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 2: Well know, sometimes you can't get the big fish. They
Speaker 2: move on to other projects I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, and their presence in the movie is pretty significant.
Speaker 3: These guys are not bit players at all. They're huge
Speaker 3: parts of the movie.
Speaker 2: Plus with Joe Dante, you know that he loves like old,
Speaker 2: older actors, you know from classic Hollywood pictures, So you
Speaker 2: know there's Kevin McCarthy, and then he loves to cast
Speaker 2: Robert Riccardo and put him in strange romantic situations such
Speaker 2: as with the made up Grimlin from Grimlins too.
Speaker 3: He's it's he's so weird in this movie is character.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to get into that character.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's let's talk a bit more about
Speaker 2: the people involved here, starting with Joe Dante born nineteen
Speaker 2: forty six. Joe and I have previously discussed Joe Dante
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema because we talked about Grimlins too.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I pointed out, just sort
Speaker 2: of to try and sum him up, is that he's
Speaker 2: one of these guys that seems to have a foot
Speaker 2: in two worlds, Like on one hand, he's like a
Speaker 2: horror legend, and on the other hand he's this obvious
Speaker 2: Spielbergian ambulin entertainment guy. And you see more of the second,
Speaker 2: but also a little the first in this one. On
Speaker 2: the horror front, you have the likes of the Howling
Speaker 2: from eighty one Piranha from seventy eight, and then you
Speaker 2: get into that Grimlin zone, which is kind of crossing
Speaker 2: the threshold. He directed the segment It's a Good Life
Speaker 2: in Twilight Zone, the movie from nineteen eighty three. But
Speaker 2: then he also did things like nineteen eighty five's The Explorers,
Speaker 2: eighty nine's The Birds, nineteen ninety three, He's Manatee, and
Speaker 2: this film especially, it is definitely in that ambulance zone.
Speaker 2: 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 differ different elements to a bunch of
Speaker 3: different 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 2: Yeah, and I would argue that it even feels more
Speaker 2: cohesive than Grimlin's. Grimlin's certainly a better known film, but
Speaker 2: that's one that I always felt like it didn't completely
Speaker 2: know what it wanted to be. This film, I feel
Speaker 2: like it balances everything pretty nicely. You know, nothing feels
Speaker 2: out a 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 2: Let's watch and let's keep upping the anti Yeah, yeah, Oh,
Speaker 2: I have a post editing insertion to make here. You
Speaker 2: might have caught my mistake there. I just referenced a
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three Joe Dante movie that I said was
Speaker 2: called Manate. The film is, of course, Mattine, but I
Speaker 2: left the mistake in because I don't know about you,
Speaker 2: but I'm suddenly really fascinated with the idea of a
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three Joe Dante film about Manates. Who knows
Speaker 2: what that would have consisted of. All right, now, let's
Speaker 2: get back into the episode. Let's see getting into the
Speaker 2: writers on this Jeffrey Boehm, who of nineteen forty six
Speaker 2: through two thousand has I believe the mainscreenplay credit here.
Speaker 2: Accomplished American screenwriter whose credits include seventy eight Straight Time,
Speaker 2: eighty three's The Dead Zone, eighty seven's The Lost Boys,
Speaker 2: eighty nine's Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, as well
Speaker 2: as a couple of lethal weapon movies. He also directed
Speaker 2: and wrote one episode of Tales from the Crypt titled
Speaker 2: Creep Course.
Speaker 3: Wow, I mean this is just home Run after home Run?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, he was involved in a lot of big projects.
Speaker 2: The other name on the screenplay also story and co
Speaker 2: producer credit, Chip Prosser for nineteen forty six, writer and director,
Speaker 2: probably best known for this film, though we also worked
Speaker 2: in the screenplay to some degree. I'm I'm not sure
Speaker 2: to what degree with nineteen eighty four is Iceman?
Speaker 3: So is this a top Gun prequel? No?
Speaker 2: It is an unfrozen cave man movie, all right. Now,
Speaker 2: getting into the cast for Innerspace, it is pretty extensive
Speaker 2: with some great bit parts and cameos, which is pretty
Speaker 2: standard for Joe Dante. So I'm going to try to
Speaker 2: either go light on a number of them and just
Speaker 2: skip some as well, and then also maybe come back
Speaker 2: just in passing to some of the cameos as they
Speaker 2: turn up. But the star, and I mean, really, this
Speaker 2: is a picture that has a trio of leads. But
Speaker 2: Top Bill anyway is Dennis Quay playing Tuck Pendleton.
Speaker 3: What a name?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the names are pretty good. You're Tuck Pendleton? Is
Speaker 2: that you can guess? He is like a test pilot.
Speaker 2: He's he would he 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 2: Oh my goodness, I didn't even think about the Top
Speaker 2: Gun connection, about sitting a riff on on Top Gun.
Speaker 2: That's a film that kind of for me, it kind
Speaker 2: of stands out of time for me, like I don't
Speaker 2: necessarily think about it in connection to other projects, But
Speaker 2: 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 is a frequent eighties
Speaker 3: kid misstep. But because of the frequency of viewing of
Speaker 3: this uh interspace Goonies Top Gun, it created a percent
Speaker 3: that was very not organic to me and and stuck
Speaker 3: out like a sort of thumb whenever I would try
Speaker 3: to use it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he's not the it's not the worst
Speaker 2: role model you could latch onto as far as a
Speaker 2: lead character in an eighties picture. But yeah, he's he's
Speaker 2: obnocked right right from the get go. He's obnoxious, he's drunk,
Speaker 2: He clearly is a mess, and but he's he's portrayed
Speaker 2: as a likable man, a lovable mess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very very kind and funny take on
Speaker 3: all 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 alcohol for him. He's really booze centered.
Speaker 2: Just drinking giant molecules of whiskey. As we'll get back to.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean Dennis Quaid. This is not an
Speaker 2: actor that we really need to introduce much. I think
Speaker 2: everybody knows who Dennis Quaid is, famous leading man brother
Speaker 2: of Randy. Credits go back to the mid seventies and
Speaker 2: he's really been in all sorts of stuff, Like it's
Speaker 2: really weird to look through his filmography, like just looking
Speaker 2: at twenty twenty four. He managed to star in the
Speaker 2: GOP Cinematic Universe film Reagan as Reagan, and he played
Speaker 2: a major role in the body horror film The Substance.
Speaker 3: Oh, I have not seen The Substance yet. I'm excited too, though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't seen anither of him yet. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: I probably need to do him back to back. But yeah,
Speaker 2: his career that was full of stuff like this, Like
Speaker 2: it's a mix of genre films and mainstream dramas and
Speaker 2: comedies as well as biopicks. I think he played Jerry
Speaker 2: Lee Lewis in a biopic at one point, so yeah,
Speaker 2: it's kind of hard to pin him down. I think
Speaker 2: for my own money, When I think of Dennis quaid films, though,
Speaker 2: I instantly think of nineteen eighty five's Enemy Mine, where
Speaker 2: it's it's Dennis Quaid Lewis gossip junior, human and alien
Speaker 2: on a strange alien world. I was always very captivated
Speaker 2: 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 grin, 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 a space the way it's on the
Speaker 3: poster really sells who he is in this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's having a great time. Yeah all right.
Speaker 2: Our other main character that Dennis Quade's character is going
Speaker 2: to be inside of in a miniaturized form is the
Speaker 2: character Jack Putter, played by Martin Short born nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: another name that scarcely requires introduction. Martin Short is just
Speaker 2: 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: Jimmy 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 2: Yeah. I mean, he's one of those actors that when
Speaker 2: I when I think of Martin Short, I instantly think
Speaker 2: of those really you know, over the top in high
Speaker 2: energy characters I think of of Glick, I think of
Speaker 2: Ed Grimley of course his character and Arrested Development Jack Dorso,
Speaker 2: you know, and he's he's great at that, and he's
Speaker 2: great at those like freak out performances in a way
Speaker 2: that they are very I feel like there are very
Speaker 2: few actors I would even compare him to, like maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, compare him to the likes of, you know,
Speaker 2: Robin Williams or or Jim Carrey even you know where
Speaker 2: they can they can hit that level of intensity, comedic intensity.
Speaker 2: But then I would also compare him to the other
Speaker 2: two in that, especially when you look at some recent
Speaker 2: Martin short performances, like he's he's a really strong actor,
Speaker 2: you know, he's he's really great in these smaller non
Speaker 2: comedic roles or stretches as well. And I think you
Speaker 2: really see that on Only Murders in the Building, a
Speaker 2: great TV series, obviously comedic series. It doesn't take it
Speaker 2: itself too seriously, and he's surrounded by great actors and actresses,
Speaker 2: but I am most frequently impressed by the smaller moments
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah. So I don't think we see as much from
Speaker 2: him along those lines in Interspace, but again, certainly in
Speaker 2: other projects. He was also really good. Recently in the
Speaker 2: series of The Morning Show, he had a small part
Speaker 2: is a disgrace director named Dick Lundy and the name
Speaker 2: sounds like a Martin Short character, but it was like,
Speaker 2: it's like a really serious, like creepy kind of character,
Speaker 2: a charismatic, charming, sexual predator sort of a guy. Wow.
Speaker 3: Going back to comparing him with Robin Williams and Jim
Speaker 3: Carrey almost called him James Carrey.
Speaker 2: Jim Carrey, I think you know it's James now that
Speaker 2: he's back in Sonica.
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 Schwartzenegger. 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 assuming
Speaker 3: in that scenario that Michael J. Fox would be playing
Speaker 3: 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 2: Yeah, I agreed, absolutely, all right, get into the rest
Speaker 2: of the cast. Here we have Meg Ryan playing Lydia
Speaker 2: Maxwell Meg Ryan born nineteen sixty one, another huge name
Speaker 2: that I think most everyone's familiar with, mostly known for
Speaker 2: I guess her biggest successes were a handful of just
Speaker 2: highly successful rom coms of the eighties and nineties. Eighty
Speaker 2: nine's When Harry Met Sally ninety three, Sleepless in Seattle
Speaker 2: the Eights, You've Got Mail, So I'm pretty pretty big deal.
Speaker 2: She's been in other things, for sure. She was in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three's Amityville three D, for example, the one
Speaker 2: with the claw busting out of the VHS cover.
Speaker 3: Also in Top Gun, Oh well, yeah, plays Goose's wife.
Speaker 3: I think I kind of feel like this is a
Speaker 3: Top Gun episode, Rob I'm gonna dot Top Gun episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But again, Yeah, she's great in this, we'll get
Speaker 2: into It's an interesting role. There is an interesting love
Speaker 2: triangle in this picture that I was totally lost on
Speaker 2: me as a kid, but watching it as a grown
Speaker 2: up is just it's deeply weird. It's strange that they
Speaker 2: ever even went for all of this, even with all
Speaker 2: the restraint they show that it's a strange love triangle. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but she's great. She has great chemistry with everyone, including
Speaker 2: Dennis Quaid, who she would end up marrying after this picture.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: And spoiler she marries his character at the end of
Speaker 2: this movie.
Speaker 3: So I got a lot to say about that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that guest list is wild.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it feels like a rap party. I'll go
Speaker 2: back to it. All right, Now, getting into the many,
Speaker 2: many villains of this picture, we'll start with the lead
Speaker 2: villain that we eventually are introduced to, and that is
Speaker 2: a Victor Scrimshaw, played by Kevin McCarthy, who of nineteen
Speaker 2: fourteen through twenty ten American actor, nominated for an Oscar
Speaker 2: for his performance in the nineteen fifty two adaptation of
Speaker 2: Death of a Salesman, but I think known to many
Speaker 2: out there for his just wonderful paranoid performance in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty six is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the original
Speaker 2: black and white one. Also perhaps known to many of
Speaker 2: you for his role in eighty nine's UHF. I assume
Speaker 2: I don't remember who he played in UHF. I'm assuming
Speaker 2: it was a villain, like a studio TV studio villain
Speaker 2: of some sort.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't recall. That's maybe we'll do UHF next time, Rob.
Speaker 3: That's a a great movie that it's been way too
Speaker 3: long since I've seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Clearly though, Kevin McCarthy was a favorite Joe Dante's
Speaker 2: because some of his other credits include The Howling the
Speaker 2: Birds Piranha. He also pops up in nineteen ninety one's
Speaker 2: Eve of destruction. That's one that I never saw, but
Speaker 2: saw the trailers for all the time. It has like
Speaker 2: 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 their congressman died or not to
Speaker 3: get elected.
Speaker 2: But that real 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 who knows the grift very well, kind of takes
Speaker 3: Eddie Murphy under his wing and shows him how to
Speaker 3: how to grift in in the right way, which is
Speaker 3: to say, the political way.
Speaker 2: All right, No, that sounds pretty fun.
Speaker 3: Really slimy guy. McCarthy plays him really well.
Speaker 2: Yeah he is. He's really good at playing the slimy villain,
Speaker 2: all right. Other villains include his kind of partner in
Speaker 2: crime here is doctor Margaret Kanker. Canker played by Fiona
Speaker 2: Lewis born nineteen forty six, British actress who we've discussed
Speaker 2: on the show before because she was in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: two's Doctor Fivees Rises Again starring Vincent Price, and her
Speaker 2: other credits include sixty seven's To Fearless, Vampire Killers, seventy
Speaker 2: three is Blue Blood with Oliver Reed, the nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: four Draculas starring Jack Palance, seventy five Listomania, seventy seven's
Speaker 2: Tintoria Killer Shark, seventy eight's The Fury, and eighty three
Speaker 2: Strange Invaders. This 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: to me from. But fantastic role, fantastic performance, and just
Speaker 3: something it's gonna nag me until the day I die.
Speaker 3: What I remember it from?
Speaker 2: All Right? The next villain. Oh, this is the one
Speaker 2: of the big ones, if not the biggest one, This
Speaker 2: is the one I think everyone remembers. This is mister
Speaker 2: Igo played by Oh they always intimidating. Vernon Wells born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five Australian actor, best known for playing heavies
Speaker 2: for that like signature mug of his and he's played
Speaker 2: some really iconic ones.
Speaker 3: He's bad news. Yeah, he's just in this movie in particular,
Speaker 3: the most fun kind of bad news, but menacing without
Speaker 3: all right, there are a few tells that he had,
Speaker 3: like really specific tells through the movie, but most of
Speaker 3: it is just the aura that he brings to the screen.
Speaker 3: He's he's a menace. He's one to watch out for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we'll discuss like his character is probably one
Speaker 2: of the better sort of terminator esque villains, like spin
Speaker 2: on Terminator without going too hard on the terminatorness, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's not really a cyborg, but he's got like this
Speaker 2: cool prosthetic hand. And I was always like all in
Speaker 2: unprosthetic hand villains at this at this age when I
Speaker 2: was a kid, you know, And this guy's got all
Speaker 2: sorts of cool gadgets.
Speaker 3: He does feel like more of a little stinker in
Speaker 3: his actual actions than he is a terminator that will
Speaker 3: end your life, even though that's always the threat whenever
Speaker 3: he's around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he'll also just pop a clown's balloon for
Speaker 2: no reason except that he hates fun. So yeah, Wells,
Speaker 2: Vernon Wells, he had some great roles. He played Wez
Speaker 2: that's the mohawk, the mohawk guy in eighty one's The
Speaker 2: Road Warrior. He was the Lord General in eighty five's
Speaker 2: Weird Science. Oh, and then a big one he's been
Speaker 2: at the guy with the mustache and Commando Amazing. He's
Speaker 2: the one that he kills last because he likes him
Speaker 2: the most. I can't I can never remember how that
Speaker 2: that's right. But yeah, his Australian TV credits go back
Speaker 2: to the mid seventies and he's one of these guys
Speaker 2: that remains highly active in genre pictures. He's got like,
Speaker 2: you know, like three dozen upcoming projects. That's sort of cheeze. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so he's great. But then we're not done with the villains.
Speaker 2: We also have one more and it's another very memorable one,
Speaker 2: and it is the Cowboy, played by Robert Picardo born
Speaker 2: fifty three, Frequently cast by Joe Dante in a variety
Speaker 2: of roles. He gets to play a bad guy here,
Speaker 2: though with plenty of comedic elements, and I just have
Speaker 2: to say, an accent of unknown origin. I have no
Speaker 2: idea what they were going for here. I think it's
Speaker 2: inoffensive because I have no idea, like what part of
Speaker 2: the globe it's supposed to be. Like, I always thought
Speaker 2: he was maybe supposed to be Russian, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: I saw some write ups online where people make arguments
Speaker 2: 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 they're from somewhere else. They're not
Speaker 3: gonna tell you what country they're from because they don't
Speaker 3: want to get at that country upset. But they're just
Speaker 3: kind of other, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that in Robert's case, this accent is either
Speaker 3: super offensive or engineered to be as inoffensive as possible,
Speaker 3: because it could not be real and could not harken
Speaker 3: to any specific existing accent.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then on top of that, he has this
Speaker 2: like old Hollywood cowboy persona that he has completely taken on.
Speaker 2: So he's always wearing the cowboy boots often the other
Speaker 2: bells and whistles as well. It's it's a fun and
Speaker 2: perplexing villain role.
Speaker 3: He's I kept having to remind myself that he was
Speaker 3: a villain. He doesn't seem villain. 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 2: Yeah, he is. The plot gets fairly complex, but basically
Speaker 2: he represents a buyer for stolen technology. We don't know
Speaker 2: exactly who he's representing. But he's the bag man, right,
Speaker 2: He's the guy with the money.
Speaker 3: Who's just going to go out and dance when he's
Speaker 3: in town.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he's also going to party. He's he's up
Speaker 2: to like sleep with any of the leads of this picture,
Speaker 2: like it doesn't matter to him. But yeah, he doesn't
Speaker 2: really do anything bad. I don't think he tries to
Speaker 2: kill anybody, right, he's No.
Speaker 3: He's pretty pretty silly guy. Uh, just good at his job.
Speaker 3: I guess we don't really see that, but we're told
Speaker 3: that he's good at his job, and he seems pretty
Speaker 3: confident all things, you know, considered, He's a pretty confident
Speaker 3: guy who knows himself, knows what he likes and pursues it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, Picgardo was a familiar face I think to
Speaker 2: film and TV viewers in general because on the TV
Speaker 2: front he was on the Wonder Years or he had
Speaker 2: some roles on the Wonder yearside, and he wasn't I
Speaker 2: don't think he was main cast. He was in China Beach,
Speaker 2: Star Trek Voyager of course, and Stargate and then films.
Speaker 2: You know, we had the Howling, we held Total Recall.
Speaker 2: He was Johnny Cab in nineteen ninety and he's also
Speaker 2: part of the cast of twenty sixteens Coen Brothers the
Speaker 2: Coen Brothers film Hail Caesar, but that has everybody in it,
Speaker 2: so I don't know that we really need to single
Speaker 2: him out for that. But yeah, he's always a terrific
Speaker 2: presence funn 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 Cab, 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 2: You take Johnny Cab out of that picture, the whole
Speaker 2: thing falls apart too.
Speaker 3: It truly is the glue, all right?
Speaker 2: And then the final main character and supporting character, I
Speaker 2: guess really I'll mention is Wendy Shawl, who plays a
Speaker 2: character named Wendy This is Jack's coworker at the grocery.
Speaker 2: Born nineteen fifty four. I'm mentioning her mainly because she
Speaker 2: was in Creature from eighty five, an alien knockoff that
Speaker 2: Joe and I discussed on Weird House Cinema here. She
Speaker 2: did a lot of TV, but her later film credits
Speaker 2: include Oh, nineteen eighty seven's Munchies, It's a Gremlin's knockoff,
Speaker 2: a Gromlins movie, You Got Batteries not included eighty nine's
Speaker 2: The Burbs, And she did a lot of TV as well,
Speaker 2: X File, six Feet under a Star Trek Voyager, and
Speaker 2: she's also done a lot of voice acting for a
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, all right, now, on the effects end of things,
Speaker 2: this was a big industrial light and magic special effects movie.
Speaker 2: So it involved just an army of talented professional and
Speaker 2: it won an Oscar in nineteen eighty eight for Best
Speaker 2: Special Effects, beating out Predator. So Predator versus Interspace Interspace
Speaker 2: 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, in 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 2: Yeah, and I thought the effects held up really well.
Speaker 2: This is not a film where I felt like I
Speaker 2: saw any wires, any scenes. You know, it all holds
Speaker 2: up extremely well, So, you know, well deserving of that Oscar.
Speaker 2: Dennis mun was the visual effects supervisor for ILM, and
Speaker 2: I also mentioned in passing that Rob Bouteen born nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine, a special makeup effects designer and creator. On
Speaker 2: this picture. He was involved in a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: squirmy and drippy special effects pictures, the likes of Squirm,
Speaker 2: the Howling, the Thing, RoboCop and Total Recall.
Speaker 3: So he made the worm face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was involved in the worm face. I
Speaker 2: didn't get a chance to look up exactly what he
Speaker 2: did on this picture, but I have this. I highly
Speaker 2: suspect that it is the morphing the face morphing sin
Speaker 2: that we'll get into, because that's one of those that
Speaker 2: is it's not grotesque unless you stop and really look
Speaker 2: at it, and then you start really, oh this is
Speaker 2: 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 2: You know, Oh that's the remorph. I think, yes, yes.
Speaker 3: The full head goes on for a long time. But
Speaker 3: just there are scenes with Martin Shwort's mouthwork where it's
Speaker 3: just his mouth and it's Martin short. It's not a prosthetic.
Speaker 3: It's not you know, a stand in dummy head where
Speaker 3: it's just remarkable, how believable an effect like that is.
Speaker 2: All right, and then finally the music. It's a Jerry
Speaker 2: Goldsmith score who lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand
Speaker 2: and four, film music legend. His other scores, of course,
Speaker 2: 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, the opening credits is incredible.
Speaker 2: Let's get into those opening credits, because this is I
Speaker 2: did remember the opening credits from because this one really
Speaker 2: blew my mind as a kid, because you go into innerspace,
Speaker 2: you're expecting all that, you know, the beautiful inner wonders
Speaker 2: of a micro world, and that is where we are.
Speaker 2: But as we zoom out, we realize we've just been
Speaker 2: inside cocktail ice for the whole you know, opening of
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: All and we realized that this cocktail ice is that
Speaker 2: some sort of a party, some sort of a formal
Speaker 2: get together of military test pilots. There's cake there, models
Speaker 2: of planes there, a bunch of of of you know,
Speaker 2: a very top gun s test pilot dudes. And then
Speaker 2: in to the fray enters Lieutenant Tuck Pendleston. This is
Speaker 2: our main character, and he is again already completely wasted.
Speaker 2: A big embarrassing scene follows where he falls through a table.
Speaker 2: He gets into a fight with the other fly boys
Speaker 2: in the kitchen and clearly he has a number of
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, it's like the stunt team knew they weren't going
Speaker 2: to have many fisticuff scenes, so they were going to
Speaker 2: really sell them yeah when they had them. So we
Speaker 2: also see Lydia Maxwell. This is Meg Ryan's character. She
Speaker 2: is his girlfriend, I believe, but she's also a reporter.
Speaker 2: I don't know if she is here as a reporter
Speaker 2: or as his girlfriend, but she kind of serves in
Speaker 2: both capacities.
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 2: Yeah, so she drags tied back to his pad, and
Speaker 2: this is you know, is you're figuring out who these
Speaker 2: characters are. It becomes really apparent that this is his place,
Speaker 2: this is not their place, because there are photos of SR.
Speaker 2: Seventy one blackbirds on the walls. There's also all this
Speaker 2: bunny memorabilia that's going to make a lot more sense
Speaker 2: here in a little bit. There's a Santa Claus on
Speaker 2: the desk, so you know, Holiday movie confirmed? Or is
Speaker 2: this guy's pad just so sloppy that there's a Santa
Speaker 2: up year round. Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 3: And right in the middle of the apartment on the table,
Speaker 3: huge nineteen eighties robotic arm. And anybody who was alive
Speaker 3: during the eighties knows exactly what this robot arm is.
Speaker 3: It's got one hinge and it's got a pincher as
Speaker 3: it's hand. It's meant to pinch things, pick them up,
Speaker 3: move them somewhere else, and release the pinch. Here. He's
Speaker 3: got it built to pick up a bottle of booze,
Speaker 3: turn it over to pour it into a glass. He
Speaker 3: does it poorly, or whoever's controlling this robot does it poorly,
Speaker 3: obviously meant to convey that Tuck's doing a bad job
Speaker 3: of it, probably because he's wasted. But somebody on this
Speaker 3: team is really good at articulating a robot an eighties
Speaker 3: robot arm because you see it happen a few more
Speaker 3: times throughout the movie, and it's done very elegantly every
Speaker 3: other time.
Speaker 2: Now would this would this have been before the or
Speaker 2: after the nes RM 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 were
Speaker 3: trying to play and allow your guy to pass through.
Speaker 3: A 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 2: Yeah, so that energy is very strong in this picture
Speaker 2: for sure. So they get settled in for the evening
Speaker 2: and and more or less we're picking up the next
Speaker 2: morning because that's when Cabby Dick Miller, a frequently mentioned
Speaker 2: actor on Weird House, cinema because he pops up in everything.
Speaker 2: I think he has popped up in more films than
Speaker 2: than than any other actor that we've covered here on
Speaker 2: the show. But he's there as a cabby to pick
Speaker 2: Lydia up in the morning. She is trying to sneak out,
Speaker 2: leave a note and leave Tuck behind forever. And we
Speaker 2: get this, we get this, you know, comedic but very
Speaker 2: very hunky scene where Tuck comes out wearing only a
Speaker 2: towel and he's going to try and talk her out
Speaker 2: of leaving. The towel gets stuck in the door, cab
Speaker 2: rides off, towel goes with the cab full backside exposed. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so there's a lot more beefcake in the picture than
Speaker 2: I remember.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really really hunky scene. A lot of
Speaker 3: hunks in this movie, a lot of honky activity, and
Speaker 3: even Martin Short gets to participate in being a hunk
Speaker 3: a little bit later. One thing I think it's important
Speaker 3: to point out here is that Lydia did try to
Speaker 3: leave the night before and a drunk Tuck blocked her exit.
Speaker 3: So big red flag there does it casually, which shows
Speaker 3: again what a lithario this guy is. And maybe gives
Speaker 3: a little bit of insight into his character. But he,
Speaker 3: either for concern for his well being or because he
Speaker 3: is such a wooer, plays the old timey song Cupid
Speaker 3: for Lydia, which I guess is their song, and that
Speaker 3: convinces her maybe to stay the night. I don't know
Speaker 3: that that's what does it, But to your point, we
Speaker 3: see her leaving the next morning and trying to get
Speaker 3: away for good. So it at least satisfied what Tuck
Speaker 3: was trying to get at that night. But the song
Speaker 3: Cupid comes back into play a little bit later.
Speaker 2: Yes, that one will be important. Now at this point
Speaker 2: we switch over to our other main character, because here
Speaker 2: we have Jack Putter played by Martin Short, in to
Speaker 2: see his doctor, and this is some pretty fun character
Speaker 2: work with the guy playing the doctor is William Shallart
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty two through twenty sixteen, who did
Speaker 2: a lot of TV shows. But basically we catch on
Speaker 2: pretty quickly that Putter is a hypochondriac that's coming in
Speaker 2: all the time. It's clearly dealing with a lot of
Speaker 2: very serious anxiety issues regarding his work, and he starts
Speaker 2: telling this story about what this nightmare he keeps having
Speaker 2: that he's very concerned about, in which he is hideously
Speaker 2: overcharging this woman at the checkout register at 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 vacation. Which how
Speaker 3: times have changed? Really that that's just that's the that's
Speaker 3: the direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this guy's having a mental health crisis, like at
Speaker 2: this point, like he's he he is having a very
Speaker 2: hard time, and it's just like, here's a prescription for
Speaker 2: a trip to Mexico.
Speaker 3: Right, you can probably afford it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So you know at this point, okay,
Speaker 2: the pieces, the main pieces are on the table concerning
Speaker 2: our protagonists. But then we got to get into the
Speaker 2: real plot. How are we going to get miniaturization involved here?
Speaker 2: So we pick up with Silicon Valley dudes stuck in
Speaker 2: traffic discussing a project. We have one of the guys
Speaker 2: from the top Gun academy graduation thing earlier and it's
Speaker 2: there he's like, well, who have you hired to pilot
Speaker 2: this prototype or whatever? And now like, oh, we got
Speaker 2: Tuck Pendleton. We hear he's great, and this dude's like,
Speaker 2: that doesn't sound too great for me to me, Tuck
Speaker 2: Pimdleton not a great get for whatever you do we're
Speaker 2: doing here. And then we kind of like fast forward
Speaker 2: a bit and then here's here's Tuck Pendleton getting ready
Speaker 2: to jump into the We don't know yet it's going
Speaker 2: to be a pod of some kind, but he's getting
Speaker 2: himself amped up with slaps to the face as well
Speaker 2: as as well as with a fair amount of inappropriate
Speaker 2: 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: Lefario 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 defended 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 pilot, and he reinforces that kind of on his
Speaker 3: walk in, and once he gets into the mind, he
Speaker 3: is down to business. He knows exactly the right questions
Speaker 3: to ask, the right things to check. He's the voice
Speaker 3: of authority.
Speaker 2: And it becomes clear pretty quickly that what they're about
Speaker 2: to do is he's going to get in this pod
Speaker 2: that is pretty really cool looking, looks like a cross
Speaker 2: between a submarine and some spaceship, and they're going to
Speaker 2: miniaturize him and inject him into a rabbit. Now, one
Speaker 2: would assume that this is there have been multiple phases
Speaker 2: before this, that they have tests, you know, unmanned miniaturization,
Speaker 2: that they have tested manned miniaturization, and they've also injected
Speaker 2: miniaturized objects into to test animals, and that now we're
Speaker 2: only finally getting to the point where they're going to
Speaker 2: send in a human being into a rabbit. But who knows,
Speaker 2: maybe they're just really having to push this project along
Speaker 2: and this is just test number one. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is where we learned the reason that
Speaker 3: rabbits were so prominent in his apartment, And yeah, I
Speaker 3: get it, But all the rabbit stuff at his apartment
Speaker 3: was like a fan of rabbits, not somebody who's studying
Speaker 3: rabbits intensely. It's somebody who like bugs. Bunny is in
Speaker 3: there and things like that, And so this guy likes
Speaker 3: rabbits a lot more than he really needs to to
Speaker 3: perform his scientific role of being inside of a rabbit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's researching at the wrong scale. I think. Now,
Speaker 2: I do really love these scenes where he's getting into
Speaker 2: the cockpit of the pod. I think it feel like
Speaker 2: this is all really well done. It has a great
Speaker 2: textured and believable NASA feel to it. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very busy, very eighty in the sense
Speaker 3: that it feels cramped. There's so much machinery on top
Speaker 3: of itself, and the space is not, you know, a
Speaker 3: designer friendly lab, which I think you'll see a contrast
Speaker 3: to that later on in the movie, But here it
Speaker 3: just seems like these guys are scientists. They're bleeding edge
Speaker 3: R and D. And then once you see the space
Speaker 3: that the pot is in, it's mylar city in the
Speaker 3: best way. There's that gold NASA milar wrapping the entire room.
Speaker 3: All of the reflections off of that milar are heightening
Speaker 3: the effect. It's really really perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can get and then inside and outside you
Speaker 2: have like all these pixelated computer screens, video feeds. I
Speaker 2: feel like there are more robot arms yeah, and whatever
Speaker 2: robot arms are up to. So yeah, it all feels
Speaker 2: very real. I love the look of all of this,
Speaker 2: and I feel like it's aged really well and in
Speaker 2: a way that's something that non analog wouldn't have, you know,
Speaker 2: if it was all touch screens and you know, next
Speaker 2: generation and 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 inauthentic compared to all of
Speaker 3: the other effects work that's going on, but again, it works.
Speaker 3: It's in that milar space. It's supposed to be crackling
Speaker 3: and electrifying, similar to how the DeLorean does right before
Speaker 3: it's about to jump through time, and so it works.
Speaker 3: It's just a little bit lower five than some of
Speaker 3: the other stuff we see, and.
Speaker 2: They seem to pull it off. They spin the thing
Speaker 2: around in a centrifuge, they shrink it down to size. Now,
Speaker 2: the pod is this tiny speck inside of a syringe.
Speaker 2: They use a magnification effect to take a look at it,
Speaker 2: the lead doctor does. But you know that something is
Speaker 2: going to shake things up, and that takes the form
Speaker 2: of an attack by gas mask wearing goons. They come
Speaker 2: in with an acid key card to short out the lock,
Speaker 2: 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 at 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 with it.
Speaker 2: They have a pretty non violent approach, like they're clearly
Speaker 2: trying to cut down on casualties, though they do punch
Speaker 2: a few people, which seems uncalled for if you have
Speaker 2: those great gas cannons on hand. But still they quickly
Speaker 2: take over things, and this is where we first see
Speaker 2: 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 it did occur to me at this moment were
Speaker 3: the other guys the good guys. I don't know what
Speaker 3: the purpose of this project was. They don't really state
Speaker 3: what they're going to do after they've successfully completed the
Speaker 3: Rabbit project, but we're just supposed to assume that their
Speaker 3: intentions were good. These guys' intentions were bad. And I
Speaker 3: think you know, I mentioned that Grimlins was trying to
Speaker 3: tell you a message in this movie is not Maybe
Speaker 3: this movie is trying to tell you a message about
Speaker 3: early Silicon Valley tech espionage and that it's really just
Speaker 3: bad guys versus bad guys, and it's a question of
Speaker 3: which one are you rooting for.
Speaker 2: I did have a fun time trying to piece together
Speaker 2: like the intended endpoint for this research, and we can
Speaker 2: kind of feel it out a little bit by seeing
Speaker 2: the capabilities of the pod. So the pod allows the
Speaker 2: pilot to ultimately see and hear through the host and
Speaker 2: or communicate with them, though I guess that did this
Speaker 2: necessary and then also deliver a powerful electromagnetic pulse that
Speaker 2: can destroy electronics within a short term radius, and so
Speaker 2: it seemed to me I was like, Okay, I can
Speaker 2: imagine that this is building up maybe to having a
Speaker 2: human pilot a rat into a sensitive environment and then
Speaker 2: set off that pulse, or of course, ultimately to some extent,
Speaker 2: like is planting a spy inside of a human being
Speaker 2: and potentially doing that electromagnetic pulse elsewhere. But oh, then
Speaker 2: we see other capabilities that shake things up even more,
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 3: technology I could think of was a really dark and
Speaker 3: depressing one that used another living being as a vessel
Speaker 3: to achieve something via a smaller human being inside of
Speaker 3: that vessel that might be small enough to escape whatever
Speaker 3: situation it's putting the larger vessel in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they kind of they definitely allude to
Speaker 2: these espionage applications, but they never even once hint at
Speaker 2: a medical application, not directly. I mean, there are a
Speaker 2: couple of jokes, but for the most part, Yeah, the
Speaker 2: idea that you would have a little submarine inside of
Speaker 2: person is not even explored. Is a medical breakthrough here.
Speaker 3: Well, Tuck casually turns Putter into if you're getting ahead
Speaker 3: of ourselves, but he casually turns it into like a
Speaker 3: superhuman just yeah, because it's convenient for that scene. So
Speaker 3: the technology is very easy to do once you're in there, apparently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, once you're inside at that scale, you can do
Speaker 2: anything you want, change faces up, cure diseases, I guess,
Speaker 2: but also make computers explode. And that seems to be
Speaker 2: the prime focus here. All right, So what happens? Okay,
Speaker 2: so we have the miniature I sub it's in a syringe.
Speaker 2: They were going to inject it into the rabbit, but
Speaker 2: then all hell breaks loose. The doc, the main doctor
Speaker 2: here is, escapes with the syringe and then our villain,
Speaker 2: doctor Canker, calls for mister I go to chase after him.
Speaker 2: So we get this big car bike chase, a number
Speaker 2: of big chase scenes that take place in the picture.
Speaker 2: On all heads to the mall and hey, that is
Speaker 2: where Jack is trying to book relaxing vacation. And I
Speaker 2: think you 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then yeah, we get to the mall. Mister
Speaker 2: I goes using he's the finger gun, which I remember
Speaker 2: just thinking was super cool when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: This crazy robot hand of his that he can make
Speaker 2: the make the finger guns and then actually fire the
Speaker 2: finger gun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very into spectro gadgety in the way that
Speaker 3: the tip of the finger kind of comes off to
Speaker 3: reveal the gun. But I mean, aside from that, like malls,
Speaker 3: this mall in particular, this is the height of mals
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 2: Yeah, this whole sequence is feels very Joe Dante, like
Speaker 2: the bit where the doctor with the syringe. He ends
Speaker 2: up injecting Martin Short in the buttock and then falls
Speaker 2: into the arms of three or four different mascots and
Speaker 2: dies and we get that that hazy pov of him
Speaker 2: looking up at the mascots looming over him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 2: So at this point we have miniaturized Pendleton tuck inside
Speaker 2: of full sized Jack Martin Short and that, and we're
Speaker 2: off to the race. It's like, this is the this
Speaker 2: is the plot. It's we're going to get into this
Speaker 2: whole situation of how does Pendleton make Jack aware of
Speaker 2: his presence inside him? What kind of gadgets are going
Speaker 2: to allow that to happen, and then how are they
Speaker 2: going to figure out, you know, what sort of plot
Speaker 2: is going on, and how they're going to maneuver their
Speaker 2: way 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: that they're points at which the action is high and
Speaker 3: the pod is shaken around. So it's like, oh, so
Speaker 3: you must be big enough to be like moving, to
Speaker 3: 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 can 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,
Speaker 3: which I'm happy to do.
Speaker 2: The pod is as small or as large as the
Speaker 2: plot requires it to be. Can it be grabbed with
Speaker 2: a pair of tweezers? Yes? Can't. Can it cut its
Speaker 2: way through the wall of an artery without causing any
Speaker 2: kind of trouble inside the body? Absolutely? All right, So
Speaker 2: at this point we're gonna we're gonna proceed with like
Speaker 2: a little less attention to every little detail here, but
Speaker 2: we want to talk, certainly in broad strokes about like
Speaker 2: the central piece of technology here, the pod. I definitely
Speaker 2: want to talk about the love triangle and the big
Speaker 2: finale and any other moments that stand out to us.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the big, the big thing about the pod,
Speaker 2: and this was something that you know I loved as
Speaker 2: a kid, is that we get like this this first
Speaker 2: contact between Tuck Pendleton and Jack, where you know you
Speaker 2: can use well, for first of all, he uses a
Speaker 2: device like fires a harpoon into the inside of his
Speaker 2: eyes so that he can see out of his his
Speaker 2: eyes see what Jack sees. And then later he also
Speaker 2: uses some sort of a harpoon type device inside of
Speaker 2: his ear so that he can hear him as well.
Speaker 2: And then at that point, like Tuck Pendleton is just
Speaker 2: completely jacked into the whole system. He can do all
Speaker 2: sorts of things as we'll see. You know, he can
Speaker 2: he can adjust like is adrenaline and then ultimately change
Speaker 2: his face one them really in addition to the electro
Speaker 2: magnetic pulse thing, changing his face, shifting his face into
Speaker 2: the face of another person, well, that one really up
Speaker 2: the ante here. It's like, Wow, we can do anything
Speaker 2: 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 can
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 rearranging
Speaker 3: cells at that point. You know, you're trying to take
Speaker 3: on an appearance and give a hair color and a
Speaker 3: hair consistency that he doesn't or I guess he had
Speaker 3: his original hair or he had Jack's hair still, But
Speaker 3: it just seemed like a huge leap of technology to
Speaker 3: be able to do that, and all of a sudden
Speaker 3: Tuck knows how to do this. Yeah, this is his
Speaker 3: first voyage too, or maybe not, maybe was it his
Speaker 3: first voice.
Speaker 2: Well, he was planning for rabbits, so he should if anything,
Speaker 2: he should be okay, but not particularly experienced with shifting
Speaker 2: rabbit faces around it. But a full blown Martin short
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, because that's a very expressive face. To change into
Speaker 2: another very expressive face, you need something a little plainer,
Speaker 2: I think for your first big.
Speaker 3: Hurrah, exactly exactly. I think, you know, I blame this
Speaker 3: movie as a child for my impression that I still
Speaker 3: have today, where my instinct is that there's a lot
Speaker 3: of empty space in the human body and you can
Speaker 3: travel between the organs with you know, the same way
Speaker 3: that you're traveling between planets and the Solar System, that
Speaker 3: there's just a lot of dead space there, which is
Speaker 3: not true. Anybody who's seen a diagram of what's going
Speaker 3: on inside a human body knows how just packed together
Speaker 3: absolutely everything is. But my child mind saw the human
Speaker 3: body as spacious, well lit, lots of areas between your
Speaker 3: vital organs that you could just kind of hang out
Speaker 3: in and fly between.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's inner space, not 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 2: Oh yeah, Like he starts off in the buttock and
Speaker 2: is almost immediately at the optic nerves. Maybe they cut something,
Speaker 2: but maybe he also he is just like firing through
Speaker 2: 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 going to start causing
Speaker 3: damage to to your host at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he does make the host uncomfortable at times. It's
Speaker 2: there's some some related symptoms.
Speaker 3: I'm shocked that that Martin short did not display any
Speaker 3: sort of existential I mean, he had some existential dread
Speaker 3: at the beginning before he realized that there was a
Speaker 3: pot inside of him.
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 3: To me, that would have just heightened the existential dread
Speaker 3: that there's now something, an actual thing inside of me
Speaker 3: that's talking to me and manipulating my body without me
Speaker 3: being able to stop it if I if I wanted.
Speaker 2: To Now some important plot stuff that you mentioned too,
Speaker 2: is that eventually okay? Well, first of all, character wise
Speaker 2: Jack and Pendleton, Jack and Tuck, Uh, they come together,
Speaker 2: they end up bonding over things like it becomes a
Speaker 2: very close relationship, not only because one is literally inside
Speaker 2: of the other, but but you know, they're they're they're
Speaker 2: the only people who can talk to each other, you know,
Speaker 2: they can. They have this this very intimate relationship, which
Speaker 2: I think the movie does a good good job with,
Speaker 2: you know, building this relationship between the two. And then
Speaker 2: of course is ultimately gonna introduce Meg Ryan's character Lydia.
Speaker 2: And then this is where we're gonna end up with
Speaker 2: this love triangle, which I have to say is one
Speaker 2: of the stranger love triangles I've ever seen, because again,
Speaker 2: we have Jack in large, we have Tuck in small.
Speaker 2: She is Tuck's X. Tuck ends up essentially being like
Speaker 2: the romance whisperer for Jack, helping him to pursue his
Speaker 2: ex at the same time, like he still has feelings
Speaker 2: for Lydia and they and also Lydia, I'm sorry. Also
Speaker 2: Jack and Tuck end up kind of bunding butting heads
Speaker 2: over this as well. It's it's bizarre and and at
Speaker 2: the same time was completely lost on me as a kid.
Speaker 2: But it has to be one of the stranger love
Speaker 2: triangles I've ever 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 mean,
Speaker 3: you get the idea of his physical stakes, but you
Speaker 3: don't know he's obviously attracted to Lydia, but he's characterized
Speaker 3: as somebody who does not need a lot of convincing
Speaker 3: to help Tuck out. And sure that's motivated by the
Speaker 3: fact that Tuck is in his body and Tuck needs him,
Speaker 3: and maybe that is something that Jack wants as well
Speaker 3: as somebody to need him or need his help. But
Speaker 3: he's pretty willing, both motivated by fear of the spies
Speaker 3: catching up to him, trying to get Tuck out of
Speaker 3: him their way, which is going to be ugly, trying
Speaker 3: to find a better way to do that, but also
Speaker 3: trying to help him, like you say, romantically, convince Lydia
Speaker 3: to trust him and to trust that Tuck needs her
Speaker 3: help as well. It's it's really interesting and kind of
Speaker 3: puts Jack in the middle in a way that supports
Speaker 3: kind of his warming warm He's not the right word,
Speaker 3: but the fact that people push him around on a
Speaker 3: regular basis. He's kind of being moved around as well,
Speaker 3: emotionally and not just physically the way that Tuck is
Speaker 3: doing to him with the pod. But I do think
Speaker 3: we've got a ticking clock here that we didn't speak about,
Speaker 3: which is Tuck's oxygen is running out.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yes, that's the Tucks you guys running out.
Speaker 2: He's eventually going to die in there if he doesn't
Speaker 2: 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: unk quote good lab before tucks oxygen runs out and
Speaker 3: it gets real close and then you somehow have to
Speaker 3: save Tuck and Lydia's relationship. That's the sea ticking clock.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We also learn that there are like two little
Speaker 2: chips that are involved in the miniaturization process. There are
Speaker 2: other groups out there who have been working on miniaturization,
Speaker 2: and they can miniaturize things, but apparently relargifying things is
Speaker 2: the hard part, and that's where you need both chips,
Speaker 2: the chip that is out here in the full sized
Speaker 2: world and the chip that is now on that pod
Speaker 2: inside of Jack's body. And so that's what the bad
Speaker 2: guys want. They need to get that chip off of
Speaker 2: that pod, and as we'll learn, they'll do anything in
Speaker 2: 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 Cowboy's 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 Lab,
Speaker 3: right so that they can re enlarge Tuck and save him.
Speaker 2: Right. But then at the same time, they've already had
Speaker 2: some run ins with the Good Lab where they've overheard
Speaker 2: the good scientists saying, you know, it's actually easier if
Speaker 2: we just let him die inside of Jack's body, because
Speaker 2: nobody can get to that thing, it's miniaturized. Just let
Speaker 2: it go, you know, he'll get I guess, you know,
Speaker 2: excreted one way or another from Jack's body and it'll
Speaker 2: just be lost to time. And maybe that's easier, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I gotta say, all things being equal, taking humanity out
Speaker 3: of the equation altogether, which is what these scientists are doing,
Speaker 3: that's not a bad case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and especially considering what mister Scrimshaw wants. We have
Speaker 2: a great later. So Drag gets abducted at least twice.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's like he's constantly escaping and re
Speaker 2: escaping and getting caught. There's one scene where mister Scrimshaw
Speaker 2: gets this great villain monologue about like, you know, nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons aren't there in the future. Space is in the future.
Speaker 2: It's miniaturization. So great villain monologue there. But then we
Speaker 2: get what we also get time and time again, a
Speaker 2: Pendleton Tuck assisted escape by Jack. So Jack's not necessarily
Speaker 2: he didn't realize when he's been trapped or see the
Speaker 2: light of the escape route. But that's where Tuck comes in.
Speaker 2: Tuck has this great gut instinct where he's like, okay,
Speaker 2: punch now, kick now, jump out of the moving vehicle now.
Speaker 2: 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 2: So at this point I don't know which thread to follow.
Speaker 2: We have more of the love triangle plot that is
Speaker 2: propelling Jack ever closer to a sexual encounter with Lydia
Speaker 2: it would seem though, Again this is a PG film,
Speaker 2: so we're dealing in very broad strokes here, and a
Speaker 2: lot is implied. And then and then we have the
Speaker 2: whole scheme to figure out what Cowboy is up to, uh,
Speaker 2: to seduce Cowboy and then and then take advantage of him,
Speaker 2: and then the morphing of the face, the infiltration of
Speaker 2: the batties. Uh. And this is of course going to
Speaker 2: involve another round of chasing and escaping and everyone going
Speaker 2: after those chips.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it, you know, just to quickly top
Speaker 3: lined the cowboy thread, I think they realized or they learned,
Speaker 3: that the Cowboy goes to a club Inferno whenever he's
Speaker 3: in town because he loves to go dancing and meet women,
Speaker 3: so they go to Club Inferno as well. That's where
Speaker 3: Jack runs into Wendy from the grocery store. Wendy sees
Speaker 3: a new bad boy side of Jack that piques her interest.
Speaker 3: But the long story short there is that Lydia is
Speaker 3: able to seduce the cowboy bring him back to the hotel.
Speaker 3: That's where they're able to knock him out and appropriate
Speaker 3: his face to go to the meeting with Scrimshaw. That
Speaker 3: disguise starts to fall apart in the middle of that meeting.
Speaker 3: I think that the cowboy has a gold toothcap that
Speaker 3: falls out of fake Cowboy's mouth, which tips Scrimshaw off
Speaker 3: gets all of the bad guys up in arms to
Speaker 3: capture Jack. Which there's a great line in lieu of champagne.
Speaker 3: How about some real pain pro pain. I had to
Speaker 3: give it a lot of flowers for going past. How
Speaker 3: about some real pain and add an another pain.
Speaker 2: To the Yeah this is and we get some more
Speaker 2: Inspector gadget Shenanigans for mister Igo because he pulls out
Speaker 2: the blowtorch. Uh, that's right, appendage or maybe the blowtorch
Speaker 2: is just always in there as a as part of
Speaker 2: his Swiss army hand. But they're gonna they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, the cowboy is known for his incredible pain tolerance,
Speaker 2: 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. S Grimshaw's terrified, and rightly so,
Speaker 3: because it's it's a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. It's very well done because if you
Speaker 2: slow it down or watch it twice, you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is this seems like boutine material right here, like
Speaker 2: this is the thing, but it is, but it's it's
Speaker 2: blurry and sped up in a very comedic Looney Tunes fashion,
Speaker 2: and that ultimately like overwhelms the horrific aspects of it.
Speaker 2: But it's very well done. Yeah.
Speaker 3: 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 transfer 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 2: French kisses work. French kisses are a complete exchange of
Speaker 2: all saliable content of the mouth and esophagus, right, That's.
Speaker 3: What we were warned about when we were younger.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, but again, like the whole the baby, the pregnancy,
Speaker 2: like this love triangle is very complex. One might even
Speaker 2: argue too complex for a picture that is just trying
Speaker 2: to be a big summertime explosion of special effects. But
Speaker 2: 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,
Speaker 3: he's you know, doing all of the things that Tuck
Speaker 3: told him to do. Once he realizes that Tuck's not
Speaker 3: inside him, is inside Lydia. He loses that, he loses
Speaker 3: that Dumbo feather, and the confidence kind of quickly at
Speaker 3: that Dumbo feather exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so all that's really well executed. But I know
Speaker 2: that those of you who grew up watching Innerspace are
Speaker 2: you've been waiting for us to get to the big showdown.
Speaker 2: The big showdown is twofold because so basically they bring
Speaker 2: captive Jack back to the bad guy lab, which is
Speaker 2: super sleek and very military. We'll describe their pod here
Speaker 2: in a minute. But of course Lydia is able to
Speaker 2: take control. She built out a handgun. But after they
Speaker 2: have already injected a new villain into Jack's body, they'll wait.
Speaker 2: At the same time, Tuck is not in Jack anymore
Speaker 2: at this point, right, Tuck is in Lydia, but they
Speaker 2: inject mister I go inside of just a frightening like
Speaker 2: military combat pod with big claws, an amazing design here.
Speaker 2: They injected that into him to go after the original pod,
Speaker 2: to get those chips and to kill Tuck.
Speaker 3: That's right, this enemy lab, it looks like the TV
Speaker 3: room from Willy Wonka's cog factory. It's just all white
Speaker 3: 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, tucks 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: Tuck is in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's frightening. And you got the one portal so
Speaker 2: you can have mister IGO's face like the horrifying mug
Speaker 2: of his, like sneering through it and grinning. Yeah, terrifying pod.
Speaker 2: Enemy pod here like a fighter pod that they have
Speaker 2: now injected into Jack, miniaturized and injected. And we get
Speaker 2: a nice bit from Scrimshaw where he turns to doctor
Speaker 2: Canker and he's like, you know, it's going to be
Speaker 2: easier if we just re enlarge him inside Jack's body afterwards,
Speaker 2: which is which is like, we we never see something
Speaker 2: like that happen in the show, But just by mentioning
Speaker 2: the idea, 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 the sound These are as sound
Speaker 3: ideas as any other suggestion. At this point, Lydia gets
Speaker 3: Tuck back into Jack with an intentional kiss to get
Speaker 3: him in. That's where Tuck can help Jack fight off
Speaker 3: mister Igo. Lydia also forces all of the scientists Scrimshaw
Speaker 3: and Canker into the miniaturization pod or into the miniaturization
Speaker 3: chamber and shrinks them all, does not shrink them all
Speaker 3: to a microscopic size, which they are for the rest
Speaker 3: of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, So the big showdown then is twofold in the
Speaker 2: world at large. We have Jack and Lydia driving you know,
Speaker 2: down the highway in San Francisco, and then Scrimshaw, miniaturized
Speaker 2: Scrimshaw and doctor Kenker attack from the back seat, so
Speaker 2: they're wrestling them in the front and back seat. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: inside of Jack's body on his esophagus, there is now
Speaker 2: a battle between the original pod and the new pod,
Speaker 2: between a Tuck and mister Igo. And this is just
Speaker 2: a really cool battle. Like I'm not saying it's like
Speaker 2: RoboCop RoboCop two level, but it's pretty great with lots
Speaker 2: of gadget arms and cutting of robotic components, some nice
Speaker 2: back 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 2: This is a great set piece for the finale here
Speaker 2: the stomach is like this. Like you said, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of space there is. It's very well lit. That's
Speaker 2: another thing about the inside of the body. You just
Speaker 2: go by innerspace and fantastic voyage. It's like a well
Speaker 2: lit nebula in there, which works. It is an inner space,
Speaker 2: and so it should look like some of our most
Speaker 2: colorful visions of outer space, whereas in reality it's like
Speaker 2: that old saying, like a man's best friend outside of
Speaker 2: a book is a dog, and inside of a dog,
Speaker 2: 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 reflux from
Speaker 3: the ay. Yes, and that's what causes the churn to
Speaker 3: which the fight then leads mister Igo down in the
Speaker 3: stomach acid, where he is eaten up, down to a
Speaker 3: skeleton an aka kaak bones skeleton, which.
Speaker 2: Is a skeleton and the remains the prosthetic arm trying
Speaker 2: to drill through the portal of the original POD's Yeah
Speaker 2: so good, great great villain kill quality, kill here all
Speaker 2: 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 hair spray, sneezes
Speaker 3: Tuck out onto one of the scientist's glasses, and.
Speaker 2: Then they tweezer it, they tweeze her it, and they
Speaker 2: get it back into the chamber. They re size him,
Speaker 2: they re enlarge him, and we got our big, happy ending,
Speaker 2: which is of course a wedding in true Shakespearean fashion.
Speaker 2: We end with a lavish wedding. But who's going to
Speaker 2: be married, Well, we know who's going to be married, right,
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, the jerky military guy is there apparently with his son.
Speaker 2: It's this The events of this film just brought everyone
Speaker 2: together into this like tight knit community, this tight knit family,
Speaker 2: 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, placed into the trunk. So they're driving
Speaker 3: off on their happy wedding honeymoon drive down a twisty
Speaker 3: mountain road, and Jack realizes that the job's not done
Speaker 3: and he needs to help them out.
Speaker 2: That's right. Oh, and we also find out that Tuck
Speaker 2: has the chips, the very coveted dangerous technology chips are
Speaker 2: his cufflins. So they set up a sequel here that,
Speaker 2: of course never happened. But I remember at the time
Speaker 2: as a kid, I just thought, if you set up
Speaker 2: a sequel like this, it will happen. It's going to happen.
Speaker 2: I feel like I spent spent a fair amount of
Speaker 2: time just assuming Interspace too was coming right down the pipe,
Speaker 2: 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 mid box office return
Speaker 3: diminished that hope, but I kind of like it where
Speaker 3: it is, where if the job's not done, they're still
Speaker 3: going to have more fun. This guy's life has been
Speaker 3: inexplicably changed for and put on a different path that
Speaker 3: he didn't choose, but he's going to roll with it,
Speaker 3: you know. He's a different person now, and I kind
Speaker 3: of really like that for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, It's like, I think it's great you have
Speaker 2: to set up these sequels that never happened. As long
Speaker 2: as you told a complete story, you put everything on
Speaker 2: the table, then I'm fine with just sort of dreaming
Speaker 2: about what else could have been possible. And this is
Speaker 2: a film that does leave everything on the table and
Speaker 2: busts out all of its tricks. So yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: feel like they held anything back with Inner Space. They
Speaker 2: just left that indow open to potentially dream up interspace 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 gonna do to Tug? I guess they're
Speaker 3: good they I guess they know about the coup leaks.
Speaker 2: Yep, somebody's gonna getized 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 2: Yeah, and that's inner space.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fun, fun time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I really enjoyed revisiting this one, and I feel
Speaker 2: like it largely held up. Yeah, you know, it was
Speaker 2: still very entertaining today. The effects were tremendous. Perform This
Speaker 2: were great. You know, you never know exactly what it's
Speaker 2: going to be like going back to a film from
Speaker 2: you know, the nineteen eighties, mid nineteen eighties and see
Speaker 2: how everything lands. But yeah, this was a fun one,
Speaker 2: 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 2: All right, Dave boy, as we begin to lead out here,
Speaker 2: let's talk talk in Tofu for a minute here in
Speaker 2: case listeners don't remember from last time, tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about what Talking Tofu is and tell us
Speaker 2: what has come out recently in the podcast and what's
Speaker 2: coming 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: recently 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 again,
Speaker 3: we're just having fun and keeping it light and showing
Speaker 3: that it's fun to be vegan. So yeah, that's that's
Speaker 3: what we're up.
Speaker 2: To, all right, that's talking to That's t a l
Speaker 2: k I n Apostrophe TOFU podcast. That's right, So look
Speaker 2: that up. You can find that wherever you get your episodes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we gotta get you on there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anytime. All right, all right, We're gonna go ahead
Speaker 2: and close out this episode, but I'll just remind everyone
Speaker 2: out there that stuff to blow your mind is primarily
Speaker 2: a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: weird films on Weird House Cinema. And if you want
Speaker 2: a full list of the movies we've covered over the years,
Speaker 2: you can find them on letterboxed our username there is
Speaker 2: weird House got a nice list there, so you can
Speaker 2: just dive in there and see what we've chatted about
Speaker 2: in the past. As always, thanks to the great JJ
Speaker 2: Possway for producing and editing the show, stitching everything together
Speaker 2: and making it sound right. And if you want to
Speaker 2: reach out to me, to Joe to JJ, or if
Speaker 2: you want to reach out to Dave, I'll shoot that
Speaker 2: on todave as well that you can email us at
Speaker 2: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.