Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, we have a
Speaker 1: fun one here for you. This is a Christmas episode
Speaker 1: from last year in which we discuss the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: sci fi action film I Come In Peace. This is
Speaker 1: an explosion filled, muscle filled action fest that yes does
Speaker 1: take place at Christmas and has at least some subtle
Speaker 1: Christmas themes going on in it, but mostly explosions and muscles.
Speaker 1: So let's dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be
Speaker 3: talking about the nineteen ninety sci fi action cop movie
Speaker 3: I Come In Peace, starring the one and only Dolph Lundgren.
Speaker 1: That's right, aka Dark Angel. That was I think the
Speaker 1: international title for it, and it was released in the States.
Speaker 1: Is I Come in Peace? I Come in Piece as
Speaker 1: the title that I was exposed to as a kid.
Speaker 1: You see it on like the other trailers that would
Speaker 1: be on your VHS rental or I think I would
Speaker 1: see the poster art and I was always really intimidated
Speaker 1: because it had this like really scary looking, like giant
Speaker 1: dude with like long white, like white blonde hair, very
Speaker 1: serious demeanor, and yeah, he's he's from space and he
Speaker 1: is here to deal drugs, and I don't know that
Speaker 1: anything can possibly stop him.
Speaker 3: So it's funny. I recall no awareness whatsoever of this
Speaker 3: movie when I was a kid, which is strange to
Speaker 3: me because it seems like exactly the kind of movie
Speaker 3: I have thought was cool would have remembered and would
Speaker 3: have sought out when I was, you know, eight or whatever.
Speaker 3: But I don't remember this one. The Dolph Lundgren movie
Speaker 3: I do really remember, though I never actually saw it.
Speaker 3: I just have the cover of the VHS box burned
Speaker 3: into my brain. Is a later one from nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: six called Silent Trigger, where he's just holding this ridiculous
Speaker 3: looking gun with like bullets that are the size of
Speaker 3: crossbow bolts.
Speaker 1: Silent Trigger, is that a thing getting?
Speaker 3: I don't know. Is it like the trigger doesn't make
Speaker 3: a noise. I have no idea what it's about. It's
Speaker 3: just Dolph Lundgren looking very grim, and I think he's
Speaker 3: got headphones on or maybe ear muffs, because maybe the
Speaker 3: trigger is too loud and that's the problem, and the
Speaker 3: plot is about how he wants to achieve a silent
Speaker 3: trigger so he can take the ear muffs off.
Speaker 1: Well, Dolph never had any trouble looking grim, serious like
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty much one of his his trademarks. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing about the movie we're gonna be discussing today
Speaker 1: is that he gets a little more room to flex
Speaker 1: his acting muscles. And to understand, that was one of
Speaker 1: the things that attracted him to the to the project.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna get to see Dolph, you know, do
Speaker 1: a little bit of comedy, do a little bit of romance,
Speaker 1: be more of a certainly an action hero. He's still gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, spinkick the soul out of people, but you
Speaker 1: know he's gonna maybe try a few other things as well.
Speaker 3: I'm more used to him in Ivan Drago mode, where
Speaker 3: he's just if he dies, he dies, But here he
Speaker 3: is he's trying to loosen up. He's trying to be
Speaker 3: funny and charming and make the same kind of transition
Speaker 3: that Arnold Schwarzenegger did from like originally just kind of
Speaker 3: like a grim, humorless muscleman like the Terminator to become
Speaker 3: more of a charismatic action hero and no offense to
Speaker 3: Dolph Lindergrin. I'm not sure if he quite has the
Speaker 3: charisma at the ready to make that shift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure it was entirely a success, but
Speaker 1: it'll be fun to talk about here. But yeah, mean,
Speaker 1: he barely takes his shirt off in this movie too.
Speaker 1: I should mention that's true.
Speaker 3: I think he's got it on pretty much the whole time.
Speaker 3: Does it ever come off? I think maybe there's one
Speaker 3: scene where he's getting bandaged up or something by a coroner.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's towards the end though, almost as
Speaker 1: if they were like, oh man, Doff's been fully closed
Speaker 1: this whole picture. Maybe he should take his shirt off
Speaker 1: a little bit. And he's like, okay, I will, but
Speaker 1: I'm trying to try new things here.
Speaker 3: I love a scene that has a coroner whose main
Speaker 3: experience is doing autopsies. They just start rolling for medicine.
Speaker 3: But hey, I know why you picked this movie, Rob.
Speaker 3: I think I know because you said it has Christmas themes,
Speaker 3: and by god, it's not really advertised in the marketing
Speaker 3: materials for the movie, but when I saw it, Yes,
Speaker 3: this is a Christmas film, so it's perfect for December.
Speaker 1: That's right. We love to cover legit weird Christmas movies
Speaker 1: on weird house cinema, like Santa Claus versus the I mean, sorry,
Speaker 1: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. We're gonna be I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna be doing another weird Christmas movie straight up
Speaker 1: in the week ahead. But we also like to dig
Speaker 1: into those Christmas subgenres like Christmas horror. We covered one
Speaker 1: of these previously with nineteen eighty three's blood Beat, but
Speaker 1: this time we're looking at an even larger holiday subgenre,
Speaker 1: the Christmas action movie.
Speaker 3: Now, the big one that probably comes to mind for
Speaker 3: everyone is die Hard, which I think at least the
Speaker 3: first two die Hard movies are both set around Christmas.
Speaker 3: From what I recall, I don't know if the trend
Speaker 3: continues after that, but I can't really think of another one.
Speaker 3: Are there other ones you've got on the list?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, so Lethal Weapon apparently takes place at Christmas
Speaker 1: various Shane Black films he loves to go for the
Speaker 1: holidays and his action pictures, and so you have plenty
Speaker 1: of very mainstream films to consider in this subgenre, and
Speaker 1: you know, they're probably influencing each other to some degree.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say these are necessarily weird films. They may
Speaker 1: have some weird elements here and there, but you do
Speaker 1: get into the weird with films like nineteen ninety twos
Speaker 1: Batman Returns, Oh Lord, which definitely employs some Christmas in
Speaker 1: its weirdness.
Speaker 3: I always forget that there are Christmas themes in Batman Returns.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's about as weird as a big budget
Speaker 3: mainstream movie gets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like he kind of pushed it over the line,
Speaker 1: and not in a bad way, but in just like
Speaker 1: a mainstream way. So we may have to come back
Speaker 1: to Batman Returns in the future. I rented this movie
Speaker 1: I Come In Peace from Atlanta's own video drome, and
Speaker 1: while I was there, I was talking with the owner
Speaker 1: and manager, Matt about Christmas action movies. He was talking
Speaker 1: about he was he was thinking he was probably going
Speaker 1: to put together a selection of Christmas action movies there
Speaker 1: in the store, and he pointed out that a fair
Speaker 1: number of Hong Kong action films also take place during Christmas,
Speaker 1: which I was not aware of. And as for like,
Speaker 1: why combine action films in Christmas? He said that he
Speaker 1: thinks part of it is just how easy it is
Speaker 1: to use the holiday aesthetic to give a picture a
Speaker 1: sense of time and place, which I think is pretty valid.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like when and where does this take place? Well,
Speaker 1: we've got some tensil in the background. Christmas is almost
Speaker 1: like artificial depth has been applied to the scene, and
Speaker 1: or if you're filming a Christmas you know, roll with it.
Speaker 1: But I think another aspect of it is certainly the
Speaker 1: juxtaposition between Christmas commercial Christmas that kind of like artificial
Speaker 1: souped up sense of joy and happiness with horror sci
Speaker 1: fi or just straight up explosions and spin kicks.
Speaker 3: I feel like using Christmas as a time setting for
Speaker 3: a movie is almost like using a recognizable location setting
Speaker 3: in the world, except it's cheaper to do. You know,
Speaker 3: it's easier to just like put up Christmas decorations on
Speaker 3: whatever set you'd be using anyway than it is to
Speaker 3: shoot a scene in Times Square and have everybody be like,
Speaker 3: I know where that is. You know, you have Christmas
Speaker 3: decorations in any room and people go, I know what
Speaker 3: that is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can relate. And it's there's also almost a
Speaker 1: little bit. You know, you can get some nice subtle
Speaker 1: comedy in there a lot easier as well. So okay,
Speaker 1: so we have an action film. It is a Christmas
Speaker 1: movie and hot on the heels of our RoboCop episode.
Speaker 1: This is another Texas movie filmed and this time set
Speaker 1: in Houston, Texas. I have to say I always like
Speaker 1: it when they just go ahead and set the damn
Speaker 1: picture where it's actually filmed, especially if it doesn't really
Speaker 1: impact anything, you know, because otherwise they're like, oh, Ironman
Speaker 1: can't go to Atlanta. He's got to be someone like,
Speaker 1: why can't it Why can't iron Man come to Atlanta? Mm?
Speaker 3: Hm. They actually they go farther than just letting it
Speaker 3: actually be Houston. Dulph Lundgren is frequently seen wearing Houston
Speaker 3: Astros merchandise, Like when we first see him, he's got
Speaker 3: an Astros T shirt on underneath his cutoff denim vest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this the Houston Astros. By the way, it's the
Speaker 1: baseball team there. It's like the Astrodome. I had to
Speaker 1: look them up though, and I realized, oh, they were
Speaker 1: Until nineteen sixty four, they were known as the Colt
Speaker 1: forty five. I don't know if their mascot was a
Speaker 1: handgun or what have you. But anyway, Oh, I was
Speaker 1: thinking malt liquor. Oh yeah, I guess it could go
Speaker 1: that way. The Cult forty five is also a gun, right.
Speaker 3: I guess so I've imagined the malt liquor is named
Speaker 3: after the gun.
Speaker 1: All right. Maybe it's the malt liquor with the gun.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Now. You can also think of I
Speaker 1: Come In Piece as a kind of late eighties, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly nineteen ninety update of Not of This Earth, the
Speaker 1: film we've talked about on the show before, as well
Speaker 1: as a predecessor to another film we've talked about in
Speaker 1: the show before, nineteen ninety two, Split Second, starring Rutger Howard.
Speaker 1: Split Second, especially, I think gave us both We can't
Speaker 1: help but compare this to these two films, even though,
Speaker 1: to be sure, I Come In Peace arrives in theaters
Speaker 1: years ahead of Split Second. But there are so many
Speaker 1: things they have in common with each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is some extremely similar DNA, especially in the
Speaker 3: specific buddy cop dynamic of the two movies. Both of
Speaker 3: these movies have sci fi elements where ultimately there's like
Speaker 3: an alien or monster doing most of the murders. But
Speaker 3: then they also have a main cop who is like
Speaker 3: a tough, no nonsense butt kicker who doesn't play by
Speaker 3: the rules, whose life is shattered by tragedy. The chief
Speaker 3: tries to take him off the case he's taken it
Speaker 3: too personal, and he gets a new partner who's a
Speaker 3: college educated nerd who insists on following the rules, but
Speaker 3: then in the third act is converted to the cult
Speaker 3: of instinct and breaks all the rules in order to
Speaker 3: save the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah. To put it in like D and D terms,
Speaker 1: it's like, you have your chaotic good and your lawful good,
Speaker 1: but by the end, everybody's chaotic good because the message
Speaker 1: is chaos gets things done.
Speaker 3: I guess that's right. Your main cop is chaotic good.
Speaker 3: I'd say actually, the new partner usually starts off more
Speaker 3: as lawful neutral, like they would rather follow the rules
Speaker 3: than do the right thing, and then by the end
Speaker 3: they are converted to the cult of the chaotic good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's the way it tends to play out.
Speaker 1: We had a whole offline discussion about well where does
Speaker 1: this come from then, like what specific film is being
Speaker 1: copied by both Split Second and I come in piece
Speaker 1: like some sort of non genre piece. And we were
Speaker 1: looking around at different buddy cop movies and the articles
Speaker 1: about the evolution of the buddy cop movie, like apparently
Speaker 1: it goes all the way back to the forties with Kurosawa,
Speaker 1: But I'm not sure, Like where do you where you
Speaker 1: find that first really influential example of the he's a
Speaker 1: bad cop or not a bad CoP's he plays by
Speaker 1: his own rules and he plays by the rules. And
Speaker 1: now they're on the same case that kind of odd
Speaker 1: couple buddy cop the scenario, Where does that come from?
Speaker 1: Exactly what puts that on the map?
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll have to chase down that lead someday, but
Speaker 3: I think we don't know the full answer today.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But also, so this movie, yes, it has every movie
Speaker 3: cliche in it. It is it is explosion fest. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, there are some elements to it that
Speaker 3: I think are kind of clever and do work on
Speaker 3: their own terms. I don't want to over sell that
Speaker 3: element of it, because this is ultimately a quite dumb movie.
Speaker 3: But like the idea of the villains being alien drug dealers,
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's just that's just kind of good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The only film I could come across and this
Speaker 1: is not this is one. I didn't make it all
Speaker 1: the way through it because I thought it was a
Speaker 1: little bit rough content wise for my taste at the time.
Speaker 1: But nineteen eighty two's Liquid Sky, I believe, also has
Speaker 1: some sort of like alien drug dealer kind of scenario.
Speaker 1: Are aliens harvesting drugs from human beings? And there are
Speaker 1: surely others, so right in with your suggestions, Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, I was trying to think of another movie
Speaker 3: also that has the dynamic of an alien bounty hunter
Speaker 3: or cop chasing an alien criminal on Earth, and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, Critters, Actually, the US Critters has that
Speaker 3: dynamic and all. So there is a Jesse Ventura movie
Speaker 3: called a Braxis Guardian of the Universe that has the
Speaker 3: same dynamic. That movie is quite, i think, unintentionally hilarious,
Speaker 3: but nowhere near on the level of like a budget
Speaker 3: or filmmaking finesse that I come in pieces.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you could even go I think the
Speaker 1: Critters example is great. Our aliens in this film also
Speaker 1: kind of dressed like the Critters bounty hunters, but you
Speaker 1: could even apply it to things like Highlander, where you
Speaker 1: have these outsiders powerful outsider beings who are at odds
Speaker 1: with each other but in the background of normal life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: All right. I came up with an elevator pitch for
Speaker 1: this one. But Joe, your chris Well is better than mine.
Speaker 1: Would you mind reading this?
Speaker 3: Oh? Okay, so I'm doing Criswell predict So, my friend,
Speaker 3: can your heart stand the shocking facts about drug pushers
Speaker 3: from outer.
Speaker 1: Yes it is. I come in Peace aka Dark Angel,
Speaker 1: and I might suggest you could also call this film
Speaker 1: White Christmas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because of all the heroine Yeah, all right, let's.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and listen to the trailer audio. I don't
Speaker 1: knowf we'll listen to the whole thing, but we should
Speaker 1: at least listen to the first part of it, because
Speaker 1: even though most like the posters don't make it look
Speaker 1: like a Christmas film, they do push the Christmas button
Speaker 1: right here at the top of the trailer. Houston, Texas,
Speaker 1: It's Christmas.
Speaker 3: Someone specials come into town. And it's not Santa Claus.
Speaker 3: Jack and Jane, a cop who does things his own way.
Speaker 3: What are you doing? Shortcut?
Speaker 1: He's sensitive, understanding and kind to strangers.
Speaker 2: Very Christmas.
Speaker 3: But all that's about to end.
Speaker 1: Three well armed men have their throats cut before they
Speaker 1: can even draw their weapons, and who could possibly move
Speaker 1: that fast? Aliens? Hey, what are you crazy? It's true
Speaker 1: you need a psychiatrist.
Speaker 3: Jack, your psycho stole a lot of heroin.
Speaker 1: To kill people.
Speaker 3: What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Tell them where?
Speaker 3: We're fighting drug dealers from matter space? Uh?
Speaker 1: All right, doesn't that put you in the holiday spirit?
Speaker 1: Doesn't that put you in the mood?
Speaker 3: I did listen to the trailer earlier, but I can't
Speaker 3: remember what the near is like. Is it the voice?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's well, I don't know if it is the voice.
Speaker 1: It might be I didn't check to see if it
Speaker 1: was Lafontein on this. But the narration is Houston, Texas.
Speaker 1: It's Christmas, someone special that's coming to town. And it's
Speaker 1: not Santa Claus.
Speaker 3: This Christmas get drug snaked by a Martian.
Speaker 1: I will put an asterisk by that. We will come
Speaker 1: back to this question because I think a case could
Speaker 1: be made that it is Santa Claus. Hmmm, okay, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to go see I Come in Piece
Speaker 1: aka Dark Angel before proceeding with the rest of the episode. Well,
Speaker 1: it's pretty widely available. We watched this on the excellent
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen Shout Factory Blu ray release, which we again
Speaker 1: ranted from Videodrome. That was pretty solid. It only has
Speaker 1: one feature att on it, but it's a good one
Speaker 1: and gets a little bit into the making of the film,
Speaker 1: and you can also rent it digitally for wherever you
Speaker 1: get your movies.
Speaker 3: I think they kind of missed an opportunity with this
Speaker 3: disc where, you know, sometimes you have these physical media
Speaker 3: releases that mirror plot elements from the movie. So you've
Speaker 3: got your you know, your Evil Dead release where the
Speaker 3: case is the Book of the Dead bound in flesh.
Speaker 3: It's probably not really flesh, but who knows. I think
Speaker 3: in this case they should have made the disc razor
Speaker 3: sharp on the edges.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I think that would have worked, and maybe
Speaker 1: the case could have had a little liquid smoke in
Speaker 1: it so when you open it and then there you
Speaker 1: have some files of alien space drugs in there.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, that'd be good.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the people behind this film,
Speaker 1: starting with the director. This is someone we've never talked
Speaker 1: about on the show before because he is very much
Speaker 1: an action guy for the most part. It's Craig R.
Speaker 1: Baxley born nineteen forty nine, third generation stuntman and stunt
Speaker 1: coordinator turned director. His father, Paul Baxley, worked on such
Speaker 1: films as Diamonds Are Forever and the original Star Trek series.
Speaker 3: I think Diamonds Are Forever, the James Bond film that
Speaker 3: Sean Connery came back for after he had left the
Speaker 3: James Bond franchise for one movie.
Speaker 1: That's the one, yeah now. Craig Craig Garbaxley, the director
Speaker 1: of the Sun Here, started out doing stunt work in
Speaker 1: the early seventies on films like Diamonds or Forever, but
Speaker 1: also The Omega Man that was also from seventy one.
Speaker 1: He eventually starts doing stunt coordinator work. By seventy three
Speaker 1: or seventy four, he's still doing stunts though he was
Speaker 1: Warren Baty stuntman on a few movies, and he worked
Speaker 1: steadily in the stunt department for another decade, culminating in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven's Predator. This is one where he served
Speaker 1: as stunt coordinator and also stunt coordinator second unit. I
Speaker 1: can't help.
Speaker 3: But see a few little gizmo's and gadgets in this
Speaker 3: movie that may have been inspired by the movie Predator.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're definitely some shared DNA, I think, And
Speaker 1: of course both are just bombastic action film sybi action
Speaker 1: films of the day. Though I may come back to this.
Speaker 1: Predator is a film that had like three times the
Speaker 1: budget of this movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah. As far as just like straight macho sci fi
Speaker 3: action goes, I think Predator is kind of unbeatable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's right there at the top. So Predator
Speaker 1: was let the last film where in which he served
Speaker 1: as stunt coordinator. He started directing a few years prior
Speaker 1: to Predator with some episodes of TVs. The A Team,
Speaker 1: but then directed his first feature film with nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: eight's Action Jackson starring Carl Weathers of Predator, Fame and
Speaker 1: much more. And now then comes I Come in Peace,
Speaker 1: followed up by nineteen ninety one Stone Cold starring Brian Bosworth.
Speaker 1: Have you seen this one, Joe.
Speaker 3: No, But I think we talked about it in some
Speaker 3: other episode. I don't remember why. It's some kind of
Speaker 3: biker connection.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, I've I've watched the Riff Tracks version of
Speaker 1: it and it was a lot of fun. Okay, So Baxley,
Speaker 1: you know, firmly established himself in the action tough guy
Speaker 1: genre of film, but he eventually became a repeat Stephen
Speaker 1: King adaptation director with the nineteen ninety nine Storm of
Speaker 1: the Century miniseries, two thousand and two's Rose Read, two
Speaker 1: thousand and four's Kingdom Hospital. That's King's adaptation of Lars
Speaker 1: von Trier's The Kingdom, and he's also apparently directing an
Speaker 1: upcoming adaptation of kings The Gingerbread Girl.
Speaker 3: I had a weird experience with Storm of the Century,
Speaker 3: which is I remember seeing ads for it before it premiered.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was on TNT or whatever
Speaker 3: I think it was. You know, it was made for
Speaker 3: TV mini series, and then I didn't actually see it.
Speaker 3: But I bought at a used bookstore a copy of
Speaker 3: the screenplay that was like published in bound form, so
Speaker 3: I like read the teleplay versus Storm at the Century.
Speaker 1: I just never I was never drawn in by because
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell what, like, what's the speculative elopment, what's
Speaker 1: the gimmick?
Speaker 3: Is it there's like a there's a demon, so a
Speaker 3: town that lives on a little island off the coast
Speaker 3: of New England. I assume it's said in Maine is
Speaker 3: cut off from the main landed by a blizzard, and
Speaker 3: in that time a demon comes to the town and
Speaker 3: tries to make a get the townspeople to make a
Speaker 3: deal with the devil with him. I think he's like,
Speaker 3: I will, I will keep killing you until you give
Speaker 3: me all your children and then I'll go away.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's that's unbranded.
Speaker 3: I don't remember how it ends up.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, uh. I guess the important thing to take
Speaker 1: home about Backsley at this point with I Come in
Speaker 1: Peace is this is a guy who knows stunts, who
Speaker 1: knows who knows stunt teams, know what stunts can do,
Speaker 1: how to and ultimately how to shoot them, or how
Speaker 1: to line up the right people to shoot them. And
Speaker 1: so no matter what you say about I Come in Peace,
Speaker 1: the explosions are just top notch.
Speaker 3: Everything explodes. If you're done with a location, it's like,
Speaker 3: do we need to shoot any more scenes there? I
Speaker 3: don't think, so let's blow it up. It's done.
Speaker 1: I'm talking like huge fireballs sometimes filmed like in interior spaces,
Speaker 1: where I often get a little wigged out by by
Speaker 1: fire effects. And shows these days, you know, have like
Speaker 1: a man on fire effect and I'm always like, I
Speaker 1: admire it and I'm a little bit afraid for anyone involved.
Speaker 1: But like, these are enormous explosions, Like it's just fearsome.
Speaker 1: And yeah, a lot of this stuff is they discussed
Speaker 1: the extras. I mean, this is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: you would today, you would use green screen and or
Speaker 1: CGI explosions and a lot of these. They were having
Speaker 1: to like shoot the actors in the same shot with
Speaker 1: the explosions, and you know, there are all these additional
Speaker 1: there's an entire arc to shooting these things, so you
Speaker 1: don't like wide out your film while you're also just
Speaker 1: making everything explode in an enormous fireball. And I should
Speaker 1: add doing all of that safely, I think the most
Speaker 1: important thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you will not if you watch I
Speaker 3: Come in Peace, you will not leave the movie thinking
Speaker 3: not enough stuff exploded. That's just not an opinion anybody's
Speaker 3: going to have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, now the screenplay here, there are two
Speaker 1: individuals credited. There's Jonathan Tidor, who he hasn't worked on
Speaker 1: a lot else. This was his first produce screenplay. I
Speaker 1: believe he's directed a little bit as well. But then
Speaker 1: the other writer is someone that's credited is Leonard mass Junior.
Speaker 1: But this is a moniker for David Cope born nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three. So this is of course one of the
Speaker 1: most successful screenwriters of the nineteen nineties, and beyond having
Speaker 1: worked on ninety two's Death becomes her ninety three's Jurassic
Speaker 1: Park to a lesser extent, ninety four is the Shadow,
Speaker 1: ninety six is Mission Impossible. Then you got the Lost World,
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park. Other films like Panic Room in twenty two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, Spider Man in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: War of the Worlds in two thousand and five, and
Speaker 1: also the two most recent Indiana Jones movies. He's also
Speaker 1: directed a little bit as well.
Speaker 3: When do we get to Dolf take you a look
Speaker 3: at golf?
Speaker 1: Come on, all right, all right? Dolph Lundren plays Detective
Speaker 1: Jack Kane. I don't really don't even have to introduce
Speaker 1: Dolph all that much here, but you know, born nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven. I believe he's about six five. Always hard
Speaker 1: to tell with people in entertainment, like what's the actual height,
Speaker 1: what's the build height? He's pretty tall, and we have
Speaker 1: people in this film that look even taller, and of
Speaker 1: course there are ways to trick that, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: huge guy, tall guy Swedish made his film debut in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five's View to a Kill, and he immediately
Speaker 1: followed that up with his iconic role of Ivan Drago.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned in Rocky four.
Speaker 3: I did not remember that Dolph Lindergren was in a
Speaker 3: View to a Kill, though that would make sense because
Speaker 3: I know he at some point was the boyfriend of
Speaker 3: Grace Jones, who was in View to a Kill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if memory serves, they were no longer dating at
Speaker 1: that point, but still knew each other, and she recommended
Speaker 1: him for the job, saying like, Hey, you want somebody
Speaker 1: stern and huge to stand in the background if your movie,
Speaker 1: well you should call my friend Dolph. And they did.
Speaker 1: But yeah, certainly by by Rocky four is off to
Speaker 1: the races. I mean, very iconic role. If he'd done
Speaker 1: nothing else after that, we would still be talking about it.
Speaker 1: But then in nineteen eighty seven he played he Man
Speaker 1: and the Masters of the Universe adaptation. I remember him
Speaker 1: as being being very fun and of course very jacked
Speaker 1: in that as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think in that movie, don't they like they're
Speaker 3: not just hanging out in Eternia or whatever. They come
Speaker 3: to modern day la so he gets to have some
Speaker 3: you know what is the eighties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Masters of the Universe is one of those films
Speaker 1: that it had just had some awesome design choices in
Speaker 1: There're some great casting. I love all the villains in
Speaker 1: that movie. But even and at the time I was,
Speaker 1: I was rather disappointed when we leave Attornia and then
Speaker 1: we just do a you know, fish out of water
Speaker 1: story with all these goofy scenes of these fantastic characters
Speaker 1: interacting with modern life before then going back to Attorney
Speaker 1: and having like an awesome showdown.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go to the galley.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's a huge male scene. That's awesome. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so he was he was already a huge name by
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety. He had just played the title role in
Speaker 1: an eighty nine adaptation of Marvel's The Punisher. But as
Speaker 1: all these titles suggest, yeah, he was playing the stern,
Speaker 1: tough guy with maybe a little bit of humor there
Speaker 1: and Masters of the Universe. But apparently what attracted him
Speaker 1: to the script is it gave him that chance to
Speaker 1: try more things, you know, to try a little comedy,
Speaker 1: try a little romance, and in the featurette I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the director back so he gave him, gave him a
Speaker 1: lot of credit for his professionalism and his performance. So
Speaker 1: he was trying new things, but for the most part
Speaker 1: moving forward, Dolph would end up sticking mostly to action
Speaker 1: and it's still active today, often in a lot of
Speaker 1: action films. Subsequent movies included the Universal Soldier franchise nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, Johnny Mnemonic. He pops up in the Coen
Speaker 1: Brothers Hail Caesar, and he's also in the Hockerman movies.
Speaker 1: I think he's like a Russian submarine pilot. I can't
Speaker 1: even remember if he's in the movie or if he
Speaker 1: because I think, you know the Coen Brothers film late
Speaker 1: Coen Brothers films. Everybody in the world is in those casts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that movie's got a big cast. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I did not remember that. That's funny.
Speaker 1: So again Dolf was trying new stuff with this particular spreading.
Speaker 1: His wiing was a little bit but one of the
Speaker 1: things for me anyway, I don't know if you had
Speaker 1: this experience, Joe, It's like, you can't help but compare
Speaker 1: this movie to Split Second, which came later, but in
Speaker 1: doing so, you can't help but compare Rugger Howard's performance
Speaker 1: to Dolph Lungdren's performance. And that's entirely unfair. It's unfair
Speaker 1: to compare most actors to Rugger Howard, but yet I
Speaker 1: kept doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's natural for us. I would say
Speaker 3: that I wouldn't expect most people who see one of
Speaker 3: these two movies to see the other one, and I
Speaker 3: wouldn't expect most people who see both to remember both
Speaker 3: of them. So the comparison is not like inevitable, but
Speaker 3: for weirdos like us, Yeah, yeah, it's kind of hard
Speaker 3: to ignore it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is another thing that comes to mind is
Speaker 1: I often remember this film, or at least promotional materials
Speaker 1: for it, alongside promotional materials for Eve of Destruction and
Speaker 1: have kind of merged them into a single film that
Speaker 1: I haven't seen. So I still need to get around
Speaker 1: to Eve of Destruction at some point, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it's one we could necessarily watch for weird house.
Speaker 1: All right, So Dolph is our cop who plays by
Speaker 1: his own rules. We have to also have a cop
Speaker 1: that plays by the rules, that is Special Agent Rwood
Speaker 1: Larry Smith or Agent Smith, played by Brian Benden.
Speaker 3: We do not learn that his name is Urwood until
Speaker 3: the very last line of the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a hilarious reveal that they leave until the
Speaker 1: very end, but it hits about as well as most
Speaker 1: of the comedy in this movie, the intentional comedy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, Brian Benden born nineteen fifty six. You might watch
Speaker 1: this movie and say, where have I seen this guy before?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: I never watched it, but he was the star of
Speaker 1: the HBO sitcom dream On from nineteen ninety through nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, and he was also in Radio Land Murders
Speaker 1: in ninety four. Both of these were things that co
Speaker 1: starred Michael McKean.
Speaker 3: That's weird. I haven't seen those things, though he did
Speaker 3: somehow seem familiar to me. I must have seen him
Speaker 3: in something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I would just see ads for dream
Speaker 1: On or you know, or perhaps if you're trying to
Speaker 1: watch the Tales from the Crypt episode, dream On would
Speaker 1: be on as the intro and you're like, well, I
Speaker 1: guess I got to set through this to get to
Speaker 1: the Cryptkeeper. It was not a film that was catering
Speaker 1: to me as its audience for sure, but people seem
Speaker 1: to quite like it at the time. It's easy to
Speaker 1: see looking at this film how this actor went on
Speaker 1: to have success and kind of a you know, a
Speaker 1: TV sitcom environment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's the nerdy new partner. Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, of course we also need a love interest, and
Speaker 1: that's where we have the coroner, Diane Palone, played by
Speaker 1: Betsy Brantley.
Speaker 3: She plays the romantic coroner.
Speaker 1: Yes, which is fun. I mean, it's a fun idea
Speaker 1: and they do it mostly works from a like a
Speaker 1: slight comedic standpoint, and she does come off as like
Speaker 1: a character who knows her stuff. Like she makes some
Speaker 1: vital breakthroughs in the case.
Speaker 3: Credit to Betsy Brantley for delivering some of the most
Speaker 3: ludicrous lines in this entire screen, like the scene where
Speaker 3: she has to where she asks Dolph Lundergren to promise
Speaker 3: her something anything, That was hilarious, and also the scene
Speaker 3: where she has to explain how the alien endorphin plot works.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah, she's great in that scene as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole idea, we'll come back to the promises aspect
Speaker 1: of the plot. That's yes, it doesn't quite work, but anyway,
Speaker 1: Brandtle is an American actress, best known for her roles
Speaker 1: as the Mother and Princess Bride, So that's John Savage's
Speaker 1: mother in that film, as well as supporting roles in
Speaker 1: such movies as ninety eight Deep Impact. In nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine's Double Jeopardy, she was the performance model for Jessica
Speaker 1: Rabbit and who framed Roger Rabbit from eighty eight, and
Speaker 1: her first big role was opposite Sean Connery in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two is Five Days One Summer, but her first
Speaker 1: credit acting credit is actually for a small part in
Speaker 1: Richard O'Brien's Rocky Horror follow up Shock Treatment from nineteen eight.
Speaker 3: I know you've talked about looking at that multiple times.
Speaker 3: Of course, I know Rocky Horror, but I've never seen
Speaker 3: Shock Treatment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We recently had someone right in suggesting it as well,
Speaker 1: so I don't know, I need to give it a shot.
Speaker 1: I've never actually watched it. I've seen Rocky Horror so
Speaker 1: many times, but I've never watched Shot Treatment. Brandley also
Speaker 1: pops up in a nineteen eighty four episode of the
Speaker 1: excellent Granada Sherlock Holmes series, and she was previously married
Speaker 1: to director Steven Soderberg and later worked with him on
Speaker 1: his nineteen ninety six films Schizopolis, and more recently in
Speaker 1: his twenty twenty two film Kimmy, which was also written
Speaker 1: by Cope. All Right, it's time to get to our
Speaker 1: alien drug pusher here.
Speaker 3: What are you gonna do first? Good Alien? Bad Alien?
Speaker 1: Oh we got to go bad alien. Okay, okay, the
Speaker 1: reason for the season here, and he's credited as bad
Speaker 1: Alien tallic. So Tallick is his name, though I don't
Speaker 1: remember them ever calling him that. That's the gig character's name.
Speaker 3: I don't recall that coming up.
Speaker 1: Played by Matteus Hughes born nineteen fifty nine. I have
Speaker 1: to just say again this is a character that scared
Speaker 1: me a bit as a kid, and watching the film
Speaker 1: still a bit scary. He's still quite a screen presence.
Speaker 1: I've seen his height listed as anywhere between six five
Speaker 1: and six eight, and he's wearing lifts in this alongside
Speaker 1: you know, various camera trick or to just make him
Speaker 1: look like an absolute giant.
Speaker 3: Another freaky thing they do to him is they, I
Speaker 3: guess it must be contacts or something. They cloud his
Speaker 3: eyes over so he can't really see where he's looking.
Speaker 3: Like his eyes are kind of foggy, and he speaks
Speaker 3: in this this creepy horse whisper, and basically the only
Speaker 3: line he says in the movie is repeatedly telling people
Speaker 3: I come in peace right before killing them.
Speaker 1: It's great. It's like you get the sense that this
Speaker 1: is the only thing he knows how to say in
Speaker 1: like Earth language, maybe he can say to multiple Earth languages,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't necessarily even know what it means. He
Speaker 1: just knows that it's something that you can say to
Speaker 1: a hostile human being to moment momentarily give them pause
Speaker 1: so you can blow them up or drugs snake them. So.
Speaker 1: Hughes is a German born Venice Beach bodybuilder who initially
Speaker 1: pops up as an uncredited extra in the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: seven cult themed Dragnet movie, but then he followed this
Speaker 1: up with small roles and eighty seven's No Retreat, No
Speaker 1: Surrender eighty eights Big Top Peewee. He plays the lion
Speaker 1: tamer in that, but then he pops up in another
Speaker 1: movie that we've we've talked about the cover art for
Speaker 1: this one, because he's the other muscle dude fighting Jorge
Speaker 1: Rivero on the cover on the VHS art for nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight Fist Fighter. Oh.
Speaker 3: Jorge Rivero is the star of Conquest, and many listeners
Speaker 3: may also know him as the villain from the movie Werewolf.
Speaker 1: He's Yury, Yeah so Matteas Hughes' other credits include ninety
Speaker 1: one's Kickboxer, two ninety one Star Trek six The Undiscovered Country.
Speaker 1: I believe he's a Klingon in that I'm assuming like
Speaker 1: maybe kind of a background us will cling on. And
Speaker 1: then he's also in two thousand and eight puppet Master
Speaker 1: The Littlest Reich. Again, I love him in this. It's
Speaker 1: one of these roles where I guess I haven't seen
Speaker 1: him in a lot. So this character feels to me
Speaker 1: like very disconnected from the rest of cinema, Like he
Speaker 1: is an actual seven foot alien who has just popped
Speaker 1: out of a crater to start harvesting human brain juice
Speaker 1: for space drucks. Now that's the bad alien. We also
Speaker 1: have a good alien by the name of Azak. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we ever hear his name, but this
Speaker 1: alien is played by another very tall individual. Jay Bilas
Speaker 1: born nineteen sixty three former pro basketball player and coach
Speaker 1: who currently works for ESPN as a college basketball analyst.
Speaker 1: He had no acting experience for this, but he was
Speaker 1: six ' eight. So they said, hey, how would you
Speaker 1: like to shave the front part of your head and
Speaker 1: put some contacts in and run from some explosions and
Speaker 1: he gave it his all. So given all of that,
Speaker 1: given how green, he was like, that's a pretty good job.
Speaker 3: So when he's on one of those shows on ESPN
Speaker 3: where the guys are yelling at each other, do they
Speaker 3: bring this up at him? They're you know, they're like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, yeah, uh huh. The astros are good this year.
Speaker 3: How about you go and starring I Come in Peace too?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I hope he's proud of it. I
Speaker 1: hope he should be.
Speaker 3: Proud of his haircut in this movie is solid. There
Speaker 3: are multiple mullets in I Come in Peace, but this one,
Speaker 3: this one is scullet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hair. The hairstyle is apocalypse in the front,
Speaker 1: party in.
Speaker 3: The back, yep, yep. He also has cloudy eyes.
Speaker 1: All right, these are the main characters that are in play.
Speaker 1: So I'll try and run through some of the other
Speaker 1: actors a little a little more speed. But a we
Speaker 1: have some criminal elements human criminal elements that pop up.
Speaker 1: The first is Victor Manning, played by Sherman Howard born
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine, American actor of stage and screen, perhaps
Speaker 1: best known for playing the zombie and headphones bub from
Speaker 1: the eighty five Romire movie Day of the Dead. He
Speaker 1: also pops up An eighty nine's Lethal Weapon two, as
Speaker 1: well as various TV episodes, including shows like Seinfeld and
Speaker 1: Deep Space nine.
Speaker 3: He plays an incredibly smug gang boss in this of
Speaker 3: a weird gang that we'll discuss more as we go on.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we don't see as much of them as
Speaker 1: I would have liked. It's good that it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: pretty fun and over the top lot.
Speaker 3: Last, you know, regarding the bad guys, we've talked about
Speaker 3: movies before where unfortunately you have some trouble telling the
Speaker 3: different characters apart. I don't have that trouble with the
Speaker 3: main characters in this movie, but the villains. There are
Speaker 3: like seven villain characters in the yuppie gang slash the
Speaker 3: Feds in this movie that all look exactly the same. Fortunately,
Speaker 3: you do not need to be able to tell them
Speaker 3: apart to follow the plot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a lot of bad guys in suits in
Speaker 1: this film, and ultimately they're not a part of the
Speaker 1: final showdown. Another key character is Inspector Switzer. This is
Speaker 1: our villainous federal agent who's looking into the whole Alien
Speaker 1: murders angle, played by David Ackroyd born nineteen forty, actor
Speaker 1: of State, screen and TV. His other credits include eighty
Speaker 1: three's Cocaine One Man Seduction, eighty three's Deadly Lessons, and
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six is a Smoky Mountain Christmas starring Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3: Ow Yeah, does he play a hard nosed federal agent
Speaker 3: in that?
Speaker 1: I hope? So, I hope So Sorry.
Speaker 3: To Dolly, I'm gonna bust up this whole operation.
Speaker 1: Now. On the criminal element side of things, we also
Speaker 1: have another guy who I'm uncertain if he's the main
Speaker 1: boss or the secondary boss, but he's His name is Warren.
Speaker 1: We only encounter him in a skyscraper.
Speaker 3: He's the number two. He's so like the main boss
Speaker 3: of the villain of the gang in the movie, leaves
Speaker 3: after the first scene. He never comes back in the movie.
Speaker 3: He's just we hear about him being in Rio, enjoying
Speaker 3: the sun and the beach while all the other characters
Speaker 3: are suffering under the alien boot heel, and so he
Speaker 3: leaves this other guy, Warren in charge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, played by Sam Anderson More nineteen forty seven. And
Speaker 1: if you're a movie go over of a certain age,
Speaker 1: you probably see this actor and you're like, I've seen
Speaker 1: this guy before, but I just can't place him. I
Speaker 1: suspect that the reason is that he's the principal in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four is Forrest Gump.
Speaker 3: Yep, I had I spent several minutes with it pause
Speaker 3: to just trying to think without looking it up, who
Speaker 3: is this guy? And then I realized, Yep, he's the
Speaker 3: He's the creepy principle, and.
Speaker 1: He's done some other TV work as well. I think
Speaker 1: he's also in Critters too. Oh okay, cool, but certainly
Speaker 1: Forrest Gump. That's a big pop culture footprint to leave there. Now.
Speaker 1: We talked about Split Second earlier. We mentioned Split Second.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, there is one individual. There may be some
Speaker 1: more in the deeper in the credits, but there's one
Speaker 1: core member of the cast who connects these two pictures,
Speaker 1: and that is the wonderful character actor Michael J. Pollard,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty nine through twenty nineteen. He played
Speaker 1: the rat Catcher in Split Second, and in this movie
Speaker 1: he plays a snarling criminal informant by the name of
Speaker 1: Boner who's essentially Gollum. He's essentially Gollum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, who I will add plays no role whatsoever in
Speaker 3: the plot. He's just there to like get ruffed up
Speaker 3: by Dolph Londegren. And then Dolph Londergren, unrelated to his
Speaker 3: interaction with this guy, has an epiphany about the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird that it goes like that. It's almost
Speaker 1: like they're like, like, look, we got Pollard for a day.
Speaker 1: We got to use him, find a way slot him
Speaker 1: in there somewhere.
Speaker 3: He just happens to be, fortunately, standing next to a
Speaker 3: pool table, and then Dolph Londergren looking at the pool
Speaker 3: table is like, aha, aliens are throwing murdered discs through
Speaker 3: the air.
Speaker 1: But Pollard's always great though, as other films include sixty
Speaker 1: sevens Bonnie and Clyde. He's an eighty eight Scrooge for
Speaker 1: a Christmas tie in, and he's also in Rob Zombie's
Speaker 1: House of a Thousand Corpses from two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: All right, now, this is a small role, but I
Speaker 1: have to point out that al Leong is in this
Speaker 1: playing the luggage salesman. There's like, essentially it's like a
Speaker 1: drug drop kind of a situation. Born nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: small role, but I think film fans will recognize this
Speaker 1: guy because he plays the Wingkong hatchet man from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six is Big Trouble in Little China.
Speaker 3: He's another one of these recognizable character actors from a
Speaker 3: bunch of eighties movies. A lot of other people might
Speaker 3: remember him from die Hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he popped up and die Hard he's ginghis Khan
Speaker 1: and Bill and Ted from eighty nine. He's an lethal weapon,
Speaker 1: longtime stump man as well. One of these guys is
Speaker 1: kind of kind of a low key action film legend,
Speaker 1: I think, because you just see him pop up in
Speaker 1: so many things. And he had a signature look and
Speaker 1: it had kind of like a receding hairline, but long hair,
Speaker 1: so you know, glorious mullet and then a really robust mustache.
Speaker 3: Powerful mustache, really strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So sometimes he's just standing in the background, other
Speaker 1: times he's screaming with a hatchet in his hand. Does
Speaker 1: great work.
Speaker 3: You attached a picture of him in the outline where
Speaker 3: he's like squatting in the foreground and then you can
Speaker 3: see the Hollywood Hills in the background and the Hollywood
Speaker 3: sign is under his thigh.
Speaker 1: Glorious. I hope he used this as his main promotional
Speaker 1: image for many years. I think he's still active too
Speaker 1: great now. This we generally don't mention like special effects coordinators,
Speaker 1: but I will mention real quick that Bruno ven Zebrowick
Speaker 1: is the individual who had the honors on this movie.
Speaker 1: Still active and highly cited by Baxley in the feature
Speaker 1: atte is a key part of the film's success, you know,
Speaker 1: from a stunt and production standpoint, So I'm looking at
Speaker 1: him a little bit. He worked on Predator and also
Speaker 1: such films as John Carpenter's The Thing, Return of the Jedi,
Speaker 1: David Lynch's Dune Action, Jackson Roadhouse, Alien three, and die Hard.
Speaker 1: So again, the stunt and and explosive effects pyrotechnics pedigree
Speaker 1: of this film is just you know, can't deny it.
Speaker 1: And then finally coming to the music, I got kind
Speaker 1: of excited when I was previewing the the credits for
Speaker 1: this one because we have we have Yon Hammer on
Speaker 1: this born nineteen forty eight. This is the Czech American musician, composer,
Speaker 1: and record producer best known for two tracks. Really he's
Speaker 1: done a lot of work, but there's the theme song
Speaker 1: to Miami Vice, the TV show, and there's another track
Speaker 1: he did for Miami Vice titled Crocket's Theme. Both of
Speaker 1: these from or from the eighties TV series. Crockett's Theme
Speaker 1: especially is just an incredible track. It's just oh, it's
Speaker 1: just so perfect. It's just this glittering, upbeat synth masterpiece
Speaker 1: you know that just just bleeds Eighties directly into your veins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's strong, it's moody. It's got a kind
Speaker 3: of a surprising and moody chord progression, but also the
Speaker 3: bouncing rhythmic synthesizer tone in it. I feel like it's
Speaker 3: something that has tried to be copied later by anything
Speaker 3: that is evoking the spirit of the eighties. Even like
Speaker 3: the Grand Theft Auto games I think have some musical
Speaker 3: score in them that is trying to copy this feeling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, it's incredible. I highly recommend listening to it.
Speaker 1: And even the Miami Vice theme song like that one
Speaker 1: earned him I believe two Grammys, So highly successful guy.
Speaker 1: Other scores include two episodes of Tales from the Crypt.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly which one off off the top
Speaker 1: of my head. He did night Rider two thousand. Some
Speaker 1: of his music appears on nineteen ninety two is Beyond
Speaker 1: the Mind's Eye, which was one of these like early
Speaker 1: like CGI psychedelic visionary art kind of things he could
Speaker 1: order off an advertisement on television. And he also scored
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six as beast Master three The Eye of Braxis.
Speaker 3: Who is Braxis?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but he's got an eye. I was
Speaker 1: trying to be just like what beefy guy plays Praxis
Speaker 1: in this, and I couldn't tell that there is a Praxis.
Speaker 1: There's a voice of Braxis, So maybe it's some sort
Speaker 1: of a special effects god sort of situation.
Speaker 3: I briefly forgotten. Then, just remember that we covered beast
Speaker 3: Master two through the Portal of Time on this show.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that one was great wings Houser.
Speaker 3: And that one speaking of he Man coming to La
Speaker 3: that's another one.
Speaker 1: All right. Let's let's get into the plot of I
Speaker 1: Come in Peace.
Speaker 3: All right. So the opening sequence we have ringing synth
Speaker 3: bells and a lonely city street late at night. They're
Speaker 3: trying to establish that moody eighties, you know, Neon signs.
Speaker 3: In the background, dark city atmosphere. A car is driving
Speaker 3: down the street. It's a luxury car. We see the
Speaker 3: driver and he looks like one of Patrick Bateman's friends.
Speaker 3: And this will be a recurring theme. Fancy suit, smug face,
Speaker 3: looks like a rich, aggressive, mean guy. Driver of the
Speaker 3: car activates some blinking futuristic panel on his dashboard.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 3: Is a CD player and he inserts a gleaming silver
Speaker 3: CD into the slot. What's he listening to? Can you guess?
Speaker 3: It's a new hit called Hark the Herald Angels sing.
Speaker 1: He had to get that hit of the Christmas music.
Speaker 3: So this guy from the Bateman crew, he's cruising through
Speaker 3: the deserted city streets. It's nighttime. He's jamming to his
Speaker 3: Christmas carols until the music starts skipping. The song sounds
Speaker 3: totally scrambled, like the notes are playing at double speed,
Speaker 3: random order, that kind of thing. And the driver is
Speaker 3: very angry. He needs his Hark and he complains. He's like,
Speaker 3: you pay seventy thousand dollars for a car and then
Speaker 3: they give you a broken CD player. Then suddenly the
Speaker 3: CD shoots out of the slot at him violently. He startled,
Speaker 3: and he nearly collides with a bus at an intersection,
Speaker 3: swerves to avoid an impact, and ends up crashing his
Speaker 3: car into a lot full of Christmas trees. So they're
Speaker 3: hitting you with a lot of Christmas right at the top.
Speaker 3: Almost makes you wonder if this whole prologue here was
Speaker 3: like added on to it really emphasize the Christmas themes.
Speaker 3: But I guess probably not, because we're about to meet
Speaker 3: a crucial character. So he gets out of the car,
Speaker 3: he complains some more, and then to make things even worse,
Speaker 3: suddenly a fireball descends from out of space and obliterates
Speaker 3: his car, leaving only a flaming crater in its place.
Speaker 3: And the driver looks on as out of the flaming
Speaker 3: crater comes a man dressed in black with gloves, a
Speaker 3: long dark coat, and some kind of technological gadget strapped
Speaker 3: to his arm like the Predator. He's got long blonde hair,
Speaker 3: his eyes are foggy, like they're clouded with cataracts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they shoot him rising up out of this
Speaker 1: crater like he's like he's a redwood tree. You know,
Speaker 1: it just seems like he's at least eight or nine
Speaker 1: feet tall. It's great.
Speaker 3: So the man from the sky approaches the driver and
Speaker 3: looms over him. He opens his lips and says, in
Speaker 3: a hoarse whisper, I come in peace. Cut to something
Speaker 3: else next week, Get an infiltration. There is a dude
Speaker 3: sneaking into some kind of building through air ducts, cutting
Speaker 3: through metal grating with a torch, climbing around in the
Speaker 3: duct work. This is also a favorite theme of eighties
Speaker 3: action movies. They love putting a guy climbing through the
Speaker 3: ventilation shafts. So what's going on here? Well, it's a heist.
Speaker 3: This is some kind of police building. I think they'd
Speaker 3: later call it a federal warehouse. An infiltrator sneaks in.
Speaker 3: He sneaks into an evidence room and then in there
Speaker 3: he runs into a police officer and kills him with
Speaker 3: a throwing knife. He steals the officers. I was thinking
Speaker 3: at first he stole his clothes and his badge, but
Speaker 3: I think maybe he just takes his badge or his
Speaker 3: name tag, because you know, this police officer's clothes would
Speaker 3: have a big knife hole in the front and a
Speaker 3: bunch of blood on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this whole sequence is ridiculous. You know, their standards
Speaker 1: sort of nineties Batman s chaos criminals because there's not
Speaker 1: ultimately nothing smooth about them. They immediately follow up the
Speaker 1: stealth portion of their mission with a seemingly unnecessary murder.
Speaker 3: Right, And so he's disguised as a cop. Now he's
Speaker 3: got this other guy's badge and name tag on. He
Speaker 3: loads up a briefcase full of these little plastic baggies
Speaker 3: of white powder. It looks like he's stealing about thirty
Speaker 3: pounds of heroin. And then the killer meets up with
Speaker 3: a co conspirator who's been like walking him through the
Speaker 3: heist on a on a walkie talkie. Together they go
Speaker 3: to the front desk and they sign out to this
Speaker 3: suitcase full of drugs, and the guy at the desk
Speaker 3: has a righteous mullet. He's like, some must be some party,
Speaker 3: ha hahu.
Speaker 1: According to I was looking at a two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine DEA press release, and according to that press release,
Speaker 1: thirty pounds of heroin might be worth somewhere in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood of for like thirty million dollars. So just go
Speaker 1: ahead and sign that out. To officers shifty and sauce here.
Speaker 3: Yes, So on the way out these guys, one of
Speaker 3: these guys drops a bag on the staircase in the
Speaker 3: lobby of this police building. Somebody is just black joy
Speaker 3: to the world, and they leave the building. They pile
Speaker 3: into a waiting getaway car. The driver also has a
Speaker 3: mullet and is wearing you know, he's dressed like a
Speaker 3: Bateman bro. They're driving a luxury sedan, so the themes yet again.
Speaker 3: They drive away and then the police building explodes, and
Speaker 3: as we said in this movie, everything explodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just fireballs of unreal proportion. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: But the other guys in the car are like, what
Speaker 3: was that, and the infiltrator dude says a little insurance
Speaker 3: policy and the guy goes, what the hell for and
Speaker 3: he's like, no witnesses experienced criminals here, and then they're
Speaker 3: all like, oh, yeah, okay. So next we move on
Speaker 3: to a stakeout where we meet Dolph Lindegren's character. This
Speaker 3: is Detective Jack Caine. He's sitting in a car with
Speaker 3: an earpiece listening to a drug deal unfold at what
Speaker 3: looks like an empty nearby nightclub and he's got a
Speaker 3: man on the inside wearing a wire. This guy on
Speaker 3: the inside is Turner his partner, who is undercover as
Speaker 3: a drug buyer. And the gang Turner is doing this
Speaker 3: deal with is called for some reason, the White Boys.
Speaker 3: Their thing is that they are yuppies, So this is
Speaker 3: like a criminal street gang that distributes heroin throughout Houston.
Speaker 3: But they all have Ivy League degrees and they drive
Speaker 3: sports cars and they look like a Brooks Brothers catalog.
Speaker 3: So it's like, is this one of the concepts of
Speaker 3: the gangs from the Warriors, along with like the baseball guys.
Speaker 3: If not, it should have been, Yeah, I agree. And
Speaker 3: Victor Manning, the leader of the gang, is giving a
Speaker 3: speech to Turner about how he once thought his education
Speaker 3: would be his saving grace, but then he got out
Speaker 3: of Princeton and he realized nbas were quickly becoming a
Speaker 3: devalued commodity. So he says he went back to school
Speaker 3: and got another master's in international banking, and then he's
Speaker 3: like quizzing Turner, and in character he's like, what university
Speaker 3: did you attend? And Turner says a funny but sort
Speaker 3: of unrepeatable line, and then before the gang boss here
Speaker 3: gets to the point of his story. His preppagoons arrive
Speaker 3: with the heroine they stole from the police warehouse. By
Speaker 3: the way, this is one of these scenes taking place
Speaker 3: on a street where the storefronts are just all apparently
Speaker 3: liquor stores and adult movie theaters, and they all have
Speaker 3: neon signs.
Speaker 1: He's very convincing. I don't know if they had to
Speaker 1: build this or they just found this in Houston.
Speaker 3: So they let Turner see the merchandise. Yep, that's a
Speaker 3: bunch of drugs. And then he opens up a briefcase
Speaker 3: full of money, and Victor Manning goes on with his speech.
Speaker 3: He's like, you know, if you don't have at least
Speaker 3: a master's degree these days, you could find yourself really desperate.
Speaker 3: You might have to turn to a life of crime,
Speaker 3: or even worse, become a cop. And meanwhile, right next door,
Speaker 3: two guys in duster coats run into an unrelated liquor
Speaker 3: store and start robbing it. They're roughing up customers, they're
Speaker 3: pointing a shotgun at the shop owner, and Dolph Londegren
Speaker 3: sitting in his car he sees this happening. Uh oh,
Speaker 3: Jack Kaine is supposed to be listening in on the
Speaker 3: wire for Turner to make the deal so they can
Speaker 3: make the arrests. But now there are people in peril.
Speaker 3: What's a dolf gonna do. Of course, he's gonna go
Speaker 3: administer some roundhouse kicks, So he drops his earpiece. He says,
Speaker 3: keep talking, guys, and he goes and he roundhouse kicks
Speaker 3: one of the guys in the in the store and
Speaker 3: then shoots the other one. And unfortunately, while Kanine is
Speaker 3: busy doing that, not listening, the gang boss reveals that
Speaker 3: they know Turner's real identity. They've been playing him this
Speaker 3: whole time. They shoot Turner, they take the money he brought,
Speaker 3: and then Victor Manning leaves the scene, telling his goons
Speaker 3: to make sure they get quote every grain of that heroin.
Speaker 3: But after the boss leaves, while the preppy henchmen are
Speaker 3: finishing up with the scene, a new player arrives and hey,
Speaker 3: it's the alien from that flaming crater. He comes up
Speaker 3: to the henchman, he says, I come in peace. Then
Speaker 3: he attacks them with an alien murder disc that shoots
Speaker 3: out of his wrist. Rob do you want to describe
Speaker 3: the death disk attack?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I really love the idea of the death discs,
Speaker 1: and ultimately it's a lot of fun in the movie.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the sci fi explanation that they get into
Speaker 1: about how they work. More on that in a bit,
Speaker 1: but let's face it, the execution of the effect is adequate.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't take you out of the movie,
Speaker 1: but it's very clearly just a CD spinning that they shot.
Speaker 1: Watching the movie, you really want this thing to be
Speaker 1: something more like a cross between the tall Man's spheres
Speaker 1: from Phantasm and the Predators killer Frisbee. I don't remember
Speaker 1: if he had the frisbee in Predator one or if
Speaker 1: that's just a Predator two thing, but that's Predator two. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: so you want it to be like that INSTEADY weirdly
Speaker 1: seems to hit with more blunt force impact than slicing terror, So,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a little disappointing in that regard, but
Speaker 1: otherwise still effective. You still buy it.
Speaker 3: Yes, On the other hand, I mean it is quite
Speaker 3: clearly just a CD.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it kind of deflates it a bit too
Speaker 1: when we had that opening scene with the CD player
Speaker 1: and the CD flying out. That's not doing that. It's
Speaker 1: not doing the effect any favors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a strange. It's strange to offer that visual comparison.
Speaker 3: It's almost like the alien got the idea of using
Speaker 3: a CD from that scene. Yeah, So after defeating the henchman,
Speaker 3: the alien steals the heroine and leaves the alien one
Speaker 3: of those drugs, and then Dolph Lundgren comes in to
Speaker 3: find his partner dead. So in the next scene, police
Speaker 3: are all over the place, so we kind of get
Speaker 3: a walk through. Somebody says, looks like somebody put the
Speaker 3: White Boys through the Queason art, I guess, referring to
Speaker 3: the cuts from the fly disc and Jack Kaine's boss
Speaker 3: arrives to give the classic reprimand of the rogue cop
Speaker 3: by the chief monologue. So we get eye out to
Speaker 3: break your neck. You're taking it to personal. You're a
Speaker 3: loose cannon. You're off the case, go on vacation. That's
Speaker 3: in order. We're not yet to meet your new partner,
Speaker 3: but that will come in the next scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, by the books.
Speaker 3: Now, in the opening scene, we don't necessarily get a
Speaker 3: great look at the character of Jack Kane because he
Speaker 3: is sitting in a car. And then the later action
Speaker 3: scene'es in like a dark store where they've shot out
Speaker 3: the light. So let's take in Kane in his full
Speaker 3: glory here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd say he's essentially a walking big and tall
Speaker 1: store rack in this film. Like I just kept being
Speaker 1: shocked by just like how much clothing he's wearing, and
Speaker 1: you know, not just that he's not shirtless, but like
Speaker 1: it's like, wow, that's a lot of clothes. He had
Speaker 1: to go to the big and tal shot for that.
Speaker 3: That's specially in this movie. He does not have his
Speaker 3: Ivan Drago blonde Frankenstein haircut. He's got brown hair and
Speaker 3: I don't know what you call this hairdoo, but it's
Speaker 3: more normal looking. It's sort of done up a little
Speaker 3: bit elvisy, but with a I don't know, later more
Speaker 3: eighties kind of style. His outfit includes what looks to
Speaker 3: me like a black denim cutoff of vest. I think
Speaker 3: it used to be a jacket or long sleeve shirt,
Speaker 3: but with the sleeves removed, the badge mounted on the vest.
Speaker 3: And then this is over a black Houston Astro's T shirt.
Speaker 3: So it's a I thought, an amusing look. But another
Speaker 3: thing I want to get to is that a lot
Speaker 3: of movies of this kind will introduce some sort of
Speaker 3: little personality quirk to their main cop character to distinguish
Speaker 3: them ever so slightly from the other butt kicking, loose
Speaker 3: cannon cops who get results that we may have encountered
Speaker 3: in our movie Going Lives. For example, with Rutger Howard's
Speaker 3: character Harley Stone in Split Second, the quirk was do
Speaker 3: you remember what it.
Speaker 1: Was, Rob? Oh, he loved coffee and he loves sweets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a sweet tooth candy and he put tons
Speaker 3: of sugar in his coffee. Yeah. So that was an
Speaker 3: interesting pick. And honestly, I think the quirk they pick
Speaker 3: for Dolph Lindegren's character here is kind of weak. The
Speaker 3: quirk is that he never breaks a promise. It is
Speaker 3: something that is universally true of his personality and everybody
Speaker 3: knows this about him. Odd choice, Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I mean it feels kind of mythic or folkloric in
Speaker 1: its own way, but it also never feels real either.
Speaker 1: There's like the scene with his on again, off again
Speaker 1: girlfriend which he's like, I wish you would make a
Speaker 1: promise to me one day, like you make promises to
Speaker 1: other people, and he's like, I don't know I'm not
Speaker 1: ready to do that yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he doesn't do it in the scene. But also
Speaker 3: what promises is she aware of him making to other people?
Speaker 3: And also isn't keeping promises just a normal thing that
Speaker 3: is expected of most honest people, Like I feel like
Speaker 3: it would be more notable if a person was known
Speaker 3: for breaking a promise every promise they made.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it seems like the get to come up
Speaker 1: with something else with this character, and I mean they
Speaker 1: kind of they kind of weave it into the plot
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it never really sticks.
Speaker 3: The way it's first introduced is in this scene where
Speaker 3: the chief is you know, Chiefs is chewing him out.
Speaker 3: He's saying, you're off the case. I command you to
Speaker 3: take vacation, and then he says, actually, no, I don't
Speaker 3: order you to take vacation. I order you to promise
Speaker 3: me you will take all your vacation days because I
Speaker 3: know you never break a promise. Jack Caine, Oh, he
Speaker 3: got him, He got him. Can't get out of this.
Speaker 3: There's no way out unless there is intervention by a
Speaker 3: higher power. And then here we introduce the FEDS. The
Speaker 3: FBI comes in and Dolph meets the character of Agent Switzer.
Speaker 3: An arrogant, domineering FBI agent of the shut up and
Speaker 3: do what you're told style. He explains that his job
Speaker 3: is to know things, and he's smarter than everybody else
Speaker 3: and that regular cops like Dolf are just stupid and
Speaker 3: beneath him, and they need to obey what he says.
Speaker 3: So Switzer takes Dolph in the bathroom to discuss the
Speaker 3: strangeness of the murder scene. It's like, what could have
Speaker 3: left these incisions on the victims? And Dolph says, I've
Speaker 3: seen a lot of knife wounds, but these were done
Speaker 3: by something else. Okay, I mean to be clear, Like
Speaker 3: we see the wounds in the movie and that nothing
Speaker 3: seems all that remarkable about them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but also we don't have a weapon.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 1: They're like, what could have done?
Speaker 3: Whatever this weapon is, it's the key to understanding what
Speaker 3: happened here. So Switzer decides that Cain should be back
Speaker 3: on the case. He comes and he tells the chief, Hey,
Speaker 3: you know, you've got to put him back on the case,
Speaker 3: and the chief complies. But the condition here is that
Speaker 3: Cain has to be paired with a new partner, and
Speaker 3: Dolph might as well look directly into the camera and
Speaker 3: shrug while a zoink sound effect plays. It's like new Partner. Okay,
Speaker 3: so it's a classic cop movie pair up. The new
Speaker 3: partner is a sharply dressed f BI agent named Larry Smith,
Speaker 3: and it's cop oil versus FBI water. Cain is tall,
Speaker 3: Smith is short, Cain is buff, Smith is skinny. Smith
Speaker 3: is by the book. Cain plays by his own rules.
Speaker 3: Smith is snooty and stuck up, while Cain is down
Speaker 3: to earth. You could have a beer with him. Smith
Speaker 3: operates on reason and logic, which the movie implies are
Speaker 3: stupid and doomed to fail, while Cain relies on instinct,
Speaker 3: which is smart and gets results.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a whole sequence where they discuss the difference
Speaker 1: between relying on your gut and relying on logic and
Speaker 1: learning without ever drawing the obvious. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: think to everyone, connection between learning and repetition and instinct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you like, these things go hand in hand. Why
Speaker 1: these things like these are falsely separate categories here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, to the to the extent that instinct
Speaker 3: would actually be useful. It's like because of experience. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but essentially they're setting it up where like Cain is
Speaker 3: a jock and Smith is a nerd, and this movie
Speaker 3: hates nerds. Well, actually there are some nerds later on
Speaker 3: that we find out are okay, but certain nerds are
Speaker 3: not so good. And in the scene where they very
Speaker 3: first meet in the chief's office, they are immediately clashing
Speaker 3: because Smith condescends to Cain. He's like trying to explain
Speaker 3: the definition of the word parameters, and Cain is getting mad,
Speaker 3: and then they get interrupted when the coroner comes in.
Speaker 3: The coroner is Diane Palone, as we mentioned earlier. She
Speaker 3: also happens to be Cain's girlfriend or something like that.
Speaker 3: They are in some kind of ambiguous romantic relationship. Oh
Speaker 3: and something I didn't mention before. Apparently Jack Caine went
Speaker 3: off the grid for eight days before the nightclubs stakeout,
Speaker 3: and nobody knew where he was or if he was
Speaker 3: even alive, including his boss and including Diane. Though it's
Speaker 3: I don't think it's ever explained why he went dark
Speaker 3: old this do they ever say.
Speaker 1: We never get an explanation, He never has to explain
Speaker 1: what was yeah, and we just kind of forget about
Speaker 1: it after a while.
Speaker 3: Maybe his reason was just instinct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe he had a really good reason he
Speaker 1: made a promise about it. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Anyway. So Jack and Smith are in the room and
Speaker 3: the coroner comes into the scene to explain that the
Speaker 3: forensics work is done. The murder weapon was quote razor
Speaker 3: thin and razor sharp. It made a deep, straight incision.
Speaker 3: I'd have trouble making with the scalpel. And the chief says,
Speaker 3: how do you explain it? And the coroner says, I can't,
Speaker 3: music sting. Everyone in the room makes ominous eyes at
Speaker 3: each other. I was laughing out loud here. I'm reminded
Speaker 3: of our episode on the cattle mutilation Panic, where it's like,
Speaker 3: it's impossible to explain these cuts in the skin being
Speaker 3: so straight and precise with earthly technology. Oh and also
Speaker 3: the Jack tries to patch things up with Diane after this,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't go well. She's mad at him because
Speaker 3: you know, he disappeared for eight days without talking to her,
Speaker 3: and Smith mocks Jack's relationship troubles.
Speaker 1: Smith is not likable at first. He thankfully he does
Speaker 1: grow on you. But they really come out strong with
Speaker 1: the idea that this guy's just unlikable, that we're totally
Speaker 1: un team Dolph at this point and can't wait to
Speaker 1: lose this guy.
Speaker 3: That's right, So we get to see them clashing again
Speaker 3: because they get immediately into some police work. Smith wants
Speaker 3: to start off their investigation by reading the coroner's report
Speaker 3: and Kine wants to ignore the report and go straight
Speaker 3: to the scene of the crime. Smith explains how he
Speaker 3: solves crimes according to the quote Switzer Manual. It is
Speaker 3: a handbook created by his boss, Agent Switzer. And to
Speaker 3: be fair, yet that does sound really lame. But the
Speaker 3: handbook includes advice such as exploit the knowledge of experts.
Speaker 3: Their expertise is essential. And Jack Caine is dismissive of this,
Speaker 3: and rightly so. It would be foolish to clutter your
Speaker 3: mind with facts about the case. You know, He's you're
Speaker 3: supposed to go to the crime scene and like get
Speaker 3: a vibe, feel it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just just feel it out. And we see this
Speaker 1: all the time in cop shows, right, I Mean, there's
Speaker 1: like a cop and he just has to inhabit the scene,
Speaker 1: you know, he has to get in the mind of
Speaker 1: the killer, put in some headphones and listen to some
Speaker 1: music and kind of like have a have a jazz session.
Speaker 1: With the crime scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he has to really feel it. But then, oh,
Speaker 3: and then there's some more clashing because the Switzer manual
Speaker 3: says that you're supposed to dress professionally. Smith says external
Speaker 3: things are very important. They tell people who you are.
Speaker 3: And Jack Kane is apparently just not dressed up to standards.
Speaker 3: But once they get to the crime scene, this dynamic continues.
Speaker 3: Jack mark Smith for taking measurements and notes at the
Speaker 3: crime scene. What a nerd? Jack says, So it's all clinical. Huh,
Speaker 3: what about in stinct? And Smith thinks instinct is no good.
Speaker 3: Jack says it works for him. Meanwhile, we're going to
Speaker 3: see the arrival of a second man from space. There's
Speaker 3: like a derelict building where there's a woman sorting through
Speaker 3: aluminum cans. Suddenly a fireball hits from above, plows through
Speaker 3: a bunch of walls, and a guy dressed like the
Speaker 3: first alien emerges, except he has dark hair instead of
Speaker 3: blonde hair. And this is the one with the scullet.
Speaker 3: This is going to be our good alien.
Speaker 1: Yes, who spoiler is hunting the bad alien.
Speaker 3: Right, but we also see the bad alien at work.
Speaker 3: We're going to get our first alien heroin attack scene
Speaker 3: in a scene structure that will be recreated several more
Speaker 3: times in the film The Blonde Alien like he attacks
Speaker 3: a bail bondsman in his office late at night, and
Speaker 3: he does some kind of weird stuff to his body
Speaker 3: before murdering him. Rob, do you want to explain the
Speaker 3: breakdown of one of these attacks?
Speaker 1: Sure? Sure, this is how it goes down. So first,
Speaker 1: our evil alien drug pusher is going to rip the
Speaker 1: shirt open a little bit, and then he's going to
Speaker 1: use sort of like a it's kind of like a tentacle,
Speaker 1: but also kind of like a kind of like the
Speaker 1: thing Scorpion shoots out of his wrist in Mortal Kombat.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, it's I think of it as a
Speaker 1: heroin injector tentacle. So this embeds in your chest and
Speaker 1: just fills you with like a lethal dose or a
Speaker 1: near lethal dose of heroin, just all the heroin in
Speaker 1: the world pumped directly into you. And then while this
Speaker 1: is going through your system, he has this big spike
Speaker 1: that he loads out of his like wrist gauntlet thing,
Speaker 1: and he drives that into your brain to then we
Speaker 1: get a lot of sci fi explanations about this later,
Speaker 1: but Essentially, he's draining the brain juice out of your
Speaker 1: heroin addled brain and then using that later to manufacture
Speaker 1: his own special space drug.
Speaker 3: That's right, So that what you were calling the heroin
Speaker 3: injector tentacle. I was thinking of as the drug snake.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's like a it's like a prehensile winding
Speaker 3: kind of thing. It stabs into the people, it injects them,
Speaker 3: and then he gets the brain juice.
Speaker 1: Oh and then the spike. Yeah is really really they
Speaker 1: did a great job with the effects on this, because
Speaker 1: the spike really looks brutal when he drives this into.
Speaker 1: One of the victims says, they don't show it at first.
Speaker 1: They kind of successfully build up the mystique regarding like
Speaker 1: what exactly is he doing to these people, But then
Speaker 1: we see it. Yeah, he's draining something out of their
Speaker 1: brains after he gets them high with the heroin.
Speaker 3: Oh and every time he says, I come in peace.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: There are also later scenes where he does the same
Speaker 3: attack on different people. He attacks a guy driving a forklift,
Speaker 3: a woman repairing a car, and in these later scenes
Speaker 3: we see the scullet alien chasing after the blonde alien
Speaker 3: blowing up nearly every car and building in Houston in
Speaker 3: the process, so many explosions. There's one scene where that
Speaker 3: the fugitive alien is just running away by like jumping
Speaker 3: from car hood to car hood. He's like running in
Speaker 3: every step lands on a different cars as they're parked
Speaker 3: in a row, and all of the cars explode as
Speaker 3: soon as he jumps off of them.
Speaker 1: Because the aliens, in addition to these gadgets that we've
Speaker 1: already mentioned with the bad Alien, they also have these
Speaker 1: crazy guns that I believe are also based on like
Speaker 1: the same underlying technology that he used to create the
Speaker 1: RoboCop gun. They have this like crazy space gun that
Speaker 1: just explodes everything in its line of fire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it shoots explosives at a buzzing rate of fire.
Speaker 3: But the blonde alien just keeps getting away. So we
Speaker 3: come back to our cops. Jack Caine apparently is going
Speaker 3: to show Agent Smith how to work by instinct, and
Speaker 3: so he takes him to some kind of combination nightclub
Speaker 3: bar slash strip club and he says, I can think here,
Speaker 3: and Smith is not happy with this. He's like, I
Speaker 3: don't drink on duty. And then Jack Caine goes and
Speaker 3: harasses and sort of beats up a guy, some regular
Speaker 3: informant of his. This is owner, Yeah, this is the
Speaker 3: ratcatcher from Split Second. But this apparently gets them nowhere.
Speaker 3: The guy has no information to report except to say
Speaker 3: that like, oh, there's no drugs on the streets. Everything
Speaker 3: dried up. What happened? Smith promises to file a report
Speaker 3: about this, but Jack Caine does get insight in this
Speaker 3: scene unrelated to his harassment of this poor guy here
Speaker 3: by looking at a nearby pool table in the bar.
Speaker 3: And I didn't understand what his revelation was at first,
Speaker 3: but then going back on it, I realized, Oh, he's
Speaker 3: watching the ball bouncing off the walls of the pool
Speaker 3: table to make a bank shot. And then he realizes
Speaker 3: that the weapon at the murder scene was a projectile
Speaker 3: that bounced off the walls.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't understand the connection either, but hey, I
Speaker 1: mean that's the thing. We're too logical. He is an
Speaker 1: investigator that is based entirely an instinct.
Speaker 3: That's true. We are nerds and losers who rely on reason,
Speaker 3: and that's not getting us anywhere, so we would never
Speaker 3: solve this case. He goes back to the crime scene,
Speaker 3: digging Smith with him, and they find the weapon. They
Speaker 3: see Jack Kane sort of like models how it flew
Speaker 3: around the room and realizes it ended up lodging itself
Speaker 3: in a speaker cabinet, and it's still there in the
Speaker 3: speaker cabinet. It's like jammed into the speaker cone and
Speaker 3: like vibrating, and it looks again like a metal CD.
Speaker 3: It looks it's a disc and if removed from the speaker,
Speaker 3: it cuts them and flies around the room until lodging
Speaker 3: itself back in the speaker. So they have found the
Speaker 3: secret alien weapon. Jack Kane takes the weapon home to
Speaker 3: his apartment, against the protestation of Smith, who quotes the
Speaker 3: Switzer Manual saying that evidence must be turned over in
Speaker 3: a timely manner. And again, I'm sorry I get a
Speaker 3: side with him here. He's right, like, can cops just
Speaker 3: take evidence home with them overnight? What about chain of custody?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's just normal evidence, not even getting into
Speaker 1: the realm of strange alien weapons that nobody understands.
Speaker 3: But in this scene we get a little bit of
Speaker 3: the thawing of the reallyationship between them, because Smith follows
Speaker 3: Jack Kine into his apartment and he is immediately impressed
Speaker 3: Jack Kane, but why he's impressed was funny. He's impressed
Speaker 3: that Jack Kane has like high end wine and fine
Speaker 3: art on his walls. So Smith is like, wow, I
Speaker 3: thought you were a low life, but actually you are
Speaker 3: secretly very classy and I didn't realize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that. Like this kind of reveals
Speaker 1: more about Kane's character, but also doesn't. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of like, oh, he likes paintings and he likes wine,
Speaker 1: all right, very well, yeah, he's a wine guy instead
Speaker 1: of a beer guy. I guess that's some level of depth.
Speaker 3: It seems like he's a beer guy in public but
Speaker 3: a wine guy in private. What does that mean? Well, anyway,
Speaker 3: Jack threatened Smith. He's like, if you try to take
Speaker 3: this evidence from me, I'm gonna I'm gonna hit you
Speaker 3: very very hard. So Smith leaves, and then Jack later
Speaker 3: goes to Diane's apartment to be like, I love you.
Speaker 3: You know I'm sorry that I didn't tell you where
Speaker 3: I was for eight days. She's she's very mad. But
Speaker 3: here's where we get to that that bizarrely written line
Speaker 3: where she's like, Jack promised me something. She says, promise
Speaker 3: to remember my birthday promise you'll come meet my mother,
Speaker 3: promise me anything. I just want you to promise me
Speaker 3: something like you promise everybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like a very low bar for him
Speaker 1: to meet in this relationship. So it's really hard to
Speaker 1: figure this one out. What they were trying to try
Speaker 1: trying to reveal about this character.
Speaker 3: I feel like he could have workshopped that. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't know. Yeah, but he doesn't promise her anything. They
Speaker 3: just start smooching, you know. And Dolf comes back to
Speaker 3: his apartment the next morning to find it ransacked and
Speaker 3: Smith is hiding inside. Smith says he just got there.
Speaker 3: He found it like this. Somebody tried to steal the
Speaker 3: evidence the alien weapon, but fortunately Jack dropped it off
Speaker 3: the night before with somebody else who Well, here we're
Speaker 3: going to meet another character, the scientist who works at
Speaker 3: the university. And what's this is Jack Kane actually associating
Speaker 3: with a nerd. I guess there really is more to
Speaker 3: him than meets the eye. And in this scene they
Speaker 3: go talk to the nerd and it is explained that
Speaker 3: the murder disc works by electro magnetism, being attracted to
Speaker 3: the electric charge of the human body or to any
Speaker 3: or to any magnetic charge. So they say, the reason
Speaker 3: it's lodged in the speaker is because the speaker cone
Speaker 3: has a magnet in it. That's the driver, and it
Speaker 3: was attracted to that. But you can tune it to
Speaker 3: attack the charge of a human body. And the scientist says,
Speaker 3: it's like turning your radio dial to K I L L.
Speaker 1: This whole scene with what is his name, Bruce, I
Speaker 1: think the scientists vary over the top. This is some
Speaker 1: of the other like intentional humor humorous parts of the
Speaker 1: film are a little more subtle, but this is one
Speaker 1: of the moments where it's really ratcheted up, like a
Speaker 1: like some sort of an explosion that's been triggered for
Speaker 1: a string of cars.
Speaker 3: And I would say with mixed success. Some of the
Speaker 3: gags in the scene really fall flat. Others are kind
Speaker 3: of funny, Like it is funny the way the scientist
Speaker 3: is frantically trying to hide pills from the FBI guy, Well,
Speaker 3: that was.
Speaker 1: Good, Yeah, it's like these are vital to my research.
Speaker 3: So they leave the disc with the scientist and then
Speaker 3: later Jack and Smith meet with Diane at the coroner's
Speaker 3: office to review new evidence from the alien murder suspects
Speaker 3: the people who have gotten you know, drug snaked, and
Speaker 3: she explains what's going on. People are being injected with
Speaker 3: massive heroin overdoses. They don't know why yet, but she's like,
Speaker 3: you know, people do all kinds of weird stuff to
Speaker 3: each other. And then she looks at Jack. But on
Speaker 3: the way out, Jack, oh, this is the scene where
Speaker 3: he gets a postcard from the villain from Victor Manning
Speaker 3: and Rio that's just like it's just like, Jack, wish
Speaker 3: you were dead. I hate you. I'm sending people to
Speaker 3: kill you right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll never see this guy again. There's no follow
Speaker 1: up to this part of the plot. At the end.
Speaker 3: You get a sense that the ending is kind of
Speaker 3: like the ending of Silence of the Lambs, where it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, they're going after Chilton and wherever he is.
Speaker 3: But okay, so Victor Mannings gang is coming after Jack
Speaker 3: Jack for some reason. So there's like a car chase
Speaker 3: where his goons chase Jack and Smith around in traffic.
Speaker 3: So they're like, okay, we got to go confront these guys.
Speaker 3: So they go to the White Boy's headquarters, which just
Speaker 3: seems to be like a big law firm Jack like.
Speaker 3: He gets inside by setting off a bunch of car
Speaker 3: alarms on the sports cars outside. People open the door
Speaker 3: and he sneaks in. He beats up the guards outside
Speaker 3: the board meeting and then goes into the board meeting
Speaker 3: confronts Warren, the second in command, and Warren thinks that
Speaker 3: it is the cops who killed their guys and stole
Speaker 3: all the heroin. Jack doesn't know what he's talking about,
Speaker 3: so they're like, well, then, who actually took all the heroin?
Speaker 3: They don't know, but the gang has no drugs to deal,
Speaker 3: so their business is suffering. So Warren makes a deal.
Speaker 3: He says, all right, we have captured your your FBI
Speaker 3: buddy Smith here and we're going to kill him unless
Speaker 3: Jack goes and buys them a bunch of heroin for
Speaker 3: them to sell. This is the scene where we meet
Speaker 3: al Leong because he's the guy who's supposed to be
Speaker 3: like selling the heroin to Jack, but it's a double cross.
Speaker 3: He gives Jack an empty suitcase with nothing in it
Speaker 3: after Jack gives him the money, and then he runs
Speaker 3: out of the building. Jack chases after him, but on
Speaker 3: pursuit he encounters Aliens. The blonde Ali and meets him,
Speaker 3: I think, like grabs him by the neck. But then
Speaker 3: the cop alien shows up and they start shooting at
Speaker 3: each other and they make the whole alley way explode
Speaker 3: and Jack witnesses the entire thing.
Speaker 1: So at this point things are finally like getting back
Speaker 1: on track. I feel like the investigation portion of the
Speaker 1: movie feels like he goes on a bit too long.
Speaker 1: There aren't any explosions, you know. Luckily we do have
Speaker 1: those random scenes with the aliens to keep things moving.
Speaker 3: Oh meanwhile, in this whole scene, Smith beats up his
Speaker 3: captors and escapes, so maybe hey, he's maybe he's part
Speaker 3: jock after all. But after this, we we sort of
Speaker 3: followed the blonde alien back to his lair like he's
Speaker 3: you know, he has this big fight and he gets
Speaker 3: away and we see him go back to It's kind
Speaker 3: of in fact, it's kind of like when we see
Speaker 3: the Predator, like, you know, cleaning his trophies in the
Speaker 3: first movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we find that he's he's just basically camped
Speaker 1: out in the ruins there, the industrial ruins there in Houston.
Speaker 1: When I would see the trailer for this movie and
Speaker 1: the promotional materials back in the day. I always assumed
Speaker 1: that that this guy was going to like take over
Speaker 1: or insert himself into the local drug world using his technology.
Speaker 1: You know those maybe those crazy discs that fly around
Speaker 1: attracted to people's electromagnetic fields. I assumed he was going
Speaker 1: to maybe be using some sort of of a crazy
Speaker 1: space drug that the world wasn't ready for. He's going
Speaker 1: to dominate the market, destroy the competition. But no, instead
Speaker 1: he's operating like a lone wolf out here, you know,
Speaker 1: living amidst the ruins, just harvesting what he needs to
Speaker 1: fill up is this small supply of drugs that he's
Speaker 1: going to bring back I guess to his home planet
Speaker 1: or his home system.
Speaker 3: Is he also using the drugs he's harvesting for his
Speaker 3: own pleasure? I think we see him do that.
Speaker 1: I believe so. Yeah. I mean in general, he does
Speaker 1: a lot of snarling, and you know, he has again
Speaker 1: just a terrific performance here. Just he's a beast. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he is also using this special brain drug.
Speaker 1: What do they call it? It's called like barci, Is
Speaker 1: that right, Barsie? I think, yeah, we find out eventually
Speaker 1: it's called BARSI.
Speaker 3: That's human brain juice. That's what it's called barsie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at least that's what the good cop tells
Speaker 1: us when he dies in the backseat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we'll get there in just a second. Okay,
Speaker 3: But first there is a scene between Jack and Diane
Speaker 3: where she explains, how you know all the murder victims
Speaker 3: have a hole jammed in their heads all the way
Speaker 3: down to their pituitary glands. Ah, there it is m
Speaker 3: which she says, this is where endorphins are created. She
Speaker 3: explains that endorphins aren't nature's ecstasy. So if you shot
Speaker 3: somebody full of heroin then extracted the endorphins from their
Speaker 3: pituitary gland, you would have on your hands the perfect drug.
Speaker 3: The only problem is nobody on Earth has the technology
Speaker 3: to extract, preserve, or administer endorphins. Not yet. But Jack
Speaker 3: puts it all together. He's like, Aha, nobody on Earth.
Speaker 3: So now I know for sure we're dealing with aliens,
Speaker 3: he tells Smith. They go back to their scientist's friend
Speaker 3: to try to get the disc back because they got
Speaker 3: some physical evidence to back up the drug dealer theory,
Speaker 3: the alien drug dealer theory. Sorry, but when they get there,
Speaker 3: the disc has been stolen. The scientist says that the
Speaker 3: disc was stolen by guys who looked like Smith. So
Speaker 3: you assume at this point that means more of these
Speaker 3: prep be gang members. You know, they're dressed in their
Speaker 3: suits and they're back to square one. But then the
Speaker 3: alien drug dealer attacks more people in a convenience store
Speaker 3: and gets into a fight with the alien cop, and
Speaker 3: the alien cop is injured in the fight, like he's
Speaker 3: got sort of ian home from alien guts hanging out
Speaker 3: of his belly, and eventually Jack well, first they get
Speaker 3: to the cops get to the location, and Jack is
Speaker 3: ordered off the case once again. The Feds take over everything.
Speaker 3: They're like, Jack, now you really have to go on vacation,
Speaker 3: and he convinces Diane to quit her job and go
Speaker 3: on vacation with him. But before they can do that,
Speaker 3: Jack gets into his car and he is confronted by
Speaker 3: the cop alien who's like hiding in his back seat.
Speaker 3: I guess somehow he knows Jack can be trusted unlike
Speaker 3: anybody else here.
Speaker 1: He can tell, he can tell that this is a
Speaker 1: true police officer, you know, a man who solves crimes
Speaker 1: with his gut as opposed to his logic. This is
Speaker 1: the guy I need to bring the details of the
Speaker 1: case to instinct.
Speaker 3: Can recognize instinct. Yes, So the alien explains, I am
Speaker 3: a law enforcement officer from space. The other alien is
Speaker 3: a drug pusher from space. And he explains if he escapes,
Speaker 3: he will bring more like him to Earth because they'll
Speaker 3: realize this is a good place to harvest endorphins and
Speaker 3: they will kill millions to steal their brain juice. Oh,
Speaker 3: and then Smith is in the car with him at
Speaker 3: this point. So Smith witnesses all of this. He knows
Speaker 3: about the alien at this point. And then the alien
Speaker 3: self destructs. They're like, we've we've got his body to
Speaker 3: show people, so they'll have to believe us. And then
Speaker 3: like light starts coming out of his mouth and his
Speaker 3: eyes and he explodes.
Speaker 1: It does like a mini quickening and then explodes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he leaves behind his alien gun as evidence.
Speaker 3: Smith insists on turning in this piece of evidence, and
Speaker 3: he holds Jack at gunpoint to be like, you're not
Speaker 3: taking this one. I'm taking this to the boss. You know,
Speaker 3: this is we got to go by the book. But
Speaker 3: there's a double cross. He takes the gun to Switzer,
Speaker 3: and Switzer instead of you know, using it to expose
Speaker 3: the whole plot. He like hides the gun in a
Speaker 3: bag and he's like, Okay, this will be of great
Speaker 3: use to the US military for our you know, for
Speaker 3: our global domination. Now we're going to have to kill
Speaker 3: Jack Cain. And then he does another double cross and
Speaker 3: he's about to kill Smith, I guess to eliminate witnesses
Speaker 3: once again, but Jack Caine shows back up and saves
Speaker 3: Smith's life by shooting Switzer. After this, Smith just fully
Speaker 3: converts to Harley Stone. You know. He's like, I'm kind
Speaker 3: of used to following procedure, but now I think we
Speaker 3: should just and he holds up the alien gun and
Speaker 3: he's like kicks some ass.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's definitely going to be just all
Speaker 1: explosions in action from here on out, and that's ultimately
Speaker 1: what this film does best.
Speaker 3: Right, So there's a bunch of the rest of the
Speaker 3: movie is really just fight scenes. There's like a fight
Speaker 3: scene where they go and try to confront the alien
Speaker 3: and shoot him with the alien gun, but it gets away.
Speaker 3: They're injured in the process. They have to retreat the
Speaker 3: two cops. Finally, they eventually meet up with Diane. She's like, hey,
Speaker 3: I quit my job, ready to go on vacation, and
Speaker 3: they're like, no, we have to kill an alien drug dealer.
Speaker 3: So then all three of them are again can they
Speaker 3: confront the alien. There is a final showdown inside an
Speaker 3: abandoned factory, of course, where Dolph ends up taunting the
Speaker 3: alien drug dealer by like smashing the endorphin vials. He's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're precious, Barsie, I've got it now, and he's smashing
Speaker 3: it on the floor and there's a big you think
Speaker 3: at the end that the alien is going to defeat
Speaker 3: Dolph by like piercing him with the drug snake, but
Speaker 3: in the end, Dolf is able to out you know,
Speaker 3: outdrawn the alien and twist the drug snake back on him,
Speaker 3: and then he injects him. He like kicks him into
Speaker 3: a pipe where the pipe stabs through him, much like
Speaker 3: the defeat of the villain at the end of the
Speaker 3: movie Come and with Arnold Schwarzenegger, by the way, where
Speaker 3: the villains, yeah, gets shoved into a pipe. And then
Speaker 3: in the end, the alien just says, once again, I
Speaker 3: come in peace, and Dolph Lindgren says, you go in pieces.
Speaker 1: It's a great exchange, it's a great exchange. I think
Speaker 1: they give it away in the trailer, but it's great
Speaker 1: when you finally reach it organically at the end of
Speaker 1: this journey.
Speaker 3: And then at the end of the movie, the three
Speaker 3: friends are like, hey, we did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I think they're all going to go
Speaker 1: on vacation together. They're talking about this vacation, but Smith's
Speaker 1: there too, and so yeah, I'm assuming that they just
Speaker 1: all go on vacation together. And I'm fine with it.
Speaker 1: I think it's great.
Speaker 3: They're three way buried now and they're going to go
Speaker 3: to Rio and get revenge on Victor what's his name. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love how this film sets up a future adventure
Speaker 1: that does not involve all of the cool stuff that
Speaker 1: made this film watchable. You know, they're like, up next,
Speaker 1: just just struct dealers. All right. Well, at this point,
Speaker 1: I do want to come back to a question we
Speaker 1: raised earlier. Is Tallic the drug pushing alien Santa Claus?
Speaker 3: So that's credibly good question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you may have a gut answer for this,
Speaker 1: your instincts may tell you one way or another, but
Speaker 1: I thought we might apply a little logic here. So
Speaker 1: first of all, kind of in the pro category, Tallic
Speaker 1: has white hair. Like Santa he is coming to town.
Speaker 1: We already established that. Yes, he is giving people something
Speaker 1: that evidence suggests they like. Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean biometrically,
Speaker 1: you can't argue with that. I guess. He arrives from
Speaker 1: on high. Okay, Like Santa Claus in a number of movies,
Speaker 1: he has to contend with a supernatural adversary that is
Speaker 1: trying to stop him.
Speaker 3: Oh, this would make the alien good cop kind of
Speaker 3: the pitch of this film.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. He makes use of various special tools, much
Speaker 1: like the Santa Claus in that film. Uh huh. He
Speaker 1: prefers to operate in the shadows. Obviously, his blood or
Speaker 1: may not be eggnog, which you know is very Christmas y.
Speaker 1: I also have to add he may use a sleigh
Speaker 1: in Reindeer. We never see what made the crater. We
Speaker 1: don't know if talk and the other alien just fell
Speaker 1: from the sky, We don't know. You know, if they
Speaker 1: were encapsuled in anything, If there's a spaceship, but disposable
Speaker 1: spaceship they travel in, well, it's just left to the imagination,
Speaker 1: and you may use your imagination to insert a sleigh
Speaker 1: with Reindeer.
Speaker 3: Therefore, he did use a sleigh in reindeer, disprove or
Speaker 3: accept exactly.
Speaker 1: However, he has no beard. That's just undeniable. Taalik has
Speaker 1: no beard, therefore maybe he's not Santa. Also, he does
Speaker 1: not reward and punish with his gift giving. Instead, it's
Speaker 1: heroin and brain drains for everybody, unless he blows you
Speaker 1: up with his space gun instead. And then finally, there
Speaker 1: are no rules of correspondence with talent clause, like nobody's
Speaker 1: riding to Tallic and saying, hey, I've been a good
Speaker 1: boy this year. I would really like a whole lot
Speaker 1: of heroin shot into my neck with a space snake. Now,
Speaker 1: you don't communicate with him, he just comes regardless.
Speaker 3: I would also say that no one leaves out milk
Speaker 3: and cookies for Tallic.
Speaker 1: No, no, I mean he doesn't want milking cookies. He
Speaker 1: wants that sweet brain juice, so he knows where to
Speaker 1: get it. You don't need to leave it out for him.
Speaker 3: Does he know who's been naughty and who's been nice? Unclear?
Speaker 1: Unclear? Yeah, I might push that into the con category
Speaker 1: as well. But hey, maybe you listeners have some thoughts
Speaker 1: on this. We'd love to hear from you. Also, just
Speaker 1: in general on the topic of Christmas action films. Are
Speaker 1: there some other key examples that we didn't mention? Do
Speaker 1: you have some favorites? I don't know. I'll even entertain
Speaker 1: the old sort of false or sort of trumped up
Speaker 1: argument of is Diehard a Christmas movie or not? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a Christmas movie if you want it to be.
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 3: Okay? I think that is all I can do on
Speaker 3: the icome in piece.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right in. We'd love to hear from anyone
Speaker 1: else's thoughts on this film. In the meantime, we'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: is primarily a science podcast, you know, that employs reason
Speaker 1: and logic. But on on Fridays we set aside all
Speaker 1: of that. We just go with our gut and we
Speaker 1: talk about a weird movie here on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: If you want to see a complete list of all
Speaker 1: the movies we've covered thus far on the show, head
Speaker 1: on over to letterbox dot com. It's L E T
Speaker 1: T E R B O x D dot com. Our
Speaker 1: user name there is weird House, and you'll find a
Speaker 1: list there of everything we've covered. Follow us on social
Speaker 1: media if you if you're on there on Instagram, we
Speaker 1: are STBYM podcast. That is our handle on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: tor topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
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