The Retros
We discuss the best picture decisions made by the Academy and whether they were right or wrong...we decide! We also discuss the many different categories and movies of the particular Oscar year we are reviewing and add a few new categories ourselves.
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The Retros
Episode 38: 1977 - Part 2
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Welcome to 1977 Part 2! We had a lot to say, so here's the rest of the show.
But first, a reminder of this years list of Oscar nominees:
- Annie Hall
- The Goodbye Girl
- Julia
- Star Wars
- The Turning Point
In this follow up, we talk about other categories to the Oscar list like The Best Grandma Moment, The Independent Darling, and Who Did It Best!
Did Andy Warhol's Bad overcome its bleak narrative to walk away with the Independent Darling, or was America's lovable mutt in For the Love of Benji a better independent film? Cord really likes the cars from the Bond films, almost as much as Carlos loves John Carradine fighting ghost demons in The Sentinel. We were really affected by Orca in our youth, in which Dumbledore fights an angry killer whale hell bent on revenge; seven year old children should not have been taken by their parents to see this movie, but here we are. Only in 1977 would a movie like Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, a movie featuring a giant Yeti with great hair and an Italian disco vibe, exist in this world. Can John Boorman be forgiven for making Exorcist II: The Heretic? He did make Zardoz. All this and more! And our hot, hot takes!
Want to be part of the excitement, listen and find out who we think could have been added to the Best Picture list! Was the Academy right? Do you agree with our correct assessments? Listen and find out! Don't forget to follow us on any of the major social media at theretrospodcast.
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Thank you for listening and watch more movies!
Hello everyone and welcome back to the second half of 1977. We're going to pick up with our discussion of bad animals and nature's revenge. So thank you for listening and watch more movies. Enjoy the uh rest of the show.
SPEAKER_01But if you want to talk more animals, we can do that. Or we can talk about who did it best, or we could talk about some biopics, which is also kind of a who did it best. Uh okay. What do you want to hear about? Let's do uh let's do biopics and uh all right. So biopics, and we'll do uh which one was best in this one. I will tell you okay. So biopics are 1977. We got a couple. We got Valentino, about Rudolph Valentino, starring Rudolf Nareev, the Russian dancer. Right. Viva Knievel, starring Evil Knieval as Evil Knieval. We've got Julia, which we know, and we'll see we're gonna skip Julia because it's got enough love already. Got nominated for a best pitch. Uh Sky Joplin with um starring Lando Kyrizian, MacArthur about General MacArthur, starring I think it was Gregory Peck, and the Greatest about Muhammad Ali starring Muhammad Ali. So you got two films, and let's look primarily at those, because I'll let me eliminate the others, and let's uh have a discussion about Viva Knievel and the greatest, in which the subject of the film was played by the actual person. The subject of the film. Yeah. Uh Scott Joplin, pretty good. Uh, like I say, Billy Day W Billy D. Williams was Scott Joplin. They didn't shy away from some issues that Mr. Joplin had. Right. Generally very good, but there were just some aspects of it that really felt like oh, this is more like a TV movie. There was just some the way they shot some stuff and some narration. It just sort of hit me wrong. But overall, pretty good. MacArthur, same sort of things, pretty standard. It's General MacArthur, he's a general, he goes to into uh the Philippines. He fights the Japanese, then he fights the Koreans, and he's uh very successful. And then he gets the can uh because he goes too far. These things happen. Yeah. And then Valentino starring Rudolph Norev, terrible, not a particularly good film, and kind of entertaining in his badness, but not too entertaining. And they kind of did it, it was kind of a jumble. So he's Valentino comes off not as a guy who was really into pursuing women. He did, but he kind of came off as a guy who's interested in pursuing whoever. They also had terrible makeup at some points, and that is this thing about giant cones, like a Victrola with a huge cone for that, dispersed the music. They're out on the film set, and they've got something similar to that, some giant like megaphone, just ridiculously large things.
SPEAKER_00Cones was kind of like a like a weird background theme of some sort.
SPEAKER_01Well, it was like two or three times, but there were so and it was something like it was something that would have a cone shape to begin with, like a Victrola, an old-time record player. It's got sort of that curved thing, it bells out, so it's c it's you know to be essentially like a speaker for the the record. And then the megaphone, you know, you it's got a little handle on it. It looks like uh a like a traffic cone with a handle, and then use that as to project your voice. So they had these things that were that were cone shaped just by the nature of what they were, but then they were like five times larger than they would normally be, to the point that it was just very distracting because they were just so ridiculously larger. So that's my take on Valentino, giant cones. I don't know why they felt the need to make giant cones, but they did. So let's so Viva Kinevil and the greatest. So the greatest was a straight biopic. You know, this is Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali and here's he's starting as Cassius Clay, and he's fighting his way up, and he goes to Rome and wins the medal and throws it when he gets treated badly, and uh when he gets back home, and then he goes up against Liston and becomes Muhammad Ali. So Ali plays Ali. He's okay playing himself. You'd think he'd be a little better playing Muhammad Ali since he is Muhammad Ali. But he it's serviceable, let's say that. Certainly somebody other who is a professional actor would have probably done a better job, and I think has done a better job in later films, but it was okay. And you know, if they're offering you money to play yourself, why not? Then Viva Knievel, there'd been an Evil Knievel biopic earlier starring George Hamilton, and that was a straightforward biopic of here's Evil Knieval, and he came up in the wilds of Montana, and he rode his motorcycle and he jumped over crap, and he kept jumping over stuff and became famous. In this film, it's a drama. He's still Evil Knievel and he's still jumping over stuff, but there's this whole thing about they want to send him down to Mexico to do a jump down there, and then the promoter's gonna get all this drugs of some sort. I don't think they specify, just generally drugs, and they're gonna take him over the border with the Evil Knieval semi. It's got Marjo Gordon, I think Leslie Nielsen, Gene Kelly is there. Who's the other female? Faye Dunaway is the the female lead. So they've they've surrounded him with legitimate actors, mostly legitimate. I'm looking at you, Marjo Gordon. But it's this Gene Kelly is becomes a they drug him, or he used to be an alcoholic, and they slip him a beer or something. They basically put him into a nut house and they've paid off the doctor, so evil has to break in there with his motorcycle and get Gene Kelly out. And Gene Kelly's got a bad relationship with his kid who's back from boarding school, and Faye Dunaway is, you know, she doesn't want to love Evil Knievil, but yet she can't deny her heart's desire. And Marjo Gordon is envious of him, and then he's gonna step up and do the right thing, even though he knows that they've like rigged a motorcycle or that they're gonna club evil after the jump or something to make it possible to move the drugs. So he knocks out Evil Knievel and gets in his outfit and does the jump, but of course he's not evil Knieval, so he crashes and maybe he dies, I can't remember. He's but he has some big accident, and then they discover oh, it's not evil Knievel, and now Evil Knievel's on their trail, and the drug dealers have to run away. It's a whole thing, right? So, given that wonderful description, which I've really broken it down for you, which biopic do you feel is the better biopic? Viva Knieval starring Evil Knievel, or the greatest starring Muhammad Ali, the boxer.
SPEAKER_00Now, the greatest is like basically the story of his how he became who he did. And yeah, I just said that. Yeah, I know. I'm making a point. And then Viva Knievel, though, is this bonkers Gonzo movie which starring Evil Knievel. It's not really this is his build-up and this is his origin story. It's just a wild movie. They've already done that. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01They did that with George Hamilton. So it'd be like if there'd been a Muhammad Ali movie about Muhammad Ali called the Greatest back in say 72, 72, 73, starring Philly D. Williams. Good for that. And then in 77, they said to Muhammad Ali, Hey, we want to do a film that's kind of about you, but it's gonna be, we're gonna make up a story. So as Muhammad Ali is going like he's going to Africa for the the big fight in Zaire. But in the meantime, while he's over there, and they've got that downtime, I think because uh foreign had hurt himself, that in in that downtime that he's having some adventure. Yeah, he's gonna like in Africa like he's fighting um poachers or something. Even better. Yeah, which would have been a great film. Write it up. So yeah, it's okay. Hold on. Let me write down Ali in Africa fighting poachers.
SPEAKER_00Um, and rescuing a cute, a cute woman who was poachers and the poacher the rumble in the jungle. Right.
SPEAKER_01Maybe you could call it rumble in the jungle. So you're referencing the big fight, but you're also fighting people in the jungle. Oh, because they're going after uh gorillas. So the jungle gorillas. It all comes together.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'll say if we're going by what a biopic is, I would give it to the greatest. That that seems to be like the one of the better story there because it's it's the origin story.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's I mean, it is a biopic. As far as movies go and the entertainment of movies, I'm rolling with Viva Knievel. As far as you know, an actual biopic, yeah, you gotta give it to Muhammad Ali. But actually, if it's a uh straight biopic, probably going with Gregory Peck as MacArthur, but that's neither here nor there. What do you got? Let's get out of this and go into something else.
SPEAKER_00Okay. But I can give you more stuff if you need me to keep going. I got a lot, so I'm willing to uh to let's start talking about it. All right. Well, we talked about the big movies, now we're gonna talk about the uh little independent films, and we call them independent darlings. There was actually not a lot of independent darlings. Oh, it is? Okay, we'll keep that. Yeah, I'll have to make a button for it.
SPEAKER_01You go ahead and do that. You can make all the buttons you want, buddy.
SPEAKER_00Hell yeah. There weren't a lot of independent films in uh in 77, which I thought was kind of weird, but there was a few, and they were they were all and they were definitely independent films.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think at that point, I think a modern understanding of like the independent Darling is is very different from what it was at that point in the 70s or earlier. Films that were kind of independent, or they were independent producers, but they were working for a studio, or they had an agreement with the studio that that the studio was gonna distribute this, and that was already set up beforehand. And then I think there were the the true independents that were doing we're just we want to put butts in seats, and so we're doing horror films, or we're doing biker films, or we're doing nurse films, or we're doing whatever whatever it takes to get you to the drive-in. So there wasn't the same sort of thing of we're making a film that's got sort of an alternative aspect or an alternative uh viewpoint, different from what you would see in a a mainstream film. It was we're doing a a genre piece to get you into a like a essentially a B movie to get you to come to the show. But go ahead. So you've got some independent darlings from 1977.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and uh the first one was kind of like this kind of movie I saw a prevalence of in the in the uh in the 70s, because I saw a lot of movies, but I also watched a lot of TV, and that was In Search of Noah's Ark, which was um it was a movie, it did have a theatrical release, and it was kind of like yeah, obviously uh it was very religious uh leaning. We're searching for the no you know, we found the ark, it's up to the thing, and they're putting together people looking for the ark, and they also have like dramatic retellings of certain scenes. So they'll actually have like produced like verse like two animals walking in together. Yeah, like that, or uh Noah talking to God or people screaming at him, whatever. So it wasn't a it wasn't a great movie, but it was kind of wild to see because it was sort of like documentary style with the different dramatic retelling of you know what they thought of the Bible, like uh, okay. But I thought that was kind of neat.
SPEAKER_01The next movie is that, and then yes, because there were other films that were like that that it seems to me, there were the um I think there was a couple films that were either done by Eric von Danekin or referenced or like were the film version of a book he'd put out. I think he put out food of not Food of the Gods, I don't think that's right. I think that was like a a giant or something. Yeah, but he did a thing about like okay, we got the pyramids in Egypt, and we've got these pyramids in Mesoamerica, and we've got these pyramids at pyramids this other place, and it was more about like aliens have come down and they've done these things. And then I think there was another aspect of sort of ancient civilizations, and yeah, they're tied in together these different ways. So but I think it had the same feel. I I saw In Search of the years ago. So yeah, so I think it's got that same no, some other arc. The Ark of the Covenant. That's the one there. It was it was called Raider, the Lost Ark, because it was lost.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The big thing I remembered was uh aliens featured prominently uh in a lot of these in search of uh things. It was all about paranormal back then. And right there was a show called And the Devil. There was a show called In Search of, and it did have like oh the guy from emergency, and they they he and another guy played like Oh, no, no, no, no. Oh I thought it was a guy from emergency. No. Oh, wait, wait, wait, 20 years.
SPEAKER_01Come on. Oh, you um he was uh in a very famous TV show from the mid-60s. Oh, I see what you're talking about. Got canceled two years early.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh it was um uh what do you call it? He sang a song about the double baggins, right, right, right. Uh he he he narrated it.
SPEAKER_01Um he died in the second film based on this TV series. It should have stayed dead.
SPEAKER_00That was Leonard Nimoy.
SPEAKER_01But that's just me.
SPEAKER_00Leonard Nimoy, come on. Yeah, I was thinking of trying. I was thinking of another show that did kind of that that did aliens. But yeah, in Search of was big into the paranormal narrated by Leonard Nimoy.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, search for you thinking of Project UFO? Project UFO, yes. That was the TV show that yes, they were they would show you. We've got this report of an UFO from the official UFO records and right, and then they did like little dramatic reshows. And yeah, I like for was the guy from Emergency or the guy from uh Adam 12? Yeah, I think it was emergency, it was the blonde one. Yeah, I think so. For emergency, yeah. Not the cute guy. Well, the other one, the the brunette, I think I got the impress you know, this is before my time, but I got the impression that the brunette guy was supposed to be the cute one and the blonde was the smart one or or something. Or or something, you know, basically like he was the blonde on chips, you know. The you've got Poncharello and you've got Larry, I can't remember, whatever the blonde one was. I think the only pairing that both of them came off okay was Starsky and Hutch. So both seem to do all right. But everybody else has got a blonde and a a brunette. The brunette is always the Q one or the the more popular one and the blonde. I guess because you know, blondes have more fun, so they punish them in their TV roles. That's what Rod Stewart says anyway. Okay, have I totally uh not this off? Totally derailed. Well, let's get back. Uh so Hey, speaking of Starsky and Hutch. Okay, later on me. There's a TV movie, and it might be like a two-part or long episode. I think that's probably what it really is. Starsky and Hutch on Playboy Island. Oh, wow. Is there anything more 70s? I mean, that that's right up there.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I want to see him drive the striped tomato all the way up into the compound. That would be awesome.
SPEAKER_01Up to the grotto. At Playboy Island.
SPEAKER_00Right. The next independent 70s for you later. The next uh independent darling is Andy Warhol's Bad.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if you ever Which I've seen some of it. I tried to watch it again and just uh I couldn't I just couldn't get into it.
SPEAKER_00It's a hard slog, it really is. Uh all about this contract killer argue with that title. Yeah, it was a contract killer who lived with this woman who like got gave him contracts and something about killing a baby that because the the mother threw the baby out, he didn't complete the contract, it didn't get money. So he argued with a woman, then killed her, took her client list, and then that was the end of the movie. He he went on. Which that was bad that that's a pretty hard slog. But the the guy who played the killer was uh Perry King. I don't know if you remember who that was. He was on uh Riptide, wasn't he? I think he was on Riptide, but yeah. He was also in a movie uh that we talked about in 1974, the uh Lords of the Flatbush. He was in that. He was one of the main characters in that. Right. So there's Andy Warhol's. I'm Andy Warhol's bad. It was certainly bad, but it was very independent because I think Andy Warhol completely uh financed that himself. The next one I have is For the Love of Benji, which is another in the series of Benji movies.
SPEAKER_01This one actually has I had that in both my sequels and my bad animals. It's the exception to the rule for bad animals because Benji's not bad.
SPEAKER_00No, no, and this was uh the the the dog was actually Ben Jean, was uh I think the daughter of the original Benji, uh, who had passed away.
SPEAKER_01So what did they well, yes, that was the actor was Ben Jean, but she played the role of Benji.
SPEAKER_00She played the role of Benji, yes. And it was c that that was a wild movie, too. Uh something about him he's going to Europe and there's drug dealers, and he's trying to find his There's a French connection with dogs. With two puppies, yeah, exactly. And uh that is my list for independent darlings. So which one would be the independent darling of 1977?
SPEAKER_01In search of no I'm going with Benji fighting the French drug cartel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I just don't know if I can get Andy Warhol's bat on that. So uh for the love of Benji is the independent darling of 1977. All right.
SPEAKER_01Doing all right. Uh little Benji saving the day. Yeah. So let me uh let me jump take you back to a who did it better.
SPEAKER_00Not best, just better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I don't think any of these we could apply the word best to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, except the car.
SPEAKER_01All right. So I'm gonna give you uh so much to choose from. Uh you know what? I'm gonna take you to uh things in water. Okay. And these are things that normally wouldn't be in water, but in these films, these things went into the water either and it was either good or it was very bad. So the two things in water films uh got are Airport 77, where the plane crash lands in the ocean and then sinks underwater, but gets caught on a ledge, a shelf. Right. So it doesn't go too deep, but it's still underwater, the plane, uh, which is not a place you would normally want a plane. Not at all. Even abnormally, you wouldn't really want it there. And the other is the spy who loved me with the car that goes into the water. But the car turns into a submarine with missiles, so a much better situation. I mean, if you're gonna be in the water in a vehicle that's not normally a water vehicle, you want that James Bond Lotus Esprit. So, Spy Who Love Me, James Bond, he's being chased by uh Caroline Monroe, who has been in Star Crash, he was in some hammer films in the 70s. She's in a helicopter shooting at him, he's on the run. He drives, he's just been given this white lotus esprit, which had not hit the shelves yet, that Lotus had gone to where they knew the James Bond crew was hanging out, coming up with the new James Bond movie, and they kept parking it in front of their office until they finally came out and they saw him and said, Hey, what's the store with this car? Right. And so he was able to get the Lotus into the film because of that, because it was so different looking from everything else that was out there at the time. So Bond had just been given this uh very cool looking car. He drives it into the ocean off of a dock to get away from this helicopter. You think, oh no, he's driven this car into the water. That's terrible. And he's underwater. It's not like the car from uh oh uh what's up, Doc, the Volkswagen which floats. It's sinking, it's going down to the bottom, but then it transforms into a submarine, and he's driving around, so to speak, under the water with his submarine, and some divers come and they think he shoots those and he sees the helicopter up and he shoots a missile up and blows up the helicopter. As cars go, this is a very good submarine. So they've got that vehicle in the water. Now, airport 77, the plane crashes in the water. There's some reason for that, other than just the pilot was drunk or an engine went out. Uh there's some shenanigans going on, I think with Christopher Lee, and they crash in the water, they sink underneath. Some guys try to get out, but they're too deep, and they can't get to whatever they were gonna do outside the plane, which is underwater. And so they die and they float away. Uh and of course the one of them is married, and the wife is there and she sees her husband floating away uh into the the briny deep. And they eventually come and save them. I think they have to go. Down to the sub they don't or to the uh the plane instead of raising it up like they didn't raise the Titanic because they just put a bunch of balloons under it and pop it was back up on the surface. Right. So Airport 77, the plane under the water, or the spy who loved me, the car that goes under the water, who did it best for a vehicle normally not in the water that suddenly finds itself underwater?
SPEAKER_00Well, I absolutely I I I love disaster films, but uh I also love cars that turn into other things like spaceships and submarines. So I'm gonna say that Spy Who Love Me was the uh the better vehicle thing in water.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely that's the case. It was uh I mean I love disaster films too, especially an Erwin Allen disaster film. Uh nothing wrong with this one, but yes, that car is iconic, second only to the Aston Martin DB five. And interestingly, and I'll may do a whole other thing on this. This was the third Bond performance by Roger Moore. He gets this car, this iconic car, which has this amazing ability. Sean Connery's third performance was in Goldfinger, which was the debut of the Aston Martin DB five. I'm not saying they're linked, but I'm saying there's a lot of interesting connections between those films and some connections to some later Bond films that were also like the third performance. Things with Germanic villains and sort of superhuman henchmen like Oddjob and Jaws. But I'll do a whole other thing on that because I'm still building my my conspiratorial rant. Uh I gotta put the rest of that together first. Okay. So, but the best thing in water that's not normally in water is the Lotus Esprit submarine from The Spy Who Loved Me. I turn it over to you now. What do you have? Alrighty. Do you want to talk about animals? Do you want to talk about sequels? Oh what are you into? Or do you have something else you want to throw in?
SPEAKER_00I I I have something else I think we can uh do it. We can throw in here. Uh I have you know the 70s had a lot of like really dark movies that uh featured some pretty incredibly violent and gory uh uh narratives, but some of them were much much more were much out your gross movie. My gross movies. Uh well they're they're they're they're much more influential, so to speak.
SPEAKER_01And uh I call uh are you gonna reference Pete's Dragon?
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01Live action and animation together.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's a whole nother thing. Because that was uh Disney was like into that for uh a lot of the late 70s, and uh we we can discuss that later, but uh no, this is what I call or what I this subject I called nightmare fuel, and I have a few movies that can be considered nightmare fuel. Okay. One is The Sentinel, which is one of my favorite movies ever. It has uh You and the Sentinel. Oh yeah. Oh, it's great. It had John Carradine in it, it had uh Chris Sarandon, and oh, it even had uh uh oh god, what's his name? Uh the uh the the the scientist from uh the the the ma the mathematician from uh Jurassic Park. I can't remember his name.
SPEAKER_01The mathematician from Jurassic Park?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, uh uh Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum, yes, he he even played a part in this. This is the story of a of a woman who slowly seems to be going insane, and she lives in this apartment full of like absolute weirdos, and she can't uh she can't figure out what's going on, and it it all builds up to the point of this house that she lives in is like a brownstone in in Brooklyn or Queens, or I don't know New York well enough to tell you exactly where. But it turns out that this was like failing. This well, the this building was like a gate to hell. And the old priest, played by John Carradine, there's always a priest there that basically guards the gate of hell. And at one and all the people, all that that that should be. In New York City. In New York City that comes as a surprise. Oh, not at all. So all the people that she had interacted with earlier inside her apartment were all ghosts of like murderers and serial killers, and and she was like haunted by the the the ghost of her father, who was an absolutely terrible human being. And then like in the in the in the final like third act battle, all these demons were coming up out of the like the woodwork, almost literally to attack her, to kill her, and they were really, really well done. I I do not I I just know that makeup art was not that good back then. I'm thinking that they actually got like real people with like deformities and stuff, uh to to to play these to play these roles.
SPEAKER_01And she you know Well, I don't know that I mean I think makeup was was okay. Okay but I also think that that would be a very 70s thing to do. If we're gonna we're gonna get the people who actually who have these weird looks or terrible looks, yeah, uh we're actually gonna find those people and put them on screen. That feels like much more something that would be done of we're gonna give you this realism, sure, whether you like it or not.
SPEAKER_00Uh another movie very deeply mired in retrospect what the 70s what 70s culture was like. The next movie is The Hills Have Eyes, which is a classic uh you know inbred hillbilly family that are like cannibals going after or the shot heroes and heroines in the movie and they're trying to get them and use them for whatever. But the all the but that family that the Hills Have Eyes they were just absolutely disturbing. Though I think there was less using people that had actual afflictions, and this was like a kind of a makeup job, but it was still really horrifying to watch.
SPEAKER_01Well, the one bald guy Yeah, he's he's popular, he's been in a bunch of stuff. He was in uh wasn't he in a Twisted Sister video? Um He's been in a bunch of stuff anyway. Regardless. And he's he's got that look. He's the he is that bald guy. Right, right. He basically he nailed that look early on, and he's been able to write it because he's the guy who looks like that. So he can just be, oh I'm looking for a guy who looks like this. Oh, we're just gonna hire this guy.
SPEAKER_02He's the guy who looks like that.
SPEAKER_01Okay, this is Sentinel and he'll have eyes.
SPEAKER_00He'll have eyes. And my third movie is Rabid. Now, this movie was kind of yeah, this movie I remember seeing the the you know, whenever I went to uh Blockbuster or the or the video store at the time, this movie was always prominent in the horror section, and I was always drawn to it, but I never picked it up because there's something wrong with you. I should have. Uh this was a David Cronenberg movie, which it kind of explained some of the weirdness in it. But basically, this this woman was uh injured in a motorcycle accident, and uh she develops like an uh an orifice in her in one of her arms that hides like a in her armpit, wouldn't it? Yeah, it was an armpit, it was like a f- Or about there, yeah. They call it the clitoral stinger, which is absolutely gross. Uh in order to call the deck the the clitoral stinger she uses to feed on human blood and uh and spread the uh the the affliction.
SPEAKER_01Man, I I see no I I thought that yes, that it was like another vagina or something with her actual vagina, but it's not, and it's not I mean I know they say that, but it's still it's like there's a spike and then it but it there's an an orifice there, but it's like a mouth. I mean, it's like teeth it like it spikes into it, and then it's sucking blood out or something. I I think there was some idea of we're gonna do something with this vagina, because that'll sell. Well, say it's the vagina and it's under her arms and sell tickets. There was another vagina film of 77, a talking vagina film called Chatterbox with uh Rip Taylor and uh and others, which is every bit as good as that premise sounds. And judge that as you will.
SPEAKER_00Oh well.
SPEAKER_01So Rabbit, she's she's hugging people because she's sad, and then all of a sudden they get spiked, yeah, yeah, that thing happens. And then they get turned, I think, don't they?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they do. They get turned into creatures with clitoral stingers, you know, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01But that's not a gendered thing, right? No, anybody could have a clitoral stinger. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's forward thinking. Right. But uh he's not tied into a gendered uh clitoral stinger that it can only be women.
SPEAKER_00No, that would be like a phallic stinger.
SPEAKER_01And they don't change the name of it. No, they don't see, but they don't do that. They don't say it's a phallic stinger. Still a clitoral stinger. Clitoral stinger.
SPEAKER_00So the all these movies, all the these three movies very heavy on the body horror. Uh also the with Rabbit, it's like this uh political allegory with uh Montreal. Yeah, I I don't see how, but uh what was the political allegory of Montreal?
SPEAKER_01Um was it about the French Canadians? Yeah. That they're against the French Canadians, right? Those bastards.
SPEAKER_00Is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was uh like a subversive kind of movie. If you say so. Yeah. I know. I I didn't I didn't pick up on it, but uh apparently that was there was a lot of that in there. Okay, a deep undercurrent of anti-Quebecois, anti-Quebecois, right? So, of those three movies, which one would be your nightmare fuel?
SPEAKER_01Oh, they're all they're all my nightmare. So I haven't seen the sentinel, I saw Rabbit at some point, and what was the other one? Hills of Eyes Out Eyes. Um so the Hills of Eyes, that was a video title that was always around with that the bald the bald guy with his big eyes staring at you from the box. I'm gonna go with that just because uh because that face and that look was just it's disturbing, just ever present. And I just don't want to see that guy running around unless it's in a movie screen. Yeah, sort of comic effect.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm gonna go with the Sentinel because uh the final the final demon attack and John Carradine smiting them with his uh cross. It was all it was wild to me. I loved it.
SPEAKER_01So the Sentinel, the duelists, he got a whole thing going on. I do.
SPEAKER_00So that would be the nightmare fuel. I choose the Sentinel, Cord chooses the hills have eyes. I don't think there's bad decisions there. I think those are both very good decisions. I think but we're just splitting.
SPEAKER_01I think anytime you're into any of those films, he made a bad decision at some point. All right, so let's move on to uh what are we gonna do now? Oh, I've got um let me throw this out at you. It's uh John Ratzenberger. You may know him from uh Cheers. Most people would know him from Cheers. Right. He was Cliff Claven, the the postman who he got his job on Cheers to be in the the Bar Know It All. Uh I think he I think he had auditioned for Norm and could see that that wasn't gonna happen for him. So he had asked, Do you have a uh a bar know it all? And they didn't, and he sort of explained, Yeah, every bar's got a a guy who knows everything, and sort of went he basically did an audition for this role that they didn't have and he got it. He's been in a bunch of movies, and he was in at least three movies in the year 1977. Okay, which is the year we're looking at. And uh so let's let's see which uh which John Ratzenberger film did it better. So he was in Valentino, uh it's kind of like he was a newspaper guy, uh photographer, I believe, in the terrible Valentino film. He did it was okay, but not a great film. He was in A Bridge Too Far as a soldier, he has a scene with Robert Redford, and he was in the film Twilight Slash Gleaming, in which the president, let's see, no, a rogue general takes over, takes over a nuclear missile site and demands that the president come to the site and does something else. Like uh the president has to say that we're not gonna put our missiles someplace. He's got some something he wants the president to do that all the presidents, people around him are saying you shouldn't do that, it's bad for our foreign policy, whatever. So the president goes there, he's gonna do whatever this thing is. Uh as you can see, it's this film was so in engrossing, I can't remember the I was gonna say it was he the president or or he was the guy. So the so the rogue general has taken over the missile site, but he's gonna fire a a nuke at somebody. He's got total control over it, unless the president comes and does this this thing of we're gonna have this new foreign policy. And Ratzenberger is again a soldier in that. And this twice last naming, very much the 70s thing of you know, the government is bad, because they end up all the presidents, guys around him are saying you shouldn't do this, and then there's some back and forth, and he says, Well, you know, if something happens to me, the first thing you do is you you gotta tell the people that we're gonna do this change. And his close personal friend is saying, Uh, yeah, we'll we'll do that, sure, buddy. Um, and terrible things happen, and guess what? The president accidentally gets shot in a hail of gunfire, a hail of unnecessary gunfire, and they pretty much tell him, Well, we're not really gonna do that for you, buddy. And that's just how it goes. So Ratzenberger was in a small part in that, in that sort of okay movie, a small part in Valentino, a not okay movie, and a small part in A Bridge Too Far, pretty good movie. Gets to share some screen time with with Redford, so not that bad. And gets to go hang out in the Netherlands for a couple weeks. So we're giving it to I've just decided. We're giving it to the bridge too far for John Ratzenberger in 1977, making an impact before he got the Cheers, before he got to the Empire Strikes Back. He was uh doing good work. Killing Nazis. That's right, killing Nazis and taking bridges. Oh, talking about it. All right, what else do you got?
SPEAKER_00Uh, okay. I think it's time for a grandma moment.
SPEAKER_01I I know you wanted to go there, even chumping it a bit. Now we discussed this briefly. Now we haven't revealed to each other what our grandma moment is, but I believe you have a grandma moment, don't you? I have two, as a matter of fact. Two grandma moments. Well, that seems excessive. Now it seems to me there's one grandma moment that just leaped. Well, I know it doesn't seem to me, I know there was a grandma moment which leaped out at me. Yep, yep. As soon as I thought about the grandma moment, this just came instantly to mind. And I will not be surprised if it was the same to you. And for those that don't know, so grandma moment is when a character sacrifices their life, not just gets hurt or something, but sacrifices life. That character dies in order to save other characters. This comes from Dante's Peak, where grandma was in the boat with a with her family, and the volcano which was exploding, had made the lake that they were crossing in their rowboat acid. Acid lake. And the boat was starting to develop holes from the acid. So none of them were gonna make it across the lake until Grandma jumped out of the boat and pushed the boat to shore. Just like Michael, kind of, got them all to shore and they made it to shore, and they didn't burn up in the acid lake. But grandma didn't she expired once they got there, but she got her family to the shore and saved them all. And there was a similar grandma moment, I think, in maybe in Volcano, which was the other big volcano movie of the same year, where a subway chief uh was was grabbing somebody and the lava had come, and so he had to walk through the lava for a few steps before he could throw this guy who had to be two bills, um distance of like twelve feet to the waiting crew, and then he collapsed because you know his feet off by the lava. Yeah, the lava got him. So that was a grandma moment, but it it sounds better the grandma moment rather than a subway chief moment. It's grandma moment character dies saving other characters. So I will let you leap in now with your grandma moment, and let's get actually give me the the one that's your second one. Not the big one.
SPEAKER_00Not the big one that we know we both uh put down. Alright, so there was this uh it wasn't a very big movie, but it wasn't 1977, it was a horror film called Holocaust 2000. Uh it was released as The Chosen and Reign of Fire. It had a whole bunch of names. That's always a good sign. Yeah, uh it it was filmed in Europe, uh in Italy, and it changed names in the rest of Europe and America. So the the big thing was this guy, this west this like wealthy industrialist guy builds up a big nuclear power plant uh in the Middle East. And before he can do that, he discovers that his son is I I just to say it is already weird, is the Antichrist. And because he's the Antichrist, he's gonna use his father's nuclear power plant to destroy the world. And uh as he's Well, they say the Antichrist is coming out of the Middle East, so there you go. That's not so far-fetched. Not so far-fetched. Uh he has dreams of like this this like giant plant. Who does? Oh, uh Kirk Douglas. The father or the devil. The father. It's played by Kirk Douglas. Uh he sees like the power plant rising out of the sea, and there's like uh the towers on it become like the heads of a monster. Ah, it's pretty cool. However, I'll I'll get to the the grandma moan part of it. There uh in the American version, he noticed he he knew that his son was the Antichrist, and he had to do something about it. So he brings all the company into a big board meeting, including his son, and he puts on a bunch of like explosives, and he like detonates the explosives, and his son, who's like ironically named Angel, his face is overlaid with the image of the explosion, and it shows that he basically thwarted the apocalypse by destroying the method by which his Antichrist could do it. This is actually the version that was in America. In Europe, he is like in exile. Uh, the ending was Kirk Douglas is in exile with his newborn child, and his uh adult son, uh, when he grows up successfully causes Armageddon. That was a real downer ending in Europe. Yeah, they still like the hangover of the World War II.
SPEAKER_01But the American virgin smoke their stinky cigarette and complain about life. But life.
SPEAKER_00Kirk Douglas, he was an industrialist, he was gonna make a lot of money. He sees that there was evil coming down the pipe, even if it was his own son, straps on explosives, takes out the method by which his evil son was going to destroy the world. Grandma moment. Unless he's in Europe. Unless you're in Europe, then he uh lives and his son is evil. Okay. That was my second one.
SPEAKER_01So that's a grandma moment. Halfway, I guess. So now let's get to the big one. That's what she said. And that is Say it, do it. Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan Kenobi. That's right. Obi-Wan Kenobi and the film Star Wars. Very good. Has his big battle with Darth Vader, who was once his tutor and is now the teacher. And as he's having that fight, he sees Han Solo and Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker and C3PO and R2D2 and Chewbacca making the break to the Millennium Falcon to escape the Death Star, go and get the plans to the rebels so they can blow up the Death Star. And he holds up his he's having his sword fight, his lightsaber fight, and he stops and holds the lightsaber up, and Darth Vader cuts him down, but then disappears. Several things come to mind with this now in hindsight. How did Darth Vader ever become a force ghost when he didn't know what happened to Obi-Wan? Shouldn't he have known that Obi-Wan disappeared because he was becoming a force ghost? Apparently he didn't. And yet he somehow figured it out. Even though there weren't any more Jedi's because they'd all been killed. Right. That's one issue. The other one is we already know that they put the uh trackers on the ship. Princess Leia told us that, and it was clearly the case since the Death Star was able to come right up to where they were at. So was Obi-Wan's sacrifice really a sacrifice that saved them? Or was it just a pointless sacrifice because they were already gonna get out? Maybe the stormtroopers weren't just terrible shots. Maybe they knew the deal was let's get him out of here so we can blow up the rebel planet. Maybe everything we know is a lie.
SPEAKER_00My mind is blowing up right now. The key part of all that is he needed Luke to move on. Luke was gonna stay there. Everyone else was running into the ship, into the Millennium Falcon, but Luke wasn't because he was trying to like, you know, shoot the stormtroopers and And and try to get hope that Kenobi comes and and and with them to be rescued. And no Kenobi knew that that wasn't gonna happen, but he needed Luke to get in the ship and go, or else they're all gonna die, and he's like the chosen one and whatever, and he needs to he needs to fulfill his destiny in all this. So he knew that if I was out of the picture, then he would be able to move on, go with the rebels, and then come back and destroy the uh the Death Star. Okay, I'll buy that. And I think there's also some kind of like I think it's like uh like a like a Jedi thing of you can kind of sort of see the future, or you've got an idea of the future. Uh I'm not 100% sure on that. I'll have to I'll have to get back to you on that. I'm writing that down.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think we have to go with what's presented at the time. So as far as other Jedi powers and and what they can see or not see, or what they can do or not do, right? I think we're locked into this is what's presented to us, this is what we know. Yeah, the lore wasn't that deep. It works in that regard of yes, I'll buy into he sees that because Luke is starting to approach and has stopped shooting at the stormtroopers, that he needs to stop being the attraction for Luke to come over and get himself blown up or shot or whatever. Because he's not aware that the ship is has been bugged. So, yeah, so it still counts as a wonderful grandma moment where Obi-Wan Kenobi or old Ben Kenobi has sacrificed himself for Luke Skywalker and his pals to get out of the Death Star and hopefully blow it up later. Exactly. So that's our grandma moment. That's a pretty great one. It just leaps right out at you. Right.
SPEAKER_00Doesn't it? It does. So we're calling it as uh Obi-Wan is the grandma moment.
SPEAKER_01Obi-Wan, yes, we're not doing your half-assed, maybe in Europe it doesn't work, maybe here it works. We're sticking with everywhere Obi-Wan dies, and Luke gets into the ship and gets out.
SPEAKER_00I knew that Obi-Wan was gonna take it, but I just had to see how many other grandma moments there were in 1977. There weren't a lot. Uh I was surprised to find this one was sound to half.
SPEAKER_01Alright, so I've got several sequels. We can talk a little bit about sequels if you want to get into that. Uh, I've got some more animal films we can touch on if you want to get into that. If you've got something, let's jump in to whatever you have. What do you have? What do you got?
SPEAKER_00I I've been on. I've been looking forward to to you talking about the animals. So let's go with uh animals. Okay.
SPEAKER_01A lot of bad animals, a lot of animal movies. Some good, some bad. Uh, in some cases, the animals are bad, sometimes good. So we talked about Kingdom of the Spiders and Empire of the Ants, uh, the spiders, which you had many negative things to say without justification. Uh we've talked about what else did we talk about? We talked about Benji, for the love of Benji. Right. So Benji's a good guy, he's obviously fighting the French mafia. Uh, you throw in ants, the movie about ants, but there's several more movies about animals, some of which are good, some of which are bad. So there's the white buffalo, or Charles Bronson is hunting for this gigantic buffalo. Now, the buffalo, to my knowledge, didn't do anybody any harm. It just being out there being a white buffalo. And white buffalo is very rare. It's an albino buffalo, uh, very important to the native tribes. And of course, so Charles Bronson wants to go and shoot it. I don't know if the buffalo did anything to him. I saw this movie at some point. I just remember you never you never get a good look at the buffalo. You sort of see his hump, which is white, moving through the tree line. He is really big, and I don't know if they even shoot him at the end. Anyway, so there's the white buffalo. So Charles Bronson's going out and shooting wildlife. There's Barracuda. I was gonna knock off of Barracuda, yeah. With Barracuda, and then Barracuda's bad. So want to chomp you. Uh Tentacles, which is this octopus, which might be bad, or it might be that they've disrupted his habitat, which is much more likely. So he's angry. I know they have a bathosphere which goes down. They got a guy in there, and they got a little window, and they see this giant octopus eyeball looking in there because he wants to see who's here. And his little bathoscope before it squeezes it and crushes it, which of course he squeezes it and crushes it. There's uh Day of the Animals. The Day of the Animals is a um it's about climate change. They talk about years before anybody else was talking about climate change. Well, they were talking about climate change, but it it was, you know, it was on Time magazine would throw something out, and it's you know, it's gonna be the the oceans will be frozen in ten years, or the oceans will disappear because it'd be come all steam in ten years. They kind of went back and forth every couple years. Anyway, in 77, Day of the Animals, it's unusually hot, and the animals are really angry about it. Oh, okay. So they're attacking people. So there's a bunch of people that go up, they take a like a helicopter up to the top of the mountain, and they're gonna walk down the mountain together. Uh again, I think Lizzie Nielsen's in it. The guy from Oh, what is his name? I'm not gonna come up with the name, so I'm not gonna worry about it. Uh but somebody else that you would recognize who was in the Dirty Dozen, and he was in the movie Grizzly, he was like the Grizzly expert. And a lot of this is this is somehow tied into Grizzly. I can't remember exactly how, like, I think the same production company, and then several of the same actors went from one to the other. But they're coming down the mountain, and uh sorry, I was just thinking about Jane's addiction. They're coming down the mountain and the animals are attacking them. Like there's a puma that comes after them, and there's an eagle that comes after them, and there's some snakes, and there's whatever else. But they're having this battle with the animals to try to get to safety. And animals are mad because it's really hot. So this could happen today. At any time. So just be aware out there, people. Uh, there might be pumas looking for you, take their anger out on you. Uh, there were several bad dog movies, and basically it was like teenage boys. You get a bunch of dogs together and they just go nuts and start attacking people. So there was the pack.
SPEAKER_00There was a recent movie like that, uh, where dogs just went crazy and just started attacking people. Like a like a year or two ago. All right.
SPEAKER_01So it was a remake of one of these wonderful movies, like Dogs Came Back. There was Claws, but I think that was not dogs, I think that was something else. Then there was Orca.
SPEAKER_02Oh, Orca.
SPEAKER_01Orca. Uh Orca is fantastic in its terribleness. So Orca is Chris and Orca, killer whale, who has been done wrong. And so they're out, this fishing boat is out. It's got Richard Harris, the Irishman who was Dumbledore for the first two Harry Potter movies, and then his life of heavy drinking caught up with him. So Richard Harris, uh, he's a character did a very emotional take of on MacArthur Park, uh, which was a success for him, was a hit single for him. So Richard Harris is this fisherman, and he's got his fishing boat, and he's got his buddies, and they're out fishing. And he's sort of not in charge at this moment where they catch this orca by accident, maybe, or maybe somebody's angry at the orca because the orca ate the fish. I can't remember, but they get this orca and they pull it up, so it's hanging above the deck of the boat, and the orca was pregnant. It was a lady orca, she was pregnant, and she just gives well it doesn't really give birth, it's like the baby orca just falls onto the deck, and they both die. And while this is happening, maybe the the crew kills them, I can't remember. Uh, but they don't make it. The baby orca and the lady orca, the baby and the lady orcas. They don't make it. And the whole time this is happening, this I think they the crew beats up the orcas and kills them. The husband slash father orca is in the water watching, and so you get close-ups of his eye, like his head is turned sort of sideways, so his big eye can look and see them doing these terrible things to his family. So he's pissed off. So he exacts his revenge and he goes, and at one point they're out on the boat, and he leaps up. This guy is up fixing something up on a uh on a tower, and Orka comes out of nowhere, jumps up the guy, grabs him. Yeah. And and Bo Derrick is in it, and she's somebody's girlfriend, but he goes to where Bo Derrick lives, and I don't know, he figures out where she lives. I guess he's been given his big eye to look around and find people, and somehow figures out that this is the girlfriend or close friend of Richard Harris, who ultimately he holds responsible for the death of his family. And so he smashes this house that's on the water, and it's on like piers on the water, and he smashes through that, so the house collapses, and she slides down into the water and he bites her leg off. Uh somehow she's hurt a leg anyway, but she bites her leg off, which is even worse than hurting her leg. So Richard Harris decides he's had enough, he's gonna go take care of this orca. So he goes out and he's following the orca, and then the orca will call up and attack and get him to fall because they're going further and further north. And God can't believe I have to go so far north to get this orca. But the orca keeps coming back and eating one of his buddies and then swims away again, and they gotta go chase him. And he's so they're out somewhere in the North Pole. He's just there's ice caps and and icebergs all around them, and he has the final confrontation uh with the orca, and the orca s at some point he's hopping from ice float to ice floe to try to get to the orca to stab him. Uh I think he gets a shot into the orca, but the orca either slaps him with his tail or lands on the ice floor that he's on, and Richard Harris goes flying like 40 feet through the air, smashes into an iceberg, and that's the end of Richard Harris, because he then slowly slides down and into the cold frozen water. And his there's a woman there who sees all things, so you've got somebody who can you know who can tell the story. So maybe this was a true story that they're cautionary tale. Sort of like in search of Noah's Ark, that they had somebody there who could see it, who could transcribe this for the filmmakers. That's what I'm going with. So that was Orca. Yeah. Uh one of the best sort of bad animal movies, uh, certainly better than The White Buffalo. But there's there's actually two more films that I want to talk about in animal films. One of those, The Island of Dr. Moreau, uh story by I think HG Wells.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Have you seen this version of Island of Dr. Version?
SPEAKER_00I've seen both. Oh I saw the were the the uh this version with uh Michael York. It was like a it was it was already on TV by the time uh uh I saw it, so it was like a TV, you know, CBS you know, movie of the night kind of thing. But I did see that, and uh I I saw the the the remake in '96, which was terrible. Shocking. That was terrible.
SPEAKER_01This isn't that much better. It was Michael York with who was the lead? I think it may have been either a Bond girl or maybe it may have been it may have been Ornella Moody. It may have been the woman who was uh in Flash Gordon, she was the daughter of Minga Merciless. I think it may have been her, but I don't think that's right. I think it was somebody else, and I'm just blanking on who that was. But it was some other actress that dark hair, and it'd been in something around the same time that I'm just not catching hold of. Uh, but Michael York shows up there, and it is it might be Gregory Peck in the lead in this one. I think so. I think it's Gregory Peck, it is MacArthur, and then he plays the mad scientist here. And so the premise is he's uh the scientist who is now taking animals and making them into people. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah, and so he's got these rules and are kind of like the the three rules of robotics don't hurt anyone, nobody sheds blood, uh, you have to be good. Because, you know, he's got he's got like the pig man, but he also has the tiger man and the buffalo man. So he's got some of these animals that are just really deadly animals that he's turned into men, and then there's you know, like the cow man or the the lizard man, whatever. That there's others that are not nearly so so difficult to deal with. And things go awry. As they do. So it's uh so it's okay. There's a surprise twist ending to it, uh, kind of a twist ending. So that's it's still animals, and they they turn to their animal behaviors, things happen, and it's not good for well, it's certainly not good for Gregory Peck, because he had this whole House of Pain set up, and it was not the rap group, and it they they did not care for it. So that's Island of Dr. Moreau. We're not gonna say anything more about that because we need to move to Yeti, Giant of the 20th Century. I strongly recommend this film. If you are not familiar with it, you Carlos.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01Oh, and by the way, I'm Cord, and this is Carlos. Welcome to the show. We're terrible at this. Oh my god. We're four hours into the show. We have to introduce ourselves.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I think we're just moving on.
SPEAKER_01So, have you seen Yeti, giant of the 20th century?
SPEAKER_00No, I haven't.
SPEAKER_01Are you familiar with it at all? Okay. So you should definitely rush out and find this. Rush out to your computer on the other side of your room and find this. Oh my god. It's similar to so they find this Yeti who's in the frozen north, and he's frozen, and then they bring him to somewhere else, they thaw him out, and he's first of all, he's giant. He so when they say he's a giant of the 20th century, he's essentially it's very much like King Kong from the year before. Probably they saw that film and threw this together. It really has that feel that this was thrown together pretty quickly. Oh, like Turkish Star Wars. So, yeah, so he is so this Yeti is like, I don't know, six or seven stories tall. He's gigantic. So they free him out, they they thaw him out, and he comes to life, and of course, he breaks out from the chains he's in, and he goes on a rampage. The Yeti himself, he is the disco Yeti. He's got hair all over, but his face, it's basically he's just had a blowout before they started filming. So his hair is fantastic, and he's got the thick beard, his brows not too bad. He's definitely less than a Brezhnev on the brows. So he's got a real Italian kind of disco look to him. If you're looking for a disco movie and a movie that really is informed by the disco movement, it's Saturday Fever. If you wait a year or two, it's disco movie with Jeff Goldflum and Donna Summer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank God it's Friday. Or it's Yeti the giant of the 20th century. Because it's so informed by the look of disco, this Yeti. It's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00But it's also Italian, so it's like it's filtered through like a European version of disco.
SPEAKER_01It is definitely. It is definitely very an Italian Yeti. An Italian disco yeti. And to be honest, it's a look that I really had down in the late 80s. I mean, yes, you laugh because you know how true that is. I was only like a half step away from the Italian disco yeti for uh a good chunk of my uh 20s. Right. So I strongly suggest you see this just to see him being thought out and to see him. He's he's got his roar, he's unhappy, but he's got this it just this fantastic look. Maybe I'm biased because of my uh my own connection, my own physical connection to the Eddie. But um, I strongly suggest you check this out. Oh anybody listening.
SPEAKER_00He looks uh amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It is oh, it's just a fantastic look. And I it's it stunned me when I saw it, and it continues to stun me. How did this ever get through? Who was minding the store when they put this out? Somebody didn't say this is insane because you've created this Italian disco yeti. But anyway, they did, they gave us this gift, and so I say go and enjoy it. So that's all I've got to say about animals. Now we can have a quick discussion of sequels. There's a couple, there's some interesting sequels out there. Uh, there's one really good one. Uh I think there's a number that are okay. We can get into it or not. I think we should, because what else are we doing? But if you've got something you want to throw in now, it's that, or we talk about vans.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01Because there's two van movies this year.
SPEAKER_00I I had like a question uh uh uh about animals, but would you take please a seven-year-old to see Orca? Because whether or not you feel like this is something that you would or wouldn't do, my parents did not have any kind of like uh worry about it. They brought me, I saw this in the theater, and the the whole scene where the mother has like the miscarriage, that was pretty intense for a seven-year-old to deal with.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's intense for anybody, it's not pleasant. It's not pleasant viewing. But I really so yes, you've you've got uh a valid childhood concern, which has obviously shaped you later in life. Yeah. Because that film, first of all, you know, I mean, Jaws has just come out two years before. It's clear this is another that this is a response to Jaws. So you know it's gonna be this giant fish, this giant aquatic animal wreaking havoc on people. That and they they on a poster, it's jumping through the air while like the town explodes behind it. So you know that's what's you going in, you know this is gonna be a killer whale killing. That's what you're getting. So to think you're gonna bring and then yes, the baby orca hitting the deck, that is disturbing. The uh father orca biting the leg of Bo Derek.
SPEAKER_00Right. That I still remember very clearly him jumping out of the water to grab the dude in the tower, screaming all the way up. Yeah, I remember that distinctly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that's definitely doing some damage. That that just uh you don't just walk out of that as a seven-year-old going. Okay, so what's next? Are we getting pizza?
SPEAKER_00Are we getting pizza? Yeah. I did kind of become obsessed with orcas after that. I was like, uh, I really like did a lot of uh Yeah, because you're worried about in fear for your life. Oh, we took fear for our lives now because orcas are attacking like millionaire yachts right now, which I think is kind of pretty amazing. They just had it. They had it with their crap. They had it with our crap, yeah. You didn't see that movie in '77? Well, you're gonna see it now. Just gonna live it, baby. Come on. So, anyway, all right. Uh so Orca, notwithstanding, a great movie, twisted my childhood around. I don't have anything else really on deck, unless there's anything else you wanted to discuss.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, let's get into some sequels. Well, it's sequels or vans, and we're not really gonna get into that. There were two van movies, uh the van where uh a guy is doing trying to get a van or his van broke. Well, he's trying, I think he's trying to get a van. I can't remember. And then there's super van where they had a stunt van come in, a guest van, the Vandora, which I think was built by George Barris, who had done other, I think he did the Monkey Mobile, did the other cars, and there he's going to the international freak out, but his van breaks down or stolen or something, and his buddy has this Vandora, which is the super van, it's got glass sides, and I think there's lasers involved. Oh my god. So he's able to go to the international freak out, everything works out. I don't know if they're still holding the international freak out. I don't know if you have to have a van to get in. There's a lot of questions out there about what's going on in Supervan. So that's the Van movies. I'd give it to Supervan if we're comparing those two, just because it's got a super van. And that's it. Let's move on. Let's talk about some sequels. So we've talked about The Love of Benji, which was a sequel.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01We talked about The Happy Hooker goes to Washington and Billy Jack goes to Washington. But we've got several other sequels we can discuss. Not discuss that one. So there was I'm going to give you some highlights here. Uh some of the big sequels for 77. Uh, The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, where they go to play a game in the Astrodome. Sorry, uh my brain shut down there. So they go across country to the Astrodome. Most of the Bears are still there, but it's not. I think Tatum O'Neal isn't there, I think. And uh Walter Mathow is definitely not there. They get somebody else. I know at some point they had Tony Curtis, because I think if you look at his career, there was a point where you could get Tony Curtis pretty easily. And at some point, Regis Phillman was in one. I don't know if it was this one or when they went to Japan. So maybe Regis Phillman. But there's definitely the Astrodome and they play a ball game in there. So that's Ben News Bears breaking training, and they drive a van across country. So there's some van action too. More van action. And then there's there is Kirby goes to Monte Carlo, uh, where he's gets involved in the Formula One race of Monaco.
SPEAKER_00Uh here's the thing at some point. Go ahead. I was gonna say here's the thing about what uh some of the the sequels I found were all Well like the f it they weren't just a a second movie. These are like the third movie in the di in these different franchises. Because I have a a so this the Herbie goes to Monte Carlo, Goodbye Emmanuel of the Emmanuel series, uh Race for Your Life Charlie Brown, which is one of the Oh I did see yes. Yeah, that was a third one, and Walking Tall, the final chapter, which was also a third installment. So there was a lot of like third installments for all these uh different franchises in there. I love Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. I I love all the Herbie movies, you know, though those came out at the perfect time for my age.
SPEAKER_01Right. So Herbie goes to Monte Carlo, and I think he wins. I think it's a pretty good bet that he wins. There was also, as far as big sequels, there was Exorcist II, the heretic. Oh, awful.
SPEAKER_00Who was that? Awful movie. Oh, that was so.
SPEAKER_01Richard Burton. So so these star So Linda Blair from the first one, she's now in this uh she's going to get to to talk to a therapist, and they're doing um they've got stuff attached to her head, and so they're doing some investigation of like her her bio rhythms or some 70s nonsense. And Richard Burton is there and he's talking to her and dealing with her, but he's real agitated, and he's got some history with Pazuzu, which is the demon that possessed her in the first film, apparently, and this is an African demon. And so he goes to Africa, and there's locusts, and somebody else he's working with falls into this chasm. Some for some reason they gotta go through an area where there's a chasm and there's a threat of falling into it, and somebody does, and they have to leave this guy there in the chasm. There's a sequence where a guy's getting out of a helicopter, and he's standing up, and what you would imagine happening with somebody standing up next to a helicopter with a helicopter blade is turning, that occurs. I don't know why, I don't know who that guy was, but that happened. R. Yeah. Um there's stuff that happens, and there's this demon Pazuzu, which they've involves locusts, and like the crops are dying, and they're in Africa, and then they're in DC for her getting her bio-rhythms or whatever. Uh it's a lot of nonsense thrown together, and Richard Burton is cashing a check and is clearly there to cash a check. So that's Exorcist 2. It was a movie that had to be made because they made so much money off of the first one. Uh, not because anyone was screaming out for more exorcists.
SPEAKER_00But you would think that they would be a better movie. Like they would have written something a little bit better. This this movie was just a mess. Yes, I agree.
SPEAKER_01That you would think if you've got something where you're dealing with with an exorcism or with like the devil taking over, or even if you say, Well, we're not gonna do the devil because we did that, or but we're gonna do some sort of demon, and that's how we're gonna suspend this, that it would have been a little better written. If they're gonna do biorhythm stuff, that they that that would have been the focus of it, and maybe you get into more sort of biorhythm talk, and it becomes sort of this this laboratory horror thing, but they don't do that. It's sort of they I think it was a long weekend, and they said, We will pay you X amount of money if you can deliver a script within 72 hours. And they said, Sign that check, because we've got it knocked out for you. And then who knows what was going on when they were actually filming? Because it was I think at this point Linda Blair was hitting Studio 54 or right around here. Um so I think she was living the life uh she obviously she would go on to do a roller disco movie after this. So she was riding high. Uh Burton was again, I think it's strange from was divorced from Elizabeth Taylor, and he was uh not divorced from Scotch. So he was going through that round of being this character of an actor of I'm playing the role of the Welsh actor and living this big life and getting hammered every night. So I think that was part of it as well that who you're dealing with is maybe not at their best. So who knows? I mean, certainly uh you would think for a big hit film they can come up with a decent script, but they've made a lot of money off of it, they can take their time and and get something done right. But there's also we can crap something out really quickly, and we're we know we're gonna get a payday. It's just a matter of how big the payday is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean what what really disappointed me was the fact that uh John Bloorman directed this and he wanted to direct it. He wanted to direct a psychological thriller. But uh, you know, with all the different people that they had for you know, all the actors that they had for it, and they and the IP that they they had to uh draw from, you I just thought it would have been better. Uh William Freakin and and Blady like re patently refused to be part, they didn't want anything to do with a uh a sequel, so they didn't have any part of it. I think that I think that also hurt it a lot because when you have like the writer of the original, you know, storyline who's not gonna give you any notes or or or do anything with it. Right, who's not gonna be involved. That's gotta be involved.
SPEAKER_01And Borman had also done Zardas. Let's not forget that. Okay. So I think he gets it in the head of and he's done great films, but I I think Zardoz. Right. That I think he gets ideas and he wants to explore those ideas, and it's not necessarily as thought out as it could be. And I don't know that that he has somebody who can talk to him and say, Okay, what I see where you're going where you want to go with this, so let me help you get there, or you're telling me you want to do this, but but what you're telling me doesn't work. It's just bad. And so I I would think that maybe he came that if he really had a desire to make the sequel, that he had some idea of what he wanted to do, but maybe that wasn't fleshed out enough uh as far as a script goes to actually get to a film that made sense and was good. So who knows? Who knows where the that train wreck started? I just know the train wreck happened. But let's talk about something else. Let's talk about a good sequel. A solid one you can't argue with. Sinbad and the eye of the tiger. Okay. Nice. That's a great sequel. It's Sinbad, it's Ray Harryhausen, it's little stop-motion creatures running around fighting each other. You cannot go wrong with that. That is Cinematic Gold right there on your screen before you. I agree. And this has uh the Minotaur, so the giant mechanical bull. Like the Minotaur, but it's a mechanical creation. So it's the Minotaur. I don't make the rules on that. It's got the witch lady who turns into like a seagull. Uh, and she's got her little potion, which allows her to do that, and maybe uh the potion gets knocked over, and there's not quite enough to make the change back to being lady. You're mostly there, but not quite all the way there.
SPEAKER_00Quite all the way.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna save money because you're only gonna buy one pair, one shoe. You don't need the pair. You got this uh saber-tooth tiger, always cool, a saber-tooth tiger. Sure. You've got uh Jane Seymour, always good, yeah, always cool, Jane Seymour, before she became uh the medicine woman, uh, when she was still slumming in regular films and wearing whatever they told her to, apparently. So Simmet and the Eye of the Tiger, I'm gonna put as one of the best sequels of the year. I know you want to say something about goodbye, Emmanuel, or Hilsa, Tigress of Siberia, the sequel to Ilsa the Wicked Warden, which I think came out the same year.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, I think so. But uh man, two movies from the same year. Uh no, uh I when when you mention Sinbad, uh I'm I'm I'm just gonna agree and we're gonna call it sequel of the year. Sinbad, the eye of the tiger.
SPEAKER_01All right, that's a good call. So I really for nothing else at this point. I will say that when we do our intermission show, we'll talk about Julia and the the scandal or the controversy surrounding the film Julia. Sure. Uh, and there was a bit of a scandal or controversy around uh Vanessa Redgrave, which when I heard there was a controversy involving Julia, I thought it was to do with Vanessa Redgrave. Um, as it turns out, it was a whole different story. Uh that Vanessa Redgrave had her issues, but Lillian Hellman had much more issues. So we'll get into that. We have a little more time just to focus on that. And like I say, I've got my conspiracy theory regarding the third performance of different Bond actors. So I'll I'll flesh that out a little more. I've got some material, but there are definite connections between Goldfinger and The Spy Who Loved Me, and see for Pierce Brosnan he did three, and his third was I think the world is not a excuse me, the world is not enough with Sophie Marceau with the villain, and then I'm gonna do a little bit of a go with me on Daniel Craig, because his third film was Skyfall, and then the fourth film was Spectre, and Spectre really fits the pattern for the third film performances, and I'm gonna shoehorn that in because the first two films of his run, uh Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, are two parts of the same story. Basically the Quantum of Solid picks up right after the end of Casino Royale. So I'm gonna use that to make the math work out right.
SPEAKER_00Make the math work.
SPEAKER_01So uh it's Germanic villains and it's superhuman henchmen and it's cool cars and it's uh unusual or something uh distinctive about the Bond girl. Uh we'll get into the whole thing. I'm I'm still putting together connections so I can make my conspiracy theory argument regarding this. Some of it is some of it's easier than others as far as finding something that makes sense. But I'm still gonna present it as as my gospel of they're up to something.
SPEAKER_00There's something sneaky going on.
SPEAKER_01Right. So I guess that wraps us up. So, first of all, this has been Cord with Carlos. Good. Thank you for listening. Uh of course, if you want to find us uh you go to wherever you got the podcast you're listening to now, and you'll find us because you found us. That seems pretty straightforward, but um gonna say it over and over again anyway.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, we're on Spotify, Apple, and you can also get our uh our podcast on BuzzSprout, the retros.buzzsprout.com.
SPEAKER_01Uh we're also on on Facebook, are we not?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes, we are on Facebook.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00All the major social media, the raid the Retros Podcast.
SPEAKER_01Right, the Retros Podcast. So the Retros Podcast at Gmail, if you want to send us a little note. Uh I believe we may be on X, and we may be on Sasquatch, we may be on Mammoth, and we may be on God only knows what else is out there. But we're trying to keep up. Uh so if you want to contact us, if you don't immediately hear from us, you can certainly find some other social media. We'll we'll really love to hear from you. Uh and we would love to hear from you. So let us know about who's your number two film. We're gonna assume that everybody is voting for Star Wars. But if that's not the case, just just tell us why you've chosen to be wrong, uh, like the Academy and make your argument. But we do want to know for your number two, is it Saturday Night Fever or is it Annie Hall? What are you putting in there? So send us that. Send us your response to the giant Italian disco yeti telling you you gotta check this guy out. He's fantastic. Get some feedback there. I may put up my Yeti photo to uh convince you all that at one point I was an Italian disco yeti. So keep listening. Thank you for listening. Now, what else do we have to cover? I think we're we've done everything and we could just shut the show down now. Isn't that right?
SPEAKER_00We can shut the show down or do it. We can do hot takes! Hot takes Strozak, bless you.
SPEAKER_01Hot takes I never promised you a rose garden.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god, yeah, that was that was uh that was the 70s right there. Everyone's uh he's nuts. He's nuts. Hot take house. What? House house? Yes, Japanese horror movie.
SPEAKER_01Uh house uh barn.
SPEAKER_00Hot takes you coming from the other side of midnight. Oh, what the other side of midnight? That's just daytime, isn't it? Hot takes Suspiria. Oh god, uh dancing witches and that crazy witch house.
SPEAKER_01And the giant uh red and white, and uh she's outside and I hot take the Gestapo's Last Orgy.
SPEAKER_00Oh my god, is that an actual movie? Because I need to see that one.
SPEAKER_01You really don't. You really don't. That's a great 70s title, but don't don't spend any time on it.
SPEAKER_00Shockwaves! More Nazis! Yeah, Nazi zombies, man. You get to kill them twice! Hot take.
SPEAKER_01You line up my life. I line up my life.
SPEAKER_00I just wanted to tell you that. Thank you very much. Hot takes the mouse and his child.
SPEAKER_01What? Can I do it till I'm blind?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, yeah. That uh I I re I remember reading about that. Yes, I can. Yes, yes you can. Which way is up? Deathbed!
SPEAKER_01Deathbed Which way is up? Yeah, uh, where your head's at. It is. Hot take. Deathbed, the bed that eats. The bummy tough. Soft. Satan's cheerleaders.
SPEAKER_00Oh, they always are. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Hot take.
SPEAKER_00Candle shoe.
SPEAKER_01Uh, light bulb boots. Hot take, hot takes.
SPEAKER_00You're only doesn't want a sandwich. The haunting of Julia. And it is not the Oh, she's haunted by her fake story. The yellow handkerchief. The green tie.
SPEAKER_01Alright, you got any more hot takes? Oh, yeah. Fun with Dick and Jane.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I remember that one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Gestapo's last orgy. Hot takes. Hats for the head. They're fun. The Hobbit.
SPEAKER_00The Hobbit.
SPEAKER_01Off to the Shire. Rank, rank, rank and bass. Yeah, that should have been uh That should not have been animated. This should have been stop animation.
SPEAKER_00Hot takes Telephone.
SPEAKER_01Uh Charles Bronson telephone.
SPEAKER_00Charles Bronson's telephone.
SPEAKER_01Charles Bronson's telephone. He just caught that. Charles Bronson's telephone. That's what it is. Then he smashes it with his fist.
SPEAKER_00Right through the screen.
SPEAKER_01Hot takes! Hot takes Pete's Dragon. We discussed Pete's Dragon. Yes. Like Roger Rabbit. Let's America. Helen ready. All these buttons.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Rooney. Right.
SPEAKER_01He is dragging every day. And he just don't care what you say. Cause he's got his friend Pete to bring him stuff.
SPEAKER_00Hot takes Damnation Alley.
SPEAKER_01Oh, the giant roaches. No, thank you. Hot takes. But a cool vehicle.
SPEAKER_00Oh god.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it makes it rain in the car. Oh, I guess. John Denver is it.
unknownJohn Denver, yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's it.
SPEAKER_00I got nothing else. I got nothing. Yeah. I got I got nothing else. 77 uh just ruined me. I'll I'll edit that up.
SPEAKER_01You dirty bastard.
SPEAKER_00Dirty bastard.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we didn't talk about uh Black Sunday.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. I did like Black Sunday.
SPEAKER_01Oh well. Next time.
SPEAKER_00So we really we really uh dove deep and we gave everybody a big old taste of 1977.
SPEAKER_01Yes, there's a very 77 films in there between the 77 things. Believe us, people, if we talked about being uh really capturing 77, you've got the list now. You can go ahead and track those films down. Please do. It's all there for you to see. If you have any question why these old people are acting nutty, it's right there. Yeah. You can a lot of it's on streaming, you can find it. These are the explains so much. These are the movies that twisted shit. This is what they gave us. This is what they fed us, alright? So get off my back.
SPEAKER_00And take your seven-year-olds to violent movies. Very important.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, it's a seven, isn't it? Whatever.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Thank you for listening, everybody.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for listening, everybody.
SPEAKER_00Uh watch more movies.
SPEAKER_01Alright. What? That's it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well, that worked out alright once we got actually going.
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