Greetings mortals! HORROR OCTORBOR FOURBOR continues as we take on foreign horror films all month! New guest/filmmaker Jimmy Moore joins us this round to talk 1977's Italian horror flick Suspiria ! Directed by horror icon Dario Argento, Suspiria is considered the poster child for the giallo film. Argento's classic stuns with bold, colorful cinematography and subtle eroticism, along with gory kills. Check out our episode as we talk witches, baby Udo Kier, and Blind Andy Samberg getting killed by ...
Oct 16, 2015•1 hr 18 min
We’re continuing our HORROR OCTORBOR FOUR-BOR world tour of foreign-language horror films this week with returning guest Julia and the 2004 Asian horror anthology Three…Extremes ! A triple feature of spooky shorts from Hong Kong ( Dumplings, directed by Fruit Chan), South Korea ( Cut, directed by Oldboy 's Chan-wook Park) and Japan ( Box, directed by Ichi the Killer ’s Takashi Miike) feature a delightfully unsettling mix of scares. From an aging actress turning to a disgusting alternative remedy...
Oct 09, 2015•1 hr 22 min
It’s that time of year again, listeners – HORROR OCTORBOR! For our fourth installment of our annual dive into the depths of hell, we’re taking on all foreign-language horror, starting with 2008’s Swedish vampire masterpiece Let the Right One In ! Matt K of fellow Chicago film podcast CinemaJaw joins us to talk about a smartly directed tale of a young outcast boy making the most unusual of friends in vampire Eli in 1980s Sweden. Check it out on Netflix and give our recap a listen, along with our ...
Oct 02, 2015•1 hr 21 min
Ka-STANG! This week, fellow A Talking Cast!?! / The ‘Cast Next Door podcastress Shannon Campe joins us for another expedition into 90s/2000s kid cinema with Frankie Muniz’s Big Fat Liar ! Muniz plays Jason Shepherd, a pathological liar whose short story assignment for class is stolen from unscrupulous, half-goatee-d Hollywood producer Paul Giamatti to make into his next hit film. With the help of Vaguely Funny Girl Character Amanda Bynes, Jason flies off to Hollywood to plan his revenge. Take a ...
Sep 24, 2015•1 hr 22 min
This week, Theo joins us once more to talk Lisztomania , the off-the-wall glam rock biopic of famed German composer Franz Liszt, played by The Who's Roger Daltrey! Lisztomania plays up the pseudohistorical tale of "history's first rock star" in typical 70s camp fashion. Get ready for giant fake dicks, robes made of piano keys, and Richard Wagner as Zombie Rock Hitler being defeated by the power of love; we sure weren't. Take a listen and check out our custom cocktail and drinking rules! (Thanks ...
Sep 17, 2015•1 hr 21 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we invite returning guest David Rheinstrom (of Twenty Questions Tuesday and Our Fair City fame) for one last job before he departs Chicago for the wide world of San Francisco – the “Recobbled Cut” of the infamous animated labor of love The Thief and the Cobbler ! Who Framed Roger Rabbit ’s Oscar-winning animator Richard Williams’ magnum opus is an elegantly drawn piece of cinema that follows the titular double-act as they attempt to retrieve the Three Golden Balls fro...
Sep 10, 2015•1 hr 12 min
This week on Alcohollywood, Jared and I fly solo (along with sentient Maillbot J4R.3D) as we check out the 2005 flop Stealth ! In this notorious cross between Top Gun, 2001, and an Incubus music video, Stealth follows hotshot pilots Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx (fresh off his Oscar for Ray ) as they contend with an experimental AI fighter (voiced by Prison Break 's Wentworth Miller) who goes rogue after...getting hit by lightning? This two-hour epic is full of director Rob Cohen's par...
Sep 05, 2015•1 hr 33 min
This week on Alcohollywood, Clayton Faits of Our Fair City joins us to talk about the chintzy 1970s giant animal flick Food of the Gods ! Adapted from a “portion” of the novel by HG Wells, Food of the Gods stars Starcrash alum (and walking LL Bean ad) Marjoe Gortner as a football player/survivalist who finds himself in the midst of an invasion of giant animals on a secluded island. With a little pluck and determination, Marjoe and the cast of mumbly supporting players must fight off giant rats, ...
Aug 27, 2015•1 hr 14 min
This week on Alcohollywood, Julia Rohed of Mercy Street Theatre Company joins us to talk the Karl Urban 2012 comic book movie/reboot Dredd ! Fulfilling a mission he’s had (perhaps to an irritating degree) for the past 3 years, Clint finally gets Jared to watch Dredd , the most recent adaptation of the British comic strip after the 1995 Sylvester Stallone disaster. Does it hold up to the cult hype? Did it deserve the sequel fans never got? And how does a population that’s 96% unemployed buy all t...
Aug 20, 2015•1 hr 19 min
This week, returning guest Nick Freed joins us to talk 1988’s A Fish Called Wanda, the caper-comedy written by and starring John Cleese! When a group of thieves (Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin, Kevin Kline and Thomas Georgeson) successfully steal a buttload of diamonds, the four quickly begin turning on each other, eventually wrapping a sheltered, middle-aged barrister (Cleese) into the larcenous fold. Check out our custom cocktail and drinking rules as we talk Curtis’ femme fatale, Palin’s sta...
Aug 13, 2015•1 hr 17 min
While we continue to get our full-length radio drama production of Indiana Jones and the Monkey King up ( listen to the trailer here !) for the 200th episode, we continue on to 201 with Michael Bay's 1996 explosion-fest The Rock! Featuring Michael Bay's signature excess and kineticism before many people got sick of it, The Rock stars Sean Connery and Nic Cage as an unlikely duo who need to stop a crazed former general (Ed Harris) from gassing San Francisco after holing himself up in the prison i...
Aug 06, 2015•1 hr 16 min
This week on Alcohollywood, Grant of Chip & Ironicus fame joins us to talk the 1986 John Carpenter cult classic Big Trouble in Little China ! THRILL as Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) wryly smirks his way through a rescue mission in the heart of San Francisco's Chinatown, oblivious to his role as the film's sidekick! GASP as mystical Raidens and old mascara-d ghost-men kidnap green-eyed girls for demonic rituals involving mall escalators! We chat about all this and more, so give us a listen and c...
Jul 23, 2015•1 hr 18 min
This week, our friend Betsy joins us to talk one of the more baffling nostalgia-fueled cultural phenomena of the 90s - Space Jam ! Based on the best-sneaker-selling Super Bowl commercial, Space Jam contrives a situation in which Michael Jordan ("playing" himself) joins Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Looney Tunes for a high-stakes game of basketball against the Monstars, in order to keep them from being kidnapped and made into amusement park attractions. (Apparently the screenwriters of this film...
Jul 16, 2015•1 hr 17 min
Happy birthday, America! To celebrate our nation’s birthday (and recent events have made us pretty proud to be an American), the Daves from the Blurry Photos Podcast join us to talk about the 2004 Nic Cage movie National Treasure. Part Indiana Jones movie, part Pirates of the Caribbean, part social studies filler movie, National Treasure follows adventurer Ben Franklin Gates (Cage) and his trusty crew as they work to stop evil Englishman Sean Bean from stealing the Declaration of Independence by...
Jul 02, 2015•1 hr 33 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we make a double feature of “shitty 90s comedies Clint watched too often as a kid” by following Good Burger with the lamentable John Leguizamo vehicle The Pest ! Guest (and author of You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me ) Nathan Rabin joins us as we witness the irredeemably-shrill Pestario Vargas (Leguizamo) vamp, titter, and offend his way through a Most Dangerous Game -like scenario involving Jeffrey Jones as a Nazi human hunter. Along the way, Pest manages to re...
Jun 25, 2015•1 hr 15 min
This week on the podcast, we engage in our first LIVE episode of the show as part of the charity podcast marathon PodSlam ‘15, with special guest Nathan Rabin (author of You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me and every online movie review/thinkpiece you’ve ever loved)! Given that this was a wrestling-themed charity marathon, we decided to take on the baffling Hulk Hogan vehicle Mr. Nanny*, in which the mustachioed lunkhead plays a former wrestler turned bodyguard tasked with nannying/protecting...
May 28, 2015•1 hr 15 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we get a bit more obscure with Theo from Twin Cinema as we discuss William Friedkin’s lost 1977 thriller Sorcerer! An unfortunate casualty of the end of New Hollywood and the beginning of the Star Wars era of special-effects blockbusters, this remake of the classic French film The Wages of Fear sees a group of disparate expatriates (including Roy Scheider) in a small South American hellhole, tasked with a dangerous mission to transport unstable nitroglycerin 200 miles...
Apr 30, 2015•1 hr 19 min
CAN YOU DIG IT, listeners? This week, returning guest Julia of Mercy Street Theatre Company bops with us as we watch Walter Hill’s 1979 cult gang thriller The Warriors ! A pulpy, disco-tinged Greek epic about a beleaguered street gang from Coney Island lost on the wrong side of town after being framed for killing a prominent gang leader, the movie’s long on style and short on complexity. We found quite a bit to talk about, from apocalypse theories to the unfortunate Director’s Cut. Throw on your...
Apr 23, 2015•1 hr 11 min
This week on Alcohollywood, playwright Dusty Wilson joins us to talk 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas , starring Academy Award-winning Nicolas Cage (in a role that gives his craziness some context and pathos) and Oscar-nominated Elizabeth Shue in one of her finest, most sensitive roles, as a drunkard and a prostitute who spend several weeks together in Vegas while the former drinks himself to death. It’s not the lightest material a drinking games/alcohol-based podcast can cover, but the complex psycholo...
Apr 16, 2015•1 hr 19 min
I AM HERCULES! Just in time for Dwayne Johnson’s latest turn in Furious 7, this week returning guest Craig joins us to talk last year’s Rock-tastic adventure Hercules ! Directed by Brett “I don’t have a style” Ratner, this sword-and-sandal epic remodels Herc as a flawed strongman with a coterie of badasses (including Ian McShane and Rufus Sewell) who help him build up the legend of Hercules so they can get money. However, when Lord Cotys (John Hurt) tasks them to take down an army of centaurs, H...
Apr 09, 2015•1 hr 12 min
(NOTE: We switched to a new laptop this week, so some driver issues made the sound quality a bit less sweet this episode. We promise it’ll be repaired next week.) This week on Alcohollywood, we’re getting shibby with returning guest Nick Ostrem to talk the 2000 stoner comedy Dude, Where’s My Car? When perpetually-stoned Jesse and Chester (Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott, who never actually smoke anything in the film) try to track down their car, they stumble upon a mad chase between “hot ...
Apr 02, 2015•1 hr 15 min
Great Scott! This week on Alcohollywood, Justin Gerber of Consequence of Sound and James Thompson of Geekspotting stop by to go back in time and learn the power of love with 1985’s Back to the Future ! Bob Zemeckis' 80s sci-fi comedy classic sees slacker Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) jumping in a retrofitted DeLorean created by his creepily-close mad scientist friend Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and zipping back to 1985, contending with 50s nuclear family politics, the prospect of getting back t...
Mar 26, 2015•1 hr 32 min
Konban wa, listeners! This week, Ele from Our Fair City and Wildclaw Theatr e joins us to talk the Japanese cult film Battle Royale – the tale of a group of kids forced to participate in a punitive government program to punish bad students by making them fight to the death on a deserted island with random weapons. Of course, since the students have apparently not heard of this at all, what’s the point of Battle Royale if it doesn’t sufficiently scare people into doing better at school? Still, we...
Mar 19, 2015•1 hr 12 min
Erin go bragh, listeners! We’re gearing up for St. Patrick’s Day along with returning guest David Rheinstrom of Twenty Questions Tuesday (and Our Fair City ) as we tackle the 1959 Disney film Darby O’Gill and the Little People ! The third in our unintentional trio of Robert Stevenson Disney musicals after Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks , Darby follows the titular character (Albert Sharpe), an old coot living in a quaint Irish village who finds himself in a series of folksy shenanigans...
Mar 12, 2015•1 hr 1 min
Greetings, listeners! Grant from Chip & Ironicus and the Six Feats Under podcast network joins us in our new and improved Alcohollywood Labs 2.0 to talk the 1995 cyber-thriller Virtuosity ! Years before they’d meet up in American Gangster , Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe face off in this cyber-thriller that sees an ex-cop convict with a robot arm (Washington) tracking down the anthropomorphized version of an AI serial killer named Sid 6.7 (Crowe, hamming it the hell up). What follows is...
Mar 05, 2015•1 hr 16 min
Greetings, listeners! Sorry about the long wait, but this just means you’ll get two episodes this week! Ryan Bond of Our Fair City joins us to talk about 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes , written by Chris Columbus and directed by Barry “Men in Black” Levinson. Taking a Muppet Babies approach to literature's greatest detective, the film follows tween Sherlock and Watson as they solve a supernatural mystery involving a mysterious Egyptian cult, as well as solving the mystery of their changing bodies ...
Mar 03, 2015•1 hr 8 min
OSCAR SPECIAL: BIRDMAN (2014) W/TWIN CINEMA FEBRUARY 20, 2015 EPISODES , GUESTS , NEW RELEASE , SPECIALS Happy Oscar season, listeners! This week, Jared’s been “kidnopped” by Keanu Reeves once more , so our special guest Theo from Twin Cinema drops in to help Clint talk Best Picture nominee Birdman , along with returning guest Andrew Saenz! The latest film by Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu is a dizzying, one-shot wonder starring Michael Keaton as thinly-veiled Keaton allegory Riggan Thomson, a wash...
Feb 20, 2015•1 hr 21 min
Happy Valentine’s Day, lovers! This week, regular guest Julia and Leah Pickett from Consequence of Sound joins us to talk Sleepless in Seattle , the seminal Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan romantic comedy from 1993! This film (about a divorcee who finds himself the talk of female America after a particularly heartfelt radio call-in segment) features Hanks and Ryan at their prime, with some solid comedy as they try to navigate the precarious middle ground between practical relationships and the romantic notio...
Feb 12, 2015•1 hr 27 min
This week on Alcohollywood, recurring guest Derek joins us from the basement to talk Satanic panic movies with Race with the Devil ! This 1975 Peter Fonda-Warren Oates road thriller follows these two easy riders along a two-lane blacktop to evil, as they (and their girlfriends) must use the incredible powers of their RV to hold off an increasingly encroaching horde of Satanists who catch them spying on their latest sacrifice. A gonzo combination of the ‘devil’s cult’ and road movie genres of the...
Feb 06, 2015•1 hr 3 min
This week on Alcohollywood, we (along with Jason Soto of Lair of the Unwanted ) finally take on our first Tom Cruise movie with the Ridley Scott fantasy Legend ! Right off the heels of Jared’s appearance on the Blade Runner episode of the Nerd Outcast Podcast , we take on another 1980s Ridley Scott movie featuring unicorns and inhuman creatures. This time, though, we get to see a young, buck-toothed Tom Cruise battle a devilish Tim Curry (as literally the Devil) for the soul of his princess love...
Jan 29, 2015•1 hr 12 min
