THE PODCAST ON HAUNTED HILL EPISODE 154 – MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE AND DARK ANGEL

The podcast on Haunted Hill will contain spoilers and swearing. I am the devil, and I am here to do the devil's work. Thanks for watching! It is time to keep your appointment.

Hello, and welcome to the podcast on Haunted Hill Episode 154.

One, five, four.

My name is Gav from the planet Uranus.

Wow, my name is Dan from the Jupiter moon of something.

Do you know Uranus is actually the smelliest of the planets? And it's not called Uranus, Uranus?

Uranus, it's pronounced.

It has the most smelly gas of any other planets.

And Pluto is no longer a planet, sadly, got demoted.

And did you know that they wanted to actually give the moon a actual time zone?

Really?

Yeah, that was weird. Weird.

I also found out that the Brachiosaurus has now been debunked, it's not an actual dinosaur. It was a combination of skeletons and it's no such thing as a, or was it a Brontosaurus, one of the two? It's no longer a dinosaur, so. Well, there we go.

That's the interesting podcast. Listeners, you're not here for that. You're here for Dolph Lundgren and Dan Bone birthday nurse, aren't you? It's a birthday episode.

It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want, talking of dinosaurs, and I'll cry if I want to.

Yeah, double Dolph Lundgren. Yes, yes.

Yes, welcome everybody, 154. For those not savvy with how we do things, when it's one of the guests, when it's one of the hosts, not the guests, one of the hosts birthdays, then that person gets to pick the movies. So as Gav said, I've selected a couple of Dolph Lundgren movies, basically an excuse to talk about He-Man, because I'm a big He-Man fan. So as you may have guessed, one of those movies is the Canon Classic, 1987.

I was going to say, it's not always nice to see the old Canon logo.

It's always lovely to see. Canon Classic, 1987, Dolph Lundgren, Courtney Cox, starring Masters Of The Universe. And a lot to talk about with that one and Canon Studios and what it did to Canon Studios and the toy line and all that business and Dolph Lundgren's career, blah. And the other one is a lesser known, but often mentioned as one of his best sort of solo movies.

Yep.

So that's what we're going to be covering. And obviously Bill Murray is already, he's been here for about three hours because it's my birthday. So he's been baking me a birthday cake, birthday brownies, which I'm refusing to eat because God knows what he's putting in them. But he's excited.

You'd hope it's weed, it's not. It's probably something really weird.

It's really like crack, yeah. Well, he's dressed as Walter White.

Bill Murray in his crack brownies.

Yeah, he is dressed as Walter White. So that actually, that makes sense now. But yeah, he'll be here to lead us into the world of the strange later on. And we're just going to have a lot of fun. It's my birthday and talk about weird and wonderful things. So there'll be some sharks in a moment to talk about, shark movies and lots of He-Man and action heroes, Dolph Lundgren and all that kind of good stuff.

It is strange that for this whole time we've been podcasting over 10 years that we have a third member. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, I said the humorous name for a penis, member. Member. We have a third member and it's Bill Murray, but he's never, he's never ever been there. Oh, get out the bag.

Don't ruin it.

It's not ruined it at all.

That's why I say Nicholas Cage isn't officially our mascot. Cause he's officially our mascot. This is my birthday.

It's like saying that, I didn't say it's an actual fact. I don't know nothing about that. But yeah, we have a third member of being Bill Murray, which I love that, over 10 years. Well, I have to get him to speak one day. I'm just getting him on the air. Here's a furry thing for your mouth.

He's nodding no to me as we...

It's a microphone.

He's not allowed, you know, the contract isn't allowed. He's not, I know, yep. He says no, you know, I know the contract allows him to only literally introduce World Of The Strange. And it's certainly not, you know, a sound bite from a movie that he was in many years ago.

Well, I tell you what, Bill, we've actually had a word from Dolph Lundgren and he's actually said, you know, if we ever thought of replacing you, that he would step in.

Who would win in a fight between Dolph Lundgren and Bill Murray?

I don't know. Bill Murray might know something we don't.

Yeah, to be fair, Bill Murray is a very mysterious man.

He might have golf club ninja skills.

Yeah, indeed, indeed. Well, it's my birthday. I know you're dying to know what I did for my birthday. You alright? If you had one of those bionies. It was a very low key one. The children were in preschool, so my wife drove me out to the country. This sounds like the start of a horror film. And treated me to a country pub dinner.

Sounded like a porn movie, actually.

Oh, and the car broke down.

Took me out to the country and blew me in the bushes.

Bloody hell. No, that didn't happen. We just literally went out and had some lunch and then drove back to Bristol and had to pick the kids up. But it was very low key, very nice birthday. So that was that really.

Nothing special, but no hand job hampers.

I don't know what that means.

Hand job hamper is.

It makes me think a hamper. It makes me think a basket case. So I certainly don't want a hand job from that thing.

Yeah, that's a hard sell.

Hard indeed. But I have been watching lots of films, Gav.

What are you watching? Oh, shit. There's my phone. Let me get my IMDB and also I'm actually last time I was on it. I had my notes and everything.

Jesus Christ.

You carry on.

Well, I'm going to disappoint you straight away.

Oh, God.

Because I, you know, I love shark movies.

Yeah.

Yeah. I finally rewatched The Meg.

Oh, I like Meg, though. Do you not like it?

I know you do. That's why I wasn't going to disappoint you. I watched it, didn't like it. You gave me the DVD and I thought, I'll rewatch this now. Because I haven't seen the sequel. Hated it. I don't know why, because everyone else seems to get on with it and really enjoy it. But I found it really boring.

No, not everyone. I know people, I've seen people don't like it.

Even though it's got a sense of fun to it, I didn't really find it fun. If you put Jason Statham in a shark movie, surely that's got a damn bone written all over it.

Because those two components work for me. I'll call it epic, just put a Jason Statham movie on it. And if it's a shark movie, you know, and the kids like it. So it's one to put on in the background with the kids there sort of thing.

I'm just a bit sad. It's one of those ones that I'm a bit sad. I don't get it. I don't get the hype. But I'm still going to check out the Meg 2, which I think you've seen. But yeah, so I had to sort of medicate myself there by watching another shark movie. So after that, I watched Megashark versus Colossus.

Of course you did. And how did that go?

I enjoyed it about as much as the Meg. Oh good.

Have you seen the Meg 2?

No, that's what I just said to you. I haven't seen it yet.

Oh, sorry. I wasn't listening to you. That's why this podcast works so well.

But the Megashark vs. Colossus is the fourth film in the Megashark series. Let me just read you the synopsis. In search of a new energy source, Russia accidentally awakens the Colossus, which is a giant robot from the Cold War. Just as they do this, a new Megashark appears threatening global security.

Coincidence?

Coincidence?

Winky-dinky right there. So they've made this big giant robot shark to help with war.

It's not a robot shark. It's a humanoid robot. So it's a giant robot man that fights the shark.

But he was frozen. Why was he frozen?

During the Cold War.

What? Is he like a massive cyborg? Not with like a fin or something?

No, no, no, no. It's Mega Shark versus Colossus.

But he could survive frozen under the water for so many years.

Yeah, because he's a robot.

Right. But did they not think of getting him out before? Did they not? They must have got him. So they accidentally got him out.

Yeah, they filled him out by mistake.

But Kawinky Dink is a giant fucking shark.

Well, the thing is, this is the fourth in the series. So if you've been keeping up with the series, which I know you and a lot of our listeners have. There's now, by this fourth film, there's a crew of women with giant boobs in scantily clad clothing who ride around in these cool submarines taking out Megalodons because the Mega Shark is one of many Mega Sharks. So while they're doing that, they realize, oh no, there's another Megalodon. Where is he? He's Russia. All right, let's go there.

Who won?

The audience.

Yeah, I think they did. You won. That's who won.

I won.

You won with a fucking knockout. Yeah. I do watch a couple of bits and bobs. Tell you what, I watched a movie called Survive In The Game with Ice-T.

Yes, you did. Fucking hell, that poster was atrocious.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That poster shows Ice-T running.

It doesn't even look like Ice-T.

He's not even really running. He's kind of just patting along through the... And that's pretty much his running in the movie. But this movie, I never heard of it. So when I watched it, I said, I just found this movie. I said, should we watch it? I was like, it's fucking... Gary Boosie basically hunting Ice-T. She's like, sold. I was like, okay, let's do it. So he rented it out on Amazon.

Rookahel. Who was the other one? Well, I mean, that's that. Those three names in a movie sounds great. It looked like Hard Target from the poster.

I think we've got Airbnb people again. There's always bloody people there. Young kids screaming.

It looked like Hard Target from the poster and from the bits she sent me. The Van Damme movie.

Yeah, a little bit like that. It was a 90s film. And the thing was, it should have been really, really, really good, but I can't spoil it. But some characters shouldn't, what happened to them so early, shouldn't have happened. And it kind of went, it started off really promising, and then kind of just went downhill a little.

I love when you discover these movies, like the time you discovered that one about Nick Nolte secretly living in someone's attic.

Hiding in the attic.

Of all the people you want to find up there, you don't want Nick Nolte up there. Was it Gary or was it Nick, Nick Nolte?

Gay Boosie, it's always Gay Boosie.

Jesus Christ, that's even worse.

But yeah, and Gay Boosie chase after you. And he has a punch up of ice tea. But anyway, well, if I watch, I can hear, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, non-gender people, aliens, dinosaurs, ET, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and ghouls. If you hear anything next door, I can't do fuck all about it, so you have to put out of it.

We can't hear it, gov, don't worry.

Cool.

So, would you recommend Surviving The King?

If you're my age, or if you are going down the rabbit hole, I want to check out kind of B-flag 90s action films with people I know in, who are not A-starers, but B-starers kind of thing. Yeah.

He's talking my language.

You may as well check it out. There's no reason not to check it out, because that's the thing now. It's really funny. Things like Cliffhanger, I watched recently for the first time. There's a few other movies like that I'm discovering for the first time, because when they came out, we had a gluttony of different films we could watch. We had a pic of like some incredible, like Schwarzenegger Predator, do you know what I mean? We had some good big movies.

That's why you generally went for the person's name, you know, this leads into the theme of the episode, which is Dolph Lundgren, you know, an action hero. And I can actually follow up what you've seen with, I watched Marked For Death with Steven Seagal, where he takes on the Jamaican drug lords.

Yeah, Rich is right.

It's his most violent film, that's for sure, loads of headings and stuff. And I watched the uncut version, which apparently wasn't released for years. It's really violent. But again, when you walked in the video store, you went for the name, didn't you? Which is why you might have missed some of these movies, although it's weird that you missed Cliffhanger, I guess, because it's like...

Yeah, but I was just like, why do I want to see Sylvester Stallone, late 90s, whatever, climbing up a mountain? I don't really care. At that point, I'm probably, you know, watching other films or whatever, you know. But then now, with like Amazon, you just go, what's that? And that leads on to another thing. Then you go, other viewers watch this or whatever, and you go down to the list underneath, and you can start crawling through that, and you're like, fucking hell, what the fuck's this shit?

And that time, me and my dad discovered Dark Angel, which we'll get on to when we cover it.

I have to give props to Amazon Prime. I think as a video service, they are the closest you've got to a fucking video shop with random things you find. So, you know, I think Amazon Prime is pretty good in that sense for video films.

Weird.

What else have you been doing then?

I also watched Top Gun Maverick, the sequel to Top Gun, which came out in 2022. I only just got a ring to it. I was never a huge Top Gun fan. It's all right. I certainly watched it a bunch of times.

I saw it the first time a couple of years ago. No, it's about four or five years ago now. And I was unimpressed. I don't care about movies or airplanes flying around. I like movies of inside airplanes, though, where some shit's going down, terrorist or something like that.

Well, Top Gun Maverick, and one might argue, Gab, that they aren't about people flying planes. I'm sure they're not. But Top Gun Maverick is, in my opinion, better than Top Gun, because it plays on that old grizzled, the character that you remember from the 80s comes back and they're a little bit older and life hasn't really moved on for them and then they get involved in something.

Yeah, Tom Cruise is a strange character. He is like Spielberg, he's meant to be in films and make films. Spielberg was meant to make films. Tom Cruise made acting films. It's a shame that he believes Scientology is obviously helping fuel that. You could do this yourself. I think you've got it in you. Don't worry.

Funny you say that Top Gun Maverick is what made Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise friends again, because they fell out after making War Of The Worlds. They had a huge falling out. It's never really been fully disclosed.

Creative differences probably.

Well, Tom Cruise was the one that got Spielberg to make, because obviously Tom Cruise was in the Minority Report Spielberg movie. They really enjoyed working together because they have the same work ethic.

They work, work, work, work, work. That's why I said both those guys.

On the set of Minority Report, Tom Cruise came to him and said, I've got three scripts that have been given. I want you to help me with these. Which one of these do you think we should make? And one of them was War Of The Worlds. Spielberg was like, I love this as a kid. And Tom was like, that's the one that I want you to, I'm glad you said that, because that's the one I'm really looking at the most. Let's make this together.

Oh, afterwards?

Yeah. I wonder what that would be about. When Top Gun Maverick came out, Spielberg said to Tom Cruise, you've single-handedly saved cinema because people aren't going to the cinema because of COVID. But your movie, because it came out just as COVID was kind of winding down and you could start going back to the cinema. She said your movie is going to make more people want to go back into the cinema. So you're almost single-handedly regenerating cinema revenue. They're friends again now.

They're both exactly the same type of people. Definitely. Tom Cruise is a strange character. He's the sort of person where you think you're a little bit disillusioned in some ways, but you are like hands down, you're the hardest working man in show business next to James Brown. Rest in peace. Can a drummer have some? Poor drummer. Drummer never got some. Drummer has had some in a long time. Anyway, Tom Cruise. I expect Tom Cruise has had some. I don't know, might not have done, who knows?

I saw that a couple of years back because I wanted to watch Curse, the Wes Craven werewolf movie again, which FYI, I really enjoyed. The second time I watched it, I was like, I get it now, I get what they were doing with this.

Yeah, but they show it twice. They film that movie twice, because the first time they filmed it, it was fucking really bad. I think I'm out great the second time, but fair enough, I may be off to watch it again, but the last time I watched it, it was not good.

Well, the first time I saw it, I was unimpressed, the second time I watched it, I really enjoyed it, but in searching for it, on Prime, I discovered there was also another movie called Cursed. So I watched that as well a year or two ago, and then I realized it's also called Ape For Silver, which you watched the other day. So tell us your thoughts on a werewolf movie. It's been a while since we've discussed a Lycanthrope story.

Yeah, it had Boyd Holbrook in it. I knew a couple of years ago, a couple of werewolf movies came out at the same time, and I kind of just didn't search them out. I thought I'll find them eventually. That's the thing nowadays. I don't really do that. As soon as I see movies, I'm not like, I've got to get on it. I'm like, I'll get to it. I'm a busy person. It's fine. I've got lists of movies to watch. So it came on. I sent Sarah a message. I was like, fucking don't watch it.

Yeah, I remember thinking it was very well shot and a good looking film. I find it quite boring.

Yeah.

For a werewolf film, it was quite boring.

I think that might have been it.

Or a werewolf.

Oh, I know what a problem I had with it. Definitely. I said this on our Facebook page. My problem I had with it is that the werewolves look like they're out of that Kate Beckinsale film, Underworld. And it's like, why? Why is it in like, say, 2022 or 2021, maybe if I made it, why is it? Why are you letting that happen? It looks so good. It's a period piece.

So all you really want is someone in the woods on all fours, is what you're saying.

Yeah, wearing furry costumes.

Hello.

Hello.

Yeah, I mean, if you're going to do CGI werewolves, the pinnacle, obviously, of CGI werewolves, as we know, and as our listeners know, is American Werewolf in Paris. That's the height of CGI werewolves.

That is the one. That is the one. I love that movie.

Always get the straight face.

I still love that movie. At some point, we should just do a commentary on it.

Well, yeah, I mean, we've covered it already, but we should maybe do it again.

Because we love that movie, and everybody hates it, whatever it is. I'm just like, I don't know. I think, I reckon, with that movie, I watched it probably a few times. We probably had it on video, rented out, watched it a few times, and I was probably in a really good place or whatever, and it just comes back like a happy place to me. That's what I think it must be, you know. I did also watch very quickly, again, I watched Chuck Still's Night Of The Trampires, again, with Elijah.

He recommended this on the last episode to our listeners and myself.

I watched it twice, and then Sarah's like, yeah, we're going to have a double bill of films with the kids, and I was like, okay, cool, and we watched another movie, I can't remember what it was now. I can't remember, but I'll talk about it. And we were going to do that again, I was like, yeah, I'll watch it for a fair time.

Amazing.

It's so good, like, Dan, when you watch it, you're going to be like, where has this been all my life? I almost say, don't sleep tonight, just watch it twice.

Okay, I won't sleep.

Honestly, you will fall in love with this film. As soon as you watch it, you'll be like, oh, this is my childhood. You're like, this is so good. It's just, there's this bit where Chuck Steele, because he's like a grizzled kind of, he's like every detective you imagine, he's got his other detectives. Steele! The whole time, you know, that sort of thing.

Well, talking of grizzled cops, on a quick side note, and also talking of the 80s, I rewatched The Deadpool. I'm not going to go on about it, because we've already covered it for your birthday episode a couple of years back. But The Deadpool, it's my favorite Dirty Harry movie.

I watched it again getting a tattoo recently.

It's ridiculous. It's got Jim Carrey, Liam Neeson, and Guns N Roses in it.

Yep.

In a Dirty Harry film.

I was getting, Ben was tattooing me. Ben, director of Tog3 for Deadbolt films. He's a tattoo artist as well. And art director, works quite well. And he started on my leg, I'm getting a big, evil, dead leg, which I'll show once it's completed. Anyway, I took it to him and I was like, I fucking got to show him this. I said, I brought a Dirty Harry movie, a Dirty Harry film, and put it on so he could watch it.

It's my favorite.

I think there's a dip earlier on, like when he's with his wife, he did that one movie with the gang, which is going around to see raping people. Yeah. And it wasn't as good. Some of those ones a bit.

Another movie I watched, which is an older movie, which I watched many years ago, but now I'm a parent, it hit differently, was a 1974 movie. It's got two names, Death Dream or Dead Of Night, all about the boy that comes back from Vietnam, and he's very different. And man, the ending of this hit hard for me.

I was teaching Daisy the other day about what she was playing. She wanted to play Call Of Duty World War II, which you start off on that. I doubt you've played it. As soon as you start off on that, you start on the boat. And it's like get off the boat, go, and they're just shooting at you. And it's from the get go. It's so intense. And I only played it once when I had the projector my old house used to live at with a big wall. So I had a massive surround sound.

You were killing women and children in the forests of Vietnam, wherever it is you were at war, and you come back and you're expected to just...

Just be normal again.

And they didn't have any mental health care or anything like that back then. They gave you your pension. You might have lost an arm or a leg as well, just to add to it. You know, shrapnel in the brain.

And you come back to a place where, especially in America, they come back to a place where there's guns around.

And you're a hero. Hey, you're back from the war.

Well, no, they weren't though. A lot of Vietnamese soldiers coming back from Vietnam weren't like, Hey, they were just like their families were pleased to have them. Of course. But a lot of people, because that's the first time TV news reports were actually showing what was happening. And they hadn't done that before previously because technology got better and stuff like that. And so people back home are seeing it.

But great movie and war has produced some great movies, which, you know, anti war movies in a lot of ways. So I'm not saying that, thank God, we had war because we got these great movies, but I'm just saying we got Tropic Thunder. Not related to that, but I also watched Deep Cover, which I messaged you about, because I've got the soundtrack. I used to listen to it all the time.

It's quite, it might not be that well known, because I've told people about it, and they're like, what the f***ing movie is this? And I said, this is the first time Snoop was ever on a song.

Yeah, Snoop and Dre, they're in it.

They did the theme song, Deep Cover.

They're in it, briefly in the background.

And it's a great, great song, I f***ing love that song. I was so stoked when I found it on the record once, at a car boot sale. Anyway, this is like, if no one knows, when we had quite a lot of 90s, early to mid 90s, hip hop movies, New Jack City, Boys And Herd, Menace To Society.

And the soundtracks were often better than the films.

Yeah, Juice, there's quite a lot of them, but this has got a gritty one, which nobody knows of, but it has Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum. I showed Sarah Reed last year, actually, because she fucking loves Jeff Goldblum. And yeah, I showed her.

He's a cocaine addicted, he plays a cocaine addicted, womanizing lawyer for the drug barons, who becomes best friends with Laurence Fishburne, and then they form this friendship. But all the while, Laurence Fishburne is obviously an undercover cop.

Really good movie.

The best thing about it, though, that I never knew until this watch is, do you know who directed it?

I did at the time, I can't remember, remind me.

Bill Duke.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I didn't even realize, naive that I am, that he directed movies, and he's directed quite a few.

Bill Duke, you'd know guys from Predator, where he breaks a razor on his face.

Yeah, it's incredibly well directed as well, and it's probably one of the best old films I've watched in a long time.

Yeah, that was like when I discovered, this is like Amazon again doing it for me, I also discovered Ricochet with Denzel Washington.

Yeah, oh, that's good.

I watched that for the first time, not knowing what it was like. I went, this is great, straight away went on eBay, found a DVD copy, and bored it, because I was like, this is going in my collection, I really enjoyed this film. So yeah, it's well worth checking out that film. Anyway, should we get on to our podcast?

Yes, well, before we do that, because it's my birthday.

It is, so really you should say when we get on to things.

I've got a couple of news items that I thought might be worth talking about as well, related to film. First one should probably belong in the World Of The Strange category. Have you heard about what's going on with David Beckham? David Beckham is suing Mark Wahlberg.

No, those words went across my mind for a glimpse of social media somewhere, and I ignored it. What's going on with that?

Basically, they were going to be forming a gym, an LA gym business. And then Mark Wahlberg pulled out of it at the last minute, causing David Beckham to lose 8.5 million, which is probably not a lot to him. So he's now suing Mark Wahlberg for 8.5 million or more.

I saw this and someone worked out. I saw a comment someone put. Someone worked out. They said it's 1.5% of his royalties or whatever earnings. And they said, it's like me saying, it's like me suing one of my mates for eating a slice of my pizza.

Yeah, it's like me saying, I'm going to sue you. You owe me 100 quid.

Yeah, it's really like, it's just, I guess it comes down to principle because if you do that low, it's gangster. Basically, if you let someone fuck you over, that opens up the floodgates.

And as we know, Beckham is besties with Tom Cruise and a lot of these big sort of guys that are potentially in social Scientology. We don't really want to talk about it too much because people are listening.

Fuck them.

No, they'll pull the plug on us.

Fuck them.

Well, let's get away from that story then. I just thought it was a funny, weird headline, but the other one, the big one, well, actually two things. First of all, M. Night Shyamalan's new movie Trap dropped a trailer a couple of days ago.

Next episode. And welcome to the new podcast on the Haunted Hill episode. We're in a new studio this time. We're in some Scientology lab. They're funding us. They're funding us.

Yeah, Trap, the new M. Night Shyamalan movie is coming out soon straight into theatres. It's not streaming. He won't do streaming. Yes, Josh hairnet is in it.

I saw half the trailer.

There's a twist in the trailer. So the trailer, for anyone who hasn't seen it, this is no spoiler because it's a trailer. I haven't seen the film. It's not out yet. But in the trailer...

The concept is that is the concept. A serial killer has been trapped inside a fake gig. Yeah. And surrounded so he can't get out.

But the serial killer is Josh hairnet. Yeah. But then apparently there is another twist or two within it.

I'm sure there should be. But yeah, I'll go watch it. Will I go to the cinema? Don't know.

I think it looks really good. And I've always been a fan of Shyamalan, you know, for the most part, I like most of his movies. We might be doing a Shyamalan episode in a few months time.

I might go if one of the dudes said it. I know Sarah wouldn't because last time we went to watch that Beaches movie did. Was that Beach movie?

Old?

Old. I didn't mind it. She didn't like it. And I think she said, I'm not going to his movies in cinema again. I think.

But that was one of the things I want to talk about. And the last thing I want to talk about before we talk about Mr. Lundgren himself, the Swedish giant, is Quentin Tarantino.

Oh, he's changed his idea. Again, I'm not looked into it. Has he changed his idea of his last film?

No, he's cancelled it.

He's cancelled.

So cancelled his 10th and final film. It was going to be Brad Pitt. It was good.

Potentially. Why make that? You just did that Hollywood once, once in a while, film industry. Why do the critic do something different?

Well, it's a sequel to that. It was going to potentially be a, it was going to basically be a really meta. The theories are that it was going to be a very, very meta film, which incorporated everything Tarantino has done in his career and touched on other movies, but also had stuff related.

That sounds fun.

But also related to his favorite decade, which obviously is the 70s. And it was going to be all about this film critic who, just by chance, touches the lives of all these people in Hollywood, much like some of the scenes in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood do. I was going to incorporate everything that Tarantino has done in his career. There was even talk of like Star Wars, but with Rick Dalton being in Star Wars, instead of Harrison Ford and all this kind of stuff.

Well, he does know how that goes. He once, no, The Hateful Eight.

Yeah, but then he did make The Hateful Eight in the end.

He eventually did do it because he saw how good the talk went when he got with the cast together and got them to read it out.

But yeah, Brad Pitt was going to be Cliff Booth. Leo was potentially going to be in it. There was also going to be talk of Tarantino, of Travolta and Michael Madsen.

I'm short of the poor all of them in, but I don't know, World's Pot of Hollywood is kind of like, it would be an incredible film if you're the age of Tarantino and grew up in Hollywood, watching that stuff. I feel like there's bits of it, I'm a bit like, it's cool, it's kind of fun, but yeah.

I think what this means is he'll do what he did with the hateful hate, he'll stop for a couple of years and then he'll shake it up a bit and then come back and drop it. And it'll be under maybe a different name or something like that.

The thing is though, he's put himself in a fucking boiler pot though. He's got himself saying, this is my last movie, so everyone knows it as well.

He's already made 10 films, but he only came to Kill Bill 1 and 2 as one film. So technically he's already made 10 films, but this is his first film. But I'm happy with that.

I'd rather get him to go do something else. What's his best film?

In my opinion, Hot Fiction.

I'd think it's up there for me, is that next to probably The War film.

Glorious Basterds.

Glorious Basterds was fucking amazing.

Well, I've got to say that my new favourite here is Hot Fiction.

But Hate For Late I fucking love.

Hate For Late is potentially his best film.

Yeah, I know. It's hot.

Because that's a real slow burn, and you fall into that world that he's created. Whereas Hot Fiction is a little bit more snappier, and it feels a little bit more...

It's very 90s.

Yeah, and it's been done. But that's because he was the first one to ever do it, Hot Fiction. But then I do, I really love Django as well. It's hard, but I think definitely for me, Hot Fiction and Hate For Late are up there, and his worst for me will always be Death Proof. I just don't think it's very good film, which is shocking. Shocking that it's a Tarantino movie, to be honest with you.

Kurt Russell is a stunt driver, kills people. Should be brilliant. I think it's too stale making it. I just love the fact that my parents have seen... Django, Django, Django, Django, what? Django, what did you watch? You watched Django, you watched a Tarantino movie, and they don't even know what one about. When I say Tarantino, they're like, what is that?

Is that Tagliatelle? I don't know.

That's exactly why they watched it. It's exactly why.

And it's a great movie.

It's probably one of the Capri's best performances.

My mum's gone away this week, so I should drop my dad around a DVD. It's Brokeback Mountain. Check this out. You'll like this one.

It's got Cowboys in it, Dad.

It's got Cowboys in it.

Oh, I can't be so content and all that. Go on, watch it tonight.

He would, though, but he'd watch it and he would be like, why would you give me that? And he'd laugh at it or he'd go, don't really like that bit and they, you know, or he wouldn't say a word.

Well, Alice recommended, last 100th night, Alice recommended a new series on Netflix she's been engrossed with called Baby Reindeer, all about a comedian who's got a stalker. It's a British, Scottish TV show. It's about eight episodes. And everyone's talking about it. It's the new, you know, Tiger King or whatever it is. And everyone's talking about it. And she recommended it to her parents on the second episode. She was like, you guys have got to check this out. It's really good.

I was watching, we'll get on to the episode soon, guys. I promise. I was watching, the second to last thing it was, episode of 1883. And I told my parents to go on there and they watched it. And it's just when I seen they start having sex in like a meadow, I was like, oh, this is going on for a bit while. But the whole time it's on, I'm just envisioning my parents sitting in their chairs watching it. The whole time, I'm like, oh, no. And it was like, oh, it's still going.

Your mum's getting up, making a cup of tea.

Are they still going at it? There was a boob at it, and I was like, oh. And I don't know what my mum and dad the situation would be. They'd probably look at the dog, go, oh, Frankie, and stroke the dog or something. I don't know what would be the dynamic at that point.

Oh, dear.

If it was me and Sarah at that age, I imagine that I'd be like, oh, I'd prod her with a stick, like, make a joke.

Yeah, me and Alice sort of, if I'm watching a programme, which a lot of the horror movies I watch, I've always got tits in them, you know what it's like when you're watching a lot of stuff from the 80s. Yeah, nobody just goes, boobs. She goes, oh, 80s Bush, or I go, oh, Alice, check out that 80s Bush or something like that.

Yeah, that's the beauty of horror movies. We watch all the good ones, shit ones. It's always great when a boob or something comes out. And it's not like just men being horrible men going, oh, tits, yeah, it's not that at all. It's just, oh, horror boobs.

It's a part of horror movies. When I was watching The Northmen last month, I was like, oh, Alice, no, no, no, dick, dick.

Because Sarah says to me, oh, boobs, she nudged me. I go, oh, yeah, nice, stuff like that. It's just fun.

Yeah, it's funny.

Yeah, we can't all be serious because there's no point, is there? Anyway, you can listen to us, funny fuckers, now talk about a couple of movies.

We should go on to a trailer, really, shouldn't we? Yes, we're going to start things off. We're going to do this reverse chronologically, because for many of you know, He-Man has a special place in my loin cloth. But we're going to start with Dark Angel, Dolph Lundgren's 1990 Dark Angel. So let's go into a trailer, Gab.

DJ, to take it away. Give it to us, Dolph. Houston, Texas. It's Christmas. Someone special's coming to town. And it's not Santa Claus. Jack Cain, a cop who does things his own way. A shortcut. He's sensitive. Hey. Understanding. And kind to strangers. Merry Christmas. But all that's about to end. Three well-armed men have their throats cut before they can even draw their weapons. Who could possibly move that fast? Aliens. Are you crazy? It's true.

Oh, so that was the trailer for Dark Angel. So here's the synopsis. Dark Angel 1990, rated R. One hour and 31 minutes.

For pirates.

R. A renegade cop is forced to work with an FBI agent in order to bring down a group of drug dealers with sinister plans. It doesn't sound like it's going to be anything supernatural or alien, but that's a misleading but very good synopsis in some ways.

Yeah, that doesn't really give it away at all, I suppose, for it. If that was what you read at the video shop and you got it out or tottered all the way home, put it in the old VCR and went, what? Be quite good though, because funny enough though, you would have had that even with Predator, even though you might have figured out Predator. But if you didn't know, like from Dust Of Dawn, you didn't know and you started watching it and all of a sudden you have this bit and you're like, oh!

Yeah.

This is actually very similar in a way it felt like Predator, maybe more so Predator 2.

Yeah, it was like that. Very much so, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, that's how it was for me, because my dad and I saw this for sale in Woolworth's department store, and we just immediately saw Dolph Lundgren and that was enough and he bought it. And we, I think probably that night, we watched it together, not knowing anything about it. We didn't bother reading the back of the box or anything like that. So when it turns into a bit of an alien thing, we were like, oh!

Just about to say out of the two movies we're doing tonight, this is my favorite. And Dolph acts better than this, Masters Of The Universe, he acts terrible. And it could be obviously Direction, it could be, it was a couple of years before, didn't have his chops on or whatever, but his acting was very good.

There's a reason for that. There's a reason for it.

We'll get on to that later on.

We shall get into it.

But here, absolutely fine. Really weird, his partner in this, which is the FBI guy he's got to have with him, is actually absolutely likable and fine, but it's kind of weird. It does feel like it still should be cast for someone else. It doesn't feel completely correct the way he looks, but his mannerisms, his characteristics, and the way he puts himself across, comes across at times easily on toe to toe with Dolph Lundgren.

And the FBI agent.

But visually doesn't look it though.

But I think that's the fun.

I assume it is because he's smaller, Dolph Lundgren's bigger.

He's about a foot shorter than Dolph, isn't he? And he's called Larry.

I guess that is it. He just doesn't, I don't think has a complete, like he couldn't lead a film himself, but then again, Dolph Lundgren just-

But what I like about that dynamic is, again, he's bringing it all to the table, that guy, because he and his character starts off as a bit of a dick, but by the end of the movie, they're like partners fully in this mission together, and it's got that rush hour, lethal weapon, buddy cop. So it's all of these things. It's Predator 2, buddy cop, lethal weapon, mixed with a bit of Highlander, and I just think it works really, really well.

Well, you've got to see, this is also made with that 80s money, that 80s cocaine-fueled money.

Yeah, indeed, and this is all about drugs as well, which we'll get into when we discuss the plot.

Weirdly, which I said, said, course it's not, it was heroin. Yeah, that's such a weird choice.

And it's directed by Craig R. Baxley, who also directed a really great movie called Action Jackson, if anyone's ever seen that.

Yeah.

Really, really good movie. He also directed quite a few episodes of the original A-Team series, and sort of did a few bits and bobs, but he did a lot of low-budget action stuff, but his two biggest movies were Action Jackson and this really, and this actually is, as I said earlier, it's been cited by a lot of critics, it's one of Dolph Lundgren's best films. It kind of flew under the radar.

Do you know how the film came about at all? Do you know if you say it's independent, was Dolph Lundgren a main component, was he a producer?

Schwarzenegger was gonna be in it originally.

Right, but do you know how it was made though? Did they get the director afterwards, or was the director involved first of all, or what, do you know?

I don't know that aspect of it, I'm afraid.

Because the director has a distinct, they knew the vision that they wanted, and they managed to actually capture it the best that they could, but they actually had like, oh, this is A, and there's B. Okay, everybody, here we go.

Here's a bit of background for you then, funny enough. So just before this film was made, the director, Craig Baxley and Dolph Lundgren were actually gonna be making another film together called Man To Man, which is gonna be an action sci-fi comedy about an alien crashing to earth. While he's in the Nevada desert, he hitches a ride with a repo man, and the two of them go on an action field adventure while searching for the alien spaceship.

And it's too close a term, are you?

Yeah, and Dolph Lundgren was too, Schwarzenegger was too expensive at this point, so in the end they went back, and Joel Silver said, okay, you can have Dolph Lundgren then. And then a few days.

You could, if AI is gonna get to that point one day, damn it, and you could be hanging out, we go, let's just quickly chuck Arnold Schwarzenegger in Dark Angel and see how it looks. And we're checking out, and it'd be like, kind of feels like it's one of his movies.

Well, a couple of days before, and this answers one of your questions, they were beginning shooting sort of less than a week before they started shooting. Joe Silver and another one of the big producers involved, Bernie Brilstead had a massive falling out, and the entire crew was stranded waiting in Vegas and didn't know whether or not the production would go ahead. They couldn't decide who they would want to be the co-star, to be the FBI agent.

Yeah, but I could see this, with a actual studio back in it, you'd have had a kind of up there with Lost Boys type thing, but like, do you know what I mean? It'd be, it's in production wise. Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at the stills now, but just seeing if you'd had that bit more money, definitely, but to be honest, like, when it comes down to the end of the day, this could be remade, it's one of those movies that could be remade, really, but...

Yeah, it's a good idea.

It's a good film regardless. Regardless of budget, it's a six out of 10 for me. If it had more money in it, probably would be the same.

Something else that works really well in this film is not just Lundgren, or anybody else that's in it, or the aliens. Two things that work really well is the score. I think the score is really good in this. And in fact, the score was liked so much that the guys who made Miami Vice basically reused some of the music for episodes of Miami Vice. But the other thing that works really well is the alien is quite scary in this.

I wouldn't have mind... It's like horror movies where you don't know what was the reason of that. Zombie movies where you had that dead, don't know the reason, like last episode. We don't really know what's going on with these much, do we? We do a little bit. We know kind of what they're doing.

Yeah, but we don't know anything about their planet or their species.

Or their backs, no, nothing. So I don't know if I really like the look of them. It's a bit...

I think that's what kind of, maybe it's because of the age I was at, but that's kind of what got under my skin a bit. It's because there was just these huge hulking blokes and they were bigger than Dolph Lundgren, you know? And you're like, wow, you know?

It's a strange look. It's a strange design.

He looks like Viggo the Carpathian, doesn't he?

It does seem a bit cheap and easy, to be honest with you, but maybe that's what they had to work with. They said, let's go with more natural look because it's easier and cheaper, probably.

But like you said, it is a very sign, like made in the 80s movie, you know? And there's the late 80s, early 90s, all the way through this. But yeah, I think we should get into it, let's...

I think we should.

Okay, great, great. So as we said, we got Dolph Lundgren in this and he plays Detective Jack Kane, such a badass, blokey name, isn't it? And then we've got Larry, who's the FBI agent he gets paired up with. And the only other person really of note in this is Ao Leung shows up at one point.

Oh, he does, I loved it when I saw him.

Fuck yourself, go fuck yourself, man! And he just runs off. But yeah, let's get into this. So we start off with just a random guy driving along in his car. Oh, he's got a CD player, Gav. He must have a bit of money back then, you know?

Yeah.

Puts his CD, starts skipping a bit, doesn't it? And this is a bit of a motif throughout CDs. It turns out that one of the weapons that the aliens use looks like a CD. But we'll get into that in a minute. And his CD flies out of his car radio and he ends up crashing his car into some trees. And I realized at this point, this is a Christmas film.

Yeah, yeah.

I could stop watching this over Christmas.

Yeah, I was like, that's a Christmas movie.

Which is great. And you've got carols throughout and Christmas trees here and there.

We find this occasionally, Jaws 4.

I know, Christmas Devil Bill, Jaws 4, Dark Angel.

There was another one we had recently, which was a Christmas movie as well, we found out. We were watching it.

Yeah, what was that? I found out recently that Rambo, for his blood, is a Christmas film, which takes place over Christmas.

Yeah, because when he takes over the sheriff's bit right at the end, you see some Christmas trees. Oh, actually, he's arrested. There's little Christmas trees on the police station desks.

It's not really mentioned, it just happens to be.

I know, I know.

Oh, it was Christine, that was the other one that takes place over Christmas as well. Lots of randoms. Anyway, he crashes his car into some Christmas trees and a little display, and then all of a sudden he hears, and some sort of missile explodes his car. This is where we see he's credited as Bad Alien. That's his name, Bad Alien. And he looks like, if Viggo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters II was about a foot taller, but had white eyes and just a bit of a weird forehead.

And an alternative title for this movie, in fact, is come in peace.

I come in peace. Yeah, in the US, this is known as I come in peace. But I think guys over there know it.

No, it's the Dark Angel is kind of cool.

Well, the reason they, one other reason they changed it was because there was that TV series with Jessica Alba called Dark Angel, which is James Cameron. So they kind of, but yeah. So the credits kick in and we start off with, this film doesn't really take a breath, which I like. We just kick straight into someone breaking into the evidence room in a police station. And I love these kinds of movies. Someone's broken in, he finds, he kills a cop that's in there. He puts on his fake cop outfit.

He just killed everybody in there just for shits and giggles.

The other guy said, why did you do that? He says, no witnesses.

And they all just laughed.

And that's where we're going with this. It's gritty. It's got that 80s RoboCop, no fucks given violence, which makes this great. Cut to Detective Dolph.

Detective Dolph.

And he's listening in, in a wine. He's got a badass car. He's a bit like Cobra as well. He's got elements of Cobra in this. He dresses in his own way.

Speaking of Cobra, Cobra turned up one day on set. Oh no, that's Masters Of The Universe.

He did, yeah. Well, you can tell that story now though.

You gave this guy lines.

Yeah. Well, actually, let's talk about that briefly then. So you mentioned earlier that his acting, but part of the reason his acting looks maybe subpar on Masters Of The Universe is because he was told, we're going to dub you over. So it doesn't really matter how you deliver your lines. But then they started running out of time and budget. They were like, shit, we're going to just have to use Dolph's dialogue.

That is no excuse at all for not being professional and just doing it anyway and doing a good delivery.

Hey, it was his first English speaking role. Come on.

Yeah, well, I can't have any excuse that could be like, actually, I should be, I should probably do a good delivery just in case they don't have enough money and they can't finish it and they have to use my lines. Ta-da! Come on. A bit more fucking with it.

But obviously by this point, he'd done a lot more movies and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And this movie, Dark Angel is fine, absolutely fine.

So Dolph's listening in on a wire to something that's happening inside a building in a nightclub. And he sees the fake cops that have just stolen that heroin and the money.

This is quite a good bit actually. It's really like interesting film straight away. There's a lot going on from the get-go because you've got this happening and then all of a sudden he's outside listening in a wire listening to something and he's like, oh, there's a drug deal going on. And obviously I'm going to have to go in there and bust them when the right moment turns up. But what goes and happens is a robbery next to him in a convenience store. So he's got, and it's a dilemma.

Well, he's his best friend as well, his partner and best friend.

And what happens?

Well, so his partner and best friend is undercover, but they know he's a cop. And, but all of that happens when Dolph has to take his earpiece out and go and stop a convenience store robbery. So whilst he's in the convenience store, his partner is getting killed because they know he's a cop and he's undercover.

Before he does get killed, again, another movie which does it again every time. It's like, how do you do this? The guy who's buying said drugs. So it's heroin, picks up the bag of heroin, threw it in plastic, sniffs it and goes, hmm. What does that mean?

It means he knows his heroin up.

How was he doing that? Is it how much indentation his nose does into the packet?

Argentinian, I'd say 1972. Hmm, it's like wine tasting.

It's like, you can't sniff it, it's wrapped up.

Sorry to Argentinian listeners, I don't know if heroin really does come from, I don't really know where heroin comes from to be honest. I don't really want to know to be honest.

I was about to, yeah, let's not start getting into that. That's not a sort of tangent one to get into. Where's heroin coming from? Well, let's talk about it then. No, it's not.

But these dumb ass armed hoods, they've held up a convenience store, a liquor store, and they do not know that the meme machine himself, Dolph Lundgren, as I say, so he heads straight in there. First thing he does when he walks in is a double kick, spin kick, first one takes the gun at the guy, the second one kicks the guy, and you're like, okay, Dolph means business. Now we'll get into this later, but Dolph is very highly trained in many martial arts.

He is quite a big guy. If he does a roundhouse kick or 360 kick on you, it's probably when that comes around to your face, that's probably gonna hit.

Well, funny enough, this stunt man missed his mark and came forward too much. So the take that they used.

He fucked up.

Dolph Lundgren took the gun out of his hand, but then the guy carried on coming forward. And then the second hit that Dolph does with his foot to the guy's face, apparently the guy went flying back and was unconscious for about five minutes.

You got knocked the fuck out.

Dolph Lundgren's span kick skicked you into fucking sleep for five minutes. I bet he had a headache when he woke up after that, but it looks great. And it's for such a big guy.

Man.

He's so agile.

Man, as a filmmaker, that happened obviously. Is he okay? Oh, he'll be all right. All right. Look back at his DP.

Dolph comes over and goes, did that look all right? Well, let's watch it back.

Is he all right though, yeah? Great, it looks good. Let's not celebrate. If they die, we probably should not celebrate until, just in case.

So Dolph ends up shooting the guy holding it, the convenience store. And like I said, while this is all going on, his partner is also being killed, which he doesn't realize. And then bad guy, alien appears, I come in peace. He fires a CD at everyone in the club, where the drug deal was going down. And I say a CD, a compact disc, but it's actually not, it's like an alien weapon that happens to look like that. But it flies out.

What are we gonna do for a weapon? That'll do.

CDs are quite new. I mean, they weren't really, but it flies out and basically they work out later on, so to jump ahead, they work out that this can be programmed to hone in on anything magnetic and all human bodies carry a magnetic vibration within them. So basically, he fires at humans and it's like a homing missile.

Predator's got this thing, hasn't he?

Well, Batman does it. In Batman Returns, he fires his Batarang, but he programs it and it takes like six guys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sort of, yeah. We could get them down, we could have fucking boomerangs.

Dynamite Dan and Gavotron.

I can't think, I used to have a boomerang, and I was fucking, I was frightened, just going, I'd be like just walking forever, just picking it up. That's all it was, it's just me getting steps in.

Well, Dolph enters the club after shooting all those guys, he goes back in the club to go and see what's going down with his partner, Ray, and Ray is dead and there are bodies everywhere. And he's like, oh, fucking hell, I only stepped away for five minutes to solve another crime and everyone's dead. So it becomes a crime scene, obviously, and all the crime scene investigating departments show up and they're talking about, well, there's five dead here. You know, what's going on?

Oh, my notes, it's a theme now, so it does put me off. I'd wrote Dolph, my notes every time, I changed it to Dolphin. So I've just got Dolphin. So I've got Dolphin turns up.

Dolphin, Lundgren.

So I'm gonna be saying Dolphin, just cause.

Somebody out there owns a pet Dolphin that they've called Dolphin Lundgren, you know that. You know that, don't you? No, that's so good.

Dolph.

Have you met my, I've got, you know, a rich guy, you know, base horse or something like that. I've got a Dolphin in my swimming pool. Dolph, his name is Dolph Lundgren, Dolphin Lundgren. And he's also got Steven Seagull that lives on his side. That's not. So yeah, he's in trouble with his boss. Like all cops were in the late 80s and early 90s. Why didn't you tell me you'd been undercover for three weeks? You'd been missing, we thought you were dead.

And the hell time is like, oh, I'm going on a holiday, I don't want to go on a holiday, you're going on a holiday, okay, I'm going on a holiday. And that's it, he's very obedient. Then he gets out, the FBI says, right, we want you back on the case. He's like, okay, I'll go back on the case. And his detectives are like, no, no, inspectors are no, you're not going back on the case.

Well, the FBI say to him, basically, there's something suspicious about this. And Dolph says, well, it's not a knife wound. I can tell you that from my experience, whatever that is on their throats, it's not a knife wound. So like you say, they get the FBI get him reinstated. And then he says, he does say to his boss, well, I said I'd take an eight week holiday. He didn't say when I'd take the eight week holiday.

And his boss... His boss looks a bit cut up, his boss thinks, but we went out for beers last night and I paid for you to have at least two.

And also when Jack came, when Dolph Lundgren says, I promise, he never breaks a promise. So he said, but you promised me you'd go on the eight week holiday. And he says, well, I did, but I never said when I'd go.

But in theory, you could keep that until you die.

That's true. So I will go on a holiday at some point.

I won't be here sometime for a period of time.

Forever. Morning comes and this is the rigs meets Muratam scene now. So it walks in, Dolph Lundgren, I'd like you to meet your new partner, Larry, the FBI guy.

Dolphin and Larry. Dolphin and Lazar.

And as soon as he meets him, he's like, I know what you're thinking. I'm very young, but I'm the youngest graduated FBI agent in my class. I'm top of everything.

Yeah, to be fair, he does do that. It does plead his case from the get-go because he's going, you know, he probably thinks I'm a fucking... It's that typical movie. It's that typical dynamic. It's that typical partnership we saw in the 80s, 90s with films with the fucking tough, tough critic up with the dweeb or the weird partner.

It's Rush Hour, it's The Weapon.

It's all sorts, yeah.

You know, it's even a 48 Hours, you know, all that kind of stuff.

It's the buddy cops in a way, but yeah, well, they are both cops in a sense, yeah.

It doesn't always work, but I feel like it really works in this because there's such a good arc with them both and then both quite stubborn, but then they rub each other out the wrong way, but then they realize one of them knows more about the underworld, one of them has more access to FBI, so they have to work together.

Do you know how it works? Like, because they kind of complement each other, I think, because it works because Dolph isn't bigger character than he is. If it was a Sylvester Stallone, it wouldn't have worked.

No, well, it works because of a scene we'll get to in a moment as well with Dolph's house, because he judges a book by its cover. Obviously he sees Dolph as this huge guy, really muscly, leather jacket, big dolphin in a leather jacket, driving around in a muscle car.

Imagine that.

My notes say at this point, That turns some heads, doesn't it? Larry seems like a jerk, my notes say. We also find out that Dolph Lundgren's girlfriend is in the police department too, and she slaps him.

I love you put your little suspicious voice in there after you did your little story voice. Story voice, suspicious voice. Back to story voice, I like that.

Yeah, well, she's very cross with him because apparently he's been gone for two or three weeks and hasn't told anyone where he is. It's because him and his buddy been undercover getting this drug deal set up, and he didn't tell anyone where he was, not even his girlfriend. The other note I've got.

No, it's so funny.

You wouldn't tell her, would you? Even though she's in the police.

Is that that? I'm undercover.

I love, yeah.

Fuck you.

I'm undercover. I'll tell you. She'll be down chatting with her mates. No, she won't. I've been a very chauvinistic man, don't worry. She wouldn't be gossiping at all. But yeah, the other thing about Larry, the FBI guy, which we've already touched on, is just how short he is compared to Dolph as well. There's this moment where he kind of squares up to Dolph Lundgren and you just think, I think Dolph says to him at that point, that's one. And he's like, one? One what?

Three dolphin strikes.

Three dolphin strikes and you're out. I can't do a dolphin. Anyway, let's go to a homeless shelter.

Let's do it.

There's a homeless shelter. There's a few homeless people milling about in there, living in there, sleeping, doing crack, all the things that homeless people are doing in the 90s. And there's a big explosion again, a big missile hits, and good alien shows up. So there's another alien. And we don't know he's good at this point, but he's got a dark head compared to the other one. And it's like, oh, who's this guy?

I was watching the other guys yesterday. Have you seen the other guys?

Yeah, I like that.

When the wheel fell, a Prius is stolen. They get it back. But a load of homeless guys had an orgy, which they class as the soup kitchen.

It's awful, isn't it? So yeah, a good alien. So we've got another alien now. He doesn't kill anyone. And that's what we see of him. So Dolphin and Larry go back to the crime scene, the nightclub, and they hate each other's guts, but they're both stumped. They can't figure out, you know, what killed these five guys?

I know that. The adventure's going to bring them both together.

Yes. We get a quick kill from the bad alien. A man calls his dog in, and his lights go out in his house. He grabs a gun, because, you know, America in the nineties, whoever's out there is going to get a face full of lead. I come in peace, it's the alien. And this time, we see a little bit more. The alien jumps on the guy.

Do you think the aliens, when we talk about the aliens, do you think we should really work out what's going on with these guys then? So how do they, can they just, whoo, they just appeared.

Oh no, no, they're just running around, aren't they?

Yeah, but I mean, do they come from a porcel or do they come from a ship?

A spaceship, yeah, spaceship.

Okay, and do you think that they figured out the English language, and then they realized that those would be the best words to say?

Yeah, because my theory is they would have picked up on us sending out signals to space throughout the 70s and 80s, and one of those would be I Come In Peace, which is always a very big thing, you know, lots of movies in the 70s and 80s that dealt with aliens. So I think if they think, if I say that, I've got limited vocabulary, but if I say that, then they might go, oh, okay, great, I'll let you come over and sit on my chest and then puncture me with a giant spike.

Have you seen Contact?

Yes, I have, yeah.

There's a bit in there, which was so creepy, I thought, if we're not, I thought a non-horror movie is extremely creepy when Jodie Foster gets the signal back from space. The first signal back, oh my God, we're gonna, I've got a signal and it's bloody Hitler talking. That was the creepiest thing ever, because you imagine that, the first thing you get and it's Hitler, like of all the people, of all of them.

I mean, he lives on the moon as we know.

Even Jimmy Salve would have been better.

Jesus Christ.

Now we're in, now we're in, now we're in, people of Earth.

Jim has fixed it for all of you.

Actually sounded a bit like him.

That's scary. So what we see this time, this kill, is after he says, I come in peace, he certainly doesn't, because he jumps on the guy. Now when we say alien, they are human, they look like humans, but with just white eyes and like 10 foot tall. But he jumps on this guy and he pumps something, which we later find out is heroin, into this guy's chest. He gives him a massive overdose of heroin. And then he shoves this blade on his wrist into the guy's skull.

Because it's from humans and that's not allowed presumably.

So he's coming to Earth and he's basically stole a load of heroin. He's pumping up a load of random people with heroin, taking the...

As soon as it gets to that point of their brain, which is good, taking it out there.

And then he puts it in a little capsule in his bum bag. He's got a little alien bum bag, hasn't he? Or fanny pack for the US. And then he's good to go then. And he's gonna go back. Do you think he's on the street corner on his planet going, guys, guys, I've got some human adrenal glands in my bum bag.

Yeah, I think so. I think, yeah. And then like, dirty dealer, isn't he?

He's got some fucking human adrenal. This is amazing. Let's get on that tonight.

So the thing is we don't actually know about, is the aliens fucked up, lying around on the human adrenal gland.

There's loads of parties going on on his planet. Alien raid music playing, and they're like, get another capsule out, come on. Do they sniff it? Do they inject it?

Exactly, they put up their alien bottoms.

If they've got bottoms.

And they plug it somehow.

Somehow, but yeah, so that's what I like. We don't know, we don't know this kind of stuff. Bookav.

Might ruin it if we knew. If we all of a sudden had a scene of a rave, an alien rave, it might ruin it. But.

Go on.

I was gonna keep going, I'm not gonna do that. Just before this, we had someone drinking some eggnog and it's a wonderful life on telly. Just want to say that I enjoyed that.

That's the guy that has just been killed.

I know, I know, but I just want to say because I enjoyed that.

Further, you know, for anyone who doesn't think Die Hard is a Christmas movie, then you're probably not going to think this is, but this is definitely a Christmas movie. They rub it in all the way through.

Die Hard movie is not a Christmas theme movie, but it's a Christmas set movie.

Yes. It's as simple as that. Thank you.

I sound like Alan Partridge.

No, it's 1990. So our next scene sees us in a strip club. Boobs.

That's my note. That's my note. It just says boobs.

Larry and Dolph Lundgren step in there and he says, why are we in here? Dolph Lundgren says, this is the only place I can come to think.

He talks to a dude from A House Of A Thousand Corpses.

Yeah, he does. And he says, what do you mean you can think in here? And he's like, well, I come in here and I think about the cases I'm working on. He's like, how can you concentrate with all this around you? And then, yeah, he sees his snitch, the guy from A House Of A Thousand Corpses, but he's also in Scrooged. His name's Boner.

Of course he is.

And he goes up to him and he says, hey, Boner, he's playing Paul.

Boner, Boner.

Yeah, well, that was my nickname at school, sadly. From the age of about eight to about 16. It was only when I was about 14 that I realized why, well, not why, my nickname was Boner, just because my name is Bone and they added an R, but I didn't realize what Boner meant until I was about 13 or 14. And then I thought, for fuck's sake, my nickname means erection.

So now I tell you, hey, Boner, you're like, hey guys, how's it going?

When we left school, being my besties.

Did you get, hi, so this is Debbie, hi Debbie, I'm Boner.

Well, the thing is, no, no, no.

Did you introduce yourself as Boner?

At school, right, everybody was just, no one was called by their name. It was either a nickname or your surname, or your surname, if your surname didn't end in like an R, then you'd have an R thrown on the end of it. So if your name was like Smith, you'd be Smithy, and everyone would just call you Smithy for the whole of school. So it wasn't until we hit 16, and then we left school, and me and all my best mates, I can still remember the conversation as clear as day.

That's so funny, your boner.

One of the guys was called Smurf, because his surname was Smith, and he was really small. So it wasn't blue, but he could suddenly be called Michael. Finally, Michael Smith was-

I feel like a flower has just bloomed.

Honestly, I couldn't believe I was getting called Dan. And we really hammed it up the first night we realized this. We were playing Mortal Kombat, and we were passing the remote control of the Sega Mega Drive controller between us. And we'd be going, your turn, Dan. Thanks, Dave.

So you're just all sitting there and you just go, guys, just been thinking about it. Yeah, yeah, well, bang, playing Mortal Kombat. Could we drop the nicknames and just sell actual proper names?

Yeah, okay. Obviously everyone has been thinking it.

It's like a scene from a film.

Obviously, we'd all been thinking it.

It's a coming of age movie.

It was great. But this guy that Dolph Lundgren goes to speak to is this snitch and his name is Boner. And he is playing pool with his buddy. Dolph asks him about the drugs. He says, who killed my partner? Come on, you always know what's going on. And then the guy's like, I don't know anything, honestly. And then he watches them play pool and watches the balls bouncing and everything. And then he gets inspired by something. And he says, let's go back to the crime scene, Larry.

He's been listening to Rick Rubin's audio book on creativity.

Well, he's been watching a Dens of Washington movie called Ricochet because he realizes that this weapon is probably ricocheting off of each of the dead bodies. And he describes this theory to Larry who thinks you're full of it. What are you talking about? And he says, if that's the case, then it should be over here somewhere. And then inside the speaker, they find this metal disc, which is basically a compact disc.

For whatever reason, it's just a CD, for whatever reason, it's a Tiffany CD, for whatever reason, it stays stuck in the speaker.

Well, because it's because of the magnet in the speaker, isn't it? Ah, okay. That's what I said earlier, it's programmed.

It's not very strong.

And it's magnetic frequency.

They're not very strong magnets in the speaker.

Maybe one of those big ones in the nightclub, but either way, it goes to anything magnetic, but you can program what frequency. And in the human body, there is a magnetic frequency, which is what the alien, they've got an advanced technology. They can't have explained it quite well.

Yeah, I'm not gonna start trying to work logic into this. I'm just gonna let it go.

Well, they take the disc out of the speaker, it flies around the room, almost kills them and then goes back into the speaker magnet. So they decide, Dolph says, look, I'm gonna take the speaker with me, I'm gonna take it home. So that's what happens.

But the good alien, it's quite good here. The director almost puts across where we don't know if we can trust the FBI guy. The whole way through this movie, I thought he was gonna be a sneak. And he's not, spoiler, he's fine.

Well, he is, and then he isn't.

Yeah, but not very much, not very badly, but.

Well, he steals the disc from the science guy.

I take it all back?

Yeah, no, he completely, he completely stabs Dolph in the back, but then, well, we'll get to that. He redeems himself. But the cut to the good alien who's out hunting around, and we cut to a character very similar to Argyle from Die Hard. Got a black chap in a forklift truck, just driving along listening to some dope 90s hip hop. He's got his headphones on. He doesn't see what's going on. He opens his eyes. There's an alien in front of him, and it's the bad alien.

Fucking massive, aren't they?

And the fact that both of the guys playing them are so big, and when they run, like one of them is running across loads of parked cars, and you can really feel the weight. You know, these guys definitely come from another planet where there's different gravity and different technology and stuff. It just all looks so good. It's different to anything we were seeing, really.

Dolphin and his partner go back to his flat.

Yeah, so Larry has been judging this guy by his book, judging a book by cover. And when he gets there, his Dolph Lundgren's flat is full of art, fine wine and books, good classical music. And he's like, wow, you really aren't the guy I thought you were. And he's like, yeah, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Would you like some wine?

Rich, he drinks in one gulp. The whole glass, but I mean like a whole glass, it was quite impressive.

But yeah, they basically, he starts to realize Dolph Lundgren isn't the badass. I mean, he is a badass, but there's a lot more to him than I first thought. Larry then says, well, I'll see you in the morning. I don't feel comfortable about leaving the CD and the speaker with the alien weapon, but I will. And I'll see you in the morning. Dolph sits there and he thinks and thinks about Diane. He's brooding. And he just thinks, oh, do you know what? It's three in the morning.

To him more than likely, you know, you just got laid in the last scene. So I'd be a bit more happy.

You know, like in that Wayne's World 2 where Garth loses his virginity to Kim Bassinger and in the morning he's like, good morning everybody. I'm a man now. And he's like smoking a pipe, you know.

I forged past it.

Recently. But when he gets to his apartment, the door is open. Someone's broken into his apartment. So Dolph Lundgren pulls his gun out immediately. You know, you don't want to fuck with Dolph Lundgren and his apartment. And put a pin in that, because that's something I'll be coming back to later on. A real life thing. So he walks into his apartment and Larry's in there. Now.

Larsa, what are you doing here, mate?

Dolph Lundgren says to him, what are you doing here? And he says, well, I got here and your door is open. Your apartment's been trashed. I think you've been robbed. Now, Dolph starts saying, well, hang on. When did you get here? And he starts thinking, did this guy do this? And then say somebody else has done it. It turns out Larry actually did do this and took the disc. Well, he didn't take the disc now. He takes the disc later. But yeah. He says, where's the disc?

He said this to his partner. I missed that bit.

No, no, no, I'm making this bit up. But Diane has got the speaker with the CD in it.

No, not Dolph saying to his partner he might love to him after he drank that wine.

No, you're going back too far on the scenes there. He didn't, they didn't make sweet love after the wine. It would have been a different type of movie. We get another kill now. Lady mechanic. She is grabbed by the alien, drugged and drained of all of her endorphins. Drugged and drained. Drugged and drained, that's what they could have called this, drugged and drained. I don't want to watch drugged and drained.

Interestingly, if you take any shots of the actual alien away and you cut them out and just had the deaths happen, you could easily not even think it's a science fiction type thing.

Yeah, could be just a straight up.

Yeah, like a mystery, trying to figure out who it is.

Fan edit. Well, we get to meet the crazy scientist laboratory guy now, don't we? My God, he is unhinged. So Dolph says, let's go meet my friend.

This dude is-

I knew you were gonna let this guy.

Fuck me, this dude, he just loves his job. He definitely has no girlfriend or anything. And he drinks coffee like no business. And for some reason he's like, he's fucked on, I don't know what he's on, but he's just so like, the drive is so like there, but he's got no, he doesn't know what he's driving towards. That's the thing, he's just manic.

Dolph says, so I wonder if you had a chance to have a look at that disc that I brought you. And he says, yep.

Why does Dolph even think he's a good one to go to?

Because he's the best, he's the best.

I guess, I guess the best are the most eccentric.

Well, he says to Dolph, yeah, one moment and I'll explain it all to you. And he turns around and faces the wall and goes, ah! Right, that's out of my system now. Yeah, so basically, who's this guy? Oh, this is my FBI partner, Larry. What? He scoops all of his pills into a drawer. These are all prescription. And he's like, I don't care about any of that. Just tell us what you know about that. So this guy is like really jerky jumpy.

What's his plan though? Just go into the meeting and just fucking start waving a gun around.

He just says to him, he says to him, I know you killed Ray. I know you're involved with the White Boys. And everybody in that boardroom pulls a gun on Dolph as well. And you're like, okay, you're in trouble here, Dolph. But Warren says, put the guns down, guys, put the guns down. And Warren explains to him that there's a drug war. And he says, I know that you stole my heroin and my 5K, the White Boys want that back. And Dolph's like, it wasn't me, I didn't do it.

He eats chocolate bar and die hard.

Chocolate bar, eat and die hard. He's endo in lethal weapon. You know, he's in big trouble in a little China. He is got, he usually got a goatee. He's fought everyone from Brandon Lee to Dolph Lundgren to Jesus, everybody.

To Jesus, what movie was that?

He had a fight with Jesus.

Kung Fu Jesus, I've never seen it.

There is actually a movie called Kung Fu Jesus, which I've seen, it was fun.

Oh, Kung Fu Jesus.

It's pretty badass. So yeah, he heads into the pawn shop that Ao Leung is running, but it's actually not really a pawn shop, it's a drug, it's all a front for drug running. He opens a suitcase, but he gets double crossed. Ao Leung gives him an empty case. He says, go fuck yourself and tell the white boys to fuck themself too. Normally he's got a heavy Asian accent, but in this film he's just got like a standard American accent, which always throws me.

Yeah, but the other alien's there as well.

He is, he steps in. There's a huge gunfight. Larry manages to fight the white boys off and go out and help, and the alien escapes with all the heroin.

I keep wanting to go to fat boys, but it's white boys.

Fat boys, as in, as in the... I wasn't having a seizure for anyone listening then. I was doing an impression of the fat boys beatboxing. So all this has gone down, lots of gunfire. You know, the tables are turning a little bit. They've also got the white boys after them. So Dolph goes to visit Diane, and she sees the bruises on his throat. It says, God, who's done that to you? And it's obviously it was the alien when he grabbed Dolph Lundgren's throat.

Why did she word it like that?

I worded it like that.

Oh, okay.

Good subtext, though, you know what I mean?

All right, it's funny, though, because the alien in this is like the predators coming to hunt. The alien is also coming to hunt.

Yeah, he's just using us.

Hunting ground, basically.

Just using the humans. Maybe they live on neighboring planets and they just see humans as a source of drugs and sport.

I don't know what else. That means that they know we're there, but they're just like, I don't know. We could go and visit them. And they do probably come and look at us. Maybe they do tools. That's what UFOs are. Yeah. They're alien tours.

There's two of them having sex in a car.

I've broken it. I'm gonna declare this on my next, my other podcast, Hot Strangers Podcast. It's what they are, they're tourists.

So there's like an alien, Richard Branson, who takes people on tours of planet Earth. Yeah. What's that one doing down there?

It's quite expensive.

That one's wanking, look.

Yeah, they can do whatever they want. It's like looking at monkeys or whatever, like the zoo, isn't it? Yeah. That's what they're doing.

That's what these guys are doing. They're like, oh, let's get some more drugs from their human brains.

You've heard it here, listeners. That's what UFOs are. I've broken the fucking code.

Well, Dolph reveals at this point to Diane and Larry that he thinks it's aliens. And they don't obviously buy that initially. Well, Diane's a bit more on board.

Generally when people say to you, I think it's aliens, you're like, what have you been smoking?

Yeah. But he's been around the block a few times, this guy. Dolph Lundgren, to know that this is not something he's dealt with in the past. They say, you know, no one's gonna believe you. But anyway, they go back to the scientist from earlier, the caffeine man, and he has had the shit kicked out of him, hasn't he?

He's had the shits.

He's had the shit kicked out of him. And the disc was stolen. And he says to Larry, they looked a bit like you actually. They were in suits like you. So some of the FBI have gone around there and shit out of him, taking the disc off of him.

I guess, like you said, he's the best he is, but I wouldn't trust in leaving him with that stuff.

I wouldn't trust him with my coffee. Who knows what he'd put in it. But Dolph tells him his theory and he says, so you're saying these are drug dealers from outer space. You really think anyone's gonna believe that? No, no, I don't think they are, are they? We get another alien fight between the good and the bad alien. The bad alien escapes, but the good alien is injured in this fight.

It does seem to be like another alien fight. It's another alien fight.

It's the same blueprint as a slasher. We cut to a kill or an alien fight or an alien kill, and then we cut back to the main story. But it works. It sounds weird when you go back and review it, but it works because like I said, it never lets up this film. It just snowballs and snowballs and snowballs.

Because all of my notes is Dolphin.

And he says to him, he basically says to him, this man must be stopped. I'm like you on my home planet. I'm a law enforcer like you. So he basically is, he's like a Dolph Lundgren from another planet. He's a cop and he's hunted this guy all the way to Earth and says that I'm dying. I'm gonna die soon, but you've got to stop him. Larry gets in the car and sees him as well.

I know the whole time though, he's persuaded to this girl to go, he's going on holiday. He said, oh, I'm gonna take the holiday. You're coming with me. And she said, what, really? Yeah, yeah, you're coming with me. Fuck it, you're coming. Oh, but I'd have to quit my job. Quit it, meet me, come on. Oh, okay, I'll do anything you say. Quit her job. We'll get to that though.

But yeah, the alien says to him, promise me you'll stop him. And obviously, as we've said, when Detective Jack Kane says I promise, he never breaks that promise. So he promises this alien he will stop this bad alien.

To be fair, if he did break his word to an alien, it's a fucking alien.

Christ, don't be racist.

I suppose it's your word, though. It's not about who it involves.

It's you. Well, then he sort of dies because he's so ill and shot. And Larry says, well, at least we've got the body as evidence. And then the body, what does the body do, Gav?

It blows up.

Blows up the car. But Larry manages to retrieve the gun, the alien technology gun, which I love, because it's got like four settings on it. They don't know what it does, but there's like level one, level two, level three, level four. Well, he does, yeah. Larry says, I got this gun as proof. I'll go now. And Dolph's like, oh, don't do that. He's like, I'm going to go and I'll look after it. But he shows it to his boss.

Double dragon.

Double dragon, baby. Dolphin dragon. Double dolphin.

Double dolphin. It doesn't seem as hard as when you were a kid.

What? Double dolphin. Sounds like a sex position.

The double dolphin.

I gave her the old double dolphin last night.

Oh, did you? Hey, what does it mean?

I don't know. Something to do with blow holes. Yeah, they arrive at the alien's hideout, which is in some kind of weird cemetery. And they basically say, let's kick some ass. They find his massive pile of heroin. Dolph tries to fight the alien, but obviously the alien is so strong. And Larry gets his arm sliced by the flying compact disc of doom. I'm not sure which album it was this time. Was it Prince's Batman that did it this time? They're chased by the alien. Larry manages to shoot the alien.

Yep.

As a lot of these films do. There's a lot of going to places, shoot outs, going back to places, shoot outs.

It's unfortunate because it kind of, it sort of shows obviously there's lack of a budget, but this may just cut some of these things down or just change them or different locations or different things happening to change it a bit, I think.

There's a couple of great moments though. One of them is the alien, the bad alien steals the cop car and gives chase and he's chased them. It's a great car chase, all practical because this is pre CGI.

So just before this, very quickly, the girlfriend turned up and said, I've quit my job.

That's right. I've quit my job. And he's like, that holiday's gonna have to be half the fall.

Yeah, you know, I persuaded you. Yeah, no. She's just gonna be like, men are such dicks.

This car chase goes, smashes through a shopping mall. More cops get killed. Larry blows up the car. Great moment where he blows up, he says, I'll put this thing to level three on the gun. Blows up the cop car with the ballon inside. And he gets out and goes, whoa, I got that son of a bitch. And then out of the flames, the alien just starts sprinting at them. And it's quite a terrifying moment. He's like, it's like The Terminator, isn't he?

Hello.

Or for anyone that's played Resident Evil 2, whatever that thing's called in that.

You said about the score. At this point, I felt the score was really lackluster because it's got these incredible explosions going on and all sort of action. And the score was like, oh, what is this? It's really weak in comparison.

Fair enough. I like the opening score.

Yeah, I don't remember the opening score, but I didn't dislike it. So, you know what I mean? I mean, pass. But this one, I could feel the dislike for how it wasn't complimenting the explosions.

Well, we basically end up in the end scene of Robocop now, because they go to what looks like the set of Robocop, a big sort of foundry.

Have you seen Robodoc yet?

I haven't watched it yet, no. It's on the list, don't worry.

It's a biggie.

And they have this big shoe out, and they duck and dodge underneath pipes and stuff like that. Dolph says to him, I'll give you the drugs. He starts throwing the drugs on the ground and smashing them and says, if you let Diane and Larry go, you can have the drugs. But he tries to then do a mortal combat.

Get over here!

The alien fires his little heroine snake out of his arm, tries to get Dolph, and they have this big struggle. And then he says, I win. And then he says, I come in peace. And Dolph shoves him onto a pipe and says, and you're leaving pieces, asshole. Puts the gun up to level four and blows him away.

Yeah, this whole ending here was just kind of boring. I don't know why. It was so good earlier on. There's a lot more sense of adventure and things going on. But yeah, this bit here just really felt...

So many movies we review together, the last 20 minutes always feels a bit like...

I think that and the ending towards the second act and that, it's really hard part to get in story sometimes correct. The fun, the setting up is easy, then it's fun and games. So for the rest of the first 40 or so minutes, you're just having fun. Then something changes and it goes downhill and then you come back up. But it's that bit there, which could be hard.

Well, there's a reason why films like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, if we're talking action films Predator, there's a reason why they live on as classics is because they managed to stick the landing.

Yeah, the formula, they, yeah.

You know, the end works. But what I would say is, because it ends on a freeze frame, but they're more laughing. But what I would say is, this film is very lucky that it's got a great story and a great cast and great direction and cinematography, so that you kind of forgive the last 15 minutes, really, because you've been on the ride. You sort of, by this point, you've had, if you drink, you've had like your sixth beer and it's midnight.

The funds arrived, it's not the ending.

Yeah. But all in all, I was really happy to revisit this. And your first watch, so what do you think? You know, tell me your thoughts.

Yeah, well, you know my thoughts. Yeah, thought it looked good. I thought it was well-directed. I thought it was absolutely fine everywhere, apart from that score, I thought it could be a bit better later on. And basically, yeah, that last bit, being a bit tighter and a bit better, a bit more different.

It's original though, quite an original story. You know, alien drug dealers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it has got elements of Predator 2 slash, you know, Cobra slash Need The Weapon.

You've got a movie called The Borrower.

Yeah, it reminds me of that as well.

Alien comes down and has to put off people's heads to be able to breathe, but they run out, so he has to keep getting other heads and just ripping off people, which as a kid, when I watched it, I watched it on a big cruise ship one night by myself in the middle of nowhere. It's like, I mean, like no one around anywhere. It's really weird. And creeped me out. I thought it was really disturbing. I watched it again, got it on videotape. I found it at a jumble sale and it wasn't very good.

It also reminded me, not that we like these movies that much, but in some of the Critters films, you get the alien bounty hunters come down as well. So it's kind of got those elements in it, but this is great. If you've never seen it, guys, it's a thumbs up from me. I think Gav's giving it a thumbs up as well. You know, it's a fun, it's a Friday night flick. It really is.

You kind of know what you're getting into, so.

Yeah, and it's quite an original story with some fun scripting and good looking scenes. So yeah, that's it really. But I'm glad we watched it.

I imagine this did well in the video shop, to be honest with you. When it came out, I imagine it's the one we picked up and went, yeah, I'd be all right.

I remember, like I said to you, I remember my dad buying it. We bought it literally because it had Dolph Lundgren on the front. We didn't look at the back or read about it, so we watched it that night together. I was probably about 12, 13 maybe, and we really enjoyed it. And it's been one that me and my dad talk about. In fact, I told him we were talking about this. He said, oh, that's such a classic film. It's a classic film. I'll have to dig my VHS out.

Has he got lots of VHS?

Oh yeah, he's like me.

Still watches them?

Occasionally, you know, if he, it's like vinyl records to him. The same with me. If I've got it, you know, like when that time me and you watched Halloween together, I pulled out my old VHS and it was so blown out, wasn't it? The coloring was all like weird on it. Do you remember?

It was hard to watch actually, yeah.

Yeah, it wasn't the Blu-ray, it wasn't 4K. But either way, I still love pulling out my old. In fact, when I watched...

What's the finished book you're saying now?

VHS tapes. In fact, our next movie we'll be reviewing, I watched that on VHS because when I was with you...

Pulling out my old Dodger.

When I was with you at Carboot sale, I found Masters Of The Universe on VHS and that's the copy I watched. For our review on this episode. But yeah, thumbs up from both of us. Dark Angel 1990, now it's time... Oh, what's he doing? Bill, what's going on here? Oh, you've made me a birthday cake. In the shape of... What is that in the shape of? Is that supposed to be a penis? I don't know. If it is, then what's that bit coming out the end?

It's an alien penis.

I see. So it's like an alien xenomorph, but there's a little penis coming out of the penis. I like what you've done there. That's quite clever.

Yeah, you cleaned it up a bit.

There's gotta be a pointer out there, Bill, with this in it, right? Where a penis comes out of a penis.

With Bill Murray?

I don't know if you're in it, Bill, are you? No? He's winking.

Dirty bugger. All right, come on.

Come on, Bill, take us into World Of The Strange, please.

Hi, welcome back to World of the Strange.

It's a very strange one. Thank you for that, Bill, as always. Now, Bill, I'm so sorry, I'm gonna have to do this. Gav, what Bill presented me with was not anything that I could read out. It was to do with dolphin sex. He's got hold of the wrong end of the stick for my birthday episode.

He's been getting back to that episode you did, and you told me about the lady in the house.

The dolphin that tried to have its way with her.

Old World Of The Strange.

So I knew this would happen, Bill. Don't look sad, it's my birthday episode, and I'll do what I want. I knew this would happen, so instead, what I've done is I've prepared a list of interesting facts about Dolph Lundgren for you. Because he's a very interesting character. I also thought we could have a quick chat about action heroes as well. And what makes an action hero? Why we don't really get many anymore? Do you know what I mean? Hmm, well, let's start with Dolph.

Um, average IQ is 100, isn't it?

Exactly that, yes, well done. Dolph Lundgren has an IQ of 160.

That's quite a bit, isn't it?

Yeah, he's incredibly intelligent. Man, I think he's six foot five. Five, obviously, he was a model.

So I presume everything's big, even his penis, because it seems he's got a big brain, big intelligence, big muscles. He's big, like everything seems to be big with this fella.

I don't have that information in this list. But he graduated from high school with straight As.

Big shits.

Yeah, he studied engineering at Washington State University, and then he did a year in the Swedish Marine Corps. Then he got a degree in chemical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology. Then he got a master's in Sydney, so he's lived all around the world.

Master's in what?

I think it was chemical engineering as well.

Okay, what engineering?

Chemical engineering. And then he also got a scholarship in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also known as MIT.

Okay, so is he essentially a chemist?

He is a laboratory chemist, all that kind of stuff really. But he quit, he quit two weeks after he got his scholarship, he quit MIT because he didn't want to shake test tubes for a living, he said. And he realized he could make a bit of money as an actor. But he says, I'm not smart, come on, I'm not that smart. But he's got an IQ of 160. And he's widely known as one of the smartest, not only action heroes, but just people in Hollywood. Interesting. He also speaks six languages. Do you know that?

That's pretty impressive.

His mother tongue, obviously, is Swedish, being a Swede. But he also speaks English, obviously, German, Spanish, French and Japanese.

Fucking hell, Japanese is a bit of fun to learn.

Did you ever hear about the fight he had with Van Damme on the steps outside Universal Soldier? Yeah, so you can find this on YouTube. They're outside on the red carpet in their tuxedos and they get into a bit of a scrap and they square off against each other and the security guards have to come in and sort it out. But later it was revealed, it was all just a bit of a show.

So you just got like a stills from the video in magazines.

I've seen it on YouTube though, you can watch it.

Then before the internet when it happened.

Oh, sorry, yes indeed. It probably would have been on some news stories.

Yeah, true. And it probably looked more of a thing when it was edited down like that.

But yeah, it was all a publicity stunt, like I say. But the film, it worked well because the film made 95 million at the box office. So fair enough for those guys. We talked about his martial arts. So he started karate at the age of 10, Dolph Lundgren. And by 19, he was part of the Swedish World Championship squad. He went to Japan to do full contact karate. Full contact, he said you had to be a brown belt.

What's full contact?

Just kicking someone in the face as hard as you can. There's no pulling punches or kicks. You're not getting points or anything like that. You're just knocking them out. But he said you had to be a brown belt to go to Japan. And I was only a green belt. But my instructor just said I was good enough to, I'm big enough to fight in full contact. I thought, oh, I can't.

Imagine going against him, going at us. Your turn. Okay, here we go. Oh, look at him.

He's six foot five.

He's not going to get close because his legs will get you.

He did say, I thought I was going to get killed, but he won his first two fights of the tournament by knocking his opponent out. And he went on to win two European Championships and the Australian Heavyweight Karate Tournament as well. So he's won three international tournaments of Karate as well in the 80s.

On the trajectory of an action star.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

I think I'm going to get killed.

He's on the action train. He's on the action train. He's putting some fuel in the firehouse.

Well, let's get into how he got into acting because it's an interesting story involving an interesting woman, as I'm sure you'll know. But when he was studying in Sydney, Australia, he was working as a bouncer in a nightclub. Not again, but just pictured Dolph Lundgren being the bouncer on the nightclub. Some little drunken Australian, like, oh, come on, mate, let me in. And he's like, all right, I can't let you in tonight. You know, a huge guy. He's not going to let you in, is he?

I don't know this story.

And she said, do you want to be my bodyguard?

Did she say, put up to my bumper baby?

She probably did. Well, later on she did. So he worked for her in Australia and then ended up becoming one of her personal bodyguards. They then fell in love and they moved.

Put up to my bumper baby.

They moved to New York City together where he was not only her lover, but also her bodyguard. So it's like the Kevin Costner, Whitney Houston. They should remake it with those two. It's the canon version. I want to see that so badly, the canon version. Grace Jones and Dolph Lundgren. And I will always put up to my bumper baby.

Pull up, pull up.

On the streets of New York City to protect Grace, he always had two guns on him. One on his hip and one on his ankle. Dolph Lundgren, not only is he a 10 year veteran of karate championships, he's got two guns.

He's bodyguard to Grace Jones while he's pulling up to her bumper.

But also she doesn't need a bodyguard. If someone came up to her, I wouldn't want to.

I wouldn't touch her.

I wouldn't mess with her, man.

Yeah, I'd be scared.

But Grace Jones basically introduced him to lots of her friends. He became really good friends with Andy Warhol and lots of other people like Roger Moore. And then eventually when he was on set of A View To A Kill, they said, oh, do you want to be in this? So his first on-screen appearance is in A View To A Kill as a guy that gets killed by Roger Moore briefly.

I think I maybe saw that. I watched it not too long ago.

Well, because of that, he then got the role of Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.

So pulling up to the bumper was a good move.

It was a good move, because then he got Rocky IV, then he got Masters Of The Universe and loads of little straight-to-video stuff, and then he did the odd Dark Angel. Now he's the bona fide action hero legend, who is probably a bit more straight-to-video than a lot of action heroes.

Expendables helps bring all of these back into the limelight.

Indeed, indeed. And we'll get on to action heroes in a moment. We can have a brief chat about, because we both love action heroes. Well, let's talk about Ivan Drago, shall we? And what he did to Sylvester Stallone.

I can't really comment, to be honest with you. I can't remember it.

Well, Sylvester Stallone said in Rocky IV, I really want these fights to look real. So I want you to hit me as hard as you can, Dolph. And he was like, are you sure? He's like, yeah, yeah, hit me as hard as you can. But he hit Sylvester Stallone so hard in the ribs that he made his heart swell up. So he had to go into intensive care with a swollen heart.

Why did he say hit me hard as you can?

Because I want it to look good for the cameras. I'm Sylvester Stallone, I can take it. The doctor said, you've got the same injuries as somebody who gets in a car crash, Mr. Stallone.

He's a big guy, so did they use the shot?

Oh yeah, all the shots are in it, yeah.

Oh good.

He said, they said to him, your injuries are exactly the same as someone involved in a very fast, very big car crash where the steering wheel hits you in the chest and breaks a few ribs and hits your heart so hard. A lot of people die from that, but yeah, that was what a punch from Dolph Lundgren's like basically. Yeah. That's pretty impressive. He also managed an Olympic team in the 1996 Summer Olympics for real.

He did what?

He managed a sports team in the 1996 Summer Olympics.

He managed them?

Yeah, he coached them.

Coached them, fair enough.

So he got asked to be involved in that for real, which is weird.

I presume as he gets older, I know obviously he is older than he was when he was younger, obviously. That's how age and time works. But I presume when he stops doing so much activity physically, he probably because of his brain, I imagine to maybe writing or do you know what I mean? Still go on to do achieve some stuff.

He revealed only about two years ago that he's been battling cancer.

Oh, I didn't realize.

So he's come out the other end of that. So I think he is really stepping down from action as much as possible now. Obviously he's still showing up in the odd expendables or whatever. But then another fact about Dolph is, and this will be one for me, it's my birthday episode, is he starred in the first R-rated Marvel movie, The Punisher, in 1980.

I remember that film with him on Sky Movies.

Yeah, played Frank Castle years before, Marvel was even really making movies, apart from the odd, terrible Spider-Man and Incredible Hulk TV show. But yeah, he played The Punisher, so people always remember that one. He also turned down the role in Ridley Scott's Gladiator.

What, for Russell Crowe?

He was gonna be the, you know the huge guy that Russell Crowe fights?

I've not seen it.

You haven't seen it? Shit. Well, he was gonna be, he was offered the role by Ridley Scott, but he said, no, I don't wanna be in this. I'm not interested in doing any acting at the moment. I wanna take time out. So you've got to respect that the guy doesn't just go after the money. If he wants to take a few years off or a year off, he does.

Yeah, fair enough. And if you notice, I'm quite a unmanly person of my sports choices. I like skateboarding, you know. So that's why I'm seeing a lot of these movies or, you know, Top Guns and whatnot.

He wasn't in Top Guns. Imagine if he was, he wouldn't fit in the plane. My favorite story is one. So I don't know if you've seen the movie he was in with Brandon Lee.

Yeah, yeah, I have actually. Showdown Little Tokyo.

Yeah, yeah. So when they were on set.

Good name for a movie.

Good name. While they were on set, they were overheard. And this is quite an interesting, he's later repeated this conversation on like the Jay Leno and stuff like that. But basically him and Brandon Lee were talking about real life fights. They got into. So Brandon Lee said he got home one day and there was a man in his house, robbing him. This is Brandon Lee. He said the guy was still in the bedroom.

F**k me, this burger. This burger. So right, here we go. Nice. I'm in.

No, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait.

He's looking around the house and he looks like he goes f**king hell.

Look at that.

That's the picture of Bruce Lee f**king hell, nice. There's another one. It's a bit weird, isn't it? He doesn't know. He's broken into Bruce Lee's son's house. Bruce Lee. Well, so amazing. You couldn't make it up. That's like a film in itself.

Well, Brandon said he caught this guy holding his VCR in his hand. So he just, all he wanted was Brandon's video player.

F**k me. This is the movie bit where you have a close up of his eyes, both their eyes, and all of a sudden a close up of the picture of Bruce Lee and the person Bruce Lee's with, then it back to his eyes and back to Brandon Lee.

Oh, I've made a mistake. Well, Brandon Lee said, they got into a fight and the man ended up getting a knife from Brandon Lee's kitchen and going to stab Brandon Lee. Brandon Lee said, I took the knife off of him.

I'm not even going to tell you anything more about that.

He said, the police came and took him away. When he got out of hospital a few weeks later, he got two years for breaking and entering an attempted robbery. So he put him in hospital for two weeks. Well, Dolph then replied with a story of his own. He said, well, I had a similar thing happen to me once, but I didn't have to fight anybody. When I was living in Spain, I got home one day. My wife, well, my fiance at the time, was tied up in the bedroom and I couldn't understand what was going on.

Yes, like I was just saying.

That is exactly like you just said. And they instantly shat themselves and just left her there and ran off. So he didn't even need to do anything. So guys, what I'm saying is put up some pictures of Dolph Lundgren or Bruce Lee.

Photoshop, that's it. This is a good, guys, guys, good burglary tips here. Write this down. Photoshop yourself with different people.

I've got that photo of me and Jackie Chan.

I've got Leslie Nielsen.

Do you mean Liam Neeson? I mean Leslie Nielsen hanging out on the set of Naked Gun.

But he did wrestle the Bear Bear Bag.

But I've got that photo of me and Jackie Chan together. So maybe I should get that blown up a bit more and framed in my living room. So if anyone ever breaks in, they'll be like, oh shit, this guy knows Jackie Chan.

Well, you can just Photoshop it. I know it's brilliant. But I love the fact that that's another movie just there. Oi, Fred, what? Look at this. What? That woman we got tied up down there. Look at that picture.

What?

It's fucking that guy in there.

What?

It's that guy he fought Rocky.

What?

What you're on about? Look, Dolph Lundgren. Yeah, that's him. Look, there's another one. What do you reckon?

Oh, fuck.

And then just like the alarm bells ringing, they're like, quick, out now, go. Don't even untie her, go.

Dolph Lundgren, we're in Dolph Lundgren's house. Well, I'd still feel more sorry for the guy that was gripping onto a VCR and then hears someone come in and thinks, oh, fuck, the owner of the home's come home and Brandon knee walks in. Of all the fucking people.

It's the first day of my robbing career.

Not doing it ever again. I'm getting put in hospital for two weeks. Last couple of bits, he's done loads of charity. He's a very charitable man. And he also, like I said, he overcame cancer recently and he is an incredibly talented, he's got one of the highest grades you can get in music in drumming. He's a really talented drummer.

I'm gonna start a bar with Dolph. Well, he put his in Dolphins.

Have you ever seen a movie where he plays the drummer for like a Britney Spears type character? It's like Die Hard, but a music festival.

What, and he saves the day?

Yeah, basically he's like a drummer for this sort of pop star while she's going on tour. And then she gets taken hostage by all these sort of Hans Gruber type men, but they don't know he's like an ex-military badass that just now drums for Britney Spears. And he goes around taking them all out. Even with his drumsticks, he stabs one of them. I can't remember what it's called now. Kick Snail, Hi-Hat, or it's got a name like that, but it's very, very good.

That's pretty cool.

Anyway, we could go on and on about Dolph, but he's definitely made his way into the legend, Hall of Legends, hasn't he? For as far as action heroes go.

Yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah, I assume he's a pretty nice guy, actually. He seems all right.

Yeah. Nicer than some, Seagal, looking at you.

Yeah, yeah, in comparison, yeah, Seagal comes across very bad. I imagine.

Yeah, but I've always thought of Dolph in my, probably in my top five, really. You know, you've got your Van Dammes, just watching him go, Stallone's.

What's the difference between Seagal and you? Can you quickly look it up?

This is not something I thought I'd ever have to look up.

I don't know, though, if he would tell the truth anyway. I'd imagine he'd make it up and change it to something else. But would we actually know? Would it be actually correct? Who's saying it, you know?

If you type in, is Steven Seagal, one of the first things that comes up says, is Steven Seagal a god?

Who's Googling that? We should start a new podcast where we just do this.

Oh, Steven Seagal says.

All right, so we take it down by 20. What does he say?

He says, I've got the highest IQ in the world. Literally says that.

Really?

Oh, come on, Steven. Do you really think you've got the highest IQ in the world? But there's no proof of that.

Okay, all right, well, let's forget that. Let's assume it's less.

If he was still alive, Stephen Hawkins versus Steven Seagal in a game of chess. Let's see what goes on. My money's on Hawkins all the way.

Oh, I was just blocking, just trying to push Stephen Hawkins out of the way.

Body doubles every five seconds. It wouldn't even be him.

Anyway, that was very good. Thank you for that. I'm sure the listeners and myself, we all need to know about some Dolph, Dolphin, Nungrun.

If you don't know Dolph Lundgren, go and check down, check down, go and check down. Go and check out some of his movies.

Get down with Dan Slang, his street words.

But the World Of The Strange segment has ended because Bill's wearing his He-Man costume.

Yeah, but it's She-Ra, isn't it?

I don't know what is going on, but he's forgot to put the pants on. That hairy loin cloth is not a hairy loin cloth.

That's not very good.

All right, Bill, take us out of here.

That's all the time we've got for this week on Rules. Next week, though, give me iron. Hairless pets. At the far end of the universe, there is a planet ruled by a being of utter evil. Stop him! Nobody move! Of Earth. I think I'm gonna need some backup. Can you show us the way? From a distant galaxy, they have come to earth. Dolph Lundren as He-Man, Frank Langella as Skeletor. Only they have the powers to be. Masters Of The Universe. Live the Adventure!

Okay, so that was the trailer for the epic Masters Of The Universe from 1987. My dreams have all come true. We're talking about this on the podcast after 10 years. So here's the synopsis. The heroic warrior He-Man battles against the evil Lord Skeletor and his armies of darkness for control of Castle Grayskull, as if he needed to know, as if he needed to know what was going on.

No, you can't skip that.

Well, that's all I know really, is that he doesn't direct anymore because there were about 10 years ago, there were some allegations.

What, on the set of this film or?

Not on the set of this film, no. Yeah.

Oh, I didn't know about that. Oh, well, I didn't think it was very well directed, so there you go.

But this is a Canon film, Canon Studios.

Yes, indeed.

This is the film.

It was a big budget movie for them, wasn't it?

Yes and no. They pulled the budget about two weeks before the end, so that's why the end of the film doesn't really, that battle he has with Skeletor is so weirdly shot and lit because they basically took the set down, they took the set away from them while they were still filming it. Because basically what I was gonna say was, this is the movie that ended Cannon Studios, this and Superman 4, which they were shooting around the same time.

But it was a sort of a Blumhouse type sort of thing, isn't it, really, back in the day? You get these certain studios and Cannon was a great studio, but they were making lots, weren't they? So you'd get different degrees, but occasionally they'd get hits.

Yeah.

Like Blumhouse was early on. Well, it still is, essentially.

But what happened was, they had the rights to make a Spider-Man film, Cannon. So they were like, great! Spider-Man is a well-known superhero. What we can do is we can make a Spider-Man film, but we need to do that by, we need to get two big blockbusters under our belt. And the money, so the money from Masters Of The Universe and the money from Superman 4, both of those are sure fire hits. And when they make all their money, we're then gonna go and make Spider-Man.

But if they're just hemorrhaging money.

And that's the thing, they were making millions of ninja films and break-dancing films.

Were both films in production at the same time?

I think around about the same time, yeah. Christopher Reeve didn't wanna do Superman 4. You know, the budget was ridiculous bad on that. If you've watched it recently, it's an awful film. The effects are terrible. The same with this.

I don't know, I've ever seen it, to be honest with you.

Even the suit he wears in Superman 4 is awful compared to the suits he's wearing in the movies.

Is it Christopher Reeve?

Yeah, yeah, it's Christopher Reeve. But it's just awful. Yeah, they were just pissing money away, really. But this film is what it is. Now look, it was a flop.

Yeah, it's 5.4 out of 10. When I was a kid, obviously I was a Star Wars fan. Obviously I was a Masters Of The Universe fan, but I think more of a Star Wars fan, obviously, not bigger, not obviously, but I was. I had a lot more of their stuff than I did, but I did have Battle Cat and I had a few of the toys and that, and I used to, what would it be then? Cartoon, was that cartoon?

The cartoon is what most people knew. It was also comic and the toys.

I think I knew cartoon really. So when this movie came out though, it was exciting. And I might have even seen it in the cinema, but I think this was almost like my second or third time watching it for this. And when it came out though, for whatever reason, even as a kid, I was quite underwhelmed by it. It didn't hit the stuff that I wanted.

So the other problem with this film is it came too late. So he, man, came out.

What year was it?

87. So he, man, the cartoon, hit the UK in 1983, the same time as the toys hit the UK in 1983. So I was five years old. I got Council Grade School for Christmas, probably that year, or maybe 84, and at one point, it was the hottest selling toy line in history. Mattel were making billions on an annual basis from this toy line alone, which is why they then got the cartoon up and running, not long after the toys had started coming out.

And it lost its core original audience.

So by the time this came out, the toys just weren't selling anymore, and the cartoon had stopped.

Yeah, looking back on it, because I was a kid at that time. So I was the actual demograph.

You were 10 when this came out.

Yeah, I was a demograph. So all these toys coming out, all these things, we were like, because they're still properties being used now, Transformers movies, etc.

etc. Ninja Turtles. Yep.

It's still going now.

Even GI.

But we had them fresh then, and there was always some new toy range come in. So, yeah, things will get pushed and come in and go, you know.

Thundercats, mask, you know, all these things.

Yeah, absolutely.

But so that's another flaw for this one. Now for the kids watching this, aged between like 5 and 10, 99% of those kids, me being one of them, loved this. I knew, okay, Battle Cats not in this. He-Man and Skeletor look a bit different. They're on earth, but there's reason they're on earth. They've come to earth, blah, blah, blah. I went with it. Obviously, there were adults, the critics, because it's not kids that critique films, it's adults. They were like, this is awful. The acting's awful.

He doesn't wear much clothing.

Whereas Frank Mengele, who played Skeletor, his highlight of his career, weirdly, and he's an Oscar-winning actor.

Oh, he loves it, doesn't he?

He loved playing Skeletor. He said, I did it because my kids had all the toys. And they said, dad, if you've got the chance, you've got to be him. So he went and played Skeletor and he puts everything. And everybody says, no matter what you say about this film, Skeletor is awesome.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

The visual effects of his, yeah, his delivery.

I don't know, the mask is a bit sketchy.

What they've also done as an adult, you realize what they're doing with this film is they're really cashing in on Star Wars. Star Wars obviously made a lot of money from those three movies. By the time this had come out, they were trying to cash in on Star Wars spaceships. It's even quite a bit Darth Vader-y, the way Skeletor is.

Exactly, they were too late again.

So this film was too little, too late, sadly. I was chatting to our buddy RJ. McCreedy about this yesterday, and he said he used to live opposite a cinema. And he remembers seeing the posters up and thinking, well, there's no way that that's not gonna be a short film. And he couldn't understand why everyone was saying it was awful, awful film. But as an adult, when you watch it through adult eyes, you understand that. However, I watched this film at least once a year.

You're a push through.

Yeah, and I actually love the flaws that are in this film and the city delivery and some of the mistakes even.

Yeah, it's transferred into your DNA. It's a part of you. You enjoy everything about this movie, even if it is shit or bad or good or whatever, you like it.

And the fact that it's a canon film, it just adds to it, you know.

I thought, how cool would it be if John Carpenter had directed it?

Jesus Christ. Imagine him directing Skeletor and Snake Mountain.

I think I'd be trouble trying to sort of run that era, but he just had a chance to do this with, maybe obviously pick a budget, but John Carpenter directed.

Be amazing.

Yeah, it'd be pretty cool.

Be amazing.

Well, obviously Russell, though, wouldn't it be mad?

Obviously the sequel never went ahead. As I said, they recycled the script and made that cyborg movie with Van Damme, which is one of Van Damme's first movies. It was a Canon film. He'd done Bloodsport and Kitboxing.

But how did they do that after the Canon flopped?

Well, they still had a few films to make, but they were shutting down really. They poured everything they had into Superman for the quest for peace and Masters Of The Universe. And neither of them made anything like what they cost to try and make. So they were already, and I think the brothers, the Globe and Golos, I think they had fallen out as well. And I think it was all just going to shit really. So this was the start of the decline of Canon.

What's Meg Foster done with John Carpenter?

Is she not in John Carpenter films? I'm pretty sure she isn't, she. Maybe not, actually. Maybe, yeah, you might be right. But she's, you know, she's horror. She's been in horror stuff.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, she's a staple of horror.

I didn't know they were her real eyes. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy, really. Courtney Cox, first film.

I didn't really know that's her real naked body in Lords Of Salem, either.

Yeah, that's her.

I thought it was a bodysuit sort of thing.

Um, we've also got Billy Barty in This Is Gwildor. And some good effects around that. James Tolkien plays Lubick, who was in Back To The Future as Strickland, Principal Strickland. And he's great in this. He's a lot of people's favorite character in this. Yeah, it's weird. We've also got another character.

I can imagine him as in some sort of 80s perv movie as well, though, as that little character.

As well as Courtney Cox, we've also got another cast of Friends in this. Her mom in Friends, Christina Pickles, also plays the Sorceress in this. So we've got two Friends references in this. Thanks.

Is that the one that plays Max Mum in Sonny In Philadelphia?

I don't think so, no. The other person to mention in this really is Anthony De Longis, who plays Blade in this, not the Vampire Hunter, but he plays a character called Blade. And he is Hollywood royalty, because anytime you ever see somebody using a whip or swords in films, he's usually had something to do with it. He's the guy that taught Harrison Ford how to whip, Michelle Pfeiffer. Yeah, Michelle Pfeiffer in Cat As Catwoman.

So say down in the pub.

I'm a whip master. Effects are pretty good in this, but for the most part, but let's talk about it. Let's get into it. We, a lot of you will know this story. Some of you may have even heard me talk about this on other podcasts. I think this is the third time we've discussed it. And it's fun. It's a silly, it's a silly movie.

You love it. Fucking get on with it.

Okay. Well, even the titles after the Canon logo, it's Superman. The music sounds like a Superman song, but slightly off key. And even the titles sort of zoom into the screen like the Superman titles do.

It does feel like the end of a Star Wars movie, the original trilogy. The music is quite epically orchestrated.

Another little caveat quickly is you won't really see anybody from the toys or the cartoons in this other than Beastman, Teela, Manotimes and He-Man and Skeletor obviously, because weirdly there was a weird pushback from Mattel that made the toys and formation that made the cartoon. They didn't want a lot of the characters to appear in this film. And they also said, He-Man's not allowed to kill anybody in this film.

How about some Hollywood Bay?

Crazy, in the eighties as well.

And it starts off with these people in black costumes and loads of like guards and it feels very Star Wars.

It does, doesn't it?

It really feels like Star Wars, which is, if that's their intention, that's a weird thing. I don't think it is, but it's possibly a very good influence or maybe just it's a bank for the money. Let's put that in there because, you know, Star Wars is popular.

Oh no, they wanted to cash in on that, definitely.

They're trying anyway they can, I think. And it just, I don't know, it's fine, but it just makes you think Star Wars. But like you said, I think, yeah, it just wouldn't hit at that time.

He-Man had already started dying off. Star Wars was long gone.

So many cool things coming and going so quickly. So many incredible stuff we had, we didn't even appreciate it. I don't even think about it now. Wow, like this thing, then the next one's this. Oh, this is coming, oh my God. And it's just always new things all the time. BMXs, VCRs, just continue, continue. Game Boy, it's just everything, do you know what I mean? Yeah. So, yeah, you're right, I probably just did not hit the right time.

No, well, like you say, we start off on this other planet called Eternia, which is the planet of He-Man, and it's war-torn and Skeletor is, you know, he's taking all the planet hostage, he's killing people, and he's even broken into Castle Grayskull. Naughty, naughty boy. And he says, I want He-Man captured, and I want Gwildor found. And we find out later on who Gwildor is, but he's the guy that invents the cosmic key that can travel through space and time with his cosmic key.

When do you reckon they decided to coin the rest of the name Evil to Lin? She's just Lin. That's Lin. Who's that as Lin?

Well, all of He-Man's characters are sort of puns because her name's like Evelyn, but she's Evil Lin. You know, so they've all got names like Mechaneck is mechanic.

But are they, on the bad side, are they calling her Evil Lin?

They normally just call her Lin. Sometimes they call her Evil Lin. Skeletor calls her Lin quite a lot.

Lin, I love it, it's just Lin.

Right, Lin? Most people refer to her as Evil Lin, but.

I used to work in a cafe with a woman called Lin.

Was she Evil?

No, she was quite nice.

No, she was good Lin then.

Yeah, she was all right, yeah.

Nice Lin.

Yeah, nice Lin, yeah, she was all right.

Nice Lin in the cafe.

Yeah.

Well, Sorceress has been captured. The worst thing that can happen, Skeletor's taken Castle Grayskull, he's got the Sorceress captured, and he's put out a hit on He-Man and this Gwildor character. And he then does a big hologram of himself to the entire planet. He didn't have phones on Eternia or the internet back then, so he does a big hologram of himself saying, He-Man needs to hand himself into me by the seventh moon of Pluto, whatever it is that the sort of timescales that they use.

So, they didn't film the ending first, then they started filming.

Yeah, they didn't film the ending first.

They should have filmed the ending first.

I know. Now, the troops then, Skeletor's evil troops, who are robots, don't worry. That's how they get away with being killed. They capture Gwildor and Annette, and again, it's very Star Wars, isn't it? It's like the Jowers or something. Yeah, absolutely. And he's a locksmith slash inventor, apparently. So, he basically shows He-Man and Mana Toms and Teela, who show up, why he's hunted by Skeletor.

I didn't realize that's Mana Toms. Oh, yeah, I'm imagining it now.

Mana Toms and his daughter Teela.

I didn't realize. What's his daughter?

What's going on with that? They're just father and daughter. That's how they were in the comics and in the cartoons.

But why is she hanging out? What's she doing?

She's captain of the Guard. Captain of what Guard? The Aeternian Guard. What's that? So he is the master of all weapons.

He's a master armorer.

Yeah. And she is captain of the Guard. So she's basically in charge of the entire Aeternian royal palace and all the guards. She's a badass warrior woman.

She's the head of security.

Also one of my first crashes.

Did you not run out? So she's like head of security.

If you go back and watch the cartoons, you see that she's high up.

Then She-Ra was a princess in the castle and He-Man is a prince in the castle.

Well, they're twins. He-Man and She-Ra are twins.

So who's the king?

King Randoor.

What's going on there? Nothing. Has he got powers?

No, but his wife is from Earth.

Where's he from then?

He's from Eternia.

So where do they get their powers from?

Well, they're the twins of power. So basically Queen Marlena or Marlena as she was known, she was a pilot from Earth in NASA. And one day her spaceship gets sucked into a wormhole, crash lands in another galaxy, another dimension on Eternia. She is rescued by King Randoor.

And is impregnated by Randy Randoor.

They get it on, they fall in love, because once they're from different galaxies, it's all the planets aligned. Twins of power are born. She-Ra is taken away by Hordak and onto another dimension on the planet of Eteria. And He-Man is brought up as Prince Adam. And then he finds out he's destined to become, sorry, there's a moth, he's destined to become He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe. Meanwhile, She-Ra realizes she's destined to become She-Ra, Princess of Power.

Who's that, then?

The woman, the bird woman who's caught in Berskenator. She's the woman who lives in Castle Grayskull and turns into a bird occasionally and gives He-Man invaluable advice. She's one of the most powerful magical beings on Eternia.

I don't remember.

She's the one I've just told you about. She's Ross and Rachel's mom.

Oh, okay.

She's the one who's trapped going, He-Man, betraying my power. That's the sorceress. She's got orange clothes in the cartoon now.

Oh, yeah. Now I'm thinking about the movie. Yeah, I was going back to the cartoon. Everything you've been telling me, I was in cartoon world. Sorry.

I was pretty much in cartoon mode. Don't worry. We were on the same track.

But now you say in the movie, yes, I remember her. I'm not having a special moment.

That's fine. So there we go. You're happy with the backstory of these characters?

I'm happy.

This is my specialist subject, so I'm happy to talk about this.

I'm happy. And I wanted to know. So you've, you know, you've given us that valuable information and all the listeners are happy right now. Aren't you listeners?

I hope so. So He-Man, Teela and Mana Toms have rescued Gwildor. They've seen that he's got this cosmic key. He tells them, I made this cosmic key. I showed it to Skeletor. I was tricked by Evil Lin and I showed it to them. And they've now got the other one. I only made two of them. And the two are linked. They can trace each other. And they've got the other one. And that's how they got into Castle Grayskull, because they opened a portal, which took them inside Castle Grayskull.

Roll him like a ball.

Roll him like a bowling ball. Brilliant.

I reckon he's a pervert though.

So they managed to. He's got gills. He blows water out of his gills all over a tealer later. She's like, don't blow your gills all over me.

Little fucking gill blower.

So they use his Cosmic Key to enter Castle Grayskull. And this is where they see the sorceress trapped in an energy shield. And they realize she's been drained of all of her power. But Evil Lin and Skeletor enter. And He-Man says, let her go. This is one of the deliveries you love. Let her go. And Skeletor says, no, He-Man, surrender to me. There's a big laser battle that goes on here. Gwildor says, we have to escape. It's anything we can do. Don't worry. We've got about a week.

Oh, I'm just imagining the act in the living, working alongside that would go and just be like, oh my God. I just haven't to respond to that.

Yeah, because you've got Franklin Geller there. He's like in a Shakespearean actor.

One extreme to the other.

And he's got full full skull makeup on.

I'm loving this.

There's even a scene later on, which I still think is one of the greatest comic books or movie moments, where he says, tell me about the loneliness of good, he man. Is it as much as the loneliness of evil? And he's sort of saying, you know, we're the same person, you know, I'm the most evil person in the world. You're the most purest person in the world. But neither of us have really got any friends or family. It's amazing delivery from Franklin and Gallop all the way through this.

It's true in scenery.

It really is. It really is. Anyway, they escape through a portal and he says, where are we going? Gwildo only goes anywhere. Where are they going, Gav? They're going to Werth, aren't they? So they jump through the portal and Scalitor says, find them, find them. And one of his troops says, well, the next time they use the cosmic key, we'll lock on to the signal.

It does, because there's one point when it just seems to be in a music store for a lot.

Yes.

So why is it in this music store so much?

This film takes place mainly in a high school, a music shop, and a street that they just bought one street.

And unfortunately, I think it was the music studio, the store, which is where I was like, there's a problem here. Do you know what I mean? It was first evident, then it just kind of went, it's stuck now.

Yeah. Well, like I said, they were working with an ever decreasing budget, bless them. But they land on Earth.

They did it.

They did it. They don't know where the hell they are. They're on Earth. Gwildorl lands in the water. He clears his gills all over Teela's breasts, like we say. They all laugh at that moment as well. If I was Man-At-Arms, I'd be like, don't you ever do that to my daughter again, dirty little locksmith.

Are you thinking about Jizz? What? Don't think about Jizz and my daughter.

They realize they've lost their... Jesus Christ, I never thought we'd get to this on the Masters Of The Universe. They realize they've lost the Cosmic Key. So they form a perimeter, search the perimeter. They meet a cow. What's this strange being? Brrr.

It is kind of fun. They've been on Earth in that, going on with the little fella and the cow. It's kind of fun.

The little fella. Is that his name?

The little fella, yeah.

What I like... The bit that always makes me laugh still to this day is when the cow goes, brrr, and Gryldor goes, what a hideous cry. What a hideous cry? It's just saying moo. But I love it. Obviously, they don't know what a cow is. So they split up, and of course, this is the first time we hear them say, good journey. So they don't say goodbye or see you later, because they're from Eternia. They say, good journey. Good journey.

And then obviously, a thingy with the mask. No, that's... That's coming to us. What did she do next? Oh, she did Leprechaun. No, that's Jennifer.

You're getting your white women muddled up there, Gav.

Yeah, I am. They all look the same.

They do. She works in a burger joint, but it's her last shift because she's moving away because her parents died last year. She's been so sad. She decided, I'm going to dump my boyfriend and move to another city.

He doesn't know that yet. She's going to use him, I think, for a ride first.

Oh, no, he knows.

Oh, yeah, no, he does, actually. He's been a gentleman.

Yeah. So he picks her up.

Well, he's trying to still get back in there.

That's what he's doing. For one last, you know.

Well, I mean, in a relationship.

He has got the van. He has got the van. And he's a musical man as well.

Is that the Deliverance guitar?

No, it was supposed to be Friends.

I was wondering what was going to happen in that van.

Your mouth so pretty and I don't know what to say. So her boyfriend, Kevin, as we say, he picks her up. And he's very sad. He says, are you sure you're going to get this plane tomorrow and fly away from me? She's like, yeah, it's just the only way I could be happy. Well, leave everything behind. Yeah, I get it.

Yeah, if you're young, I guess.

So he says, all right, well, look, do you want to come to my soundcheck? She's like, yeah, all right, I'll come to your soundcheck because your band are playing at the high school dance tonight. All right, cool, cool. And then she says, oh, can we quickly go to the cemetery so I can say goodbye to my parents? It's all the expositions in this little scene here. So that's our humans. Let's go back to our attorneys. So Teela, she closes in on Robbie's ribs, which is where Julie was working.

Man-At-Arms does look a little bit like RoboCop's granddad, or RoboCop's dad.

Yeah, his visor is a bit weird, isn't it?

Yeah, it's literally RoboCop's dad.

RoboPops.

RoboPop!

Dead or alive, you're coming with me.

You're grounded.

Go to your room.

What did you say?

I found porn under your mattress. I swear, dad, it was not mine.

That's a bit of a weird sitcom.

The Robo family.

RoboCop and RoboPop. RoboPop.

RoboMom's there in an apron. I can picture her now. She's got an apron on her. She's like, these brownies are ready.

Then you've got the young daughter, but she's 18.

And then their cousin RTD2 comes around. It'd be like the Munsters. They've got a daughter, but she's a human.

Yeah, that's it. It could work. Let's AI that.

Last time it was the 18 sitcom. This time it's the RoboCop sitcom. I love it. Back to back on Friday nights. So yes, Teela and Man-At-Arms, very hungry. They spy Gwildor hiding in the bushes.

It's got a little fucking hook. It's like grabbing chicken out of a bucket. He's got a big old bucket of chicken.

So they all sit in the woods and eat this chicken.

They're like, what are you doing here? Give me that chicken. They all start eating the bucket of chicken.

And then Teela says, why do they put the food on these little white sticks? And her dad says, well, these are ribs.

And she's disgusted.

Yeah, she's like, you eat animals. And he goes, well, sometimes when you're at war, then you've got to eat whatever's around. So maybe on their planet, they're mainly vegetarian.

I guess so.

Yeah, interesting. Julie, it turns out, Courtney Cox blames herself for her parents' death because they died in a plane crash. They had a private plane, a little mini microplane. And the day that they were supposed to go on holiday, she decided, oh, I want to study. I'm a good student and I don't want to go on holiday. They said, well, in that case, we'll go up on our own. And they died in that plane crash, so she blames herself. It's part of her depression.

They find the key.

The cosmic key. And he's like, what is this? Now, my first note here is she picks it up. It looks like a fucking bomb.

It does.

It's got all these flashing lights and smoke coming off of it. And she's like, oh, let me pick this up.

I like to think with wisdom nowadays people are wiser.

I'd be calling the police going, you probably need to send the bomb squad out. But instead she picks it up. Then he says, oh, I know what this is. This is one of these new Japanese synthesizers.

I love it. Then he stops playing. It's like, well, isn't that a coincidence that it plays music and you play the synth?

Well, he's a musician, Gavin. He knows an instrument.

He's a synth musician, a synth keyboard player.

He knows what's going on. He presses the buttons and he sort of hears the weird noises. But because they're pressing the buttons, Skeletor picks up on the signal from it. And his troops, like Skeletor, we've located it.

I've got to find my key. It's turned on.

Yeah, find my key. Gwildor's brought it in. But it's a vague, because he doesn't really turn it on. He just presses a few buttons. They've got a vague location. So they said, it's enough of us for the next time. Whatever they press next time, we'll definitely lock in to where it is. So every time they use this thing, it's giving us more and more signals to Skeletor to find them. They don't know that. Cut to the sound check. This is like the... You don't really like Back To The Future, do you?

I know that film very well.

Yeah. Well, as Kevin's checking out, you know, he's like, how does that sound, Judy? She's like, yeah, yeah, great. Typical like musician's girlfriend, like, yeah, yeah, great. I've heard you play that a billion times. And he's really up himself, isn't he? You can tell he thinks his bands are going to be the next, like Huey Lewis in the News or something, you know. But I like Kevin. He's all right.

Turn it to 11.

Yeah, but all it does is he puts it to a microphone. I thought if you amp something, you plug it into the amps. You don't just put a microphone near it.

Yeah, no, you are correct, yes.

I got something right about music. But anyway, he plays it. This time, lights come out of it and little spinning lights and special effects that probably cost too much money for Canon. That's why the film got shut down.

Unless he's just putting the microphone to it, then the microphone was going to an amplifier and it was just coming out of the amplifier.

Yeah. It's not correct terminology, though, is it? Let's be honest. But anyway, because they've turned it on now and pressed some more buttons, Skeletor says, OK, we've located them. Assemble the mercenaries.

That is what you would do. Sorry, I see you throwing me on it now. You would do that because it's not going to have a jack output or an XLR output to play it out of. It's not a fucking music instrument. It's a fucking key from He-Man world. So, you know,, he's doing it correct.

So Skeletor assembles the mercenaries and these are the Beast Man.

He should have said, let's mic it up.

That's what he should have said.

There you go.

Can we move away from this now?

Yeah, yeah, you can. You made me get obsessed. I should have known.

So this is like the scene now where Darth Vader says, get the bounty hunters together and you get Boba Fett, that lizard guy, that weird robot and a few other ones. This is like that. Skeletor gets together his four best men. One of them is the Beast Man, who we all know from the cartoon.

I'm always going to like Beast creatures like werewolves or that sort of thing.

He is terrifying.

Yeah, he was quite, I remember.

I had cinema trauma.

Yeah, as a kid I remember thinking that.

When he chases her through the school later. Karg is that sort of Brian May hairdo creature.

I really dislike the look of that one. I don't like looking at it.

Blade, who's got a patch over his eye because He-Man took his eye in a battle. He's the guy that played Bandini De Longus, who is a real life man at times. He's the one who whips He-Man later in a very sexy fashion. He's got badass swords. And of course, Saurod, who's like a lizard creature with a helmet on. Skeletor says, Hmm, what a curious quartet. Send them to the high school. Obviously, he doesn't call it high school, because Skeletor doesn't know what high school is.

She said to him, I'm leaving. I don't want to be your boyfriend anymore, girlfriend. So he's like, yeah, nice. I'm a fan of synths. It's fucking well cool. See you later.

It is a pretty badass. I'd love to have a prop replica of that. Someone's probably made one.

RJ, come on, you can make one.

Yes.

He can make one. If anyone can, RJ.

And I want it to do, not necessarily the lights, but if you can just get it to do the music, that kind of thing, you know. There we go. Challenge. You've got four years to get that to me for my 50th.

Go.

Go. Start now.

Go.

So Kevin, like I said, he leaves. And the baddies arrive. Beastman smashes the janitor in the face. Quite violent for a kids film. Hits him with an open palm in the face. Janitor goes flying through the wall. They chase Julie. She climbs under the stage. Blade gets his swords out, sort of stabbing them through the stage. She gets away. She throws some bleach in Beastman's face.

And he's like...

And then the whole place catches on fire. She escapes, runs to the junkyard. And they chase her. And this is where she bumps into... E-man.

Yeah, well, they're still in the place, aren't they? Oh, no, they do get there. And E-man looks like a stripper, a male stripper.

He does.

He really does.

I'm not even going to argue with you. He does.

There's really not much clothing going on.

He's got on a little metal bit on his chest with some strings and stuff. And a little pair of leather pants, and that's it.

Yeah, I'd be falling out all over the place.

So when she bumps into him in the dark junkyard in the middle of the night, she's not at all thinking, oh, this guy's a sex pest. What's he going to do to me?

She's happy to see this huge man who's all oiled up with not much clothes on. She says, help me, the monsters.

She says, these monsters are chasing me. And he just looks at her and goes, I can help you. Again, terrible delivery.

I can help you wait here.

And he hides her behind a pile of metal. And then he just goes to town on these troops. And he takes them all out. He fights Beast Man, knocks him over. Then Blade says, I've waited a long time for this. And they have a big old fight. He picks up Sawrod and throws him at Blade.

The lady at this point sitting there on the floor, watching all this after He-Man's just been in her arms, she must be going, I am asleep. Absolutely, 100%. There's no chance of me being awake. This is not happening. There's one of those strippers, male strippers, just fighting creatures with a sword. Fucking, I'm going to watch it, but I'm hopefully wake up soon.

I think I've fallen asleep at the high school. She's thinking, Kevin's still there. I've got so bored listening to a sound check, I've fallen asleep. And this is part of the dream, it must be.

I have to be, you would definitely be like this.

There's no way, there's a big werewolf thing chasing me through the high school. But it's real, Gav, it's real. So, Man of Thorns and Tila show up and shoot a few of them, and the baddies retreat, retreat, retreat. And then she cries, and then we get another fantastic line from Lundgren where he says, You're safe now. And she is, she's safe. Let's go to Charlie's music store. Kevin arrives, Charlie's there. Hey, man, how you doing? I run a music store in the 80s. Woo, woo.

It's like Goonies.

It is. It's like the opening of Goonies, isn't it?

It must be a very small and quiet town for them to be like, Oh, my God. Because like the odd time it would happen in here in my little village, you know, emergency service, I'd love to see I'd love to see Gwildor squishes milkshake up against the window as he's watching them all go by.

But yeah, so he picks up his police scanner because he's obviously got one of those. Everybody had those in the 80s. And he hears that there's been an incident at the high school and Kevin says, Oh, my God, Julie, I left Julie at the high school. So he runs back to find out what's going on. He-Man, meanwhile, is telling Julie, we're looking for this thing called the Cosmic Key.

He says to her, she's going to wake up, wake up.

Yeah, she says to her, it's about this big. Have you seen it? And if you just cut that bit out of the film, it could be a porno at that point because he's wearing nothing. And he's saying to this woman, it's about this big. Have you seen it?

With a porn directed, porn acted style.

No, but I'd like to. Yeah. But she says, Oh, I think I know the thing you're looking for. Does it have lights that come out of it? And he says, yes, because, yeah, my boyfriend's got it. Oh, he's in.

Then he says another coincidence.

Then he says, we must go to him.

He could be in great danger.

So good. So dry. But why?

I don't understand why he didn't try a bit more anyway. I know it's going to be changed, but you can still tell delivery without sound.

I don't think he really knew how to do it.

I think it comes to the direction.

Yeah, the director should have said to him, try with a bit more emotion.

I reckon it's probably too much on his plate.

The director had a face.

Probably didn't even fucking give him a time of day about his character and how he should deliver it.

He was cast for this.

Imagine directing a movie that size with the.

Situation of the canon and the budget and dropping.

You're stressed as shit. You probably ain't got time. Just fucking do the thing. Great, I'll go.

And you've got the pressure of, you know, this was making billions every year as a toy line.

What happened to the director?

Well, other than the underage allegations, he didn't really do an awful lot after this. He did a few things, but not a lot. Gary Goddard. But yeah, so back at the high school, Kevin goes back there, and there's a huge crime scene. Are you looking up Gary Goddard?

I am, yes.

Tell us. Let's take a little break.

I'm just having a quick look.

Okay. The reason I'm pausing is because we're about to meet Detective Lubick.

Yeah, go for it. The bald guy, who is he?

He is James Tolkien, who is also in Back To The Future. He plays Lubick in this.

Oh, yeah, of course.

So back at the high school, Kevin's gone back there. There's a huge fire that's been put out. The janitor has been put in a hospital. He says, what happened? He goes, you don't want to know what happened here.

Yeah, it does.

Pretty fair. And then suddenly he meets Lubick. He goes, whoa, whoa. Now listen, kid, he's a real ball breaker. You get it straight away. He goes, what's your name and what do you want? And he goes, well, my name's Kevin, and I'm looking for my girlfriend, Judy. And he goes, OK, well, we've got Grand Arson. All this, he starts listening to stuff. And he goes, why don't you come with me? And he goes, what, I'm under arrest? He goes, no, but we're going to go find your girlfriend in my police car.

I guess. It seems a really weird thing, like, as a scene of destruction has happened, you go, what, where's your girlfriend? I don't know. Right, let's go find her. You'd be like, detective, should you not be to stay here on the scene of crime, what's happened, like, where are you going? He's looking for his girlfriend. So what's that to do with you? We're just going to go look for his girlfriend.

But he's a ball breaker, isn't he? He likes it.

It is a bit weird. Maybe he's got other intentions.

Well, Gwildor has a new car in the next scene. He's got the Isaac Hayes mobile from Escape From New York here. He's pretty much got a pimped out Caddy that he's stolen and he's put the flux capacitor from Back To The Future in it. And it's just this crazy high speed futuristic Cadillac that he's converted. They all get in and they go for a ride in Gwildor's pimped mobile. Incredible. Skeletor and Evelyn sort of flirt a little bit back in Castle Grayskull.

He does?

He evaporates. Sawrod.

Sawrod. Sawrod.

Oh my God, I've never got that until now.

What's he called?

Sawrod.

Saw-od. S-A-U-R-O-D.

Sawrod. The action figure, when you spun the button on his back, sparks came out of his mouth.

He's got a sawrod.

That's probably why the sparks were coming out of his mouth. So yeah, he kills Sawrod and he says to Evil-In, if you think you're so good, you go in his place. And he sends Evil-In and the rest of the mercenaries and the troops back to Earth to finish the job. So Evil-In's like, fucked. She's like, for Christ's sake, I don't really want to go on this mission, but I'm going to anyway. So they go and get the key. Kevin and Detective Lubick arrive at Julie's house and that she's not home.

No.

Not this time. So Lubig leaves Kevin, like I say, and this is where Beastman, et cetera, show up at Julie's house, where Kevin is. They beat him up a little bit, and then evil in, puts the collar on him. Yes. I think it's called the Eldritch Collar. I'm not sure if that's right. But what this thing does is it clips around your neck and it makes you tell the truth in a robotic sort of voice. It's a pretty cool device. And they ask him, you know.

It's a shame they can't use that in court.

Just pop that one around his neck.

To anybody who's on trial. Did you murder yours?

I also killed a cat when I was three. All right, that's enough now. I sometimes wank to porn the chin. No, I don't want to know anymore. I'm really into bestiality. Get, take the collar off. He's telling us too much.

It would be a bit much.

It would be good though. Yeah, I worry about that kind of thing. If I ever got hypnotized, what if I say too much? Yeah, I've done anything bad.

After the live on podcast.

Have you ever been hypnotized?

Yeah, I don't know. A couple of times. Not really. It's been done to me in a proper environment. First time.

Like a therapist or something?

Yeah, first time I thought I could see. I thought I raced my channel. It's all down. And the second time, my mind's too fucking. You're not getting me.

I kind of would like to be hypnotized, but at the same time I wouldn't. Do you know what I mean?

It might be different now. My mom's my mom. My mind's a lot calmer since my mushroom powder. Still going.

Yeah, still going on the lines, Ming.

It's good. It's good. It's working well, actually.

There we go. So yes, this collar makes him reveal everything.

No anxiety. Still not had one bit of anxiety since it started working.

Even with the Dolph Lundgren double bill looming, you weren't anxious at all.

Not one bit of anxiety. It's really weird.

Do you think the man that broke into Brandon Lee's house had anxiety when Brandon walked into the bedroom?

I think the realization was anxiety fueled. Yeah, nightmare fueled.

Still love to see that.

Yeah, but come on though. How good is that? He's getting a few beers bought from him in a pub.

When he gets out of hospital.

How many times did he tell that story?

John, tell them what happened when you tried to be a burglar.

How did you break into your twat? It was the first night burglaring, wasn't it? It was fucking Brandon. Bruce Lee, what an egg-cuck-figure.

Is this like an Eddie Fawkes and Horses sketch?

I don't know why it's all of a sudden something weird in England. Triggers there going, So I'm stood there with the VCR in me arms, and it walks Brandon Lee. Yeah, it's quite funny.

Sorry. So yeah, Kevin's told them everything because of the collar. So they know that He-Man and Julie are together, and the policeman's taking the key. So that's what Skeletor and his troops are after. So they get in their flying spaceship craft, which looks quite good. You can see, you know, some of the... You can see where all the effect or the budget's gone. It's gone on like the special effects of the flying things and Skeletor's makeup and stuff like that.

And there's Eman.

Eman's in leather pants.

Nothing.

Robocop's dad. A woman in lycra. And a little fucking thing in drag.

It's a pervert.

Why does Gwildor show up in drag?

He's like, I found...

He says, I found primitive clothing.

Yeah, it's weird.

We could disguise ourselves. So they're like, okay, cool. So the cop goes to Charlie's music store. So we're back at the music store, Gav, you're right. We're back here again. Meanwhile, at Charlie's, Lubick says... Oh, because he's talking to Charlie about this device, this Cosmic Key, and he man shows up. So he sees this huge tall guy in the pants that we talked about, Robocop's dad, etc. He says, well, I guess the circus is in town today. He's quite a good detective.

He's quite well cast for it.

They're like, we need that. We need that back now. And he's like, no, I'm not giving this journey. In fact, who are you guys? I think we're all going to go downtown for a walk. Tila pulls a gun on Lubik. He's like, you guys are in trouble. They disarm the detective. And then Gwildor says, someone's coming, because the key is making a flashing sound. So Man of Toms and Tila say, all the humans go and hide in the back of the shop. We'll defend ourselves from what's about to happen.

She's not dead.

This bit got me. I don't know why this time around, maybe, you know, the things that have been proven in the last five years, but she goes out there and her mum says, sorry, we're not really dead. We were involved in a secret government conspiracy. We've had to change our identities. All we need as part of the project we're working on is a special thing called the Cosmic Key. Go and get it for us. So Julie runs in. She snatches the Cosmic Key out while they're all arguing, takes it out.

He's got giant surfboards.

Yeah, and he's got a big throne that sort of floats across the ground, doesn't he?

He-Man gets run, doesn't he?

Yeah, well, they all climb up to the roof. He takes out a few of the troops and he grabs one of their hoverboards, doesn't he?

Yeah, it looks pretty ridiculous, but yeah.

It doesn't look good, does it?

No.

It looks like one of the He-Man toys because it doesn't move. It's just flying upside down in a ring, but nothing's going on. But we get a moment where He-Man's sort of taking out these guys in midair with his sword and Skeletor sneaks up behind everybody else in his flying throne and he makes them surrender their weapons. He-Man says, if I come with you, will you let the rest of them go? Typical thing. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, He-Man.

Yeah.

So He-Man's like, all right, cool.

He does whatever he's told, doesn't he?

So is he a setup, is he? I guess. Nice. So they leave. They take He-Man with them back to Castle Grey School, leaving the humans. Julie's got a very fucked up leg with green shit all over it. Lubig tries to get some backup, but the other cops think he's nuts when he tells them about the swords and lasers and stuff like that. And... Go on. Oh, I thought you were going to say something there. They tell Julie that only the sorceress can heal you.

Because the Casio keyboard comes to save the day.

Thank fuck. Thank fuck. Well, Gwildor says, the only thing... If I can just work out the tones. And he's like, what do you mean tones? And he's like, it's like a... And he goes, oh, do you mean this?

And he just goes, do.

And he hums. And Gwildor's like, how did you do that? What? How did I hum? Yeah, you're fucking humming and tunes and singing and whistles on your planet. And he goes, look, I'll get those. Let me go and get a keyboard from Charlie's burnt down shop. The last one, probably, that hasn't melted.

I guess.

He brings it back and they start working out the tones, don't they? So that they can reopen the portal.

Charlie's at his music shop just crying because his music store's just destroyed.

His whole life. Insurance is going to be like act of God and he says to Lubeg, grab that shotgun. You can go out and go for it if you want. Now, He-Man is naked at this point. He's been stripped down to his pants. In front of Skeletor.

Look at me. Do you like my pants? You're saved. My drugs.

And Skeletor says, I win, He-Man. I win. The sorceress is almost drained. I've got your sword. Finally, I'm holding your sword, He-Man. And he says, Blade, come in here and whip him. He's like the Gimp. He brings in Blade, the Gimp. He's not just got a whip, he's got an electric whip, Gaff.

I've got He-Man's all gone a bit home-erotic here.

Yes. This happened in Flash Gordon as well. There was some whipping and stuff going on like that as well.

Yeah. They're both in the same wheelhouse, aren't they?

And they were both wearing leather pants as well.

They're both canon as well.

No, Flash Gordon isn't canon, but it felt like a canon film. And we mean that in a very good way, of course. So yeah, He-Man is whipped and chained, my notes say, weirdly. Blade seems to be loving it. He's like licking his lips as he's whipping him. Yeah. And he says, when the sun's coming up and as you die, He-Man, I'll be reborn. So that's what's kind of happening in Castle Grayskull.

It's just the same again, isn't it?

The interesting thing is though, this set at the time was the most expensive set ever built in a film, this Castle Grayskull set, so that's another reason why they spent all their money on this set.

But it doesn't look very good.

It doesn't really, does it?

Well, no, you need more of an exterior of the whole actual castle. It is, I have the power and just so much more cool stuff. It does do that, but it's like it's too late, too late.

Well, He-Man escapes from the chains. They all fight the baddies. He-Man pushes a huge statue over showing that he's got that super strength, which sort of ends the battle pretty much. Lubig gets annoyed. Nobody takes bad shots at Lubig and starts firing his gun at people, realizing, you know, God, this is real. I mean, in a Star Wars film, but not. And Skeletor turns into God Skeletor. He says, I am a God. And he's got this weird giant gold armor on.

I love that bit.

That bit gives me goosebumps every time.

He could have done that three times. I would have allowed it three times in the movie.

So do you want to know a secret?

Well, as I can say, that end battle was so lackluster. It's such a shame.

This is a personal thing, but I got teary this time around when he said, I have the power. I don't know why. I can't tell you why. This film just brings me so much joy that I got tears in my eyes this time when Dolph Lundgren shouted, I have the power. And he didn't even say it in a very good clear voice, but it was enough for me. Should we do another take? No, that's fine. We're running out of money.

Let's go and move. They've just taken the cameras, so no, we can't.

Dolph Lundgren, someone's taking the squabby shoes off while he's still acting.

It's a shame. I don't think this movie was given the movie it should have had.

No, it should have been made a couple of years earlier, maybe.

And it should have been made with a proper studio and done properly. This would have been like, whoa, man.

Imagine if Lucasfilm, you know, decided to do...

Or John Carpenter, like I said, there's so many things.

Well, we get another Star Wars ripoff now because He-Man eventually wins. He knocks Skeletor off and he falls just like the Emperor falls down at the end of Return Of The Jedi into a pit. They seem to have won. Detective Lubig decides he's going to stay because he's now the king.

What if David Lynch had done it? Like the little fellas backwards talking and shit.

What if David Cronenberg had done it?

Jesus.

Or Argento.

No, that's going too far.

The only person I think could have done this in later years, and a lot of people wanted him to do it, was Peter Jackson. After the Lord Of The Rings movies, they said he'd be the perfect director to make a serious He-Man movie or trilogy of movies. Because they did it. But you did so well with Lord Of The Rings. Yeah, that would be a good shout as well. Well, the Skeletor falls into a pit. Lubig becomes king of Castle Greaves. Galamodor says, I'm not going back to Earth.

It's really weird. It's just so someone's so out of touch.

Anyway, she wakes up and realizes Gwildor has sent her back.

It was all of a dream.

Well, no, it wasn't, but I bet she wishes it was. She thinks it was a dream, doesn't she? Because her parents are still alive. She steals the plane keys. She says, please don't fly today. She runs out in the street in her weird night gang. Kevin's there. He's like, I remember it too. She said, oh my God, it wasn't a dream after all. Maybe it was a thank you from Gwildor, which it was. And then they look into the little ball with energy that they've given them as a gift.

He-Man. Well, yeah, I'm glad we did it for you. You were very excited for it and I know you like Masters Of The Universe. You've got a tattoo, haven't you?

I've got a couple. I've got Battle Cat and I've got the He-Man sword as well.

So I'm glad we could do that for you for your birthday. That's the main thing. I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah. I probably wouldn't watch it again. No offense.

So as a child, you weren't like...

I wasn't into it as a child as well, I remember. It was really weird. I remember being like, oh, and slightly disappointed and not really wanting to revisit, I think.

Fair enough.

I might have done, but it wasn't, I don't know. Like, I think exactly like you said, hit too late. I was not bothered at that point.

You really did. Everybody in this suffered. All the costumes were so heavy that they could barely move.

The sword was a real sword.

But he had to carry a sword which he could barely lift even with his strength. So he had to learn how to use a broadsword for this, which is pretty crazy. Yeah, and they'd been trying to get this movie made for about four years. So they should have really tried harder. Because like we said, if they'd made it earlier, it was fine. But it didn't work. And yeah, it was the biggest Hollywood set in 40 years at that time when they made it.

No, I don't give it a thumbs up. Sorry.

A couple of interesting facts about this. Very quickly, before we wrap up the show, there was a contest run by the Mattel Toys. And you had to design a character. And if you won the competition, not only would they make your toy of your character, but you'd get a role in the film. And a boy called Richard Sponder did it. And he was Pig Boy. Just wears a pig's mask. In it for about three seconds. He told all his mates when he...

I was in the He-Man film. That's pretty cool.

And apparently in some early drafts, She-Ra was going to be in it as well.