Weird wad.
Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly round up. I am Father Malone and joining me beside me to guide me the little lady who sat through Wes Craven's Swamp Thing yesterday. I'm so fucking proud of you, just glued to the screen and no freakouts, Miss Ripley.
Jean.
Yeah, I doubt you'll respond the same to that short lived television series. It is very scary, but we are not talking Alec Holland or Anton Arcane or Abigail Arcane. There's a romance for you swamp Thing and Abby Arcane. I know, I know, I just said we're not talking swamp thing. Actually, later today I am talking swampting. As a guest over on a year in Horror podcast. Always a delight getting to drop in over there in chat with the show's illustrious and hilarious host, mister Paul Waller.
He's at Waller, not Weller. On Instagram and other socials. Probably I'm at Fan Malone on Insta and Blue Sky and threads. As in my patients with social media is hanging by a few of those threads. Yellowjackets Update, I'm actively angry at the show now boneheaded shit. Just to keep things moving at this point, that's where they're dumping us out at the end of the season. The finale is this Friday, Xbox Action. I'm back on Alien Isolation. I know I'm very predictable and boring, but there is
an innovation now too. Actually, number one, I bought an awesome NASA jacket, and if I wear it while I'm playing it, it makes me feel like I'm in the game method gaming, y'all. And number two, I bought my first ever expansion pack for the game Soul Survivor. So now I'm running around on the actual Nostromo and it is a fucking trip. And and I'm the actual Ripley. No, I'm Ripley, You're a Ripley. It's really just Alien Isolation in Survivor mode with some new skins on some things.
But fuck, it is a trip to come around a corner and run into yaff at Coto as Parker or you know, Lambert standing behind a glass divider giving you attitude. Also, I saw the Monkey that's Osgood Perkins new film based on the short story by Stephen King. You remember the main image off of the Skeleton Crew book The Little wind Up Monkey with the Cymbals. Well here it's a wind up Monkey with a drum. Because that famous novelty Wine Monkey with Symbols is actually copywritten. They've turned that
short story basically into Final Destination. If you want a longer review of it, hit me up at Father Malone seventy one at gmail dot com, or at the aforementioned social spots. I didn't have a huge problem with the film. It's just that I'm trying to recommend things on this show as much as possible, rather than just have a laugh pointing out how hard it is to combine humor and horror like in the Monkey. Okay, I'll stop. If you do write in you may end up on a segment here, what segment?
What segment?
The segment with the power the power of voodoo?
All right, that's enough. Pal from a role.
Alex Bledsoe he's the author of the Eddie Lacrosse series. He wrote in about the crossover episode we did with Noise Junkies host HP about Walter Hill's film Crossroads. He saw it at a sneak preview ahead of Wildcats. Remember when studios would do that? Remember when there were studios about a week before the film's premiere. They would have a word of mouth screening paired with whatever else was
their big release. At the moment. These days, the closest you're going to get is a Thursday night soft opening. I went to a lot of these special screenings, pre social media, pre overexposure. There were times when folks had no idea a movie was coming out up until the week of, and there you'd be, having already seen it and just bursting about it. Alex's screening was Crossroads and then Wildcats. I'd say, I wish I'd seen them in the theater, but I did.
I know.
I think I'm bragging, when really all I'm saying is I'm really fucking old. Those screenings were great, though, because they afforded the opportunity to feel like a mogul. Shall we stay for the feature?
No?
Anyone can see that Alex chose to dip out on Wildcats, feeling that any other entertainment was going to be lesser. I think in that case you would have been fine. I like Wildcats. It was great seeing Goldiehan being funny and baass and not just in DITZI. She is clearly a fucking powerhouse, but funny thing HP and I attended a few of those back in the day. We actually went to the Beetlejuice sneak preview together.
Michael Keathon mare is a ghost called Beetlejuice and the ghostly and most name twitted Beiji the Speak previews Saturday, March twenty sixth.
That was paired with the delightful Police Academy five assignment to Miami Beach. I think we left during the credits of Police Academy following that exact same instinct. We were right also in the penn Pal Mailbanks section, just a continued conversation with our man in Scotland Ian what's up, mister Banks. That's like Mary Poppins or that movie with Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Colin Farrell was mister Banks, that's neither here nor there, other than I'm here and
I'd like to be there in Scotland or Wales. I want to spend a month of Sundays in Wales. I think that's an Irish expression. But whatever Welsh people contact me tell me where to go. That's cool. I mean, obviously I'm going to make a pilgrimage to the statue of Yanto Jones. He is a global hero, not just a Welsh local hero, and we all owe him a debt. You know what, anyone in the UK hit me up if you been to Blackpool. I am not low key obsessed. I'm fully on fucking obsessed, and I want to know
if you've been, what's it like? Have you been in the off season? Where I grew up, there's a little boardwalk called the Willows in Salem, Massachusetts. During the summer, it is very heaven ski ball and arcade games and miniature rides to the kids and the best sloppiest fucking Chinese American place that makes this fucking sandwich will quote a generous slice of American cheese, and it's all great.
But in the winter, oh man, so desolate. The food places are still open, and sometimes an arcade will still be open, but there are no tourists. There are barely any locals, just you and the guy who makes the popcorn bars and the saltwater taffy. Am I feeling nostalgic for home?
No?
I want to go to Blackpool, motherfuckers. If I've learned anything in this life, it's this the cool people are always going to leave us, and the bankrupt, boring worst of us will be left behind. That was the case this week when we lost a fucking giant. I oh boy, I had no idea how hard his death would hit me. But the world got a little less interesting with the passing of mister Val Kilmer. I'm gonna do my damness not to lose my shit during the next twenty or
six minutes. Pretty sure we all loved him. Obviously, he put his stamp on Doctor John Holiday. That will be nigh impossible to top that portrayal. How could anyone be Doc Holliday? After Kilmer's antique drawl whispers in your ear, how much better it is? Here's my favorite line, By the way.
It's very cosmopouloism. Sheriff may I present a pair of fellows sophisticates in Turkey Creek, Jack Johnson, Texas Jack of a Million. Watch you here, Creek.
There are way too many roles in way too many triumphs to get into any kind of full on retrospective here. So let me say, if you haven't seen the documentary, vow, what the fuck are you waiting for? Do you need another demonstration of how fleeting everything can be. I realized the irony of telling you to live life with us by watching a documentary about an actor, is to which I say, shut the fuck up, Go watch the documentary. The motherfucker always had a video camera. You can see
every portion of his life. It's incredible, including when he was a kid doing this wicked quint from Jaws impression with actual funny punchlines. Or maybe it was the performance. Now it's streaming for free. It's going to break your heart. But now is an excellent time for that. There are really so many goddamn good performances. There are entire raps of films that can be said to have only one good thing in them going into that's Val Kilmer. But
you can discover those on your own. And naturally he is inextricably linked with Jim Morrison and The Doors. I think mister Kilmer's version of five to one is superior to the original. Is that sacrilege or sacrilicious? That movie is always worth a rewatch. And here's the thing about Val Kilmer's and Batman. When you cast that part, you're really casting Bruce Wayne because the bat is pretty interchangeable unless you're gonna do something nuts like try to growl
like a demon with limited vocal range. That might set you apart. But I will say that Val Kilmer as Batman is really the only good performance of that character. It isn't camp or kitsch like George Clooney or Adam West. It's not overly serious like Christian Bale or Robert Pattinson. And he can move his neck unlike Michael Keaton. And since I'm dropping in Val Kilmer vocals in this episode, here is my favorite delivery of a line in any
Batman film. Matman has just busted his way inside the helicopter that two Face has been using to menace Gotham. It's the quickest, most informal line that Beliza relationship and complicated history that we can only dream of.
You need hell harm him, give it up.
And we're not even close to running out of iconic roles in films like Heat. You were there for the New York stage actors getting together for the first time. I was there for Mad Martigan with a machine gun. Speaking of Mad Martigan, I know they did that spinoff series recently, but who cares too little too late? We deserved a Mad Martigan standalone flick or a franchise further advent. Absolutely the Mad Martikan chronicles Chiching. I mean, I haven't
even mentioned Iceman and Top Gun. It's pretty fucking iconic. Not that we're covering that gang. I mean, you're probably read the title, so it's not like a huge surprise or anything. I don't know what your Val Kilmer origin tale might be for me. I first saw his For me, I saw his first film in the theater. I'd say up until Kiss, Kiss, Bang Bang, I saw everything of Val Kilmer's in the theater. I don't think I was even conscious of doing it. Some performers are just like that.
If you were to ask me my favorite musicians, I don't know how early on the list, I'd say Linda Ronstadt ranks, but I look at my record collection and I own every fucking album she put out. Either I'm mk ultra condition to buy every Linda Ronstadt record, or
I'm a big fucking fan of that lady. And the movie that really did it for me with Val Kilmer was his second feature, though really his first, honest to god, actual narrative feature film, get Ready for the Tanning Invitational Get Down, into those steam tunnels and into Laslow's pajamas. Put on your yellow mock turtlenecks. It's ill genius.
I don't want to hear about any problems done, just as long as we have a working weapon by the end of June. I haven't had a working weapon since Korea.
When the military runs short on brains, they go hunting at Pacific Tech, an exclusive institution for outstanding intellects, where the superstar of smarts is Chris Knight.
You have a jacuzzi.
Absolutely, His hobbies violate the laws of gravity. What are you doing out there floating, sir? His homework could win a Nobel prize.
He's one of the ten finest minds in the country.
And his IQ is higher than most people can count. I can't stand it.
Have you ever seen a body like this before in your life? She happens to be my daughter, Then I guess you had.
But when Chris makes the scientific discovery of the century, you did it. His classmates want the credit.
You're not number one around here anymore.
His professor wants the publicity I and the military wants to use his discovery as the ultimate weapon.
This is not good.
So Chris is about to turn getting even into a science start and show them Roger open bombay doors. They should never try to outsmart a real genius.
It's no longer laying efficially.
It's not shutting down.
Shut it down, real genius.
Number.
When Animal House was released in seventy eight, it marked a significant change in the landscape of collegiate comedy, as well as making life hell for cafeteria janitorial staff four years to come. But in addition to inspiring what must have been terrible copycat behavior on campuses nationwide, it also cracked open takes of irreverence and prankery that had been
occurring at schools since time immemorial. And while tales of partying and terrible behavior seemed to dominate those narratives, occasionally you'd hear of schemes and pranks that were actually just fun or inventive. Madison, Wisconsin's official bird is the plastic pink Flamingo, thanks to a University of Wisconsin prank in nineteen seventy nine. In nineteen eighty two, Mit, which has no sports team, buried a weather balloon on the field
of an upcoming Yale and Harvard game. It inflated explosively mid play. We all won that game. The granddaddy of weirdo pranks and eccentricity has always been cal Tech, California Technical Institute. They've been at it since the fucking twenties. Let me tell you a recent one. Because most of the classic pranks you already know, they were folded into the screenplay for Real Genius. But in two thousand and five, Caltech students traveled to MIT for their freshman orientation weekend.
They inflated a cal Tech blimp inside the dome. They gave out hundreds of T shirts that read MIT on the front and on the back because not everyone can get into cal Tech, and they changed the campus signed to read the other Institute of Technology. It was stories like that that cut a script together from Pat Proft and Neil Israel. Those were frequent collaborators of the Kentucky
Fry Theater. That script was eventually refined uncredited by Loel Gans and Babbelo Mandel before ending up with director Martha Coolidge. She added a whole lot of smart and dispensed with the typical sex comedy script was riddled with. Interestingly, the villain was originally named doctor Atherton that changed to Hathaway when professional eighties asshole William Atherton was cast in that role. So now, in the wake of Animal House and the Rise of Snobs versus Slob's humor, Real Genius gives us
something entirely new. Smart people, they're still having sex, but it isn't the focus of the goddamn film. You've got a fuddy duddy old dean at your university. He acts like a real dick when you guys party so hard you destroy an entire city block. Well, how about an administration complicit with the black op section of the defense industry using your inventions for political assassination. Now that's something to rally behind with a little more meat on the
bone than who can chug the most beer. Real Genius follows Mitch Taylor in the original script, Mitch Simon, a fifteen year old savant who's accepted midterm to the fictional Pacific Tech, where he's partnered with a famed student genius named Chris Knight originally Chris Kinsley. I don't know why these minor changes from script to screen tickle me so much, but they really do. Chris is kind of the platonic ideal of the eighties wise ass hero. He's actually that
smart and he's actually that fun. Ryan Reynolds has based his entire goddamn career on emulating this character. No, not the character, this performance. It'd be easy to turn Chris Knight into an insufferable person, but they lucked out here with the second screen performance of Val Kilmer Olmers. Chris Knight is my absolute fucking hero, top to bottom. He is an aspirational icon, incredible sense of style, incredible good looks, incredible sense of irreverence, and he's the smartest guy in
the fucking room. I possess none of those qualities, but man, I did and still do aspire to bet Chris Knight. On a side note, at age thirteen, I went to the mall to one of those T shirt places, you remember, those T shirt places, like the iron On places, and I had them make me a replica of the Monkey's T shirt Chris Knight wears in this film. They had to dig the design out of the back, but I wore that goddamn shirt proudly knowing that Chris Knight agreed
that the monkeys were cool. Speaking of which, two of the Monkey's guest stars show up as professors here, Monty landis as the dismissive prick when we first meet Chris Knight, and then the amazing, the incredible, the legendary Severn Darden as the befuddled professor Meredith. If you don't know Severn Darden, look him up. He is a major force in the
early improv scene and a really interesting human being. Some of those pranks and scenarios that occurred in real life At Caltech In nineteen forty a car was disassembled and then reassembled inside a dorm room. It was a model t Ford and it was idling when they discovered it. How about the McDonald's contest in nineteen seventy five, where you could enter as many times as you liked. Students did They won twenty percent of the prizes, including a
new station wagon. They wants froze a stairwell and used it for sledding. As it melted, it became a whitewater rafting spot. There is a legendary student who cracked and retreated into the steam tunnels, where he spent three semesters. One of the inspirations for the film that wasn't previous prank, but a student. The producers and director encountered Phyllis Rostchis nickname Trigger became the basis for hyperkinetic student Jordan played
by Michelle Myrin. That character would have then inspire gadget Hack Wrench on Chippendale Rescue Rangers. Jordan eventually falls for Mitch in the film's Only Real stab At Romance. A word about Mitch, played by Gabe jam Mister Jarrett is very young in the film and has very soft features, so much so that when my late wife Jessica was watching the film for the first time, she was convinced they were going to reveal halfway through that Mitch was
actually a girl. I hadn't thought of it when I saw the film, but now I can't not think of it when I rewatch it. Oh and speaking of weird inside jokes, the initials INDI appear throughout the film Darlington Electronics Incorporated. Later there's a van with Drain Experts Incorporated.
It stands for it Dabney Eats It, which is not a reference to Dabney Coleman's failed network show, but actually one of the houses on the campus of cal Tech, Dabney House, where during the fifties, a dish of noodles was so unpalatable that it inspired the phrase They were a conservative bastion until the sixties, when the entire house became radicalized. Since then, they've put those initials everywhere they can scrawl it. Innumerable satellites are orbiting above your head
right now, festooned with DEI. Those letters are at the top of everest has it, They're on the moon. Let's talk in music. There are eighty soundtracks you can point to as cultural touchstones of time and place. Fast times at Ridgemont High Valley Girl, where usually a soundtrack supervisor or consultant cherry picks a few dozen tracks from the most popular or guaranteed up and comers to present to
the filmmaker. That's how you end up with what could pass for a greatest hit of That's that's how you end up with what could pass for a greatest hits of new wave samplers. The other more prevalent eighties soundtrack can be exemplified by real genius. There are a couple of tracks from then proven winners Don Henley Tears for Fears, and then a whole bunch of songs that sounded good at the time and go ahead, just put them on there.
Such situations can be awful, better off dead, y'all. I've been arrested by you take me you, Oh my God. Or it could be something like number one by Chaz Jankle.
Number one is.
A hot time, I'm making.
Shock? What else?
Not great?
Not bad?
Does the job? Or I'm falling by the comsat Angels. To be fair, if you named your band after Cutting Age Tech, you were probably gonna end up on the Real Genius soundtrack. No better than all Those, though, is
a Brian Adams song One Night Love Affair. This is my favorite song from that Canadian and describes my favorite kind of romance, not a one night stand, although the name implies that I'm talking about that brief coming together, not physically at all, just a complete surrender to a time and a place and a person without any regard to past or future, the audio equivalent of lost in translation, I suppose I'm gonna put that song at the end of this episode. They've threatened to remake A Real Genius
a whole bunch of times over the years. I think they may have gotten close just about a decade ago. Don't do it, or at least please do it very very well. I mean a show about smart kids inspiring other actual smart kids to make our lives better while constantly fucking shit up. Couldn't hurt these days. Okay, Jesus, I can tell you're excited.
Hit it HP. But we have here a list of these things. If we're good, we're gonna try it. In sixty minutes.
We're gonna try and get you to say it ain't over tell us over and say is it true or not true?
When I when I'd brush on some of these, No, that's not true.
Okay. You wanted the director of that movie Island of Doctor.
Morot to be fired.
No, no, not true, shruved the Batman director. No, no, didn't do that. Not true. On the set of.
Tombstone you grabbed a locust and extra hat and ate it.
Well, that is true, all right. You were responsible for the breakup of Hall and Oates.
I was young.
I reformed they broke up.
Man, If real genius wasn't far back enough for you, young Ripley suggests you take a step further with a trip to zaz Land. That's Zucker Abrams Zucker The Kentucky Fried Theater Folk, The Kentucky Fried Movie Folk, The Airplane Folk, a film that purportedly put Doug Kenny from National Lampoon in a tailspin pun intended when he compared it with his upcoming Flip Caddy Shank. The As Boys had such a huge success with Airplane that they were basically given
carte blanche for their next feature. There's no other way to describe the creation of top Secret.
Waab bamb a love bamboo too, pruda a rut it to the fruit ho rut.
Oh root it o bamboo. Get a girl name soup? Just what to do?
Gotta got her name soup? No, just want to do.
Look, I'm not the first guy of fell in love with the girl he met in a restaurant who then turned out to be the daughter of a kidnapped scientist. Only the loser who were childhood lover, whom she'd last seen on a deserted island, and who turned out fifteen.
Years later to be the leader of the French underground. I know it all sounds like some bad movie.
A girl named Daisy, She almost have me crazy, She's almost ound me crazy.
You want me to the west sees the.
Girl that I love best.
The dordt.
Rooted rootedded? How rooted Pablo Bamba love Bamboo?
How do you follow a pointed tank down of the disaster film genre? A cold war thriller sent during World War Two with a rock and roll hero. Basically, if Elvis had fought the Nazis during the sixties while World War Two was going on, now, that's going to be a difficult premise to laur an audience. So we got to give him something recognizable in the lead. I know, the third lead of that Broadway production of Slab Boys. By the way, you can see that production of Slab
Boys if you go watch that vow documentary. I'm telling you he shot everything. They were looking for a young Elvis to play their proxy Nick Rivers for this film. They got the future King instead. Remember True Romance Clarence's guardian angel is Elvis Prinsley played by Val Kilmer. It ran up there with Kurt Russell's portrayal of the King in John Carpenter's TV movie Elvis, Val Kilmer, Kurt Russell
Tombstone Stop Haunting Me. This movie Top Secret represents one of my favorite aspects of Val Kilmer as an actor. He was game man name a genre he didn an attempt name a style of acting he wouldn't slip into for that character. I know this was his first film, and at that point in your career you'll pretty much do anything. I doubt Charlie's than would accept a role in Children of the Corn three these days, but Val
Kilmer might have. And he came back to do other comedies, and not just comedies, but very silly comedies.
Over and over again.
Look at anything he did with The Lonely Island. MacGruber is fantastic, largely because of how straight he's playing that role. And that's the thing, silly comedy. He's great in the straight man role there, and the very silly role of Nick Rivers in Top Secret. Not everyone can do that. I think we can all agree. Christopher Reeve is an enormously talented dramatic actor. I think he's even been funny a bunch of times. But watch that Muppet Show he hosted.
Reverend is not Superman's forte. I'll just say that Batman would have killed on the Muppet Show. Talking about you, Val Kilmer, this is probably just going to devolve into a list of my favorite bits from the movie. But before that, I just want to say that this was a genre unto itself, the zazz genre. This type of bizarro plot doesn't matter, it's just to get us to
the next gag. Well, a dozen other gags are occurring in the foreground and the background, and the gags are as pointed as direct references to then current pop culture and as timeless as the best slapstick. But what's interesting about Top Secret is that it shows what we're effectively three defunct genres to parody World War two, Cold War thrillers and Elvis movies, and now this genre itself is dead. So it's a dead genre parodying three other dead genres.
And anyone claiming this type of film is still being made is incorrect. Those Friedberg Seltz films, disaster movie, here come the Spartans. Whatever the fuck They didn't just put the nail in the coffin. They dug a fucking hole in the ground and then kicked the casket into it and waste on top of it. So I'm actually curious with a movie link Top Secret, which did and does work just as a funny movie, how it would appear
in the eyes of newer, younger viewers. Does any of it resonate beyond how fucking silly some of the jokes are. Speaking of game, how awesome is that Peter Cushing not only agreed to do a scene in reverse, but with a giant prosthetic eye over half his face. I love all the perspective jokes in this movie. The giant telephone, the pigeon statue, Oh my god, the underwater fight. All right, See, I told you I was just gonna end up listing things.
It's late.
I've got two more shows to record this morning, so that's gonna be doing it for us. Watch all of all Kimber's work, all of you you have homework now. He is never uninteresting and at the very least you get to watch one of the most beautiful people on the planet. Thanks for listening. We've got another Tales from the dark Side this Friday, and then the Friday after we're continuing Fusco Fest. We're Noise Junkies host HP and I are tackling the career of screenwriter John Fusco. We've
already got Crossroads and Young Guns done. You can get those on the regular feet. Next up his Young Guns too, and that's going to be a spectacular episode. Patreon dot com slash father Malone gets things early and commercial free. I said, we'd leave you with Brian Adams and we are talk to you next week.
How the US Before then, one time like we we'll fret.
Shot put show shoes, sham show.
Show regulators. You regulate any stealing of his property.
We're damn good too.
But you can't be any jek off the street.
You gotta be handed with the steel, if you know what I mean, or you.
Keep regulars.
Man.
No, it was a clear black knight, a clear white woman was on the streets trying to conserve some starch for the eve.
So why could get something.
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