Weirdhouse Cinema: Innerspace

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and today I have a returning special guest co host. We're joined once more by David Streepy of the Talkin' TOFU podcast. Dave, welcome back to the show.

Thank you, thanks for having me back, and hello to all the stuffies. I think we agreed that they're called, so hello again to all of you. Glad to be back.

That's right, we're gonna be talking about the Gate three.

Right, yes, no, I wish, Oh my god, could you imagine old Man Terry now?

Instead, we're gonna be We were talking about like a handful of potential movies and we ended up going with the one. I think this one was probably the one that you brought up that was the most holiday friendly and I think might be a stealth holiday film because they did see a Santa Claus at one point.

That's all it takes to qualify, really, and this did happen in California, so really, your only cues that it is the holidays and a West Coast movie are from the decorations and not from climate or any anything else. That's going on. Yeah, we did have We had a bunch of really strong contenders for possibilities, but I think this one, in addition to its appropriateness, it's it's the it's a big one, but it kind of made a small splash and a big splash at the same time. It's really really unique.

Yeah, I don't feel like Interspace, the movie you're talking about in nineteen eighty seven's Interspace. This is Joe Dante. Film got a great cast, I mean, starring Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, Meg Ryan. I mean, it came out big summer special effects movie, apparently made money. This was not a box office bomb by any stretch, and it it amazed a lot of kids. I was one of those

Yeah, I think that you're right this one definitely. I don't think it was a flop at the box office, but maybe had higher hopes given the pedigree of everybody involved, but I think it was a big renter. It was a big VHS. I remember having a huge presence at the video store, both in cardboard cutout, but also the number of copies that were on the shelves, the availability

Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's easy to expect with an effects film like this, you have your big effects sequences, you have your big finale. Those are the ones that certainly stuck in my head the most. Also, some of the like the Martin Short over the top freak out moments, which I mean, if you're going to hire Martin Short, especially you know during the eighties or the nineties or well or subsequent decades, you're going to want at least a little of.

That or even now. Yeah, I think that's that's still a stock in trade, and I think that, you know what, I kind of maybe tuned out and we'll get to it, of course, But what didn't really stick on my memory was all the work needed to move Martin Short around the board. Yes, and upon a rewatch, it's pretty compelling

Yeah, it's a film that is, it's constantly in motion. It keeps adding new elements, often wild elements on top of the shu. Yeah, new characters. There's a whole whole cast of villains in this picture, as we'll discuss. So it's never boring, it's it's in constant motion. It is like Martin Short as a film.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Martin Short film film modified.

Now this is of course a miniaturization film. If you're I think everyone out there is familiar with this subgenre of science fiction by now, with the classic example being Fantastic Voyage. This is essentially Fantastic Voyage through Martin Short. I don't know that we've had a menturization film recently. It seems like more recently you tend to see it pop up like as a treatment on some sort of

I think the one that stands out to me, and it's not a movie, but the Futurama episode where Fry eats an egg salad sandwich from a gas station, that's a great one. The parasites from the sandwich colonize his body and become super intelligent and have a whole civilization in there, and they have to go inside to reconcile that.

Yes, that's a great one because it's it's Fantastic Voyage themed, but it is also a Flowers for Algernon themed episode, so it has it has a fair amount of depth to it as well, and then just a lot of great jokes, and there's the whole worm thing why people came over on the sandwich. Great stuff. All right, let's go ahead and listen in to at least some of the trailer audio here. Let's let it roll.

Test pilot Tuck Pendleton wants to make history. Supermarket clerk Jack Putter needs a vacation. Late.

That's not good, you know.

It's Lieutenant Pendleton is about to be miniaturized, placed into this needle, and then injected into this.

Rabbit back and roll. But something went wrong.

And Tuck's about to get a new destination inside Jack Putter. Give yourself a shot of adventure inner space.

All right, David, I see you had a note here about the music in the trailer, possibly the trailer we used here, but possibly another trailer. But still, this is a great point regarding the music.

Yeah, this is the music used for the Fertelly chase scene in Goonies, The dun dunt dun dun't. It's always great when a podcast guest just like hums a line nolesly for you. But it's really really it's opening scene of Gooney. It's really iconic bit of music. Cool to see it here, but also a little bit strange to see it here too.

Yeah, it's like when you encounter a trailer where they're clearly using the Aliens theme song, you know, it's like, that's great, you're really getting me amped up, but amped up for a different movie.

Right, just kind of dug through the drawer for it and got something that you knew I would recognize and knew would pull me in.

I guess they still do this today, right, use because the music's not always together when you're putting together a trailer, or you're just like, well, we have rights to better music, let's sell this puppy.

Yeah. I think that's you know, the marketing can be that detached from the actual production that unless you've got the Star Wars theme ready to go with your Star Wars trailer, you're gonna take some liberties. And it really, you know, matches the tone of the movie in a way that if you weren't again hyper familiar with goonies the way that I was as a kid. That was the other video that I was renting. The music fits the tone of the trailer, fits the tone of the

Yeah, absolutely, all right, So some of you might be wondering, well, where can I watch innerspace before proceeding with the rest of the episode. Well, luckily for you, this was a major motion picture. It has not been entirely forgotten. It's maybe not as celebrated as it should be, but you can find streams of it, you know, digital rentals and purchases.

It's really interesting that Kevin McCarthy and Robert Piccardo would be the sit ins on that commentary and not Quaid or Short or even Meg Ryan.

Well know, sometimes you can't get the big fish. They move on to other projects I don't.

Know, and their presence in the movie is pretty significant. These guys are not bit players at all. They're huge parts of the movie.

Plus with Joe Dante, you know that he loves like old, older actors, you know from classic Hollywood pictures, So you know there's Kevin McCarthy, and then he loves to cast Robert Riccardo and put him in strange romantic situations such as with the made up Grimlin from Grimlins too.

He's it's he's so weird in this movie is character.

I can't wait to get into that character.

Yeah.

All right, well, let's let's talk a bit more about the people involved here, starting with Joe Dante born nineteen forty six. Joe and I have previously discussed Joe Dante on Weird House Cinema because we talked about Grimlins too. One of the things that I pointed out, just sort of to try and sum him up, is that he's one of these guys that seems to have a foot in two worlds, Like on one hand, he's like a horror legend, and on the other hand he's this obvious

Yeah, he's definitely, you know, he's He's This sounds like a dig but I don't mean it that way. He is like a ranch dressing of a director in that he can go in any direction. I think he's got strong horror chops, but he really shines when he's bringing a bunch of differ different elements to a bunch of different genres to the movie and creating something that's completely unique.

Yeah, and I would argue that it even feels more cohesive than Grimlin's. Grimlin's certainly a better known film, but that's one that I always felt like it didn't completely know what it wanted to be. This film, I feel like it balances everything pretty nicely. You know, nothing feels out a step.

I agree. I think that he's having fun here, and not to say that Grimlins is not fun, but Grimlins feels like it's trying to send you a message as well, and I think there's no message here. The message is what if this happened?

Let's watch and let's keep upping the anti Yeah, yeah, Oh, I have a post editing insertion to make here. You might have caught my mistake there. I just referenced a nineteen ninety three Joe Dante movie that I said was called Manate. The film is, of course, Mattine, but I left the mistake in because I don't know about you, but I'm suddenly really fascinated with the idea of a nineteen ninety three Joe Dante film about Manates. Who knows what that would have consisted of. All right, now, let's

Wow, I mean this is just home Run after home Run?

Yeah? Yeah, he was involved in a lot of big projects. The other name on the screenplay also story and co producer credit, Chip Prosser for nineteen forty six, writer and director, probably best known for this film, though we also worked in the screenplay to some degree. I'm I'm not sure to what degree with nineteen eighty four is Iceman?

So is this a top Gun prequel? No?

It is an unfrozen cave man movie, all right. Now, getting into the cast for Innerspace, it is pretty extensive with some great bit parts and cameos, which is pretty standard for Joe Dante. So I'm going to try to either go light on a number of them and just skip some as well, and then also maybe come back just in passing to some of the cameos as they turn up. But the star, and I mean, really, this is a picture that has a trio of leads. But Top Bill anyway is Dennis Quay playing Tuck Pendleton.

What a name?

Yeah, the names are pretty good. You're Tuck Pendleton? Is that you can guess? He is like a test pilot. He's he would he would be at home in Top Gun.

Yeah, yeah, he's definitely. Look, kid me couldn't get much cooler than this actor in this role. I mean, yeah, he in all the worst ways too. I think as an adult, I'm a little bit repulsed by his demeanor, his swagger. But as a kid, this was eighties cool. With a little bit of reflection, I can see what a rip on Tom Cruise this this delivery is. And it really seems like it's trying. He's trying for a

Oh my goodness, I didn't even think about the Top Gun connection, about sitting a riff on on Top Gun. That's a film that kind of for me, it kind of stands out of time for me, like I don't necessarily think about it in connection to other projects, But now that you've pointed out, yeah, I can't unsee it.

I think that you know, I made the mistake of using these films as cues for how to act in real life, which I think is is a frequent eighties kid misstep. But because of the frequency of viewing of this uh interspace Goonies Top Gun, it created a percent that was very not organic to me and and stuck out like a sort of thumb whenever I would try to use it.

Yeah, I mean, he's not the it's not the worst role model you could latch onto as far as a lead character in an eighties picture. But yeah, he's he's obnocked right right from the get go. He's obnoxious, he's drunk, He clearly is a mess, and but he's he's portrayed as a likable man, a lovable mess.

Yeah, it's a very very kind and funny take on all because he's drunk for a lot of the movie, and alcohol is his motivation in a lot of cases, he will get to it, but designs a robot to pour a drink for him and does it poorly. One of his big orders of business for Martin Short is to pour some alcohol for him. He's really booze centered.

Just drinking giant molecules of whiskey. As we'll get back to. But yeah, I mean Dennis Quaid. This is not an actor that we really need to introduce much. I think everybody knows who Dennis Quaid is, famous leading man brother of Randy. Credits go back to the mid seventies and he's really been in all sorts of stuff, Like it's really weird to look through his filmography, like just looking

Oh, I have not seen The Substance yet. I'm excited too, though.

Yeah, I haven't seen anither of him yet. I'm gonna I probably need to do him back to back. But yeah, his career that was full of stuff like this, Like it's a mix of genre films and mainstream dramas and comedies as well as biopicks. I think he played Jerry Lee Lewis in a biopic at one point, so yeah,

For me, it's this movie. This is the image that instantly comes to mind is his image from the poster, which is, you know, he looks very handsome. He's got a joker grin, a Jack Nicholson joker grin that's maybe digitally enhanced to be a little bit bigger than it should be, and it just really sells his swagger. You know, that look on a space the way it's on the poster really sells who he is in this movie.

Yeah. Yeah, he's having a great time. Yeah all right. Our other main character that Dennis Quade's character is going to be inside of in a miniaturized form is the character Jack Putter, played by Martin Short born nineteen fifty another name that scarcely requires introduction. Martin Short is just a comedy legend.

Yeah. I don't know what to say about Martin Short, so sorry that you had me on your podcast, but he's just great. I mean, he's he's been a part of my comedic sensibility since I was very very young. In every role that he's in, from Three Amigos all the way to only Mergers in the Building, he's just fantastic and he is himself. He delivers every time, and he's a chameleon in appearance, but his sensibility, his timing,

Yeah. I mean, he's one of those actors that when I when I think of Martin Short, I instantly think of those really you know, over the top in high energy characters I think of of Glick, I think of Ed Grimley of course his character and Arrested Development Jack Dorso, you know, and he's he's great at that, and he's great at those like freak out performances in a way that they are very I feel like there are very few actors I would even compare him to, like maybe,

Yeah, I think, especially in Only Murders in the Building, I think he does a really good job of representing not just the comedic bits, but the building itself and life in the building and what it means to be at that stage of your life in that building and getting on in years and what that means for your relationship with your family, And yeah, that's never not never,

Yeah. So I don't think we see as much from him along those lines in Interspace, but again, certainly in other projects. He was also really good. Recently in the series of The Morning Show, he had a small part is a disgrace director named Dick Lundy and the name sounds like a Martin Short character, but it was like, it's like a really serious, like creepy kind of character, a charismatic, charming, sexual predator sort of a guy. Wow.

Going back to comparing him with Robin Williams and Jim Carrey almost called him James Carrey.

Jim Carrey, I think you know it's James now that he's back in Sonica.

That's right. I think he the roles the characters that he creates, and I think this movie is a great example. You can't imagine anybody else being these characters, and that's true of Robin Williams and James Carey. You can't imagine somebody else doing the mask or ace Ventura, you know, you know, I was reading somewhere. I don't know if this is true or not, but early versions of this movie were pitched as Michael J. Fox enters the body

Yeah, I agreed, absolutely, all right, get into the rest of the cast. Here we have Meg Ryan playing Lydia Maxwell Meg Ryan born nineteen sixty one, another huge name that I think most everyone's familiar with, mostly known for I guess her biggest successes were a handful of just highly successful rom coms of the eighties and nineties. Eighty nine's When Harry Met Sally ninety three, Sleepless in Seattle the Eights, You've Got Mail, So I'm pretty pretty big deal.

Also in Top Gun, Oh well, yeah, plays Goose's wife. I think I kind of feel like this is a Top Gun episode, Rob I'm gonna dot Top Gun episode.

Yeah. But again, Yeah, she's great in this, we'll get into It's an interesting role. There is an interesting love triangle in this picture that I was totally lost on me as a kid, but watching it as a grown up is just it's deeply weird. It's strange that they ever even went for all of this, even with all the restraint they show that it's a strange love triangle. Yeah, but she's great. She has great chemistry with everyone, including Dennis Quaid, who she would end up marrying after this picture.

That's right, that's right.

And spoiler she marries his character at the end of this movie.

So I got a lot to say about that. Yeah, that guest list is wild.

Yes, yes, it feels like a rap party. I'll go

Yeah, I don't recall. That's maybe we'll do UHF next time, Rob. That's a a great movie that it's been way too long since I've seen.

Yeah. Clearly though, Kevin McCarthy was a favorite Joe Dante's because some of his other credits include The Howling the Birds Piranha. He also pops up in nineteen ninety one's Eve of destruction. That's one that I never saw, but saw the trailers for all the time. It has like a killer lady terminator in it.

I remember him most specifically from The Distinguished Gentleman, The Eddie Murphy movie from nineteen ninety two, where great premise, Eddie Murphy runs for Congress using he has the same name as a deceased congress person and uses the fact that nobody knows whether their congressman died or not to get elected.

But that real that I have never heard of this movie.

Amazing premise. Yeah, great, it's pretty fun movie. Pretty fun movie. It's part of that Eddie Murphy era with Boomerang early nineties. But another great movie. But Kevin McCarthy plays a seasoned congress who knows the grift very well, kind of takes Eddie Murphy under his wing and shows him how to how to grift in in the right way, which is to say, the political way.

All right, No, that sounds pretty fun.

Really slimy guy. McCarthy plays him really well.

Yeah he is. He's really good at playing the slimy villain, all right. Other villains include his kind of partner in

Yeah, I wasn't familiar with her, but I felt like I was. She looked so familiar, her performance was so familiar to me, but I could not place it even through an IMDb. I couldn't remember what she stood out to me from. But fantastic role, fantastic performance, and just something it's gonna nag me until the day I die. What I remember it from?

All Right? The next villain. Oh, this is the one of the big ones, if not the biggest one, This is the one I think everyone remembers. This is mister Igo played by Oh they always intimidating. Vernon Wells born nineteen forty five Australian actor, best known for playing heavies for that like signature mug of his and he's played some really iconic ones.

He's bad news. Yeah, he's just in this movie in particular, the most fun kind of bad news, but menacing without all right, there are a few tells that he had, like really specific tells through the movie, but most of it is just the aura that he brings to the screen. He's he's a menace. He's one to watch out for.

Yeah, and we'll discuss like his character is probably one of the better sort of terminator esque villains, like spin on Terminator without going too hard on the terminatorness, you know, like, yeah, he's not really a cyborg, but he's got like this cool prosthetic hand. And I was always like all in unprosthetic hand villains at this at this age when I was a kid, you know, And this guy's got all sorts of cool gadgets.

He does feel like more of a little stinker in his actual actions than he is a terminator that will end your life, even though that's always the threat whenever he's around.

Yeah, but he'll also just pop a clown's balloon for no reason except that he hates fun. So yeah, Wells, Vernon Wells, he had some great roles. He played Wez that's the mohawk, the mohawk guy in eighty one's The Road Warrior. He was the Lord General in eighty five's Weird Science. Oh, and then a big one he's been at the guy with the mustache and Commando Amazing. He's the one that he kills last because he likes him the most. I can't I can never remember how that

You know, you're gonna get mad at me, rob but this is exactly like the Bad Guy Meg Fighters and Top Gun, where they're they're from somewhere else. They're not gonna tell you what country they're from because they don't want to get at that country upset. But they're just kind of other, you know.

Yeah.

I think that in Robert's case, this accent is either super offensive or engineered to be as inoffensive as possible, because it could not be real and could not harken to any specific existing accent.

Yeah. And then on top of that, he has this like old Hollywood cowboy persona that he has completely taken on. So he's always wearing the cowboy boots often the other bells and whistles as well. It's it's a fun and perplexing villain role.

He's I kept having to remind myself that he was a villain. He doesn't seem villain. Most of his scenes are pretty silly, and I keep I kept having to remind myself of what he was there to do, yes, and why they needed to stop him.

Yeah, he is. The plot gets fairly complex, but basically he represents a buyer for stolen technology. We don't know exactly who he's representing. But he's the bag man, right, He's the guy with the money.

Who's just going to go out and dance when he's in town.

Yeah, he's he's also going to party. He's he's up to like sleep with any of the leads of this picture, like it doesn't matter to him. But yeah, he doesn't really do anything bad. I don't think he tries to kill anybody, right, he's No.

He's pretty pretty silly guy. Uh, just good at his job. I guess we don't really see that, but we're told that he's good at his job, and he seems pretty confident all things, you know, considered, He's a pretty confident guy who knows himself, knows what he likes and pursues it.

Yeah. Well, Picgardo was a familiar face I think to film and TV viewers in general because on the TV front he was on the Wonder Years or he had some roles on the Wonder yearside, and he wasn't I don't think he was main cast. He was in China Beach, Star Trek Voyager of course, and Stargate and then films. You know, we had the Howling, we held Total Recall.

Yeah, I'm a big, big fan of his from Star Trek and Total Recall of course, probably my favorite movie of all time. But a role that was created for him, the Johnny Cab, I believe, was molded in his image before he was even signed on to the project. They wanted him to be the Johnny Cab that badly.

You take Johnny Cab out of that picture, the whole thing falls apart too.

It truly is the glue, all right?

And then the final main character and supporting character, I guess really I'll mention is Wendy Shawl, who plays a character named Wendy This is Jack's coworker at the grocery. Born nineteen fifty four. I'm mentioning her mainly because she was in Creature from eighty five, an alien knockoff that

Great job here too, being she does a lot with a little doesn't have a ton of screen time, but you really get a vibe of exactly who she is from very few lines and just kind of her presence and reaction to things.

Yeah, all right, now, on the effects end of things, this was a big industrial light and magic special effects movie. So it involved just an army of talented professional and it won an Oscar in nineteen eighty eight for Best Special Effects, beating out Predator. So Predator versus Interspace Interspace wins clearly. So, yeah, an army of people involved here.

It's no surprise this is a really well done movie effects wise, in that you don't notice half of the effects that are happening. They're so organic. Particularly for me, anytime he's inside the body or we're seeing inside the body, I'm not even clocking that as an effect. Most of

Yeah, and I thought the effects held up really well. This is not a film where I felt like I saw any wires, any scenes. You know, it all holds up extremely well, So, you know, well deserving of that Oscar. Dennis mun was the visual effects supervisor for ILM, and I also mentioned in passing that Rob Bouteen born nineteen fifty nine, a special makeup effects designer and creator. On

So he made the worm face.

Yeah, yeah, he was involved in the worm face. I didn't get a chance to look up exactly what he did on this picture, but I have this. I highly suspect that it is the morphing the face morphing sin that we'll get into, because that's one of those that is it's not grotesque unless you stop and really look at it, and then you start really, oh this is this is grotesque.

But there's one that There are two big morph scenes that I that I have in mind, and one of them is a full blown you can see that that is an effect set piece.

You know, Oh that's the remorph. I think, yes, yes.

The full head goes on for a long time. But just there are scenes with Martin Shwort's mouthwork where it's just his mouth and it's Martin short. It's not a prosthetic. It's not you know, a stand in dummy head where it's just remarkable, how believable an effect like that is.

All right, and then finally the music. It's a Jerry Goldsmith score who lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand and four, film music legend. His other scores, of course, include the likes of Grimlins and Alien from nineteen seventy nine.

Amazing and great stuff here. I think even right from the jump the synth, the opening credits is incredible.

Let's get into those opening credits, because this is I did remember the opening credits from because this one really blew my mind as a kid, because you go into innerspace, you're expecting all that, you know, the beautiful inner wonders of a micro world, and that is where we are. But as we zoom out, we realize we've just been inside cocktail ice for the whole you know, opening of the credits.

Yeah, it's a tremendous effect. I think it's really really well done and not really a trick either, because it shows you the molecular level of what a glass of ice would be. You just you're kind of entranced by the pre science of it.

All and we realized that this cocktail ice is that some sort of a party, some sort of a formal get together of military test pilots. There's cake there, models of planes there, a bunch of of of you know, a very top gun s test pilot dudes. And then in to the fray enters Lieutenant Tuck Pendleston. This is our main character, and he is again already completely wasted. A big embarrassing scene follows where he falls through a table.

Yeah, the one thing that stood out to me during this sequence is the fight choreography inside the kitchen. This is another thing like it didn't need to be a well choreographed fight, but it actually is well blocked. It's tight. There is interesting action happening here. It could just be this drunk guy pushes off a couple of guys, get subdued, and Lydia takes him home, but it's more than that. It's an actual interesting action sequence that doesn't really have

Yeah, it's like the stunt team knew they weren't going to have many fisticuff scenes, so they were going to really sell them yeah when they had them. So we also see Lydia Maxwell. This is Meg Ryan's character. She is his girlfriend, I believe, but she's also a reporter. I don't know if she is here as a reporter or as his girlfriend, but she kind of serves in both capacities.

Yeah, it seems like there's an estrangement here, so I think it's a former girlfriend. I'm not sure how recent the formerness is, whether it's a fresh breakup or an on again, off again relationship. But this embarrassment, her responsibility for him from this embarrassment. Maybe that's just a gesture of kindness to everybody else in the room of being I'm the one who can get him out of this situation, or more of a responsibility of this is my date

Yeah, so she drags tied back to his pad, and this is you know, is you're figuring out who these characters are. It becomes really apparent that this is his place, this is not their place, because there are photos of SR. Seventy one blackbirds on the walls. There's also all this bunny memorabilia that's going to make a lot more sense here in a little bit. There's a Santa Claus on the desk, so you know, Holiday movie confirmed? Or is this guy's pad just so sloppy that there's a Santa

And right in the middle of the apartment on the table, huge nineteen eighties robotic arm. And anybody who was alive during the eighties knows exactly what this robot arm is. It's got one hinge and it's got a pincher as it's hand. It's meant to pinch things, pick them up, move them somewhere else, and release the pinch. Here. He's got it built to pick up a bottle of booze,

Now would this would this have been before the or after the nes RM that played the Little Spin Top game?

Oh so this would have been after the Robotic Operating Buddy rob for the Nintendo Entertainment System, where it's a similar thing. You had to use the controller to make the robot pick up a spinning gyro and drop it onto either a red button or a blue button, which would affect the level on the screen that you were trying to play and allow your guy to pass through.

Yeah, so that energy is very strong in this picture for sure. So they get settled in for the evening and and more or less we're picking up the next morning because that's when Cabby Dick Miller, a frequently mentioned actor on Weird House, cinema because he pops up in everything. I think he has popped up in more films than than than any other actor that we've covered here on the show. But he's there as a cabby to pick Lydia up in the morning. She is trying to sneak out,

Yeah, it's a really really hunky scene. A lot of hunks in this movie, a lot of honky activity, and even Martin Short gets to participate in being a hunk a little bit later. One thing I think it's important to point out here is that Lydia did try to leave the night before and a drunk Tuck blocked her exit. So big red flag there does it casually, which shows again what a lithario this guy is. And maybe gives

Yes, that one will be important. Now at this point we switch over to our other main character, because here we have Jack Putter played by Martin Short, in to see his doctor, and this is some pretty fun character work with the guy playing the doctor is William Shallart who lived nineteen twenty two through twenty sixteen, who did a lot of TV shows. But basically we catch on pretty quickly that Putter is a hypochondriac that's coming in

Yeah, and the doctor's prognosis or prescription to this grocery store clerk is you should simply go on a vacation. Yeah, you should simply go on a lavish vacation. Which how times have changed? Really that that's just that's the that's the direction.

Yeah, this guy's having a mental health crisis, like at this point, like he's he he is having a very hard time, and it's just like, here's a prescription for a trip to Mexico.

Right, you can probably afford it.

Yeah, all right, So you know at this point, okay, the pieces, the main pieces are on the table concerning our protagonists. But then we got to get into the real plot. How are we going to get miniaturization involved here? So we pick up with Silicon Valley dudes stuck in traffic discussing a project. We have one of the guys from the top Gun academy graduation thing earlier and it's there he's like, well, who have you hired to pilot this prototype or whatever? And now like, oh, we got

Yeah, it's really strange the way that he walks in. I believe one of the scientists or tech workers kisses him on the cheek. He doubles back and does a full blown mouth kiss with her. Just a real again Lefario level of swagger coming into this test pilot job. You know, while the Silicon Valley dudes were arguing in the car, he was defended Tuck as being somebody who

And it becomes clear pretty quickly that what they're about to do is he's going to get in this pod that is pretty really cool looking, looks like a cross between a submarine and some spaceship, and they're going to

Yeah, and this is where we learned the reason that rabbits were so prominent in his apartment, And yeah, I get it, But all the rabbit stuff at his apartment was like a fan of rabbits, not somebody who's studying rabbits intensely. It's somebody who like bugs. Bunny is in there and things like that, And so this guy likes rabbits a lot more than he really needs to to perform his scientific role of being inside of a rabbit.

Yeah, he's researching at the wrong scale. I think. Now, I do really love these scenes where he's getting into the cockpit of the pod. I think it feel like this is all really well done. It has a great textured and believable NASA feel to it. You know.

Yeah, it's a very busy, very eighty in the sense that it feels cramped. There's so much machinery on top of itself, and the space is not, you know, a designer friendly lab, which I think you'll see a contrast to that later on in the movie, But here it just seems like these guys are scientists. They're bleeding edge R and D. And then once you see the space that the pot is in, it's mylar city in the best way. There's that gold NASA milar wrapping the entire room.

Yeah, you can get and then inside and outside you have like all these pixelated computer screens, video feeds. I feel like there are more robot arms yeah, and whatever robot arms are up to. So yeah, it all feels very real. I love the look of all of this, and I feel like it's aged really well and in a way that's something that non analog wouldn't have, you know, if it was all touch screens and you know, next generation and stuff.

Yeah, there's a little bit of what you could arguably say as a Hokier design tactic or effects tactic that has lights superimposed on the pod while it's being miniaturized. It looks a little bit inauthentic compared to all of the other effects work that's going on, but again, it works. It's in that milar space. It's supposed to be crackling and electrifying, similar to how the DeLorean does right before it's about to jump through time, and so it works.

They seem to pull it off. They spin the thing around in a centrifuge, they shrink it down to size. Now, the pod is this tiny speck inside of a syringe. They use a magnification effect to take a look at it, the lead doctor does. But you know that something is going to shake things up, and that takes the form of an attack by gas mask wearing goons. They come in with an acid key card to short out the lock, and they're clearly trying to take over the operation.

Yeah. The thing I love about this takeover is that they got these gas masks, but they're not flooding the space with gas. They're using a fire extinguisher type device to point the gas at somebody, shoot a blast of gas directly at them so that only that person is knocked out by it, which is genius. Like, yeah, that's how gas warfare would be should be. I am not advocating for gas warfare, but I were, that's how you would do with it.

They have a pretty non violent approach, like they're clearly trying to cut down on casualties, though they do punch a few people, which seems uncalled for if you have those great gas cannons on hand. But still they quickly take over things, and this is where we first see Fiona Lewis's doctor Kinker taking control of the computers there.

That's right. Clearly the bad guys have invaded this space. But it did occur to me at this moment were the other guys the good guys. I don't know what the purpose of this project was. They don't really state what they're going to do after they've successfully completed the Rabbit project, but we're just supposed to assume that their

I did have a fun time trying to piece together like the intended endpoint for this research, and we can kind of feel it out a little bit by seeing

Yeah, I think it's probably says more about me than it does about the movie. But every application of this technology I could think of was a really dark and depressing one that used another living being as a vessel to achieve something via a smaller human being inside of that vessel that might be small enough to escape whatever situation it's putting the larger vessel in.

Yeah, I mean, they kind of they definitely allude to these espionage applications, but they never even once hint at a medical application, not directly. I mean, there are a couple of jokes, but for the most part, Yeah, the idea that you would have a little submarine inside of person is not even explored. Is a medical breakthrough here.

Well, Tuck casually turns Putter into if you're getting ahead of ourselves, but he casually turns it into like a superhuman just yeah, because it's convenient for that scene. So the technology is very easy to do once you're in there, apparently.

Yeah, once you're inside at that scale, you can do anything you want, change faces up, cure diseases, I guess, but also make computers explode. And that seems to be the prime focus here. All right, So what happens? Okay, so we have the miniature I sub it's in a syringe. They were going to inject it into the rabbit, but then all hell breaks loose. The doc, the main doctor here is, escapes with the syringe and then our villain, doctor Canker, calls for mister I go to chase after him.

Yeah, And I just got to say this car chase on the freeway again, way more elaborate, way more action packed, way more elegant than it needs to be. It could have been a quick shot that gets you to the mall. But it's really fun and there are convertibles, there are This is actually happening on a busy freeway. It's really really exciting.

Yeah, and then yeah, we get to the mall. Mister I goes using he's the finger gun, which I remember just thinking was super cool when I was a kid, This crazy robot hand of his that he can make the make the finger guns and then actually fire the finger gun.

Yeah, it's very into spectro gadgety in the way that the tip of the finger kind of comes off to reveal the gun. But I mean, aside from that, like malls, this mall in particular, this is the height of mals at nineteen eighty nine. You know, you get not just

Yeah, this whole sequence is feels very Joe Dante, like the bit where the doctor with the syringe. He ends up injecting Martin Short in the buttock and then falls into the arms of three or four different mascots and dies and we get that that hazy pov of him looking up at the mascots looming over him.

Yeah, fantastic.

So at this point we have miniaturized Pendleton tuck inside of full sized Jack Martin Short and that, and we're off to the race. It's like, this is the this is the plot. It's we're going to get into this whole situation of how does Pendleton make Jack aware of his presence inside him? What kind of gadgets are going to allow that to happen, and then how are they going to figure out, you know, what sort of plot is going on, and how they're going to maneuver their way out of it.

Yeah, I you know, throughout this whole basically from this point on, I have a tough time reconciling how big Tuck and the pod are supposed to be inside of the syringe and inside of Martin George's or Putter's body, that they're points at which the action is high and the pod is shaken around. So it's like, oh, so you must be big enough to be like moving, to be moved along by by the motions of the body. But then there are points where Tuck is so so

The pod is as small or as large as the plot requires it to be. Can it be grabbed with a pair of tweezers? Yes? Can't. Can it cut its way through the wall of an artery without causing any kind of trouble inside the body? Absolutely? All right, So at this point we're gonna we're gonna proceed with like a little less attention to every little detail here, but we want to talk, certainly in broad strokes about like

That one is more okay. I feel like the effects of hooking into the eye looked painful, and you know that's an effects success as far as I'm concerned. Same with the ear, but those all seem like I can wrap my head around those. And then yeah, he changes his face, which it's like, I feel like you need outside pieces to do that. You're not just read rearranging

Well, he was planning for rabbits, so he should if anything, he should be okay, but not particularly experienced with shifting rabbit faces around it. But a full blown Martin short face that seems like a lot.

Yeah, he should have been able to turn the rabbit into the cowboy. Yeah, but not Jack Putter into the cowboy.

Yeah, because that's a very expressive face. To change into another very expressive face, you need something a little plainer, I think for your first big.

Hurrah, exactly exactly. I think, you know, I blame this movie as a child for my impression that I still have today, where my instinct is that there's a lot of empty space in the human body and you can travel between the organs with you know, the same way that you're traveling between planets and the Solar System, that there's just a lot of dead space there, which is not true. Anybody who's seen a diagram of what's going on inside a human body knows how just packed together

Yeah, he's inner space, not inner goop.

That's right, exactly exactly, And the title yeah supports that backs that up. I will say that I don't know how big or small this pod is. I'm ready to move away from that gripe. But he's able to get around that body real fast.

Oh yeah, Like he starts off in the buttock and is almost immediately at the optic nerves. Maybe they cut something, but maybe he also he is just like firing through those blood vessels.

Yeah, he gets into blood vessels and somehow is able to because it seems like a blood vessel is like a highway. Like the vessel goes to one part of your body and maybe has some off ramps on the way there, but you don't have full agency of where else to go in the body unless you kareene out of that blood vessel, which you're going to start causing damage to to your host at that point.

Yeah, he does make the host uncomfortable at times. It's there's some some related symptoms.

I'm shocked that that Martin short did not display any sort of existential I mean, he had some existential dread at the beginning before he realized that there was a pot inside of him.

M hm.

To me, that would have just heightened the existential dread that there's now something, an actual thing inside of me that's talking to me and manipulating my body without me being able to stop it if I if I wanted.

To Now some important plot stuff that you mentioned too, is that eventually okay? Well, first of all, character wise Jack and Pendleton, Jack and Tuck, Uh, they come together, they end up bonding over things like it becomes a very close relationship, not only because one is literally inside of the other, but but you know, they're they're they're the only people who can talk to each other, you know,

Yeah, it's tricky because you don't really get a clear picture of what Jack's steaks are and emotionally, and I mean, you get the idea of his physical stakes, but you don't know he's obviously attracted to Lydia, but he's characterized as somebody who does not need a lot of convincing to help Tuck out. And sure that's motivated by the fact that Tuck is in his body and Tuck needs him, and maybe that is something that Jack wants as well

Oh yes, yes, that's the Tucks you guys running out. He's eventually going to die in there if he doesn't get out right.

So you've got ticking clock a which is there's these guys on your tail that you don't want them to catch you because they're happy to kill Jack to get Tuck out of him if they need to. B If you want Tuck to succeed at again whatever he's doing, you need to get back to the good lab quote unk quote good lab before tucks oxygen runs out and it gets real close and then you somehow have to save Tuck and Lydia's relationship. That's the sea ticking clock.

Yeah. We also learn that there are like two little chips that are involved in the miniaturization process. There are other groups out there who have been working on miniaturization, and they can miniaturize things, but apparently relargifying things is the hard part, and that's where you need both chips, the chip that is out here in the full sized world and the chip that is now on that pod inside of Jack's body. And so that's what the bad

So that's where Robert Piccardo comes in as the Cowboy, the agent employed to retrieve one of the chips, and their plan is to appropriate the Cowboy's face onto Jack's face and then infiltrate the meeting with Scrimshaw to get that chip to take back to the quote unquote Good Lab, right so that they can re enlarge Tuck and save him.

Right. But then at the same time, they've already had some run ins with the Good Lab where they've overheard the good scientists saying, you know, it's actually easier if we just let him die inside of Jack's body, because nobody can get to that thing, it's miniaturized. Just let it go, you know, he'll get I guess, you know, excreted one way or another from Jack's body and it'll just be lost to time. And maybe that's easier, Yeah.

I gotta say, all things being equal, taking humanity out of the equation altogether, which is what these scientists are doing, that's not a bad case.

Yeah, and especially considering what mister Scrimshaw wants. We have a great later. So Drag gets abducted at least twice. I feel like it's like he's constantly escaping and re escaping and getting caught. There's one scene where mister Scrimshaw gets this great villain monologue about like, you know, nuclear weapons aren't there in the future. Space is in the future. It's miniaturization. So great villain monologue there. But then we get what we also get time and time again, a

Yeah. Jack gets a lot of heroic stunt opportunities to really look like like the hero, you know, and it's a lot of it's driven by Tuck, but he's the one doing it. It's not that Tuck's making his body move. Tuck's just guiding him through what to do. And that's kind of a Dumbo feather to Jack, where he's he has the confidence to actually execute on a lot of those things, and he's successful at it.

So at this point I don't know which thread to follow. We have more of the love triangle plot that is propelling Jack ever closer to a sexual encounter with Lydia it would seem though, Again this is a PG film, so we're dealing in very broad strokes here, and a lot is implied. And then and then we have the whole scheme to figure out what Cowboy is up to, uh, to seduce Cowboy and then and then take advantage of him, and then the morphing of the face, the infiltration of

Yeah, I think it, you know, just to quickly top lined the cowboy thread, I think they realized or they learned, that the Cowboy goes to a club Inferno whenever he's in town because he loves to go dancing and meet women, so they go to Club Inferno as well. That's where Jack runs into Wendy from the grocery store. Wendy sees a new bad boy side of Jack that piques her interest. But the long story short there is that Lydia is able to seduce the cowboy bring him back to the hotel.

To the Yeah this is and we get some more Inspector gadget Shenanigans for mister Igo because he pulls out the blowtorch. Uh, that's right, appendage or maybe the blowtorch is just always in there as a as part of his Swiss army hand. But they're gonna they're like, oh, you know, the cowboy is known for his incredible pain tolerance, so let's just get an example of that here.

That's right, and this is where the actual grotesque transformation scene from Cowboy face back to jackface happens. It freaks out everybody in the room. S Grimshaw's terrified, and rightly so, because it's it's a lot.

Yeah, it is. It's very well done because if you slow it down or watch it twice, you're like, oh, yeah, this is this seems like boutine material right here, like this is the thing, but it is, but it's it's blurry and sped up in a very comedic Looney Tunes fashion, and that ultimately like overwhelms the horrific aspects of it. But it's very well done. Yeah.

Yeah. Another thing to point out, they obviously, you know, escape this this scenario, Lydia helps them escape. Jack transfers Tuck to Lydia through a French kiss. Yes, which again I'm just gonna say, yeah, that works, you can do that first try. You know. While that happens, Tuck is inside Lydia's body, sees that Lydia is pregnant, presumably with

French kisses work. French kisses are a complete exchange of all saliable content of the mouth and esophagus, right, That's.

What we were warned about when we were younger.

Yes, yeah, but again, like the whole the baby, the pregnancy, like this love triangle is very complex. One might even argue too complex for a picture that is just trying to be a big summertime explosion of special effects. But it's one of his charms that it's all there.

Yeah, and I think it is. It does serve the function of while Tuck is in Lydia's body, Jack's not necessarily aware of that yet, and he is still acting like a heroic, you know fighter. He's knocking people out, he's you know, doing all of the things that Tuck told him to do. Once he realizes that Tuck's not inside him, is inside Lydia. He loses that, he loses that Dumbo feather, and the confidence kind of quickly at that Dumbo feather exactly.

Yeah, so all that's really well executed. But I know that those of you who grew up watching Innerspace are you've been waiting for us to get to the big showdown. The big showdown is twofold because so basically they bring captive Jack back to the bad guy lab, which is super sleek and very military. We'll describe their pod here in a minute. But of course Lydia is able to take control. She built out a handgun. But after they have already injected a new villain into Jack's body, they'll wait.

That's right, this enemy lab, it looks like the TV room from Willy Wonka's cog factory. It's just all white and tons of space in contrast to the other lab, which has just stacks of machinery on top of stacks of machinery. But yeah, this this exopod, it's a suit, whereas the you know, tucks in a little chair inside of a small room. It feels like this is a scuba suit that has attachments. It's a lot more menacing. Presumably this guy can whip around more quickly within the body,

Yeah, it's frightening. And you got the one portal so you can have mister IGO's face like the horrifying mug of his, like sneering through it and grinning. Yeah, terrifying pod. Enemy pod here like a fighter pod that they have

Yeah, I love that. Again, take the humanity out of it, and these are all the sound These are as sound ideas as any other suggestion. At this point, Lydia gets Tuck back into Jack with an intentional kiss to get him in. That's where Tuck can help Jack fight off

Yes, So the big showdown then is twofold in the world at large. We have Jack and Lydia driving you know, down the highway in San Francisco, and then Scrimshaw, miniaturized Scrimshaw and doctor Kenker attack from the back seat, so they're wrestling them in the front and back seat. Meanwhile, inside of Jack's body on his esophagus, there is now a battle between the original pod and the new pod, between a Tuck and mister Igo. And this is just

Well, and it moves to the stomach for the final blows of the scene, and that is probably my favorite set piece of the entire movie. It's this raging sea of stomach acid at the bottom. Again, a ton of distance from the top of the esophagus where they enter the stomach to where the acid is. And Tuck has

This is a great set piece for the finale here the stomach is like this. Like you said, there's a lot of space there is. It's very well lit. That's another thing about the inside of the body. You just go by innerspace and fantastic voyage. It's like a well

It's very dark and so well and I misspoke. It's not his allergies that he needs to trigger. He stresses Jack out to the point where he gets reflux from the ay. Yes, and that's what causes the churn to which the fight then leads mister Igo down in the stomach acid, where he is eaten up, down to a skeleton an aka kaak bones skeleton, which.

Is a skeleton and the remains the prosthetic arm trying to drill through the portal of the original POD's Yeah so good, great great villain kill quality, kill here all the way.

Yeah yeah. So they get back to the good lab, they can't get Tuck out, or they can't quickly get Tuck out. The oxygen is at zero. At this point, they think they've lost all hope. Jack realizes that he's allergic to hairspray, which is the element that was introduced earlier in the movie, is given some hair spray, sneezes Tuck out onto one of the scientist's glasses, and.

Then they tweezer it, they tweeze her it, and they get it back into the chamber. They re size him, they re enlarge him, and we got our big, happy ending, which is of course a wedding in true Shakespearean fashion. We end with a lavish wedding. But who's going to be married, Well, we know who's going to be married, right, It's going to be tucking Lydia.

It's tucking Lydia. Jack is the best man, which, again just met these guys, but they've been through a lot together. So I kind of understand that. What I don't understand is why Wendy is at the wedding. Don't understand why mister Wormwood, the boss at the grocery store, is at the wedding. What I don't understand is why the doctor who prescribed the vacation for Jack is at the wedding. This is not Jack's wedding.

Yeah, the jerky military guy is there apparently with his son. It's this The events of this film just brought everyone together into this like tight knit community, this tight knit family, in ways that are perhaps a little inexplicable.

Yeah, and so it seems like a happy ending, but not quite we see that the cowboy is the limo driver, and that I believe Scrimshaw and Margaret are inside of the suitcase. Yes, placed into the trunk. So they're driving off on their happy wedding honeymoon drive down a twisty mountain road, and Jack realizes that the job's not done and he needs to help them out.

That's right. Oh, and we also find out that Tuck has the chips, the very coveted dangerous technology chips are his cufflins. So they set up a sequel here that, of course never happened. But I remember at the time as a kid, I just thought, if you set up a sequel like this, it will happen. It's going to happen. I feel like I spent spent a fair amount of time just assuming Interspace too was coming right down the pipe, and then it was coming up next. Never happened.

I kind of love the and then the adventures continued layer of it. I wish that more franchise films took that under advisement. I think it's okay to say Indiana Jones went on more adventures after this one, and that, you know what, I don't really need to show you what the last one is or the second to last one is, or continue that storyline if I don't want to. Sometimes it's fun to just say. And their lives continued to be that exciting, and so I agree with you.

Yeah. Yeah, It's like, I think it's great you have to set up these sequels that never happened. As long as you told a complete story, you put everything on the table, then I'm fine with just sort of dreaming about what else could have been possible. And this is a film that does leave everything on the table and busts out all of its tricks. So yeah, I don't feel like they held anything back with Inner Space. They just left that indow open to potentially dream up interspace too.

Yeah, it's very strict. I mean, it's such a bizarre fever dream of an ending scene where all of the characters from the movie are invited to the wedding of somebody who most of the characters have never met, and then all of the bad guys are also at the wedding in disguise to attack these two characters after the wedding, What are they gonna do to Tug? I guess they're good they I guess they know about the coup leaks.

Yep, somebody's gonna getized again. It's they're gonna be Shenanigan's.

Yeah, great time. Twist in the night Away takes us into the credits. The credits are actually a pretty tight credit roll where you're not it's not ten minutes long. It's like a good three to five minutes credits twist AND's playing the entire time and then you're out.

Yeah, and that's inner space.

Yeah, fun, fun time.

Yeah. I really enjoyed revisiting this one, and I feel like it largely held up. Yeah, you know, it was still very entertaining today. The effects were tremendous. Perform This were great. You know, you never know exactly what it's going to be like going back to a film from you know, the nineteen eighties, mid nineteen eighties and see how everything lands. But yeah, this was a fun one, good pick.

Yeah, yeah, this one for me, it like we were saying at the top, it's stitched into my memory of being a certain age because of how much I saw it at that age. And even though I did drop out a significant chunk of it from my memory, a lot of it took me back into that spare bedroom at my grandmother's house, sitting and watching it on a tiny TV. And to that point, it's not just the

All right, Dave boy, as we begin to lead out here, let's talk talk in Tofu for a minute here in case listeners don't remember from last time, tell us a little bit about what Talking Tofu is and tell us what has come out recently in the podcast and what's coming out in the future.

Sure, yeah, so Talking Tofu is myself and my co host slash wife Becky Streepy we're both vegans, and we felt like there's not a lot of fun vegan content out there. Some of the stuff that you see about being vegan can be kind of hard handed in the way that it convinces you of the value and the virtue of adopting a different lifestyle, whereas we don't really think about that much on a day to day basis.

To, all right, that's talking to That's t a l k I n Apostrophe TOFU podcast. That's right, So look that up. You can find that wherever you get your episodes.

Yeah, yeah, we gotta get you on there.

Yeah, anytime. All right, all right, We're gonna go ahead and close out this episode, but I'll just remind everyone out there that stuff to blow your mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.