Only three podcasting musketeers this time around to wage battle with The Four Musketeers from 1974, the sequel to the unexpectedly delightful comedy movie The Three Musketeers. Unfortunately, what surprised us about the first one is no longer present and the film descends to the low brow laziness we expected from the start. Surprising, considering they were originally filmed to be one film.

https://ia601608.us.archive.org/12/items/the-four-musketeers_202607/The%20Four%20Musketeers.mp3

We go back to the dark ages of comic book movies as we tear into Spawn from 1997 and we regret every second. We heard that it was notoriously bad, but we were still totally unprepared for it’s terrible impenetrableness. This time, expect: nobody being allowed to say the word ‘Hell’ despite entirely revolving around it, Martin Sheen’s evil guy voice, unnecessary skid marks, unexplained green goo, the absolute WORST CGI ever and Jesus Christ that bloody clown!

Get ready to check off your 80’s bingo cards as we scry upon Teen Witch from 1989, probably the most painfully derivative high-school movie ever made; a film so bad it almost feels like a parody of 80’s teenage nonsense movies. It’s a guilty nostalgic pleasure for one of the crew, but can they win the other around to it’s “‘so bad it’s good’-ness”? Come and find out in our discussion about: copious white-boy rap, terrible yet kinda catchy 80’s pop songs, squandering magical powers, Zelda Rubinstein love and that one moment where the film becomes a musical for no reason.

The “Popular Tv Character Gets a Movie” genre keeps resurfacing every few years despite almost always being unentertaining messes. But if their is one personality that this podcast thinks could pull it off it would probably be medical doctor come surreal stand-up Harry Hill, a comedian we all have affection for. Have we found the hidden gem of these British cash-in movies (that never actually seem to make any cash) or does it belong in the bin with the rest of them? Tune in to find out!

After a short tangent on classic British sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo (can’t imagine why!), we dive into a semi-informed discussion of The Three Musketeers from 1973. And by semi-informed we mean one of us actually read the book for a change. Up for discussion this time: dog chess, carpet ripping, chicken skewering, laundry duels, Roy Kinnear appreciation, Michael York’s stuntman appreciation and wondering whether that was blue feces we saw.

The Razors Edge was supposedly the reason that Bill Murray went on hiatus for 4 years in the 80’s, even though it came out the same year as Ghostbusters. The reception from audiences was poor at the time, so we are curious whether there is something there that people missed.
Well, we definitely found some respect for Theresa Russell’s harrowing performance and also some empathy for Bill Murray’s response to the film’s reception, but is that enough to get us to the end of this long, slow journey?

With this podcast’s mild obsession with the live action “Super Mario Bros.” movie it was all but inevitable that we would at some point tackle the “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” movie. Does this film succeed any better at making a cohesive story and world out of all the videogame nonsense than it’s predecessor? Well, it definetely looks great and we suppose it helps that they have an extra 30 years of canon to work with, but it certainly has it own unique pros and cons.

After some vegetable talk and Vic Reeves club singer impressions we get around to discussing The Defiant Ones from 1958, a film about two chained together convicts, one black and one white, as they try to elude authorities that we are weirdly much more familiar with the numerous parodies of. This time, expect: wet cigarette smoking, toad eating, turpentine pondering, Thunderbirds-style crashing effects and asking the question what’s long for ‘Lon’? (Leonidas, apparently!)

How do you make a film which deals with very depressing and gruesome subjects whilst also making it broadly and bitingly funny? You make a film about Ambulance drivers! Code 3, from 2025, is a hilarious comedy drama featuring slapstick, gross-out and cynical humour that chronicles a 24 hour shift of Emergency Responders, which constantly resists becoming overly sentimental as it deals with harrowing and grim matters such as: horrific accidents, mental illness, violence, hospital politics and severe burnout.

You don’t get many films about the Amish, do you? At least, not ones where they aren’t used solely to be made fun of. It’s also nice to see Harrison Ford in the 80’s not being Indiana Jones or Han Solo. Witness, from 1985, is a bit of a classic thriller these days, but we have a few questions why, considering it’s the most calm and soporific film about attempted child murder. This week, you can expect: awkward puritan romance, public toilet throat slitting, barn-raising, lemonade chugging, a fresh-faced Viggo Mortensen and a weirdly off-putting, moustache-less Danny Glover.

When James Cameron made the most expensive and most profitable film ever made about the Titanic, there was only ever one guaranteed outcome: the inevitable rip-off. But what we couldn’t predict was that the rip-off itself would set new standards in laziness, incomprehensibility and not understanding tone. This shipwreck really needs to be seen to be believed as we dive into the awful, yet morbidly fascinating Titanic: The Legend Goes On.

After The Nightmare Before Christmas bridged the long gap between Halloween and Christmas, it took movies a surprisingly long time to capitalize on the success by making more stop-motion, spooky family animations to milk this wilderness period. ParaNorman came out at the tail-end of this revival period in 2012 and we all agree it is a marvellous, painstakingly made animation that inspires awe by the clear effort put into it, but we have an unclear consensus on how successful it is as a whole.

When you see a title like “I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle” you have no option but to watch it immediately, or at least we here at SFFCH had no option but to devour it whole and live with the consequences. We once again find a movie that the universe has seemingly snapped into existence solely for our consumption on this little niche podcast of ours and we are not left wanting. Clearly taking inspiration from The Evil Dead franchise, this movie is a uniquely British take on the comedy-horror genre involving satanic cults, murderous motorcycle gangs, banquet-hall bar-brawls, coffins in sidecars, poo creatures, out of place werewolf references and a ninja-star wielding priest C-3PO.

Total Recall? More like Total Rectal, amirite guys… (pause for laugh)… yeah, this guy knows what we’re talking about…

Anyway. Some long lost memories are very pleasant when they come back to you many years later, reminding you of a simpler time with old pals and the crazy things you did. And then there are those deeply repressed memories that surface which bring only misery, trauma and sadness. We’re sure you’re catching our drift with this intro, so we’ll just say we have some feelings about this 2012 remake that need dealing with and you get to be our put-upon therapist. Enjoy.

This week we are proud to present some quality animation from our home nation of Wales. And by ‘proud’ we mean wary. And by ‘quality’ we mean shoddy. And by ‘animation’ we mean… well that one’s still up for debate, we suppose. The Princess and The Goblin probably should have stayed in our dusty attic with the dodgy ghosts of our Great Grandmothers, but who are we to deny any part of our rich culture?

Enemy of The State seemed like just another far fetched, borderline sci-fi tech thriller when it was released in 1998, bypassing it’s implausibility with intense action and pacey style. But as we cast our watchful eye over it nearly 30 years later we discover that it is still definitely that, but deserves some props for it’s foresight that ages it slightly better than maybe it should have been. Also, it’s seemingly a stealth sequel to The Conversation from 1974, which is cool, we guess.

We wanted a submarine film, but they’re all about the Second World War, or some war at least. But do you know who you can trust for some crazy submarine hijinks? James Cameron. He’s always up mental underwater shenanigans. This week, we watched different cuts of The Abyss by accident and we cant decide which is better: the short version which is tight, but has a confusing ending or the long version with a bigger climax, but also features extraneous country singing.

Sometimes we just need to gush about films and there’s really only one director who, if we choose any of their films at random, we can pretty much guarantee will hit a bullseye: Akira Kurosawa. High and Low from 1963 is a crime drama that demands a little more of your attention than usual, but we think it is well worth your time when it is so thoughtfully and masterfully directed by one of, if not THE, greatest.

Happy New Year, one and all. What better way to begin a new year than to totally disregard the first few films of a major franchise and start watching the third entry. Luckily we all have just enough base knowledge of Pokémon to not be totally confused the whole way through, but my God does this movie try its best to confound us. One of us thinks this is the Pokémon film they wish they got as a child and the others are now questioning their friends sanity. Tune in to find out who now!

Merry Merry Merriment Season to one and all from the ‘Spoiler Filled Film Conversation, Hooray!’ group. We found some more Wrestling Christmas films, but we’re too scared to do them so instead we turn to Charles Dickens’s seminal A Christmas Carol, a story told so many times in so many different ways, and ask the question: what if Scrooge was a ruthless TV exec making a tv show of The Christmas Carol and he himself is then Christmas Carol-ed? Don’t worry, it’s not as confusing as it sounds. We’ve all seen this Christmas staple before here at SFFCH and seek to find whether we actually like this movie or not. Tune in to find out the answer now!

We indulge Jamie’s Exorcist obsession again this week by watching The Nickel Ride, a 70’s crime movie starring Jason Miller (and it doesn’t help that he looks like Jamie’s other obsession Harry Dean Stanton in this) as a criminal gang’s fence who’s professionalism is challenged by the evolving crime landscape and leave us wondering which will come first: being killed by the criminals or dying of an anxiety attack? This time we discuss: connections to the reality TV show Storage Wars, floating bald heads, all the craggy-faced middle-aged men, using annoyance as a pre-emptive psychic attack and getting angry at the poor beer-pouring etiquette.

We head back to some well trodden and well loved territory this week in exploring weird, nearly forgotten sci-fi cinema from the 80’s exploring, analysing and deconstructing Brainstorm from 1983. Up for discussion his week: why is this film more about the social lives or nerds than actual sci-fi, the realness of inventing a ground breaking technology only to turn it into porn, memory bubbles, contemplating all the dreadful memories we would inflict upon Gordy and finding out this is a film of two unequal parts: before elongated bicycle and after elongated bicycle.

Ever wanted a comedic, yet ultimately heart-warming, movie about someone trying to guide their awkward niece through the trials and tribulations of becoming a fan of Insane Clown Posse? Well, we didn’t either really, but sometimes we don’t know what we want until we get it. Up for discussion this week: too much chicken parm, impressing Sensei Pete, the who’s who of B-list ‘that guy’ actors and what can be more formal than a pant suit and a cape?

We need a win this week and all signs point to Sleuth, a mystery thriller from 1972, being just the win we need, what with it starring Legendary British actor Laurence Olivier and a young British National Treasure Michael Caine as well as directed by the guy who made All About Eve! Come and see we agree if this is a great film or whether it’s just good enough for us to keep our sanity in our discussions about: memories of all our childhood grandmother-ornaments, Michael Caine’s cartoon West-Country accent, Olivier being the embodiment of eccentricity, bedroom entrance fees, Edgar Allen Poe looming and why a clown, man?

Someone wanted to mix musicals and short men, so this week we end up looking at Purple Rain starring Prince as Prince…we mean The Kid, an up and coming musician dealing with personal and professional struggles. This time, we ask the important question: what exactly is Purple Rain? (shrug) Can Prince be most accurately described as the smallest man in music? (probably) Why is the main character such an asshole? (cool, innit) Why is the best part of the film the worst song? (it’s something, at least) And what exactly is the brag in having a brass waterbed? (wtf?)

We return to the wonderful world of Hong Kong martial arts madness with Taoism Drunkard a.k.a. Drunken Wu Tang, which we soon discover is a dream logic, kung fu Carry On film and possibly the most baffling comedy film we have ever seen. Up for discussion this time: the most sporadic and hasty subtitles we have ever seen, our less than regular ‘speculate on the religion’ segment, checking for cherry boys, logic defying scarf physics, drag grannies, the complex comedy of corpse puppetry and whether we prefer ‘watermelon monster’ because it looks like a watermelon or ‘banana monster’ because it eats dicks.

We all know how terribly ‘men in drag’ comedies usually age these days and we were kind of expecting the same from Tootsie, especially seeing as it was made in 1982, but we are pleasantly surprised to find out its just a solid comedy movie with some great comedy performers and some satirical social commentary. It’s not perfect, though, with a few questionable things slipping through the cracks. This week we: wonder what other legendary actors would be like in drag, speculate on comparisons between Dustin Hoffman and the ‘hard to work with’ actor he plays, appreciate Dabney Coleman’s comedic sleaze and consider if the most dated part of this film is actually the soundtrack.

Merry Spooky Day once again from all of us here at SFFCH. This year, we have decided to tackle a much loved, comedy horror classic
from Abbott and Costello which inspired a long run of them meeting various horror icons on screen. Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein is fondly remembered, highly rated and unexpectedly popular, so it must be a very good film, right?! Well…..
Up for discussion this week: why isn’t the filmed called “…Meets Dracula”, how confusing is the term ‘going gangbusters’, Lon Chaney Jr trying more than he probably should, Lou Costello being a weird little man, kinda cool bat transformations, kinda not cool 40’s chauvinism and losing our minds learning about the film’s behind the scenes jester.

There’s a surprising amount of films called Fortress, but we’re watching the most obscure one, the Australian family thriller (if that’s a genre) that constantly switches between jovial, Steven Spielberg-esque kids adventure in the outback and violent horror thriller with kidnapping, murder and rape threats. Be prepared for: improvised tools and weapons, decapitated duck heads, menstruation referred to as ‘The Curse’, deadly ‘Home Alone’ antics, hearts in jars and who carries that much salad dressing on them!

We talk for far too long about the various meanings of the world ‘rumble’ at the start of this podcast as well as tangents about youth clubs and soap operas for kids. What’s all this got to do with the out first discussion of a Jackie Chan film, the Hong Kong martial arts classic Rumble in the Bronx? Not much really, but then the film is just a series of excuses to have fun, stunt-filled action set pieces strung together loosely so why can’t our podcast be the same!? Up for discussion this week: the largest small Chinese supermarket ever, the ‘we don’t know how videogames work’ trope of the 90’s, Jackie Chan’s polo neck tank top, throwing a truck of bouncy balls off a roof and that incredibly illogical hovercraft climax.

We all remember watching the t.v show Harry and The Hendersons in our youth, so we figured we’d better check out the movie, especially considering it had podcast favourite John Lithgow in it. Our questions this week: is this the most rugged and sexy we have ever seen David Suchet?, would a fan casting of The Big Show as Harry be any good?, is the ultimate lesson of this film simply ‘don’t drive like a douche in the forest’? and would we get a bigger audience if we did a Big Foot podcast or if we did a Big FOOT podcast?

Our Chinese martial arts movie kick continues with the 1994 action comedy Legend of The Red Dragon, which soon descends into a trope filled, silly, Looney Tunes-style live-action cartoon that forgoes logic and sense for as many visual gags as it is possible to jam in there and, do ya know what, we are totally here for it! It’s a film that never stops delivering it’s fun crazy antics, far too many to list here, so we’ll just say strap in for an entertaining wild ride.

It’s the classic story of ‘parents go away for the weekend and kids have to deal with hell portal that opens up in the backyard’ in The Gate from 1987. If you’re looking for a Stranger Things fix this may be the perfect film for you with its fun blend of kid-centred family film meets surprisingly effective supernatural horror in a movie featuring: demonic geodes, dancing with dead dogs, hilarious tiny gremlins demons, perplexing moth symbolism, our favourate miming scene ever and the seemingly inevitable fireworks climax of every 80’s movie.

How have 4 British people making a film podcast not tackled a Carry On in over 10 years? Some kind of generational trauma, perhaps? The fact that they seem to revolve only around innuendos to private parts? Well, whatever the reason we have finally deemed it time to examine this huge part of our comedy culture by watching, what we have been assured is ‘one of the good ones’, Carry On Up The Khyber. Come and join our discussion about: a plot that entirely revolves around not wearing underwear, the most cringe-inducing comedy names, every actor being incredibly charming, more actual satire than we were expecting and, whilst agreeing this movie’s time has passed, still finding a surprising amount to admire.

Richard Kelly took the world by storm with his debut feature Donnie Darko. There was a lot of expectation on his follow-up Southland Tales, a film that seemed to promise even more originality and mind-bending antics. Unfortunately, what everyone got was probably the biggest sophomore slump in film history with a drawn out, pretentious and non-sensical movie. What did we make of it? Come and find out in our discussion involving: taking a long time to try to figure out the story, an unexpected Justin Timberlake music video, ice-cream-truck weapons dealers, underwater perpetual motion machines and actually being thankful for the juvenile humour.

Moulin Rouge was huge when it dropped in 2001 and is credited with reviving the movie musical with it’s lightning pace, wacky antics and maximalist aesthetic. Was this actually a good thing? This week we seek to find just how well this jukebox musical has aged in a discussion about: elephant boudoirs, narcoleptic Argentinians, well hidden Ozzy Osbourne cameos, Richard Roxburgh stealing the show as the most stereotypical villain, David Wenham in drag far too briefly and just being overwhelmed by how aggressive this film is all the time.

We’ve never done a South African film before and what better choice than Yankee Zulu, a movie half remembered from childhood about criminals, poachers, theft, racists and royal affairs. But don’t worry, it transforms into outback Home Alone at the end so it’s all good. Up for discussion this week: dismemberment pranks, disappearing poo pranks, the weird rules of The South African Lottery, being surprised that Prince William is a main character in this and, yes, a hell of a lot of race swapping hijinks.

Oh dear, we’re going to explore the early days of anime film adaptation this week with the awkwardly named The Guyver. To be fair, the later days of anime film adaptation haven’t improved very much, but My God, they really didn’t have a clue what to do with this one. Come and join our discussion about: wasting your Jeffery Combs, mixing Power Rangers with Akira, David Gales’s giant teeth, forehead tongues, Mark Hamill disturbingly transforming into a cockroach and somehow mashing the chest bursting scene from Alien with the shark stalking scene from Jaws.

God forbid we actually expect a story about mermaids in a film called Mermaids. Of course we should have expected it to be about Cher as a flight-y mother moving her kids across country and her 15 year old daughter starting a love affair with a 26 year old dude. I suppose Christina Ricci does like swimming though, that’s… something. Come and join our discussion about: Bob Hoskins’ perpetual ‘lucky guy’ energy, pumpkin heads, rebelling by becoming a devout Christian, awful paintings, something about JFK and… nope, still no mermaids.

It’s time to fight our way through the back catalogue of martial arts films from The Shaw Brothers Studio by taking on The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter. Our first challenge: try to workout what the title of the movie means. Result: We fail. But don’t worry, we meet all the other challenges this crazy film thrusts at us in our discussion involving: plentiful Wu-Tang Clan references, the benefits of numbering your offspring, pond slapping, coffin ballet, wishing there was a training montage and being overwhelmed by the amount of forced dentistry in the climax.

We return to obscure Steven Spielberg this week with The Sugarland Express, a crime dramedy from 1974 which was his first official feature film and first collaboration with John Williams. Is their movie magic already fully formed at this point or is it a case of tentative first steps into greatness. Come and join our discussion where we: root for the protagonists to fail, discover the sub genre of ‘too many police cars’, witness our favourite car vandalism scene, ponder the effectiveness of the portable toilet antics and wonder just exactly what they did to make that child cry all the time.

This week we discover we all have a weird bias against Jim Belushi even though we don’t really know where it came from. Has society lied to us and will we discover, in our viewing of the wonderfully obscure Retroactive, that ol’ Jim is actually good and entertaining actor? Come and find out in our discussion involving: confusing rat experiments, surprising Power Rangers connections, the forgotten about job of micro-chip smuggler and props to M. Emmet Walsh’s stunt man.

Ever wondered what it would be like if a dog-frisbee enthusiast is flung into the not so distant future and has boring adventures in a spaceship that sounds like Pee-wee Herman? No? Well, here’s Flight of the Navigator anyways, an 80’s sci-fi that is often looked back on quite fondly, but not so much by this bunch of Welsh chumps who find out its a film of two halves: one half an intriguing, almost David Lynch-for-kids drama and one half annoying, only-for-kids comedy adventure. Watch out for: roaming robot cupboards, lots of 80’s synthetic drum beats, Sarah Jessica Parker flirting with a child, alien sphincter monsters with colds and so much God-damned dog frisbee.

Did they finally make a sequel to Electric Dreams? No, silly, it’s a dialogue-free, French animated movie about a boy and his dog…no wait, a dog and his robot that may be one of the most charming and heart-warming things we have seen in a long time, despite the countless times it keeps tricking us with false narratives and an ending which leaves you with only a vague sense of catharsis. And hey, good luck getting September by Earth, Wind and Fire out of your head, it certainly hasn’t happened for us.

There are a million and one films about dogs, not so many about cats. Maybe it’s because dogs are easier to train and cats are essentially ungovernable, but Hey! does no-one enjoy a challenge anymore? Well, they seemingly did in 1978 when they made The Cat From Outer Space and fair play to them they got pretty decent performance from a cat. It’s just a shame that nothing else in the film got that level of attention or scrutiny. Come and hear our discussion about: flying motorbikes, inter-species cat romance, gaining U.S. citizenship by levitating a judge, last minute James Bond villains and giving far too much thought to alien cat society.

Sam Raimi is usually very comfortable with dark humour, especially with mixing genre elements like slapstick comedy, horror and suspense. So, his movie Crimewave, which is about a dweeb dealing with a murder plot, bumbling hitmen and trying to save and woo the woman he fancies and also written by dark humour maestros the Coen Brothers, really should have been a homerun, but ends up being a spectacular foul ball, with a major emphasis on the foul. What made this such a mess? Studio interreference apparently, but can that truly explain everything wrong with this misfire of a movie? Tune in to find out our answers.

We have differing levels of experience with the filmography of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar here at SFFCH, but none of us have seen what is probably his most well known film, Women on The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, a zany, dark comedy about women on the…verge of a…nervous breakdown…yeah. So come and find out: who is happy they don’t have to think too much, who hates British Rom-Coms with a vengeance, who loves the vibrant colours and kitsch the most, who thinks everyone is getting arrested after the happy ending and just what is everyone’s relationship with gazpacho soup.

Somehow most of the crew have never seen the film Ghost before and because of that their PKE meters (Podcaster’s Knowledge & Expectations) are all askew with readings of ‘corny romance’ and ‘silly 80’s nonsense’. Little do they know, they’ve discovered a bona fide classic. So come and listen to their discussion about: constant death fake-outs, screaming at cats, train-hobo-ghosts, ruining potential artistic masterpieces for a bit of muddy sexy time, one of the weirdest lesbian workarounds ever and general amazement at Rich’s mezzanine knowledge.

Most people think of the 90’s horror movement when they think of Japanese horror, so we wanted to go back to it’s roots and see what influenced it. Onibaba is a small scale, vaguely supernatural drama that relies more on the bleakness of war, poverty and human nature to convey it’s horror rather than monsters and spirits. Come and listen to our discussion where: one of us tries to deny the supernatural element, everyone appreciates the aggressive jazz, someone gets a lot less chauvinism than they expect and we perhaps get our own podcast ghost.

“So, I have this animatronic T-rex laying around, for some reason, do you want to make a film with it? No, there’s no script and no money and you have a few weeks to do it. Whatd’ya say?” This was the proposition that director Stewart Raffill received one day in 1994 and you can’t say the man doesn’t meet a challenge. Tammy and the T-Rex is probably the biggest and best ‘backyard’ movie ever made, but where does this silly, weird and perplexing movie rank on the overall film scale? Tune in to find out now!

We’ve all watched stoner comedies before here at SFFCH and know that they can range from endearingly stupid to utter dreck, so where does 2007’s Smiley Face fall on the filmic weed-ometer? Come and listen to us find out in our discussion about: well needed female stoner representation, long overdue Anna Faris appreciation, whether we would want our lives narrated by Roscoe Lee Browne, random Carrot Top sightings and trying to figure out if there was more to destroying the Communist Manifesto at the end (probably not).

We all wanted to watch some non-Star Wars George Lucas this week. Turns out, there wasn’t really much choice so here’s THX 1138, a film that everyone has misspelled at some point in their lives. It seems he always had the imagination to get alot out of a small budget and remains a surprisngly influencial artist, but really should stop remastering his old stuff. Up for discussion this time: vending machine therapy, futuristic fleshlights, Robert Duvall breakdancing and a few more references to Waiting For Godot than this film probably deserves.

The thought of school reunions makes the crew all nostalgic for their old school days this week as they tackle Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, the female answer to those ‘two dumb men do dumb things’ films from the 90’s. They came in with expectations of ‘silly blonde comedy’ and leave with ‘quietly funny and endearingly odd’ in a discussion about: perfectly executed dream sequences, Handsome Squidward Alan Cummings, pretend sex scenes, post-it notes, business women and one of the best dance sequences ever.

Years ago, The Internet decided that The Flintstones was a terrible film. We all bought into it here at Spoiler Filled and believed it, so there was little enthusiasm when it came to watching it. However, we soon came a shocking conclusion: it’s fine. For a film whose premise is essentially “Stuff, but it’s stone”, it is heightened by it’s attention to detail, fun practical effects and commited actors. It still has that God awful fat pig waste disposer though, so…

It’s taken us a while, but we finally realised that Denzel Washington is pretty good at this acting business. We’ve also got some due love to give for Elias Koteas and John Goodman too, even if Fallen has a crippling case of ‘Good Idea, Bad Execution’. Come and listen to us: debate demon possession rules, develop an aversion to James Gandolfini’s facial hair and try to comprehend the extreme subtlety of a mass murdering monster eating cereal.

Happy Merry Time, one and all!

It’s time for our festive filmic feature and where better to look for a Christmas movie than Japan! (It was bound to happen on this podcast eventually) And what better themes to tackle than homelessness, poverty, abandonment and suicide! But don’t worry dear listener, this film is somehow one of the funniest, most joyful and wholesome Christmas movies out there,whilst never holding back on it’s harrowing depiction of Wintertime on the Japanese streets.

It’s time to hunker down and watch some Michael Shannon this week as we dig into Take Shelter from 2011. It was brought to our attention as many consider it to contain one of Shannon’s best performances on screen and, by God, we do love a Michael Shannon performance here at Spoiler Filled, how could we resist?! Our love for Shannon remains undiminished, but we are a little more divided about the successfulness of the film as a whole. Is it a poignant study of mental illness and societal foreboding or a messy, often nonsensical re-imagining of Noah’s Ark? Tune in to find out our decision.

Happy Halloween!

To celebrate spooky season the Spoiler Filled gang have rummaged in the fiery pits of hell and found Pet Sematary 2. Listen now as we experience a complete personality switch where Rich and Abi love a trashy horror movie and Ant and Jamie think it’s a bit silly actually. Unbelievable scenes.

After watching the film Shampoo we have learned one great lesson about the hairdressing business: all you have to do to be considered successful is sleep with all your clients and then they won’t notice that your only trick is waving a hairdryer vaguely in the direction of their heads. Shampoo claims to be a satire of American society and sexual politics, with something to do with Richard Nixon in there, but we’re not sure what to make of this 70’s dramedy.

We get a backdoor George Miller connection this week with Dead Calm. Produced by Miller’s company, it is a film about a married couple trying to forget their child died by going on a boating trip in the Pacific and running into a creepy Billy Zane on a boat full of dead people. Nothing too suspicious here, then. Billy Zane on a boat…nope, doesn’t ring a bell. Up for discussion this week: asparagus dreams, being kinda happy they killed the dog for a change, that baby-through-the-windshield scene and just general appreciation for our boy Billy.

George Miller is… unfathomable, we’re going with unfathomable. He builds his career making apocalyptic action mayhem with all the Mad Max films and then suddenly pivots to making kids films involving animals, be they pigs or penguins. Not content with the original, fairly conventional Babe, Miller steps in as director for the sequel Babe: Pig In The City and just lets the weirdness flow. Did it turn out to be a wondrous family-orientated romp or a dark and harrowing nightmare bordering on animal cruelty? Tune in to find out.

We’re all armed with our barrel scrapers this time as we scoop Drop Dead Fred out of the cinematic cask, but we’re mildly surprised it’s not as far down there as we all had expected. Turns out it’s not just fresh dogshit smeared on new carpet and more like dried bogies smeared across your face (or, at least, so the majority decides)! We invite you to make up your own minds in this cult comedy that involves: assaulting violinists, sinking your best friends house, Rik Mayall turned up to 11, dusty vagina jokes and one of the lamest dream sequences ever.

Time to celebrate the weird and wonderful partnership of Italian action comedy stars Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer as we dive head-first and try to tackle to the ground Watch Out, We’re Mad, a film where two guys wreak havoc over local mobster because they blew up their dune buggy. Up for discussion this time round: hot dog guzzling, beer swigging, choir singing, acrobat assaulting, motorcycle jousting, not your typical British Villain and wondering why the hell Donald Pleasence is in this!

‘Curious’ is definitely the crucial word this week as we find ourselves puzzling over The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, not because of the people who made it (whom we mostly like) nor for it’s success and reputation, but because of the peculiar ponderances that the premise of the film alone elicits from our twisted imaginations. Could this film, about a man born old who grows younger as he ages, even remotely live up to the insane masterpiece we have all conjured up in our collective consciousness? Tune in to find out!

We’re watching Locke this week. That is a decision that we have made. We do enjoy when we get to be all Welshy on the show, it doesn’t happen very often, and seeing as Locke is just 80 minutes of Tom Hardy talking in his best, highly-quotable Welsh accent, we take full advantage to do so. Hey, and who would have thought concrete pouring could be so tense, huh!?

From the director of Napoleon Dynamite Jared Hess, who one of us describes very aptly as Wes Anderson’s naughty younger brother, Gentlemen Broncos is a tale of adolescence, friendship and the grubbier side of the entertainment industry dealing with plagiarism, creative compromises, standing up for oneself… Ah who are we kidding! We came for the camp and bizarre performance of Sam Rockwell, but will we stay for all the intense awkwardness, kitsch and gross out humour in this very silly comedy? Tune in to find out in our discussion including: surveillance does, rock hard popcorn balls, dune-buggy-riding cyclopes, making people out of testicles and a lot (A LOT!) of references to yeast.

Time to tackle one of the most notoriously bad films ever made this week, a film so bad that no-one is willing to admit it was their choice for the podcast. Is there anything worthwhile to be found in Monkeybone, a film named after a euphemism for an out of control erection? Short Answer: yes. Long answer: …(sigh). So come and listen to our discussion about: ‘bingo-wing’ fetishes, orangutan kissing, preferring Chris Kattan with a broken neck, giant Abraham Lincoln heads in the sky and trying to make sense of this ‘nightmare juice’ sub-plot.

One of us thought this week’s film was set in the 90’s (it’s set in the 60’s and 70’s), one of us thought it was Point Break (it’s not Point Break), one of us just wanted to see some Chris Tucker (yeah, he’s in it). One out of three ain’t bad, I guess. Dead Presidents caught us all a bit by surprise in some way. A portrayal of Black American disillusionment in society after the Vietnam War which is also a heist movie. And a war movie. But not really. Has it bitten off more than it can chew? Come and find out in our discussion involving: prosthetic legs, manky hands, pet decapitated heads, an actually intimidating pimp portrayal and awkward Tony Curtis jokes.

The A-plot of The Chase is a weird romance happening during a car chase between a criminal and his hostage. The B-plot is a chaotically comical satire of the absurd world of television news starring various rock stars and porn actors. Guess which plot we liked best. We can’t help but keep taking weird side roads in our journey with The Chase and talk about so many other films, but we do get to discuss some of the important questions: how do we keep watching films with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in, how do we stop looking at Henry Rollins’ neck and why is dancing to the Village People always our favourate thing in a movie?

Not many films have the chutzpah to just change from a police procedural drama to a semi sci-fi tech thriller and then to a fully fledged time travel movie two thirds of the way in, but Deja Vu certainly does have the gumption to attempt it. It’s safe to say none of us at SFFCH were really expecting this from a Tony Scott movie and are left suitably baffled and intrigued. Does the unexpected turn do it for the Spoiler Filled crew or are we left in a tangled web of logic and paradoxes? Tune in to find out.

We’re not terribly familiar with Frank Sinatra’s acting career here at SFFCH despite him being in a surprising amount of films. We wanted to see if he could hold his own in something which wasn’t a musical or a cheeky-chappy comedy and we think we’ve found the least likely film from the 50s to star one of the most famous singers on the planet. The Man With Golden Arm is a surprisingly hard-hitting and intimate portrayal of drugs, addiction and recovery from 1955 and, fair play to him, ol’ Frankie certainly did hold his own in a film including: a better class of drug dealer, allowing someone to practice drums in your tiny apartment, lovingly kept scrapbooks of fatal accidents and lot more of us not understanding gambling at all.

Robert Pattinson had a bit of a shaky start to his career with all that sparkly vampire nonsense, but we here at SFFCH have stuck with him over the years and you could even, maybe, sort of call us fans. Despite making some unique choices in roles, Damsel, a blackly comic Western, seemed like a particularly quirky film that caught our attention and definitely gave us a few surprises. Up for discussion this time: Robert Pattinson’s masturbation period, where did the barrel-wearing hobo stereotype even come from, dead bodies urinating and dynamite-strapped priests on small horses.

Yeah, we get it, it’s about the film script called 7 Psychopaths, it’s not about 7 actual psychopaths. It’s about storytelling and the creative process and how we glorify violence and bad people in fiction, but we can’t help but feel a little cheated by the misleading title. To be fair, we only needed the 3 psychopaths anyways (well, 4 I guess, Tom Waits gets a pass too). We’re not quite sure how to feel about this Martin McDonagh unconventional comedy, we love the performances, but can’t help but find a few holes here and there.

Frank Capra is regarded as one of the best and most popular film directors of all time so we thought it might be worth our while to check out Arsenic and Old Lace, a black screwball comedy from 1944. As is seemingly always the case when we tackle a classic film or the work of legendary filmmaker here at SFFCH, we find the film a little divisive. Who finds the film a work of genius comedy and who thinks it’s just plain dumb? Tune in to find out! (At least we can all agree that mental illness jokes have dated quite badly)

We descend into the world of LA-based bounty hunters this week as we plow through 1974’s blaxploitation film Truck Turner. It has everything you want from a classic blaxploitation: a ruggedly handsome protagonist, pimps and hoes, hit-men, bar fights, chases, intimidation and a funky soundtrack as well as plenty of stuff you didn’t need (but love anyways) like: constant reminders our hero smells like cat piss, rituals of a pimp funeral, sneakily getting your girlfriend arrested for her own protection, Nichelle Nichols being unhinged and singing your own love song over your own love scene.

We missed our ride home and are stranded in Japan again this week, so we hunker down with our old friend, anime movies, to pass the time. This week, we become the bewildered passengers of the wild, adrenaline-fueled ride that is Redline, a high-octane, sci-fi, racing movie that contains some impressively drawn and chaotic animation, a thumping soundtrack and so many weird and wonderful alien creatures that we have no more adjectives left to describe.

An obscure Japanese film that (roundabout-ly?) inspired one of the most popular horror video game franchises understandably has Jamie salivating this week on SFFCH. Indeed, everyone sees the potential that Sweet Home emanates and after watching it we truly think we have found something unique for a supernatural Japanese Horror film: boring-ness. Though there is still plenty of general lunacy for us to tackle, including: possessions, glass-bending musical interludes, fantastically protracted people-melting effects, an insanely fun monster puppet and realising that it all boils down to dead babies in these types of films.

It’s finally time to scrutinize and interrogate our first Vincent Price film and it’s one where he, as a 50-something year old man, is playing a real historical figure in his 20s. Movie magic, aye?! Fair play to him though, it’s a cracking performance. We all thought Witchfinder General was going to be a campy horror/thriller à la Hammer Horror movies and other Vincent Price B-Movies, but we are (pleasantly?) surprised by how grounded and unflinching a portrayal of this insane time period it is. So come and listen to our discussion where: no-one can remember the word ‘cavalier’, someone describes the film as ‘an hour and a half of screaming’, we realise everyone in the English Civil War were just right bellends and we appreciate the plethora of fashionable buckles and doilies.

Yes, we know it’s really dumb. Yes, we know it’s pretty ‘out there’ and yes, we know that none of this should really work, but the planets and stars have really aligned to make Wanted an incredibly entertaining experience that we all get a kick out of here at at SFFCH. So come and listen as we finally gel with director Timur Bekmambetov’s unique style of craziness in a movie involving: bullet bending, supernatural weaving machinery, Lazarus pits, magical assassins, skyscraper vaulting, rat bombs and so, SO much more!

Well, this aint our first submarine movie so we’ll dispense with the usual jokes about things being long and hard and full of seamen. Shame this movie doesn’t dispense with the poor humour. You don’t see Kelsey Grammer in movies much, do you? Not unless he’s hairy and blue anyways. Down Periscope is a movie we have all seen before here at Spoiler Filled and we don’t remember a thing about it. And that’s saying something considering it ends with a Village People music video. Enjoy?

We all know director Blake Edwards here at Spoiler Filled more for his crazy comedies, but he does have a few extra things tucked into his bag of tricks. Things like the neo-noir Experiment in Terror, a surprisingly effective thriller from 1962. (Yeah, we thought it was gonna be a horror movie too) This time around we discuss: how to better explain to someone you work with mannequins in your apartment, whether we have ever seen realistic physical therapy portrayed in a movie made before the 90’s and how do they expect us to take the villain cross-dressing as an old woman seriously.

Some of us here at SFFCH LOVED this film when we only had small, not fully formed brains decades ago. Somewhere over the years, the memories faded and it was lost to obscurity. But this week, like a terrible repressed memory, this film claws it’s way back to the surface and we must deal with consequences it brings. Freddie as F.R.O.7 is a baffling animated film that dares you to try and comprehend some of it’s wacky decisions, decisions that include: an unexplainable anthropomorphic frog car that’s in love with the main character, a Loch Ness Monster musical number, the use of the worst pop songs available in 1992 and using more stereotypes in one film than we have ever seen before.

This week we turn the big eye of SFFCH on The Small World of Sammy Lee, a British crime dramedy from 1963 about a cheeky chancer and his desperate attempts to raise a lot of money in a short time to not be beaten to a pulp. Will he succeed or succumb to his brutal fate? Come and find out in our discussion involving: being surprised at the production value of a strip club, wondering whether ‘background actor in a striptease’ is the best job in the world, pondering what happened to all that cool smoking that used to happen in films and lots of us all not understanding gambling.

We all love racing films, right? Especially how they are all so different and don’t rely on the exact same climax in every film, right? Sarcasm aside, we’re sure there are some really good racing films out there, but Days of Thunder ain’t one of them, by our reckoning at least. We mean, if you’re looking for a very toned down Top Gun rip-off with cars then this is certainly the film for you, but we need to cling onto the oddities like: the weirdly misjudged romantic plot which might be a glimpse into the real lives of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, sugar packet demonstrations, threatening medical care with a baseball bat, the overuse of the term ‘Superbowl of’ and a whole lot of of angrily throwing your hat on the floor.

A film hasn’t ticked as many SFFCH boxes as Lair of the White Worm has in a while. Big actors before they were famous, laughable dream sequences, a ridiculous villain, cheap special effects, unplaceable accents, a peculiar theme song and the seemingly inability to settle on a tone between: comedy or horror, serious or wacky, gothic or modern, dark or quaint. It even adds some new boxes that we didn’t even know that we needed like: climactic heroic bagpipe playing, sleeping in a big wicker basket and taking the idea of snake charming to its extreme.

Time to find out who among the Spoiler Filled Crew are true McConaugheads as we take a look at Mud, one of the films that kicked off The McConaissance. So come and listen to us McConalyze this Southern coming-of-age drama and find out: why we’re so McConaccepting about weird nicknames as Welsh people, who gets McConannoyed at the lack of anything happening and who gets dis-McCon-bobulated about their own McContrasting views of the film in our McConextemporanous McCongregation.

What shall we have from Japan this time; those crazy, weird and wonderful bunch? What about a beautiful anime? Or a chilling horror film? Or maybe a big, stupid monster movie? I know, what about a satirical drama about the caramel business?! So yeah, we’re going a little out of the box this time with Giants and Toys, a film about post-war Japanese capitalism and manufactured fame, but we’re glad to inform you it’s a little ahead of it’s time for a 1950’s movie and there’s plenty to talk about like: rotten-toothed fashion models, giving away small animals with your confectioneries and the endless cycle of stress-induced ulcers of Japanese businessmen.

We just remembered that Billy Bob Thornton exists and that he’s great at all this acting malarkey whilst also being a very peculiar human being. And he also writes and directs stuff too! So how could we not set our twitchy sights over One False Move from 1992 and see who is the first to flinch. It’s a tense thriller that was much praised at the time, but does the Spoiler Filled Crew get on with this ponderously slow yet surprisingly violent film? Tune in to find out.

It’s a right ol’ cult classic is Krull, aye! When you say 80’s Fantasy movie this is definitely one of the first ones to pop into your head. Is that because it’s so well made and entertaining? Is it because it’s iconic? Is it just because of nostalgia? Or is it one of those ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ movies? Well, we aim to discover the answers as we all have different relationships with this movie and we can attack it from all angles.

The perfect Christmas movie would definitely have a little bit of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, a touch of ‘A Christmas Carol’, a whole heap of unexplainable Crimbo ‘magic’, a smattering of ‘angelic figures’ and finished with a sweet layer of ‘lessons learned’. Throw in Nicolas Cage as a cherry on top and where could you go wrong…?
The Family Man has all the right ingredients to truly be a Christmas classic , but unfortunately something in the mix went stale and rancid and what we ended up with was something nauseating instead of appetizing.

As Christmas slowly approaches, we here at Spoiler Filled think it’s important to remember what this holiday is truly about. It’s Jesus. In case you were wondering. We’re doing The Last Temptation of Christ. It’s funny because it’s clearly an inappropriate choice for either a Christmas film or a Jesus film. We’re a laugh riot like that, we are. So what if we did this way before Christmas and had no intention of linking it to the holiday and it just so happens to come out now!? It’s jokes, innit! Enjoy the show.

Before he helped Marvel take over the world as Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr had been kicking around Hollywood for a long time. We wanted to go back and see a fresh faced RDJ before the super-stardom and his ‘wilderness years’ shall we say. What we found was Heart and Souls, a supernatural comedy about 4 ghosts from the 1950’s tethered to a boy in order for him to fulfill their unfinished business. Like pretty all movies involving ghosts and a vague afterlife, this movie raises so many more questions than it intends to answer and sets up an interesting premise which it can’t quite pay off. But hey, at least we get to see RDJ pretend to be a black woman pretending to be RDJ!

Yar-Har and fiddle-dee-dee me hearties. Welcome to (hopefully) the start of our next batch of 100 discussions here on Spoiler Filled. We kick off on our road to 500 with Treasure Island from 1990, which purports to be the most faithful movie adaptation of the 1883 novel. The question is: is being totally faithful to the book the best move for a movie adaptation (although, who knows because none of us have read it, surprise surprise)? Up for discussion this time: a divisive Charlton Heston performance, an unrecognizable Christopher Lee performance, a ‘pat-on-the-head, didn’t-he-give-it-a-good-try’ Christian Bale performance, apple barrel tension, cheese deals, easily survivable explosions and Oliver Reed really stretching his acting chops by playing an aggressive drunk man.

It finally happened! We delved too greedily and too deep into the pits of moviedom that we ran out of them and awakened a foul beast: The Remake. So, from now on, be prepared for us to just simply re-do out entire catalogue, repeating the same old stuff whilst only adding superfluous nonsense that wasn’t needed the first time. If only we were doing a Disney live-action remake, it would have fit so well…

We’re only pulling your leg dear listener (or are we…). You’d think that after 400 episodes we would be running out of steam and anything to say about these oft obscure, mediocre, mixed tone movies that we call home. Well, we certainly haven’t and, in fact, we’ve even thought of more things to say about them than we would have liked. So just this once we’re gonna take quick trip to our past, right to the beginning in fact and let some of the crew who never had the chance join in on our discussion of Batman Forever and let them praise/eviscerate any aspect that they’ve been waiting a decade for.

Spooky Season rears it’s ugly, burned, maggot-filled, decapitated head once again and we here at SFFCH are ready to vanquish it the best way we know how: make a damned podcast. This time our sights are set on the Horror Anthology Movie, a classic staple of the genre, with the 70’s British film Asylum. Re-animated body parts wrapped in brown paper, magical reflective suits, imaginary Swedes, murderous toys, maniacal laughter aplenty and a possible conspiracy we just can’t quite work out are what awaits in out spine-tingling discussion.

He’ll never learn, that boy! What Jamie describes as a ‘morbid fascination’ the rest of us agree would be better classed as a fetish by now: watching video game movie adaptations! Once again, we swim in this bog of sewage hoping to one day find a nugget of gold and this time we have dredged up Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. This week, we ask the important questions: how can a film with so many actors we have good will for be this bland? How is Omid Djalili not in this, we could have sworn he was? Are we really not supposed to know that Ben Kingsley is the villain? Just how does a poisoned coat work exactly? And how many time we can say ‘ostrich’ in one podcast?

It’s time to not talk about Mel Gibson (unsuccessfully) this time on Spoiler Filled as we probe into M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, a film about grief and faith wrapped up in an alien invasion movie. Now, we know its cool to hate on Shyamalan, but this time we’re gonna be uncharacteristically nice and consider whether this is his best film or not. This time we consider: the effectiveness of the movie’s wry humour, the meta-ness of having the writer of the film do a cameo apologizing for killing a character, whether OCD will save the day and did they really need to kill TWO dogs?

A long, long time ago, at the birth of Spoiler Filled Film Conversation Hooray, we all agreed that if we were ever to cover a Disney Animated film it was going to be The Black Cauldron. A movie based on a story based on Welsh mythology which allegedly almost bankrupted the now massive business juggernaut. Well, its been almost 400 episodes and we felt it was finally time to take a peak. Have we discovered an underappreciated gem or are we wishing we waited another 400 episodes to watch it? Tune in to find out.

How do you make some of our squeamish members of the podcast enjoy a gory 80’s horror sci-fi film? The answer: turn it into a wacky comedy half way through. We all came to Re-Animator for the delightfully campy and deranged performance of Jeffrey Combs who never fails to deliver, but we never expected his unique energy to be matched (and dare we say maybe even surpassed) by David Gale, mainly as a disembodied head. Other oddities include: fighting with cat puppets, a constantly masturbating security guard (perhaps), luminous green resurrection juice, passive-aggressive pencil breaking and trying to work-out the mechanics of how a severed head can talk and drink blood like a plant.

Time to join the bandwagon pretty late again here on the podcast as we re-evaluate the career of Brendan Fraser (even though we don’t do too much of it) as we rediscover the under appreciated Airheads from 1994. We get: Adam Sandler probably at his least ‘Adam Sandler’, an unexpected and extended Die Hard parody, opening doors with tongues, a surprisingly stacked cast for such a forgotten film and some wonderful impressions from our own Jamie.

Get ready for the quickest tangent towards erections we’ve ever had here on Spoiler Filled as we jump into bed with Light Sleeper, a Paul Schrader crime drama from 1992. This time there is: bemusement at the weird middle-class drug dealer lifestyles, wonderings about what superheroes would be putting in their diaries, discussions about the differences between writer-directors and director-directors, anger at nobody actually eating anything and some major aversion for what this film tries to pass for sex talk.

How do you adapt a novel to film where the story being told of the life of a man is constantly interrupted by meandering tangents and you barely get to his birth by the end of the story? Well, turns out you make a film where the film itself is being interrupted by meandering tangents of the people actually trying to make the film. A Cock and Bull Story is not your typical adaptation ,it must be said, but does this offbeat British comedy work for the Spoiler Filled Crew? Tune in to find out!

As if ‘body-swap’ films weren’t odd enough, we had to go and choose a Japanese one. But the truly odd thing is how grounded it is with its usually wacky premise. Not only that, but it may also have the most baffling movie title ever. Rich reveals his peculiar obsession with this niche genre of film and leads us through one of his favorites: I am You, You Are Me.

“The Brother From Another Planet”!? Well, with a title like that we’ve got this film all figured out before even watching it. Except, thing is, we really don’t. What we thought was going to be a cheesy, 80’s, blaxploitation, sci-fi schlockfest turns out to be something altogether different and…alien, you might say. It’s got: arcade-machine-fixing magic hands, conspiracy theory fanatical barflys, beat poetry spouting street philosopher drug dealers, a unique way of spying on people and some damn ugly feet.

Thousands of years ago, back in 1978, famous animator Ralph Bakshi attempted to tackle an adaptation of the most prolific and influential fantasy novel of all time. “It can’t be done” they all said, and they were right. Well, to an extent anyway, it certainly gives it a good go! We actually quite enjoyed most of Bakshi’s Lord Of The Rings, although we have some real problems with condensing The Two Towers into a 30 minute epilogue.

Movies telling the story of the making of other movies have become very popular over recent years, but one of our favorites has to be Dolemite is My Name, staring Eddie Murphy (in a return to form performance) as Rudy Ray Moore, the creator of the Dolemite character and persona and the subsequently titles 70’s movie. We have a mixed history with movies about movie making here on the podcast, but this movie manages to mix up the story with Moore’s comedy career and early life enough to keep us engaged and pleased to see Eddie Murphy back in the game. Also, it would be criminal to not mention Wesley Snipes’ wonderful turn too.

Can you get a more swords and sorcery swords and sorcery film than The Sword and the Sorcerer? Not only does it involve a sword and a sorcerer, but its a three-tiered shooting sword and a monstrous mud-birthed demon sorcerer. Although saying that, they only really turn up at the start and the end. But don’t worry, the rest of the film is stuffed with plenty wondrous and terrible things such as: screaming rock faces, a bounty of terrible wigs and beards, man-eating rat swarms, surprisingly gruesome transformation practical effects and your typical wedding day crucifixion.

Ever wanted to run off into the night with Michelle Pfeiffer and/or Jeff Goldblum? Well now you can with…Into The Night, a comedy action thriller from 1985. But we should warn you, should you choose to take this absconsion, be prepared for: questionable slapstick Iranian portrayals, cameos from every movie director working in the 80’s, death by shared ennui, Bruce McGill as a possible gay Elvis impersonator and probably our favourate David Bowie cameo ever.

It may sound like some kind of cosmetic surgery for your derriere, but The Asphyx is actually a British horror sci-fi film from 1972 in the vein of Hammer Horror films from the time. Whilst it may have the look down but its certainly lacking a few elements. Elements like a decent script, actual effective horror and filmic staging. However, it’s intriguing yet highly illogical premise certainly raises the eyebrows slightly here at Spoiler Filled. Be prepared for: Ghostbuster references, unethical experiments, immortal guinea pigs, guillotine hi-jinks, unbelievable drowning accidents and one very lazy, old-man mask.

Turns out that Al Pacino really hit the ground running in his acting career. The Godfather was his second staring role, followed closely by Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, but even in his first starring role in The Panic In Needle Park he really establishes himself as one of America’s greatest. And that’s not to mention everyone else’s fine performances. But this film about heroin addicts in New York is certainly not for everyone and is certainly not intended to entertain. Come and listen to our discussion now.

Ah the French New Wave! Celebrated everywhere for it’s impenetrableness! Well, not on this podcast! Neo noir Sci-fi films are pretty much a staple sub-genre these days, but not in 1965 when Jean Luc Godard decided to make Alphaville. Come and listen to us appreciate and decimate this New Wave classic in equal measures in our special irreverent way as we acknowledge its influence and experimentation as well as it’s incomprehensibility.

We have been inundated over the last decade or so with movie sequels and remakes that come a long time after their originals, usually trying to capitalize on some form of nostalgia. So this week, we’re going to look at one of the first films to do this and it turns out to be one with the longest gap. Psycho 2 was released a good 23 years after the original Hitchcock masterpiece and hoped to recapture some of the suspense, horror, weirdness and magic of it’s predecessor. Does it succeed? Well, yes and no. For a more detailed answer listen to our discussion now!

Can it get any more bleak than a British period drama about an underappreciated female historical figure? Turns out yes, yes it can if you add to that equation lesbianism and the British seaside. Ammonite is like the perfect storm of filmic gloominess fraught with awkwardness, greyness, the British weather and long dead creatures turned to stone. Sounds like a right ol’ laugh, huh?! Well, bear with us as we discuss why this film is worthwhile.

It’s 1998 and the last thing any Batman fan wants at this moment is any more Mr Freeze in their lives. Then, despite the fact it was probably commissioned to cash-in on the release of Batman and Robin, Batman and Mr Freeze: SubZero comes along and reminds us why these characters are so popular in the first place. Up for discussion this time around: the beginnings of trying to meld CGI and 2D animation, where the live action film got Mr Freeze wrong and our own small tribute to Kevin Conroy.

What we thought was going to be a Disney Channel film about sorority girl spys surprises us a little by being a Disney Channel style satire of action/spy films about sorority girl spys. Or we think so at least. We’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for being mildly amusing. D.E.B.S. from 2004 chronicles the burgenoing relationship between the leader of the teenage spys, Amy, and Lucy Diamond, the supposed super villain in a surprising but not unwelcomed lesbian plot from the early 2000s.

Time to revisit past trauma again on the podcast by watching Shallow Grave, a film that was watched far too young by one of the crew (and weirdly unheard of by the rest of the crew) and now it’s time for some catharsis. And it turns out it’s alot tamer than is originally remembered in terms of gore and disturbing imagery, but alot more distressing in terms of horrible, unlikable characters. So much so that Keith Allen of all people turns out to be the most likeable one, even with having his penis unnecessarily on display.

“We should do a Fellini film” Jamie said. “We all actually learned proper film criticism once upon a time, we can tackle an avant garde classic.” Well, whether it was high expectations or whether its because we’ve spent the last decade talking about obscure trashy films we just didn’t quite get on with this film constantly regarded as one of the best ever made. So, if you’re looking for a more irreverent look at this highly regarded classic about the personal and professional struggles of the creative process, then you have certainly come to the right place.

Oh good, another film biopic of a famous genius musician who has gone through some hardships in their life. “We’ve seen it all before” shouts the Spoiler Filled team expecting another run of the mill, oscar-baiting jukebox musical. But what’s this!? Could it be they’ve found something a little more unique, a little more genuinely surprising, a little more insightful, much like the musical icon which is it’s subject? Tune in to find out!

Well, a film hasn’t confounded us as much as The Manhattan Project in quite a while. A film where John Lithgow’s attempts to get laid lead to the possible nuclear destruction of New York. A film where a child builds a nuclear bomb in a jaunty montage. A film where we are supposed to side with someone who is essentially a domestic terrorist because he is young and ‘sticking it to “The Man”‘. So come and listen to us be bemused and infuriated in equal measures about: terrible laboratory etiquette, glittery shampoo being a substitute for plutonium, remote control car peekaboo hi-jinks, secret C4 dealings between teenagers and the fact that we would totally support our protagonist being shot dead by the military.

Oh no! It’s another video game adaptation. Why do we do this to ourselves? To be honest, we’re just glad to watch Timothy Olyphant playing something other than a grizzled sheriff type. Hitman came out in 2007, to our surprise as it does feel like a 90’s movie, and follows the exploits of Agent 47, the most conspicuous, bald-headed, barcode-tattooed assassin dealing with double crossings, his asexuality, fake Russian Presidents, turning people into bombs and doing all this while forgetting the streak of humour the games do so well.

Uh-Huh-Huh! Elvis has entered the podcast! We watched Baz Luhrman’s Elvis biopic and we figured maybe there’s something to this Elvis guy people keep talking about. So, whilst being most famous for his music, we delve into his movie back catalogue and pick out the one we most fancied: King Creole. Whilst it might not be the best representation of his entire oeuvre, which consists mainly of lazy, crowd pleasing musical comedies, King Creole is a surprisingly nuanced and dramatic outing which leaves us wondering if Elvis could have been as good of an actor as he was a singer.

What if one day all parents suddenly had the urge to kill their kids? Huh? What do you mean that doesn’t sound so far fetched? OK, OK, what if one day all parents suddenly had the urge to act on their urge to kill their kids? There we go! Well, that’s what we’ve got this time with Mom and Dad, a dark comedy horror which we are sure is some kind of social satire about modern family life, but lets be honest were here for the Nicholas Cage and the crazy.

So, we need a sports films to watch so we can go on our usual wrestling tangents, but we’ve already done a wrestling film. What could be the next best thing? That’s right, it’s competitive arm wrestling! Not only that, but its a cheap semi-Rocky rip-off both written and starring Sylvester Stallone as a trucker trying to bond with his son and win arm wrestling tournaments. Unfortunately, everything the premise promises is pretty much undelivered in a film about: an unrealistic child custody battle, terrible 80’s soft rock, teleporting villains, Ash Ketchum hat twirling mechanics and so much melodrama it hurts.

It’s a new year and we think that at this time of looking to the future and putting your past mistakes behind you that the perfect film to watch is one that is obsessed with being stuck in the past and trying to fix all your mistakes. Frequency is a forgotten-about 90’s time-shenanigans movie (which is kinda funny seeing as this discussion has been lost for months in the Spoiler Filled Vault) about magic time travel radios powered by aurora borealis, firefighters, cops, serial killers a very young Michael Cera and a very non-mental Jim Caviezal.

Merry Merry Time. Cold season had set in and its time for our suitably odd Christmas Time podcast. We have moved on from wrestlers and horror Christmas movies (well, more or less) and have landed on Batman Returns. Trust us, Christmas is all over this movie with Tim Burton’s macabre, gothic and wacky style at it’s peak, making this film a new one we think you should add to your annual Christmas binge. In our plentiful sack of movie nonsense this week, be prepared for: giant ducks, rocket launcher penguins, cold soup, thin batmobiles, death by electric snogging and a few too many lecherous quips than we can handle.

As we work our way through all the sports in the world, we take on skateboarding with the 80’s teenage cult drama Thrashin’. This time around be prepared for: skateboard jousting, bus-top disappearing shenanigans, gnarly spider graphics, jumping jacks sabotage, a banging soundtrack and perhaps the most boring sex scene ever put to film.

Before everyone started jumping on the Multiverse bandwagon, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kicked off the action with Turtles Forever. Come and listen to us all nostalgically reflect on our childhoods of watching the original Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles cartoon (we are British don’t you know, and can’t be dealing with all this ninja nonsense) in a discussion which includes: arguing whether we would all be Donatello’s or not, being disappointed with the 80’s turtles and trying to decipher why Shredder is a space slug.

We can do this the easy way…or we can do The Hard Way. We don’t get to see Michael J. Fox films very often so how about we watch one where he plays an actor. Not much a stretch you might be thinking, but pit him up against gritty cop James Woods in a buddy cop action comedy and we might have something here. Might. Be prepared for: getting weirdly heated over junkyard hotdogs, this films bargain bin origins, tangents about romance novel cover model Fabio, movie interpretations of video games and Fox and Woods relationship role play being the best thing.

No, it’s got nothing to do with that annoying song. Thankfully the title is ironic as you’ll only find grizzly, scowling cops in The Laughing Policeman. Why does Walter Mattheu always end up playing surprisingly cool characters in the films we pick? Why are 70’s film always so great? How does Bruce Dern always pull off assholes so well. Tune in to find out our answers now.

Ironweed. We came for the Tom Waits, we stayed for the bleakness and depression. Well, we actually stayed to do a podcast, but would we have if that wasn’t the case with this well made but clearly oscar-baiting movie about tramps? Come and find out in our discussion which includes: imagining Jack Nicholson’s breath, emotional support turkey, Tom Waits being fate’s punching bag and getting confused whether there are ghosts are not.

Have we ever done a pirate film? We must have done a pirate film, right?! How have we never done a pirate film!??! Well, let’s be honest, if we did one from the last few decades we would have been very disappointed. Luckily we went back all the way to the Fifites for The Crimson Pirate, a very light-hearted, swashbuckling adventure. Be prepared for the usual carribean islands, boats, brawls, sword fights, rope swinging and stripey tights as well as the slightly less usual pirates in drag, farcical antics, tanks and hot air balloons.

Irish films generally come in two flavours: gritty working class drama or magical mythical fantasy. But what happens if you mix them both together for a bit of magical realism? And by mix them both together we mean inserting a debatably magic horse into the story of down on their luck travelers. Well, you get Into The West, that’s what! Come and find out if this childhood ‘classic’ lives up to the expectations of those who have find memories and those that don’t.

Spooky Time is upon us again and this time we have chosen to dissect one of the works of Horror Master Wes Craven. The question is are we getting gritty exploitative Wes Craven or goofy Wes Craven as we lose ourselves in the labyrinth of The People Under The Stairs. Turns out its a bit of both, but can we stomach the mix of tones served to us? Be prepared for: irrelevant (but perhaps accurate) tarot, bafflement over the name Poindexter, dragon hoards, gimp suits, wall people, some very good dog acting, some debatably good symbolism and a somewhat out of place third act.

We have an Upgrade thrust upon on this week at SFFCH, but don’t worry because, whilst it does take over an hour and a half to complete, we think it is well worth it for a change. So come and join us as we: wonder what it would be like to have the Microsoft paperclip in your mind, get alot of of pleasure from the pun of ‘hand gun’ and ponder a little too much of how to most effectively torture Elon Musk.

We’ve earned the privilege of being allowed into The Big Room this time on Spoiler Filled, so we decided to put on Ruthless People really loud, a movie that seemingly invented the stereotypical 80’s aesthetic while also lampooning it at the same time. Although, what would you expect from a Zucker/Abrams production. In store for you this time, dear listener, is: kidnapping, murder plots, sex tapes, blackmailing, attempted dog killing, Danny DeVito being the biggest asshole and yet it’s all a zany comedy.

Sometimes you just have to be amazed at just what someone can create and persuade people to do in the face on so many artistic and financial hurdles. Honestly, we are just kinda impressed by the gumption it takes to make a movie like StarCrash, despite it turning out to be the hot mess of a Star Wars rip-off that is it. This week, be prepared for: Texan dildo robots, intergalactic perms, Christopher Plummer being in the wrong movie, David Hasselhoff being in the RIGHT movie, robot misogyny, fairy-light stars and things that look like lightsabers, The Death Star and The Force, but definitely aren’t, OK!

Ancient mystical martial arts meets the world of gangster pop music in The Last Dragon, a movie that is like constantly switching channels between watching a kung-fu B-Movie and music videos on MTV. In this discussion, be prepared for: very undefined mystical martial arts powers, video arcade gangsters, getting put in the bin and getting acquainted with Sho’nuff and Sum Dum Goy.

Time to talk an incredibly long time about The Incredible Shrinking Man! What should have been just a silly B-Movie turns out to have a little more depth than we expected. Tune in to hear about: the perils of mixing Nuclear glitter and pesticides, the amusements of seeing a tiny man sit on a huge chair, declaring war on giant spiders and one of the most patient and understanding wives in movie history.

What’s this? An actual good movie that people have heard of! What are we thinking?! Well, we attempt to jump out of our comfort zone of watching obscure or weird toned movies and see if we have anything to say about Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece Rashamon. And it turns out, like always, we have a lot to say. But whose version of events do you agree with? Come and listen and find out.

Time for a half remembered childhood film to be thrown under the bus again this week on Spoiler Filled as we explore Babes in Toyland, a 1961 Disney musical about nursery rhymes and lots of other nonsense. Be prepared for: awkward goose puppets, rip-off Laurel and Hardy, extolling the benefits of child labour, selling people to gypsies, an exemplary drag performance, poof guns and a really fun toy battle climax.

Did your movie turn out out too short? That’s OK, just splice in some footage from another movie, nobody could possibly notice! Wizards Of The Lost Kingdom is a dumpster fire of a movie, there can be no denying it, but by God is it fascinatingly weird and terrible. Seductress insectoids, forced cyclops weddings, manticores fighting disembodied heads (or whatever the hell THAT was), abominable snowman Chewbacca, winged cave lizards, disintegrating dwarves and so much more in this no-budget, schlocky masterpiece.

It’s time for our regular jaunt down to New Zealand here on the podcast and this time we are looking at the classic Goodbye Pork Pie, a comedy, crime roadtrip movie spanning the length of the country in a slowly deteriorating Mini. They certainly don’t make ’em like they used to!

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, aideu.(Get it? The Long Goodbye? Aren’t I clever?!) We do love the 70’s here at Spoiler Filled and especially gritty American movies about mumbling criminals and detectives. Throw in some Robert Altman and Elliot Gould and you have a sure-fire winner for us. So come and listen as we discuss such curiosities as: feeding cats raw eggs, impressionist security guards, the novelty of chicken kievs and how can we not mention Arnold Schwartzenegger in his pants.

Somehow we all agree that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is not a good film and yet we don’t agree whether we actually like it or not. Come and find out how that can be so in a film about a brain surgeon/rocket scientist/rock star and his eccentric band of merry men battling dimensional rock alien prisoners named John and all the baffling bollocks that happens along the way.

Hey! Remember Freejack? from 1992? Emilio Estevez? Time travel? No? Well, there’s a good reason for that seeing as it is so forgettable, but we are here to remind you about some of the things worth remembering like: eagle-man hobo, Amanda Plummer’s foul-mouthed nun, Mick Jagger saying ‘asshole’, some terrible editing and Mike from Breaking Bad being smacked in the balls.

Ah, the surprise twist! Sometimes it blows your mind and makes a movie a lot better. And sometimes it’s practically given away half way through the film and, if you think about it enough, it makes everything that happened in the film highly elaborate, unethical and irresponsible. Well, that’s the case with Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, a more Hichcockian than Scorsesean psychological thriller from 2010. (Spoiler: there’s a twist ending)

What better way to introduce David Lynch to the podcast than to take a look at one of the least ‘David Lynch-ian’ David Lynch films? Now, if that sentence didn’t make much sense to you, then you’ll probably have no hope when it comes to unraveling the weirdness that is Dune from 1984. But then, we suppose you could say that for any David Lynch film, though we’re pretty sure you’re actually meant to understand this one. Wow, this intro has gone as off-the-rails as the movie does. Remember the Tooth!

How do you think up a plot for a film based on a mannequin that comes to life? Turns out you just don’t. Montages of fashion and cocking about in a department store are seemingly enough to fill 90 minutes worth of feature film in Mannequin from 1987. Come and listen to us ask the important questions: just how does this Ancient Egyptian wish-magic work? Why is James Spader the only one who understands what film he is in? Why didn’t Hollywood Montrose have his own spin-off? Does the Mannequin’s mum ever get closure? And why is everyone so blasé about sex with mannequins?

We know you’ve all been in this situation: You’re girlfirend wants to watch a musical, you’re Dad wants to watch snooker and you want to watch cowboys battle vampires. What do you do? Well fear not, for we have the solution to this all to common predicament. Billy the Kid and The Green Baize Vampire seems like a film this podcast has willed into being, but we assure you this musical fantasy horror-comedy drama sports film has existed since 1985 and yes, it is as bizarre and unique as you expect.

Yeah, we know. Everybody and their Mum have talked about Silent Hill. Well now you can add 3 Welsh chumps to that list because we couldn’t resist. Jamie and Ant are here to attempt to exorcise some demons from their love of the Silent Hill franchise and Rich is here mainly to scold them for making him watch it. So come and have a listen as we brutally tear the flesh off this film from the perspective of fans and non fans alike.