A first time writer-director, in the right place at the right time, developed a story about a troubled young man, in the wrong place at the right time, as Donnie Darko became a dark twisted tale of cultural significance against a mind-bending plot, and resulting controversy surrounding its use of gun wielding after Columbine, and imagery of a plane crash just after 9/11. These factors would mean it would flop when it did eventually reach US cinemas in October 2001, however Donnie Darko would...

Technically the first ever quadruple-bill episode (if you also count the Richard Donner cut of Superman II, which we do), as voted for by Patrons of this podcast for, on the history and legacy of Superman II, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, Superman III & Superman IV: The Quest for Peace ! The sequels to the previous episode on Superman SUPERMAN II was inevitable after Richard Donner completed 75% of the movie, filmed at the same time as Superman (1978). His work on the sequel was...

Before Barbenheimer, there was The Dark Mamma. Two polar opposite movies going head-to-head at the box office, and both ending up huge successes in very different ways. The film adaptation of Mamma Mia! was never planned to be Universal's big summer 2008 hit, in fact it wasn't until test screenings that they realised what a gem they had on their hands. Mamma Mia! would not beat The Dark Knight at the box office, but it would blaze its own trail, for a jukebox musical based on a running stage...

It's got Tarantino's trademark dialogue, Rodriguez's trademark visuals and Salma Hayek dancing seductively in a bikini... what more could you want in a crime thriller slash vampire movie? Originating as a story by future Wishmaster director and KNG EFX visual effects master Robert Kurtzman, which he planned to direct as a low budget horror film, that all changed when he enlisted a then-unknown Quentin Tarantino to write the screenplay. This was well before Reservoir Dogs would put Tarantino...

We'll tear your soul apart.... From the depths of hell comes body horror, an exploration of sexual desire, lust and gratification, and the pleasure pain theory, as hedonistic Frank Cotton solves the Lament Configuration and receives a gruesome demise, only to be accidentally resurrected. Hellraiser is unlike any other horror movie of its time, not just for its content, but for the risk New World took on a first-time writer-director, based on his own novella rooted in sadomasochism, with no...

They're here... Some of the '80s most influential and popular films wouldn't exist without Steven Spielberg, and Poltergeist is one of them. But its origins aren't from ghost stories, but in UFO sightings, and it would be Spielberg's hesitance to do a sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind that would lead him down the path of creating a pseudo sci-fi horror sequel called Night Skies, itself based on the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter of 1955. Night Skies, a dark story of malevolent aliens...

Be careful what you wish for... Wishmaster might not be up in the realms of horror classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th, but for a low budget cheesy '90s horror fantasy, it has serious horror pedigree. Directed by visual effects maestro Robert Kurtzman, executively produced by Wes Craven and containing cameos from a whole host of screen horror legends, Wishmaster revels in its campy horror roots, and gives the Disney version of a benevolent and funny genie offering...

Steven Spielberg quite famously refused to take on a sequel to his iconic shark movie, Jaws, (as referenced in last week's episode on Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D and Jaws: The Revenge. But when it came to a sequel to his iconic dinosaur movie, Jurassic Park, covered on this podcast in episode 57 back in August 2020, Spielberg returned to the director's chair, despite having just set up the studio DreamWorks, and filming Jurassic Park and Schindler's List back-to-back. While Michael Crichton was writing...

The first ever triple-bill episode, as voted for by Patrons of this podcast for Sequeltember, on the history and legacy of Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D & Jaws: The Revenge ! The sequels to the previous episode on Jaws. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water. JAWS 2 was wanted pretty much immediately after the success of Jaws, but Steven Spielberg wasn't interested in reprising his directorial role. The director they did find, John D. Hancock, was fired after a month, and the...

We start Sequeltember 2023 with the sequel to last June’s episode on X-Men: First Class - itself a movie that didn’t deserve to be as good as it was, but it really was. When a sequel to X-Men: First Class was announced, fan expectation was high. Not only did it adapt a much beloved and influential comic book series, it also announced it was bringing the original trilogy cast and the new cast together, for the first and only time… But bringing together the new and old casts for X-Men: Days...

Welcome to 1985! Where CD players were brand-new, everyone loved Flock of Seagulls, everyone wanted to join the Mile High Club, "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" and Billy Idol gets it, I don't know why she doesn't get it... The Wedding Singer started life as one of Adam Sandler's trademark man-child comedies. It became something different after the involvement of two incredibly famous women - Drew Barrymore, and the late Carrie Fisher. It's also the annual birthday episode, which means I...

SURPRISE! No-one knew this one was coming. Not the Patrons, and no-one on social media. This week was going to have no episode, but I really wanted to do an episode on the crazy story behind Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, and how a sequel this wacky and ambitious ever got made in the first place. A sequel that references Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, as well as containing evil robot versions of Bill & Ted, and the characters dying and ending up in hell. It's a lot more fun than the...

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure almost wasn’t so excellent. Its original plot had to be changed during shooting, a major role was left uncast until the last minute, its original ending was abandoned for being, honestly, most heinous, and its production company went bankrupt during post-production. But, just like the movie, its ending was most triumphant. Bill and Ted would pass their history report, form Wyld Stallyns, and their music would create utopia on Earth. The movie would become...

Two households (Baz Lurhmann & 20th Century Fox), both alike in dignity, In fair Verona (Australia / Hollywood), where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge (Strictly Ballroom was a huge success) break to new mutiny, (mutiny = partnership) Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. (there was no blood that I'm aware of) From forth the fatal loins of these two foes (they decided to collaborate, non-fatally) A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; (They made Romeo + Juliet, which...

A spec script sitting in development hell at Touchstone Pictures, called There's Something About Mary, wouldn't be the raunchy r-rated comedy it ended up becoming. Originally written more straight, with Ted as a creepy stalker hiring a PI to track down the girl he crushed on at high school, once the Farrelly Brothers got involved, it became more of a comedy (with traces of those stalker tendencies still included) and 20th Century Fox wanted in. R-rated comedies were big business in the '80s,...

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot: Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned; It's been almost 20 years since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released, and it feels like nothing else comes close to depicting the cyclical nature of relationships so honestly, or so deftly. With pitch-perfect performances from Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet (both playing against type), a stellar supporting cast of...

"They're coming to get you, Barbra!" You always ask for more horror, so I'm giving you the original and best. The genre-defining low budget zombie movie, an influential horror classic, an unintentional social and political commentary on racial inequality. George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead. The story of zombies has been rooted in culture for decades, and black history has its own myths, based around the Afro-Haitian slave trade, where slaves would welcome death to escape slavery, but...

Don't Panic “Hitchhiker’s by its very nature has always been twisty and turny, and going off into every direction. A film demands a certain shape and discipline that the material just isn’t inclined to fit into.” This is a quote by Douglas Adams, creator and writer of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Despite his (and many others') opinion that the material was mostly harmless (and unfilmable!), Adams was adamant for the big screen adventures of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod...

Another Nanorama (episodes slightly shorter, but focusing on interesting titbits of information) on the history and legacy of Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft's follow-up to the wildly successful Airplane! and The Naked Gun... Hot Shots! prime target for spoofing was Top Gun, but despite the material being right there, writing it turned into a potential life-imitating-art situation, when tensions started to build in the Gulf, and in the summer of 1990, Iraq (led by Saddam Hussein) invaded Kuwait,...

Guillermo del Toro loves Japanese cinema, no more so than his passion for kaiju films, and it's this joy that fuels a loving homage to kaiju cinema like Pacific Rim, and it's this movie that concludes Kaijune for this very reason. A director known for his cinematic monsters, and his metaphors for man being the monster, was surely ripe for a kaiju movie. Pacific Rim is often misjudged and misunderstood as just a smashy smashy monster robot B-movie, but it's a beautifully made B-movie, a...

It was the US Godzilla remake that spurred Toho into making their own brand-new Godzilla remake. Not the previous episode's 1998 Godzilla, but Gareth Edwards' 2014 Godzilla, which ended up becoming a huge hit worldwide, and giving Toho the confidence that they could continue the long-running franchise. Shin Godzilla was announced in 2015, and just like the 1954 original it emulated, it would be a Godzilla born of disaster and tragedy, as well as a Godzilla who was a terrifying threat to...

From the depths of Kaijune comes the King of the Monsters.... GODZILLA! But not the Godzilla many fans were expecting when a US remake was announced in the '90s, and not the first attempt to make a US version of the legendary kaiju. Steve Miner had tried to get a 3D version off the ground in 1983, and then there was the infamous Jan de Bont version in 1994. Both stories are fascinating enough, but always lurking in the background of the 1994 version were Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin....

Bong Joon-ho is a fascinating director, and for the start of Kaijune, a theme month dedicated to cinematic monsters, I simple had to start with The Host, one of his lesser-known films but also one of his most accomplished. Bong Joon-ho does tend to make movies about monsters, but usually they’re figurative monsters. Capitalism, colonialism, greed, class inequalities, social injustice. But here, this is a literal monster born from humanity's greed, government conspiracy and environmental...

Heathers wasn't the first teen black comedy, but it certainly would go on to define teen movies going forward, with movies like Clueless, Jawbreaker and Mean Girls all benefitting from Heathers' influence, either vernacularly, sartorially or thematically. A candy-coloured world juxtaposed against the metaphorical "high school is hell", Veronica Sawyer is a member of the Heathers, the most popular, and most hated clique at Westerburg High. Led by Heather, aided by Heather and brought up in the...

"Play Ja Ja Ding Dong!" Ok, ok... But also, to celebrate the Eurovision Song Contest being held here in the UK, and in support of Ukraine, the history and legacy of not only the contest itself, but also Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Will Ferrell first saw the contest in 1999, and became a huge fan. It would take him over 20 years to bring a movie to the big screen, and it would be a movie endorsed by the European Broadcast Union. It had to balance a fine line between being...