Ep.#439 - The Avengers (1998), LIVE!

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This time, it's personal.

On this episode, we discuss the Avengers live in Oxford, England.

Wow.

Good.

You got your cue.

Yeah.

They picked it up.

Hello.

This is the Flop House.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen.

Dan, what do we do on the Flop House?

The Flop House is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

And we're talking about 1998, The Avengers, not.

Dan I thought the Avengers came out in 2000 and something Elliot you beautiful fool you're thinking this has all my favorite American characters Captain America Thor we we took him from the Norse he's ours now Iron Man a genuine war criminal hero thank you yep that's pretty American actually yeah

Black Widow, Russian, technically, we'll take her, sure, why not?

No, of course, this is the film that was based on the popular British television show, The Avengers.

About Captain America.

About

Steed, John Steed, is that correct?

And Emma Peel.

Don't pretend you didn't watch this show when you were younger, Dan.

Dan, for the audience who may be listening at home later, if we release this, Dan gave a whole presentation about how just totally all over British TV he was as a kid.

And now he's like, oh, yeah, I think it's about a guy named John Steed, and he's like a secret agent.

In the first season, he had a male sidekick, and they were investigating someone's murder.

But then in the the second episode, second season, they took it over in a different way.

I've never seen it, though.

I don't know.

Well, I mean, this is the funny thing about making a movie, a big blockbuster American movie about the Avengers, because it is not something,

I think, widely known on our shores.

I did see it a few episodes growing up.

It would play on Arts and Entertainment.

A and E.

The basic cables version of PBS before it turned into like a place where you watch shitty reality programming.

Yeah, they really jettisoned the arts part of arts and entertainment eventually.

Yep, this is even worse

than when they made that Faulty Towers American remake movie where they were all superheroes again.

Yeah.

So yeah, basically my association with it was

Diana Rigg looked pretty good in a cat suit.

That was my main...

Why are you staring at me, Dan?

That's all you talked about in the green room.

Yeah.

Whenever I'm I'm a little pervy, I just need to look to you for comfort.

No, it's cool, dude.

Validation that it's okay.

Come in.

Yeah, let's do it.

So you're saying this was kind of like when the movie John Carter came out, and the filmmakers were like, people are going to lose their shit when they see a movie of their favorite character, John Carter, the warlord of Mars.

You know, we wouldn't even have American superheroes without John Carter.

And the movie came out, and everyone's like, I don't know who that is.

I don't know who this 100-year-old character is.

And my wife said, this sounds like the kind of movie where George Clooney plays a sad guy.

yeah well should we should we let's talk into it let's walk through the Avengers 1998 so

we begin with credits over storm clouds and very almost they should be ashamed of themselves cheap looking video effects for the the titles are kind of like spinning and like they're going down a drain or going up a drain and this is this is the first effect a child uses when they are editing on a computer And then when they turn eight, they go, why am I doing this?

I shouldn't use this.

Honestly, Elliot, I loved these credits because these were the most 1998

credits I have ever seen.

And it hit a nostalgia button and then everything else was sort of downhill from the credits.

Yeah, yeah, that's very true.

Did you guys see this when it came out?

No.

I did, yes.

Because

it came out like...

shortly after Men in Black.

I felt like it was like trying to hit a same tone or an audience as like a Men in Black.

They were like, you you know what?

People hated in men in black, the aliens.

Let's take them out.

I mean, you know, I,

yeah, I watched it at the time.

I was vaguely familiar with the show.

I like the idea of like mod sort of

spy stuff.

Uma Thurman, very beautiful.

Rafe Fiennes looks also very beautiful in this movie.

So here's my question that I should have done research for before the show, but I didn't think of it till now.

When did Austin Powers come out?

That's a good question.

Because I wonder if they were like.

There's no way of knowing.

There's no way of knowing.

And no one in the audience, look it up.

We should never know.

He's always been with us, L.

If you go back to ancient cave paintings of Austin Powers.

Yeah, baby.

It's like

in Cave of Forgotten Memories, Werner Herzlog is like, yeah, we see.

The ancient cave people have used the contours of the cave to adequately express the bulge in the pants of Austin Powers.

Here they have taken a jutting jutting out of the rock and painted a Union Jack underpants on it.

Yeah, interesting because it was not a flag that existed at the time, but those, you know,

they cast the runes and they made it.

So anyway, we're halfway through the opening credits, so let's keep going.

They are very, they're real sub-James Bond credits.

There's a lot of silhouettes.

There's a lot of silhouettes of umbrellas.

And as soon as you see umbrellas in the opening credits, you're like, this movie's going to be awesome.

We're introduced to uh ray finds as jon steed secret agent uh it types out 90s style on the screen john steed the ministry which is a band right yeah he plays for ministry the band right yep yep him and al jergenson yep okay he's classic classic john he is the image that most americans have of an english person bowler hat suit tie umbrella and he's walking through a little country village and everybody in it the milkman the cop the lady with a pram auto mechanic they all drop whatever they're doing as soon as they see him and they just fight him and he has to fight them all and the fighting is I would I would say sluggish

yeah the

so

we should address that half an hour was was cut from this film pre-release so that's a good sign usually right well and that's that's why much of it makes much of the plot makes very little sense because they cut a lot out but that doesn't explain why do you think they extended each shot of someone punching or kicking to fill that the time that was?

No, I mentioned it only to be like,

perhaps we can't blame the director for every problem this film has since the producers gutted it, but it is startling how

little sense of tension or ability to shoot an action sequence.

For a big action movie, this does not have

any thrills within it.

And part of that's the tone.

Part of the tone,

I know that the like the Avengers show was also sort of like very cheeky, like

kind of dry, like droll, very droll, droll, yeah, which a droll for people to know, it's like a droid of a troll.

Thank you for yeah, yes, we are

if you want a portmanteau explained, just come to me, Elliot Portmanteau Kalen.

We are in Oxford, the land of dictionaries, so I appreciate that they don't know, yeah, that's I actually grew up near portmanteau.

I still remember the sound of the fishing boats going out to get the words,

but but

the movie sets a problematic tone from the beginning where it's like,

well, it doesn't seem like Steve cares that much about anything that's happening, so why the fuck should we?

Yeah, that's true.

Well, I'm going to blame a little bit of that on the director, yeah.

So it was directed by Jeremiah Chechik, who I'm not, I didn't know by name, so I looked it up.

That I did look up, and he directed a little movie called National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, also known as the first movie I ever saw where I experienced not liking a movie.

The first time I ever saw a movie in the theaters and was like, almost like you have an allergic reaction to something and you're like, why is my body rejecting this?

I don't understand.

Like, I'm not enjoying this movie.

Am I using it wrong?

What's because you normally love Randy Quaid movies.

Yeah, the whole thing.

He just loves his politics.

That's why

in Total Recall, the guy's name is Quaid, and I'm like, when's Randy going to show up?

Yeah.

So Ray finds, he's fighting his way through this village very slowly.

It turns out it's all training exercise.

They're They're just testing him out as a secret agent.

He gives a box of macaroons to the guy who's testing him, which is going to go to his boss, code name, mother.

That's right, it's action superstar Jim Broadbent.

He's the head of the ministry.

Things are about to get topsy and maybe a little turvy.

And

he tells the prime minister.

Over the telephone.

They couldn't get the actual prime minister for the movie.

He tells him, the Prospero weather shield is down.

Oh no, the weather shield.

And this is presented as if it is a thing that is real that England has.

Maybe you do.

I don't know what that all is.

And this is also, I mean, I think that this may have meant more to us in the original cut, because it is my understanding that in the original cut we see Uma Thurman, who we will meet soon, working at the Prospero Weather Shield, just getting out, her husband dying.

We don't know in the movie as it exists that she just became widowed.

We see Uma Thurman beating up everybody in the Prospero base and shutting it down.

But instead, all that's left of that is a couple seconds of security camera footage we see later on.

Because when they decided to cut down the movie, they took out one of the action sequences.

So then we meet Dr.

Emma Peale, Uma Thurman, born and raised in England, right?

Yeah, local.

She's the former head of the Prospero program.

And she gets a box of chocolates delivered to her.

And when she opens it, there's a note that says, answer the phone.

And then the phone starts ringing, and she picks it up.

And the movie is like, the movie is trying to tell you this movie is going to be a little quirky.

But what it tells me is that there's a lot of unnecessary jobs in the British Secret Service.

You're adding a step in here that's not necessary, British Secret Service.

The phone has a thing that tells you to answer it, which they use because it rings.

But anyway, she's not going to be able to do it.

Maybe they cut out a scene where the phone rang and she didn't answer it.

Oh.

Because she's like just looking around.

She doesn't know what it is.

She's picking up

food and stuff.

She picks up a banana.

She hits the microwave.

It won't stop.

Yeah.

But we didn't see that scene either.

So she is sent to a private men's club.

The doorman tries to stop her because no women have been allowed in since the 1760s.

She shows she's made of Cerner stuff by walking past him.

It's a crack team of security they have at this club.

She goes to meet John Steed, who is nude in the sauna reading a newspaper.

And it seems this was a test of her as well.

We see a little bit of Ray Fine's butt.

You see a small amount of Rayfine's butt.

And this was right after English patient where you saw a lot of his butt, right?

Yeah.

So this has been our Mr.

Skin corner if you're interested in Ray Fine.

And of course, if you missed it, of course, he did full frontal as Robert Moses in straight line crazy on the stage.

He didn't really.

That would be amazing, though, if Robert Moses is like, well, Governor Al Smith, this is straight line crazy and just pulls his penis out

Please don't tell Roman Mars my co-host on the power broker podcast that I said that

Anyway, so they they they give their philosophies he's all about the rules.

She says the rules are made to be broken.

This will come into play never

And they're kind of smilingly smugly not liking each other.

It's your classic African queen scenario.

They don't like each other, but they're gonna fall in love.

But I know in the show they didn't fall in love, but this is a movie.

Even Even though she is just recently widowed, which I discovered.

Yeah, she's on the rebound.

So she's gonna be brought into

the agency and the ministry.

Okay,

sure.

The Avengers thing that they do.

But there's a so normally, narratively, there's a reason you might have a character come in from the outside.

It's either so you can show them sort of being trained and learning the ropes, and like through that point of view character, you learn the ropes.

Yeah.

Ropes.

Or it's sort of a mismatch where it's like, okay, well, Steve has the spy skills, but she's going to bring something else to the table.

But instead, this movie does a thing where it's like, oh, Uma Thurman's character is immediately good at all the same things and just seems like another spy.

So I don't know why it happened.

Well, there's, I'll tell you why it happened, Dan.

Because they go to the ministry, they talk to mother, Jim Broadman, someone blew up the lab for the Prospero Weather Shield.

Security footage shows it's Emma Peale who's the culprit.

She's like, but that's not me.

I didn't do that.

And the only, it says it in the British legal system, the only way to try someone for a crime like this is to let them loose so they can solve the crime themselves.

So she's gonna team up with John Steed, take it up with, I don't know, with whoever wrote that law book everyone uses in the 19th century.

I don't remember.

Anyway, so

she has to to work with John Steve, and mother's second-in-command, a woman named Father.

She's like, I think Emma Peale may have a split personality or want revenge for the death of her husband, who was a spy for us.

This is not really brought up again.

And I mean, the split personality ideas, but her dead husband does not.

And Father is played by Fiona Shaw.

Yes, that's right.

So we got, yeah, we got some.

It's classy.

It's a big deal.

How many haters?

I mean, it's got a great cast.

Yeah, it's a fantastic cast.

But this is the kind of movie where information is brought up and the characters are like, good, established.

We don't have to deal with that anymore.

Alternately, information is not brought up and the characters pretend that we know what they're talking about.

So

they fence for a while, Emma Peel and John Steed, then turn, and they talk about research and her background.

It's all very, it's kind of weirdly airless.

It turns out they're at John Steed's Taylor's.

He orders a set of boots for her.

This will come in important later on.

That's good screenwriting.

And

I feel like every scene is either an exposition delivery system or a pun delivery system.

That's exclusively the entire movie.

I was going to ask you, how would you describe their banter?

Because it's always banter, the banter of two people who hate each other and are pretending that they get along.

That's how it felt to me.

But how does it feel to you?

It's banter that doesn't actually have any jokes in it.

Yeah.

It's just sort of like, we're going to say this to each other in an arch tone, and that's how you know we're being witty.

I don't know about you.

I'm the expert.

Yep.

I don't know about you, but I could go for a bit of lunch.

I could also go for lunch.

And it's like, all right, there's no...

Later on, they're what I would call half entendres.

They're like not quite even single entendres.

But anyway, they leave for the country.

They're watched by the most sinister man in England, Eddie Izzard.

And

Eddie Izzard, who is, you know, is playing a bad guyness.

So they drive to the country.

Of course, it's England, so John Steed's car makes tea.

That's an American's idea of what English things are.

And they're going to see Sir August DeWinter, a fanatical meteorologist, and the choir, the choir, the chair, I misread my notes here.

He's the chair of a group called Brawley, which is a private science weather project.

And he is so obviously the villain, and the characters don't seem to know that for half of the scene.

And then they seem to pick it up, never talk about it, and just assume from that point on that he's the villain.

And it does feel like they cut,

25 minutes out of the movie.

No, no, there's definitely no scene at which they're like, you know, that guy who seems like a villain, we have the proof that he's a villain.

They just like skip over from like suspicion to like, okay, this is the bad guy, but we're also just going to kind of dick around for a while and not take him down.

So it's played by Sean Connery, who has a house full of, he's a rich weather obsessive with a house full of traps.

So like maybe he's the bad guy who shut down the weather system.

And as we'll find out later in the movie, he is related to a private weather service that creates weather that you can order to, bespoke weather.

And it's like, why'd you bother sending secret agents on this one?

Like,

there's a problem with weather in the country.

Maybe it's the people who can make their own weather.

Well, and they go into his house and it's just filled with snow globes.

So he's either like a super villain or like, I don't know, like my weird cousin.

So, yeah, so Emma Piel, she meets Sean Connery.

He first grabs her by the throat.

A certain something, seems like a villainous thing to do.

But then he admires her interest in weather and they they talk about weather and monsoons they almost make a double entre about the line about the phrase being wet but they do not go that far and she's like she's like well I heard the military cut the funding for your weather technology and he's like nothing's impossible they just didn't have the guts to do it but I'll do it I'm doing it right now and she's like well I'll see you later you know

And meanwhile, John Steed is walking around and there's super winds blowing him around.

And anyway, and DeWinter knows that Steed is out there.

And suddenly it's snowing on Steed.

Like, all the evidence is that they gave them all the clues, Mr.

Policeman.

Like, I don't know.

And

the evil Emma Peale shows up in a dog sled, shoots John Steed.

He wakes up in regular Emma Peel's home.

She denies that she shot him.

He reveals he was wearing a bulletproof waistcoat.

And they banter for a while.

And she shows him.

Yeah, he also is like...

Pretty cool with it.

Like,

I feel like he half doesn't believe like, oh, it wasn't her, but he's also like,

yeah, I guess.

I get shot shot by women all the time.

It's cool, you know, whatever.

Yeah, they, she, she stole a snow globe made by this weather company.

It's called Wonderland Weather.

So they go there, and literally, the woman there is just like, yeah, we make our own weather and we sell weather.

So if you want weather, this is the place to go.

You know, we do it.

And they're like, we are recommended by August to winter.

And she's like, yeah, sure.

Two secret agents.

They mentioned my evil boss.

Like, cool, I'll just show you the goods, what we have.

You know, I don't know who this actress is who plays this part, but

she was fine.

So, meanwhile, this is when the movie starts.

Wait, sorry.

I'll admit that I don't.

Who plays the Wonderland weather receptionist?

Oh, yes, okay, okay.

It seemed like a long role that was supposed to have a joke at the end of it and then doesn't.

And she just,

they're like, look, we're going to browse Lola.

She's like, okay.

And then just walks out of the scene.

And it's like, oh, there's no button or anything on the end of this scene, huh?

You know, it's.

I was asking because I couldn't quite hear, but like, I know that the woman who shows up later on in the street with the gun

was a part that was offered to Diana Rigg, and she was like, No, thank you, I won't be doing that.

It's like, I don't do this anymore.

I'm gonna wait till Game of Thrones comes on TV so I can be in that.

So, they so this is when the movie starts getting, starts, stops being cutesy and starts being quirky.

Where August DeWinter, he's holding a meeting with all of his other council members, but they can't know each other's identities, so they're all wearing enormous plush teddy bear costumes.

And this, I know, I was into it.

This is a thing that I do know is from an episode of the series, as is the MC Escher stares later on.

There are these nods to the series, but what's interesting about them is, like, while I can't recall whether they make sense in the series, they sure as shit don't make sense here.

They're just thrown in.

And I can imagine someone who has never seen an episode of The Avengers being like, what the fuck?

Why?

Did you see that?

He was just wearing a bear costume.

I remember reading a review of this movie that came out, and they're like, for no reason at all, why are they meeting in teddy bear costumes?

Yeah.

And

this was received well by critics.

Yeah, this is a huge hit.

Yeah, it won all the major critics.

All of it.

Yeah, yeah.

Best picture.

Yeah, sure, sure.

So,

I mean, it was nominated for a Rezzi for Worst Picture, but it lost.

I don't care about that.

It lost to Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho, which say what you will about the unnecessariness of that movie is basically psycho.

It's like, don't give it a Rezzi.

Come on, what are you doing?

Anyway, this is much worse than that.

So anyway, he goes, I understand this is tough.

We're all super villains.

If anyone doesn't have the stomach for it, tell me now, resign, I'll give you a million dollars.

And two teddy bears raise their hands and he throws poison darts into them and kills them both.

At that point, I would just quietly leave the organization.

And so they're Wonderland.

Steed and Peel walk into the boardroom and finds the dead teddy bear bodies.

The movie is handing them the clues.

And they unmask one of them.

Uh-oh, one of the dead ones was one of the Prospero scientists.

They chase after some bears.

They split up.

There's bears everywhere.

John Stevie fights Eddie Izzard and some other guys.

He uses his umbrella because he's the penguin or something.

And Eddie Izzard drives off, but not before first dropping a map to the Brawley secret headquarters.

Because again, the movie is

not since seven, where the movie was like, these guys are just screwing it up.

Bad guy, walk into the room and announce yourself to them.

Like David Fincher's off-camera being like, one of these idiots is going to figure out it's David Spacey.

Just like, David Space, just show up, just go.

Like, David Fincher's the DM, and he's like, my players aren't figuring out my mystery.

I'm just going to have, I'm going to have Strad walk in here, and they'll deal with him.

It reminds me of, there was a game that you ran us through once, and afterwards, you were like, I set up this clue.

If you went over here, I set up this clue.

I mean, our character was just bumbling around doing nothing.

And I'm sure I've never sounded more disappointed in my friends.

Yeah.

So anyway,

they're on the roof.

Emma Peale is attacked and stalked.

She's stalked and attacked by one of the bears.

The head comes off.

It's the other Emma Peale.

And John Steed arrives.

There are two Emma Peels.

And that second, the Evil Emma Peale runs away by jumping off the top of a building.

And you know that she survived because they don't cut to her hitting the ground.

She just jumps off the top of the corner.

Well, what if they did?

What a beautiful moment it would have been.

If they did, it really would have thrown the movie a loop, you know.

Instead, she jumps off the building and we cut to the next scene.

So did the characters check?

I don't know.

Now, I read somewhere that the evil Emma Peale, I guess in the movie, is a clone, but originally in the screenplay, she was a robot.

Well, at one point she was a robot, but in the movie, she is supposed to be a clone, but the scene explaining that, again, was cut.

So, there's a brief mention of cloning at one point in the movie, and you're just, I mean, the movie is making it easier for the heroes of the movie to solve the mystery than it is making it for the audience to understand the story.

Yeah.

They don't understand.

It's like you wanted the movie makers to be like, John Steed and Emma Peel are not the audience for this movie.

Like, anyway, they, they,

mother and father are arguing and John Steed explains what's going on and it turns out the World Council of Ministers is about to meet in London on the day of the patron saint of weather,

which is a real Batman thing to do.

And

August DeWinter, he's testing out some kind of lightning gun.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

August DeWinter?

Yeah, it's a clever reference to Rebecca.

Yes.

Just one of many Easter eggs to the work of Daphne Des Moyer that's riddled throughout The Avengers.

If you'll notice, there was a bird in one scene.

And that night, Emma Playlist.

And audiences didn't look now at the Avengers.

So that night, Emma P.L.

She explains some made-up science stuff as they play chess to John Steed.

And there's more banter.

And she's found an area of England that has a cluster of microclimates.

Could that be where the bad guys are?

I don't know.

Let's check the map the bad guys dropped.

Meanwhile, father is playing croquet with August DeWinter.

She's in cahoots with him.

Oh no, what's gonna happen?

Meanwhile, Eddie Hizzard's using a remote control to pilot a swarm of robot bees to

attack John Steed at Amapil's car.

I have to admit that the jump between the croquet game to the bee scene is so abrupt that I was like,

I don't remember where the characters are going.

I don't know if these bees are something that we're supposed to be surprised by or not.

And the bees look tiny until one of them smashes into the car.

It's huge.

It's enormous.

Yeah.

But I think Eddie Azard seems to really be enjoying herself in the scene.

The B scene, I gotta give the movie at least this.

It was the one time the movie seemed to remember that the heroes should look worried that they're being threatened.

Yeah.

Like briefly, they're like, oh, shit, they're trying to kill us.

Yeah.

The bees are shooting guns at them, and then John Steve's shooting a machine gun at them, and there's all sorts of crazy car chases

it's just action extraordinaire and uh they're uh

john stead they they run the other bad guys off the road and john steadina pill are stopped

by an older woman a kind of proper lady in the road that's alice another spy she's got a huge machine gun and she shoots one thug and then scares off another and she's like mother and father aren't getting along right now and i know i'm worried about what's happening she i'm gonna help you and she is the most competent action hero in the entire movie like she is so very clearly the hero of the movie who just walks in and she's like, let's go to August DeWinter's house.

I know a back door that we can sneak in through in the hedge maze.

And they go in the hedge maze and they go, let's split up.

She was showing you how to get in.

Why are you splitting up?

It doesn't make any sense.

Also, when the bad guys have a double of one of them, you shouldn't split up.

That's another very good point.

They get into different traps.

August DeWinter shows up and fights John Steed.

It's an umbrella versus a walking stick.

And he flips John Steed's umbrella into the air and then disappears.

And then evil Emma Peel pops out and punches him.

And

good Emma Peel, I guess, she's strapped into like, it's some kind of weird machine.

I assumed it was a brainwashing machine just based on other movies where people are strapped into things.

It's not really explained.

But August Winter's like, join me.

You won't remember any of this when you wake up, but join me and do some stuff.

And

then he dances with her until she faints or falls into a trance.

He's about to kiss her.

Not cool.

And then the doorbell interrupts him.

And this is the most unbelievable part of the movie.

This movie with giant robot bees and a weather machine.

August de Winter answers his own door.

He's got a huge manor house.

He's rich.

He has weather machines.

He doesn't have a guy who answers the door for him.

He's like, oh, I'm in the middle of doing some really evil shit.

Like, I got to do this evil stuff.

Like, oh man, the doorbell.

And now, to press the button that will blow up all of England.

Ding-dong.

Oh.

I'll see who that is.

Excuse me, you know, I'm going door-to-door telling people about this new solar panel installation plan.

You know, you can get money from the government to put solar panels on your house.

Oh, I'm a weather baron.

I have solar panels.

Okay, yeah, well, cool, cool.

Anyway, who's your cable provider?

Well, this is why you're doing double duty.

I feel like that's an easy sell to a guy who can control the weather.

Is solar panels?

Yeah, exactly.

That's just good.

Okay, come in, come in.

Tell me all about it.

I'll get back to my evil later.

Yeah, exactly.

so Alice is at the door.

She's pretending to sell church raffle tickets.

Then she just pulls a gun out and says, where's Emma Peale?

Like, way to blow cover, you know?

And Emma Peale walks around very woozy, and she's wandering through the bowels of the house, and she's trapped in these like MC Escher-esque loop stairs and rooms.

This scene is great.

This, where she's, I'm a sucker for any scene where someone runs out of a room and then the, and then by some dimensional magic, ends up back in the same room.

I go, that's one of my favorite creepy things.

Yeah.

Although apparently the way to solve this, you know, physics bending room is just to smash the window and go out that way.

Yes, but it's the window has been disguised as a mirror.

Oh.

So unless she's Angus Scrimm from the Phantasm movies, she doesn't know to smash the window.

She doesn't look at that and think of it as an exit.

Yeah.

She's not, though.

That's just to be clear.

Yes, yes.

In case anyone's wondering, she's not Angus Scrimm from the Phantasm movies.

At no point does she tell anyone that they play a good game, boy.

In fact, quite the opposite.

She tells Jon Steed he is not good at chess.

Oh, interesting.

She's like the anti-Angus.

That's that little Easter egg.

That's a little phantasm Easter egg.

Yeah, Don Cascarelli was on the set, and they were like, hey, Don, throw in a line.

You're not good at games, boy.

So

she hears John Steed tapping on a window with his umbrella, something you would not do unless you needed to notify someone on the other side that it's a window.

And she hurls, she jumps through the mirror, and it leads outside, but she is knocked out.

And then Eddie Izzard knocks out Alice.

Emma Peale awakes in Jon Steed's flat.

Fair is fair.

If one character wakes up after being knocked out in one flat, it must happen the other way.

That's called,

what, like symmetry, you know, that's narrative symmetry.

And he's like, here are the boots I ordered for you from my tailor's.

And he flirt banters with her as he takes her boots off and puts

the boots back on.

Something that another movie might be sexy.

Yeah.

But here at Chief.

Yeah, I agree.

But here he just seems like a boot salesman.

Which, I don't want to shame anybody.

Maybe you think that's sexy.

That's okay.

Yeah, yeah.

I love Married with Children.

That's what he does, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, for anyone in the Married with Children fetish.

Yeah.

Wait, wait, wait.

I remember when I was, I went to school in Germany in like 2000, 2001, and for some reason, like, Married with Children merch was so fucking popular.

Like, watching German dudes walk around wearing polkai football jerseys, it was so funny to me.

Because it feels like something that you would have no con, I don't know, it feels like something you wouldn't have context with if you're a a German person yeah they would be like they'd be like why is he is not uh trying harder at his job I don't understand

He seems to not understand that if he is a shoe salesman, that is the role he has been fitted for by the state.

So you posit that they are studying it to try and figure out

what is wrong with this man and how they can avoid it.

It's a brilliant character study of a twisted mind.

A man who just refuses to refuses to accept what reality is telling him, which is that he should be trying harder to sell shoes.

Anyway, married mitt children.

Married mitkinder.

Married mitt children.

We have no German word for married, so it's called married mittkinder.

The only true marriage is between a human soul and the spirit of destiny.

I took two semesters of German in college.

I know what it's all about.

Yeah, sure.

So

they're about to kiss, but nobody gets to kiss Uma Thurman in this movie right away because they're about to kiss when father and mother and some agents burst in and arrest Emma Peale.

They've done the thing that they probably should have done earlier on.

Meanwhile, storm clouds are gathering over London, and they're not metaphorical storm clouds, they're real storm clouds.

To quote William Joel, a storm front is coming

in the United States.

America's greatest poet.

Yeah,

I mean, it's either him or

what?

Mariah Carey?

Sure.

So, as storm clouds gather, John Steed goes to the Ministry Archives,

which is staffed by an invisible man.

Now, this is Patrick McNee's voice.

Okay, Patrick McNee, the original John Steed.

This is a little cameo.

He said, you can have my voice, but I will not show my face in this movie.

He was very old at the time.

I think he was in his 90s, so that also probably.

He could have still played the main character.

And so we've got to bring you out of retirement, John Steed.

I'm in my 90s.

We'll do it anyway.

I mean, that would explain the sluggishness of the action scenes.

They were choreographed for a man in his 90s.

And Steve's like, I found this evil map that the bad guys dropped.

Can you tell me about it?

And the Invisible Man is like, yeah, I have all the information that you need.

It was on hand in the archives the whole time.

And this is one of those things, too, where it's like,

if it's the kind of movie where someone will casually show up as invisible movie, you can't just start doing that two-thirds of the way through.

You got to prepare me for that kind of thing.

So meanwhile, Emma Peale, she's in a padded room talking to Father.

She is losing her sanity.

She's acting frantic.

She's not making any sense.

She has stopped making sense, just like that movie told her to.

And father, with evil Emma Peel, they spray knockout gas at good Emma Peale.

Oh no, why are they doing this?

It doesn't help their plan at all.

What is this?

Speed to?

Why would you you bring the woman who can stop you, whose romantic interest is the man who can stop you with you when you're doing your evil thing?

Leave her in the padded room in a straitjacket.

Anyway, John Steed learns that August DeWinter used to work for the government.

He was kicked out.

He's always been close to father, and she sold him ministry land on an island in London from where he's controlling the weather.

This is all information they had the whole time.

Yeah.

If they had ended the movie with that guy from the beginning being like, well, you passed the test, Agent Steed, I would have been like, yeah, makes sense, sure.

Is this also sort of around the time that the bad guy just reveals himself by coming in and threatening everyone?

That's the Council of Ministers.

Is there an emergency session?

They're addressing the disaster weather that is sweeping the globe.

A real problem we are now dealing with that they are not taking as seriously as the fake weather in the movie.

And August Winder enters as Sean Connery.

You know he's going to be a kilt and kind of Scottish garb.

He announces.

Yeah, he's really cheesing it up, right?

He's really enjoying himself here.

Yeah, he is.

He announces he has control of the weather of the world.

He plans to destroy London, the city he is currently in, as a start.

Then he will hold the world for ransom to his deadly weather.

He gives them until midnight, and he is asking for 10% of GNP annually.

That's a lot of money.

This is one of these scenes in a movie like this.

I mean, I understand that the thought is: okay, like, no matter what, he's got this weather controlling device, like, he's got minions, you know, like this.

but he's not that many.

He doesn't have one to open his doors and shit.

Yeah.

He's in this room.

Imagine if he had some minions from Despicable Me run around his house opening their doors.

But they're just saying banana a lot, so they're not

really a threat.

Like he walks into this room filled with people, and no one's just like, get him.

You know, he's wearing a kilt.

Kick him in the nuts.

He doesn't even have the protection of pants on his lower legs.

Yeah, that's a good point, Dan.

But you should remember, this is Sean Connery.

People are scared of him.

They saw Zardaz.

They know what he's capable of.

Yeah.

And he was wearing even fewer clothes.

Less clothes?

I don't speak English.

I don't know.

So anyway, they're in trouble.

What are they going to do?

Meanwhile,

where were we?

Oh, yes.

Mother reveals herself as a secret agent, bad guy to father, points a gun at him in the snow, and evil Emma Peel is carrying good Emma Peel.

And then father knocks mother over, and

mother just ends up lying in the snow.

He's just lying there in the snow.

And the one funny moment I found in the movie is eventually John Steed runs up and he's like, you gotta go save Dr.

Peel and stop the bad guys.

And he goes to help Mother get up.

He goes, Don't worry about me.

I'll be fine.

And he just goes, okay, and runs off, leaving Mother lying in the snow.

And it would have taken him moments to just set him in his chair at least.

10 seconds more and you put the man back.

That was the funniest joke in it.

So John Steed, he finds the padded room.

They kept him.

He's got a computer pocket watch, much like Penny's computer book from Inspector Gadget.

And he's tracking something.

We will later find out he secretly put a tracking device in the boots he ordered for Emma Peale.

Creepy, creepy behavior, secret agent stuff.

Emma Peale wakes up.

Here's her is waking up to find themselves in places.

I'm like, what did Raymond Chandler write this?

What's going on?

And she wakes up, she's in a hot air balloon over London with father and bad Emma Peale.

Why'd they bring her?

I don't know.

And

mother points to Steed and is like,

he's like, go to the balloon, go to the balloon, leave me behind.

Emma Peale, on her own, disables part of the balloon.

It drifts off course.

Bad Emma Peel fights good Emma Peel.

The balloon eventually crashes through the top of Nelson's column, and then Emma Peel, the good one, falls off of it again.

The Peels are impervious to falling damage because she's fine.

Nothing bad happens to her.

And the balloon crashes into a Wonderland weather sign that was not adequately set up as a thing that was there for them to crash into.

It explodes.

John Steedy finds Emma Peel on the ground.

She's alive.

It was tracking the tag in her boots.

They kiss.

Finally, but John Steed is like, well, that kiss was just to test your identity.

I can't admit that I have emotions in any way.

And anyway, the mother, now back and on the phone again, assures the Prime Minister his agents are on the weather case.

This scene is useless.

If you're going to cut anything, cut the scene where mother is informing the prime minister of something we know already.

They uh they John Steed and M Appeal now it's time for them to bring the fight to August to winter they get into they're in giant inflatable globes that let them walk on water like they're at spring break or something in Pro 3D.

This was in like the trailer, right?

I feel like this was like one of the big like images of the trailer.

Yeah, it's iconic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is.

They walk across the river, they go to DeWinter's Island weather station.

There's another dead prosperous scientist in a bear suit.

Who cares?

They get into this, they get into a phone booth.

Emma Peel knows the secret code to use it to get into the weather lab, a secret code that was set up in a scene that appears in the trailer for the movie but does not appear in the movie.

So it just seems like she knows, she just knows a password somehow.

There's a lot of going down spiral stairs for a while.

Anyway, they split up again.

Emma Peel goes to shut down the machine, which involves walking on a tightrope to a big globe that she's got to crawl inside of and then pull wires out of.

And DeWinter, and John Steed is going to go fight.

August DeWinter.

And that's, they're fighting on like a catwalk of some kind.

There's water underneath.

When she's going to go shut down the machine, that's when Eddie Izzard shows up.

Apparently, his character's name is Bailey.

This is told to the audience late.

It doesn't matter.

Who cares?

She eventually defeats him.

He falls to his death.

He doesn't have the Peel sisters falling in vulnerability.

This is all very edifying, too, because I watched this movie on the plane coming over here.

Your preferred way to watch planes.

To watch movies, yeah.

Long-time listeners of the Flop House know, Dan's favorite movie theater is in the air.

Yeah, your emotions are heightened, you know, it works on you.

This was the moment at which the couple next to me otherwise seemed very nice.

You know, the woman offered me some food she wasn't eating,

but they chose this moment.

Don't eat that, Dan.

They chose this moment to not get a drink from the beverage cart that was coming down their side of the aisle over here, but to order across me

two vodkas and apple juices, the drink of toddlers.

And I'll tell you what.

Were you like, I want to get in on this shit?

I also had a couple sitting next to me, and they seemed very unhappy with what I was watching.

And it was kind of an older German couple.

And now I realize they just really wanted to ask me about married with children.

I know.

They're like, finally, we're sitting next to an American.

We can just talk about Al Bundy.

I don't have to wait until he's finished with his film before we can ask him.

My German accent is turning more and more Scandinavian as it goes on.

So, Eddie Isard falls to his death.

The London Blizzard's getting worse.

Steed finds DeWinter's control area.

There's sword fighting.

There's water.

There's lightning.

Uh-oh.

Lightning hits Big Ben Tower, blows it up.

Oh, no, it's going to be so expensive to fix that.

And Peel's trying to deactivate the machine.

August DeWinter overpowers John Steed very easily, launches him over a railing, and then John Steed just climbs up the other side of the railing.

Is he Bugs Bunny?

Like, what happened?

I don't know how he did it.

Ultimately, John Steve stabs August Winter with his sword cane that acts as a lightning rod.

Lightning then hits the sword and pulls August Winter up into the sky like a lasso?

Like a lightning lasso?

Is he Pecos Bill?

What's going on?

He must, that must, like, if you love the weather, getting killed by lightning's got to be your like number one way to go for sure.

I assume it's it's Thor from the future being like, Avengers belongs to us.

It's very funny to me that a movie that's so based around the idea of weather didn't bother to research whether lightning can pull you places.

It's not really, it's not like an electric rope anyway.

That's why Ben Franklin did all that stuff with a kite.

He's like, it'll pull me up.

I'll be the kite then.

Finally, my dream of being a kite.

My dream is auditioning for the role of the kite on Pee Wee's Playhouse.

I need to get experience if I'm going to win this part.

This is all important American history.

Yeah, we all learned this in school.

Everyone knows the story of Ben Franklin and the kite and the Peewee's Playhouse audition that failed.

Anyway, that was the name of the...

That's a Metallica song, isn't it?

The Peewee's Playhouse Audition that failed.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah.

So a tornado's smashing up London, but Emma Peale pulls the right wire.

All the weather stuff shuts off immediately.

Then she dives into the water so that she can climb back up again out of the water and be reunited with Jon Steed, but the auto-destruct goes off and it just blows up.

It's fine.

They don't do have to do anything.

They don't have to escape or anything.

It just, it's fine.

So wait a minute.

So is the like the standard state of all weather no weather?

Like, that's what I'm trying to, like, wouldn't it just keep doing what it's doing for a little while?

I don't know a lot about mad scientist weather science.

But in real life, yeah, weather doesn't just stop when you flip the switch.

You know, it would keep doing stuff, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it would more gradually return to stasis, probably.

Not right away.

Fancy words here.

I can use words.

Can you go to my house and explain to my kids the concept of entropy?

Because I could not get it across to them.

The concept of entropy?

Yeah.

Yeah, just show like a picture of yourself from like 10 years ago and then you're like, same dude.

No, because when I, I don't want to give entropy the credit for that.

I point to that picture and I go, you did this to me, children.

Elliot, I have to admit, now,

it's very echoey up on stage.

I have to assume it's slightly better out there because people are laughing.

But I heard, when you said entropy, I heard, can you explain the concept of denture baby?

Yeah.

Denture baby.

So when babies are born, they don't have teeth, right?

Well,

maybe they can have some with denture babies.

Join me, won't you, as we go through the wonderful world of teeth for babies.

Yeah, the concept of teething is when babies are crying because they want their dentures.

They're like, wait.

They have tooth jealousy.

Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

Freud talks about tooth envy in babies.

Yeah.

Oh, I want to eat steak and corn on the cob.

Don't worry, baby.

You will.

Be patient.

Be patient.

No.

Don't grow up too fast, baby.

I want to grow up now.

Give me my dentures.

How do you have a tattoo already, baby?

What's going on?

Anyway, mother calls the prime minister.

The weather is done.

But Emma Peale and John Steed have not returned.

The next day,

August Winter's control pod surfaces in the Thames.

Steed and Peel are fine.

Why did they do that?

Yeah, why do they have a scene where they're like, they've never been heard from again?

And then like two seconds later, they're like, here they are.

Yeah, let's celebrate.

We've said this before about other movies.

It feels like someone heard how a movie is supposed to go and then made the movie and they're like, yeah, yeah.

And then the hero, like, everyone's supposed to think they're dead.

And then they come back and they're not dead.

They're arrived again.

But they just do it not good, you know?

Yeah, there's like, it's like in that, what, the 50 Shades of Gray movie where they're like, oh, Christian Gray's plane went down.

Then a second later he walks in the door and they're like, I guess you're cool.

Yeah.

It's like, my new kink is making everyone think I died in a helicopter crash.

Yeah.

It's a good one.

It puts me in mind of the next movie we're going to talk about, Spice World, which very charmingly keeps introducing a problem and then immediately resolving it.

That's true, yeah.

But they do that on purpose.

We're now at the

final scene, perhaps maybe one of the most unnecessary scenes in the movie, which is just Emma Peel and John Steed and Mother having champagne together.

That's it.

And there's no, like, I think you two are going to work together real well from Nice on, from now on.

They're just like, yeah, well, we went through that, didn't we?

We sure did.

Cheers.

And then that's the end of the movie.

It is a movie that at times I was like, did they think they were making an episode of a television show?

Because that's what it feels like.

It feels like it doesn't,

they're like, join us next week for the next movie, you know.

Never.

And

this was a launching pad for Sir Sean Connery, right?

He went on to make a lot of good movies after that.

Yeah, this was Sean Connery's breakthrough role.

Yeah.

After slaving away in the obscurity of the James Bond series and the Untouchables.

Yeah.

What's weird is that this was not the movie that drove him to retirement.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was the movie there where he said, I'm not doing this again, ever.

And tell Sir Billy, I'm going to come back

to make

Sir Billy.

Hey, is this Meredith?

This is.

This is Alex Schmidt from Secretly Incredibly Fascinating.

I'm calling because you have been named the Maximum Fun member of the month for the month of December.

Hooray!

Yeah, as the member of the month, you are going to get a $25 gift card to the maximum fund store.

You get a special member of the month bumper sticker.

And you get to use a special parking spot at the maximum fund headquarters in Los Angeles, California.

Definitely getting plenty of return on my investment.

I have not worked through all the bonus content yet.

If you're a Max Fund member, you can become the next Max Fund member of the month.

Support us at maximumfund.org slash join.

Hello, teachers and faculty.

This is Janet Varney.

I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year.

Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Allison Bree, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience.

One you have no choice but to embrace, because yes, listening is mandatory.

The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you.

And remember, no running in the halls.

Hey, it's Dan here, breaking in on this live episode for some sponsor and podcast announcements.

But first, what a joy it was to be in Oxford at their brand new Saint Audio Podcast Festival.

Thank you to them for having us.

It was a dream to finally get out of the continental, the continent of North America, go somewhere else with a podcast, and see a bunch of listeners in the UK.

But this episode is sponsored in part by Aura Frames.

Isn't it funny how the people we love most are often the hardest to shop for?

Luckily, there's one gift.

Everyone on your wish list is, everyone on your wish list, everyone on your list.

Geez, are you going to wish for these people?

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digital picture frame.

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you know this is a very good gift for family or loved ones where you can put new photos on, not even before you give it to them, but after you have given it to them.

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That is AURA frames.com promo code flop.

This deal is exclusive to listeners, so get yours now in time for the holidays.

Terms and conditions apply and we got a couple of jumbotrons here.

The first is for Kalina the Cutthroat by British Fantasy Award finalist Elijah Kintz Spectre.

It is a queer fantasy novel about con artistry,

dark dark magic, and relying on mutual aid when systems fail us.

It is also a book that

was partially written at Stewart's Bar Hencherlands.

Wow.

Hencherlands is now a literary hub, featuring immersive world-building, complex characters, thoughtful politics, goofy bullshit.

I like that.

And at least one wizard, Kalina the Cutthroat.

is out November 26.

And if you're wondering how to spell Kalina for googling purposes, it is spelled K-A-L-Y-N-A.

I'll assume you can handle the cutthroat on your own.

Order Kalina the Cutthroat by Elijah Kinch Specter through your local bookstore or online.

Also available in audiobook.

And we've got one more jumbotron.

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It is from Walt.

The message goes as follows.

For 10 years, I've used Facebook to warn of the dark powers of the Tom.

But still his power grows, and I'm desperate.

So I'll use his favorite podcast against him.

To all within the sound of this flopper's voice, beware!

Tom's birthday is nigh, and he is an actual literal monster.

Cower if you see him approach, but know his wrath comes for us all.

So that's for Tom from Walt, who's doing a bit of nagging there.

But happy birthday, Tom.

And now for a few flop-specific announcements, the next episode of Flop TV is tonight, provided that you are listening to this on the day of release.

That is Saturday, December the 7th.

We'll be discussing Highlander 2, The Quickening.

You can watch along with our Flop TV stream at 6 p.m.

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So if you live in the Bay Area or if you're willing to travel, check us out at Sketchfest.

For tickets, go to sfsketchfest.com.

And now, back to the show.

Hey, we should do our final judgments whether this is a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, or a movie we kind of like.

I will say that this is a bad movie.

Be careful.

You might lose the British British audience.

Dan, Dan.

Dan, Rayfine's parents are in the audience tonight.

I believe it can only endear us to this audience to say that the American version of a beloved British thing is not very good.

And in this case, it is not very good.

It is inexplicable, disjointed, not thrilling.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would agree that it's bad, bad, although, when I first flew over here, I was having some trouble with jet lag, and it helped me fall asleep.

I will say,

it's a bad, bad movie with the small caveat, maybe it was because I was also watching it on a plane, and the oxygen was so low in my brain.

But as it went on, it still wasn't good, but there were times where I was like, you know what, movie, I'm kind of charmed by how little you're trying.

It betrays a confidence in what they're doing that it shouldn't have, but it's the kind of, it's like the thing where where you see someone who is bad at a thing doing it with so much assumption that they can do it that by the end you're like, well, I'm entertained by that aspect of it, you know.

But it's you know, like when you see a baby try to chew a corn on the cob or something like that, you know?

It's like, baby, you're not equipped for this, but he thinks he is.

It's cute.

It's adorable.

So it sounds like it almost reaches like good, bad quality for you.

Almost.

I think the problem, I think the middle of the, I mean the second half of the movie is good, bad to me because it's so disjointed and it's so like kooky crazy.

But the first half of the movie is very boring.

So

skip to the middle.

Who cares?

Or watch something else, you know?

No one's making you watch the Avengers.

So looking at the time,

let's take

four or five questions, tops.

We're going to answer them quick.

Okay, it's questions.

And we'll turn the room over for the next show.

Thank you for coming to this one.

Thanks so much.

We really appreciate it.

I'm going to say my thing that I always say at the top.

We want great questions from everybody.

So before you ask your question, think to yourself:

Would anyone else in this room be interested in this question?

And also, everyone, a lot of times when we do these shows, people at the top like to tell us how great we are.

We're not that great.

But also, we really appreciate that you're here.

So we know you'd love it.

And this is perfect.

Five people have queued up.

No more.

Queued up?

Oh, some people have queued up, Daniel.

Oh, well.

Some of them's been in England for three days.

Queued up.

Wow.

I got booed so heartily at last night's Spice World screening that I need to pander now.

This was, I sorry, we'll get to the world.

How late were you up thinking about getting booed last night?

I had the gall to suggest that

while I love the Spice Girls, they were engineered.

Boo, which is

simply a fact.

They answered an advertisement, people.

I want Dan to start going, your sheep, all of you.

I also love the monkeys who answered an advertisement.

It's fine.

Anyway, next thing you're going to tell me, the Muppets didn't really get together on their own.

Yes, please.

Question.

Thank you.

Hi, Elizabeth, last name withheld.

I was just wondering if you guys already have any ideas for other bad British movies that you might watch next time that you do a show here.

Oh, other bad British movies.

We wanted to suggest the beast must die, but I would like to hear if you guys already have any ideas.

See,

the thing that I sort of suggested in my presentation is like only

the best culture from other countries sort of like makes it to our shore.

So it's hard to do it.

It's the opposite of beer, where the best beer tends to be kept from America, from other countries.

I am told that there's a movie about potato men that is not good, but I don't know much about it.

Like Mr.

Potato Head?

Sex Lives of Potato Men?

Is this a thing?

Am I getting this correct?

Okay.

What What do you...

Do you have anything?

I mean, I'd have to do some more research is the thing, because I feel like

there's a period when, I guess post-Fulmonte, when I said, England, I'm going to take a break from your movies for a while.

Because they were all kind of the same movie.

It was all like, check out these blue-collar guys who are going to do something.

Or check out these old men who are going to do something.

Or check out these old ladies who are going to do something.

And I'm like, often nude.

Yeah.

And I'm like,

you're supposed to be making horror movies that are more creepy than scary.

Come on, what are you doing?

I don't know, like, there's a period of time where I was working for an English company, and my boss is English, and he kept bringing me DVDs of Danny Dyer movies, and those were

all pretty bad.

Oh, you hit a nerve, yeah.

Thank you.

Thanks very much.

Hi, Andrew, last name withheld.

Fun fact,

M.

Appeal's name is apparently a pun because she was the appeal to men, the sex appeal, the M Appeal.

What are your favorite absurdly contrived names from movies?

Absurdly named.

I mean, this is a TV show.

There's a TV show in America right now called Tracker.

And the main character...

His name should be Tracker, but it's not.

His first name is Coulter, which I think is a very funny first name for a TV character to have because it's like, even Colton would be kind of like a too cool name for this character, but Coulter is like, they put another twist on it.

But a contrived name for a movie.

Okay, hold on.

What do you think?

Tracker was very heavily promoted during the Super Bowl, a thing that I don't care about, but as an American, I'm contractually obligated to still watch.

And I was just,

I found myself, my mind was taken by Tracker.

Don't you understand?

He tracks people.

He's really good at tracking things.

No one's better at tracking.

He can't find them.

He just tracks them to a certain place.

He always has to be at least 100 feet behind them.

Yeah.

I mean, what is it?

Elan Sleesbagano from the Star Wars episode two, who sells depths.

What's Rob De Niro's name in...

What is it, Devil Heart, Angel Heart?

Oh, yeah.

He's like

Cipher.

Yeah, Louis Cipher.

That's the head of heart.

Louis's best one, I think.

I'm going to throw my support behind Louis Cypher.

Because he's the devil.

They might have just named him Stamp, or something like that.

Yeah.

My name is D.

Evelyn.

Thank you.

My name is B for Bob, L Zebub.

B L Zabub.

Bob Lawrence Zebub.

Yeah.

Hey, Tobias, last name we've held.

So we've got a classic weather machine supervillain weapon being used in this movie.

What would you say are your preferred supervillain

world-destroying device.

If you were going to try and destroy the world, because you've got to do it.

We're all doing it together.

We're all doing it together as a species.

It's the most successful project humanity has ever embarked on.

Like, that wall in China is pretty good, but I think if we as a species got together, we could destroy the whole planet.

A real

weather is pretty classic.

Like, a space laser is kind of boring, but you know, like, it's got a certain brute force charm.

You can't argue for efficient.

It's the most efficient way to do do it.

Have you seen Star Wars?

They blow up that planet fast.

Even if it's just a big, like, giant magnifying glass that you put in front of the sun.

Yeah, yeah, that'll be good, I think.

What about one of those things that just summons Godzillas?

Like something that summons a bunch of Godzillas?

Yeah, yeah, the Godzilla summoner.

Yeah.

I think there's a...

Yeah, now you've got me to get it.

Because if I'm going to make something that destroys the world, I want it also to very easily kill me in the process.

So if the good guys stop me, I'm like, oh, why am I summoning all these Godzillas?

Yeah, I mean, you're making me think of Geostorm where there's the plot to kill the president, which is to create a Geostorm.

And it's like, that's going to kill a lot of other people and maybe not the president.

He's like, me and the Geostorm, we have an agreement.

It's going to get everyone around me, but not me.

You're holding up a headshot to the Geostorm.

This is him.

This guy.

And then I'll say, Robot duplicate of the president.

Gets in there, breaks stuff, you know, and everyone's like, why is the president doing this?

And I know it's because he's a robot, and the robot knows it's because he's a robot, and the real president knows he's been replaced by a robot.

Nobody else knows till it's too late.

Classic.

Stealthy.

Yeah, very stealthy.

The perfect crime.

There's no law against it.

If they bring it, they arrest me.

I'm like, show me in the law book where it says you can't replace the president with a robot.

Well, we never had to write one.

He's right.

I thought it was implied.

And I guess that dog can play basketball.

Yes.

Sean, last name withheld.

I watched this film a few days ago, and it was

a painful experience.

So I just want to talk about a better aspect of British culture and ask Stu,

when are we going to get some analysis on slang, or at the very least, when

Two Worlds Collide?

Oh, I've forgotten the name now.

You're asking about slom?

Slang.

Slang?

The album after adrenaline.

Oh, shit, okay.

So see.

everyone else, what's your favorite Def Leppard song?

So sometimes when a band like Def Leppard has made hit after hit after hit,

sometimes you got to get a bad one out of you, you know, and that one's slang,

which is how we pronounce it.

And yeah, it's kind of a

bummer.

But I feel like they turn it around a little bit in Euphoria, you know, like not the show Euphoria, the album by Def Leppard.

But yeah, I mean, it's a bummer, bummer, and that's okay.

I feel like it makes the other ones feel better by comparison.

I don't know.

You got to low standards for leopards that can't even hear.

It's making music.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah,

that's the Beethoven of Leopards.

Thank you.

I think it's about three or four years I've been waiting for that closure.

All right, this is the first time.

I was like this close to buying a deaf leopard sweatshirt at Primark today.

Hey, so I'm Mark, last name withheld.

I saw this film at 17 when it came out in cinema.

I paid for this.

And then you, I mean, you really paid when you watched it.

Yeah.

And I think as a kid, I loved movies, and this was the first film I saw, just like you with Christmas Vacation.

I came out of it and was like, holy shit, films can be bad.

Like, I had the same experience.

So I think my question is, what was something you saw in a film?

Could be recent, could be much further back, but that you saw and was like, this broke something I always believed about films.

It could be good or bad.

That's a very good question that I wish I had time to think about.

Yeah.

But we're under the gun.

Whenever we get a good question, like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

I mean,

I don't know.

This is not something that I saw.

Well, it's something I've seen recently, but it's a movie that I saw a long time ago also.

Recently, my wife and I went to go see a screening of the movie The Fall, directed by Tarsum Singh, which we saw when we were first dating when it came out in theaters the first time.

And it's an amazing movie.

And that's one of those movies where, like, it's a movie that is so kind of

so pretentiously up its own butt at times, but it's so beautiful.

And there's things in that movie where I'm like, oh, I didn't know you could make a movie like this.

This movie that is like, the story is...

kind of feels like it's being made up as it goes along to a certain extent.

And there's a there's a child performer in it who's clearly an amateur, but she's so charismatic.

And she's holding...

Lee Pace, right?

She's holding her own with Lee Pace.

So yeah, Lee Pace, the child performer.

And then you're watching images in it where you're like, how did they make that image?

Like, how did they do that?

And so that's one where

I'm like, oh, there's stuff they're doing in this movie that I've never seen before.

And I really love it.

But it's one of those movies where you show it to someone and half the time they're like, what am I watching?

Like, what are you doing to me?

I think for me, I remember loving a lot of Hong Kong cinema and martial arts movies like Jet Lee and Chow Yun Fat.

And then when they started coming over and doing American English language stuff, I'm like, man, this is terrible.

And it's because they, you know,

it's realizing like, oh, these actors who are such great performers in the hands of somebody who doesn't know how to make a good movie is not going to, they're wasted.

Yeah.

I wish I had an answer, but I don't.

And so, in the interest of moving us along, I won't try.

But if you can catch me afterwards, I'll think of something.

One more.

He does mean catch.

Like he's going to run away.

Yeah, yeah.

Catch me if you can.

Thank you.

We have one last question.

Shit.

A lot of pressure.

Sorry, am I allowed to swear?

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Apologies.

Calm down, sir.

You don't need to.

You don't really have to run.

All right.

First off, I just want to say thanks so much, guys, for coming over here for the first time ever.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

We speak for everyone here.

Thanks so much.

And thanks for just taking our brains away from themselves when we listen to you guys for hours after hours over and over and over again.

Question time.

We've got one and a half questions.

Uh-oh.

The half question I'll go with first.

Elliot, have you gone to that Popeyes over there?

No.

I promised my wife I would not go to the Popeyes while I was here.

She said, I'll be so mad at you if you spend time in England going to Popeyes, a place that we have in our neighborhood that you go to already too much.

Popeyes is rare over here, so.

And I mentioned that.

When you walk into the one in your neighborhood, they're like, hey, it's like Norman Cheers.

Exactly.

The huge, Mr.

Kate, you know it.

I say, break that promise, go to the Popeyes.

So, this film apparently had like half an hour of cut material.

I believe the next film also had about half an hour of cut material.

One of my favorite films, Event Horizon, apparently secretly had half an hour of cut material.

Do you guys have any films that you've heard that there's like this secret extra cut material that doesn't exist anywhere in the world that you'd love to see?

I mean, the classic one is there's a lost version of the Magnificent Ambersons that

I would love to see as it was originally intended.

I mean, because I love the movie as it exists, so

I doubt very much that the original vision of Orson Welles was worse than what we got.

And this is the other classic one.

I want to see that seven, eight, nine-hour greed that Eric von Stroheim made.

And they were like, what are you doing?

And they were like, you have to cut this to an hour and a half.

And he cut it down.

He's like, four hours is the best I can do.

And then they fired him.

But I really, I'd love to sit through that because

there's a version that there's a restored version of Greed that's like three and a half hours long or so.

And they just use stills for all those scenes.

And it's, it's amazing.

It's an amazing movie, even with just the as remnants, you know.

I'm just learning that you can cut stuff out of movies now.

Stewart thought it actually happened.

Yeah.

I'll have to think of something later.

You'll track me down.

Stewart thinks that movies are just shot.

Thank you so much.

Cheers.

Thank you.

Thank you to everyone here.

Thank you to the St.

Audio Podcast Festival.

Thank you to Oxford Town Hall.

Thank you.

We got another one coming up.

Thank you again.

I've been Dan McCoy.

I've been Stuart Wellington.

I'm Elliot Kalen.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you for being here in this cavernous cavernous space.

Thank you.

I think this is probably the nicest room we've been in, right?

Yeah, no, by far the nicest room.

What about when we played the Las Vegas Sphere?

What about that?

Wait, or did I dream that?

You're thinking of U2.

Oh, right.

That was not us.

It's going to be so cool when we play the Sphere and they play that with no sound, all on the sphere.

It'll be amazing.

Thank you for being here.

This is the first time we've been, well, not been in the UK.

We've all been in the UK.

We did.

I mean, we're men of the world.

We've been a third of the way through that sentence without having to add a proviso.

The first time we've done a show outside of the continental

North America.

That's true.

Yep.

So.

Woo!

Thank you.

We brought all of our A-game England material.

We're podcasting on the other side of the stage.

I wrote some.

I don't have any more England material.

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