Book Retorts

This week Danielle brings the tween horror with one of her favorite movies, the 1999 Disney Channel Original Movie: Don’t Look Under the Bed. When teen Francis Bacon (yes, seriously) wakes up one day to find all the clocks in her completely average town have been moved forward by hours, and all the neighborhood dogs coaxed on to the roofs of the houses, she knows she’s in for a weird day. Only the weirdness comes not from those events but from how all the adults instantly blame this innocent child for the hijinks. Oh also, she starts seeing a boy named Larry Houdini (yes, still seriously) that no one else can see, and who claims to be an imaginary friend, but not her imaginary friend. Francis being the logical sort, decides to tell just everyone around her about the invisibly boy and constantly ask if people can see the boy that only she can see. To no one’s surprise but her own, this does not work. Larry reveals that he was her brother’s imaginary friend until she recently (or not recently, the timeline makes very little sense) convinced her brother not to believe in imaginary friends so he could focus on his leukemia treatments. This movie is amazingly insane. Anyway, Larry is upset by that, but also reveals that the person framing Francis for all the pranks is the Boogeyman, or rater a particular Boogeyman (Boogeyperson?), who has a vendetta against Francis. Also, she can see Larry for no reason other than that he thinks “she needs him”. Eventually, Francis and Larry construct an anti-Boogey weapon called a Temporalfuge and some Boogey bait called Boogey Goo. Now Larry and Francis need to travel into Boogeyworld to try and save her brother by venturing under the bed, but Larry is struggling with an unwanted transformation. Hopefully, Larry and Francis can make it out of Boogeyworld alive, otherwise Larry may end up dressed as a Victorian lord speaking in rhyming couplets like the other Boogeyman. How has this movie not won all the awards?

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

For more delightful weirdness, follow us on Bluesky or YouTube.

If you like our content and want more of it, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

Elevator music courtesy of Stonefree.

This week Sam takes us back on the pilgrimage with the continuation of the 1989 Dan Simmons book Hyperion. The pilgrims touch down on Hyperion but find that in the three years they have been traveling, chaos has overtaken the planet. The mysterious Shrike has been wandering around murdering at will, and the citizenry of the planet—and the WorldWeb—have turned against the Shrike church. Still, with the help of some presumably no-longer-enslaved androids from the Shrike church, the pilgrims resume their journey upriver on a barge pulled by giant mantas. On the river, Fedmahn Kassad shares the story of what led him to this pilgrimage. It starts with Kassad at the Olympus Command School Historical Tactical Network on Mars in a simulation of the battle of Agincourt. How this simulation of medieval warfare helps with space combat is unclear, but nevertheless, Kassad is there and eventually meets a girl in the woods and they immediately have sex. This happens numerous times over the course of many simulations with Kassad and this mysterious woman hooking-up during battles throughout history. He becomes obsessed with her even though she never once speaks to him and he never sees her outside the simulations, or at all after he graduates. There is a boat-load of explanation of the FORCE forces and the New Bushido code, as well as more of Kassad’s backstory, but the exciting stuff happens when the space dwelling people known as the Ousters attack the Hegemony. Kassad saves the day by employing brutal tactics that turn many of the citizenry in the Hegemony against him—much to Danielle’s frustration—so the Hegemony CEO packs him on an eighteen-month time debt trip back to the Web to let things cool off. However, on the way they run into another Ouster warship and Kassad is forced to crash land on, you guessed it, Hyperion, where the mysterious woman finds him. Who is this mysterious woman? How is she connected to Kassad? How did she infiltrate the simulations? How did she know to find him here? But instead of taking her up on her invitation to ask literally any of these questions, Kassad decides they should have sex again. Sam is enraged by his priorities. Meanwhile, Danielle learns some fun new vocabulary words, so she’s the real winner here.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

For more delightful weirdness, follow us on Bluesky or YouTube.

If you like our content and want more of it, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

This week Danielle brings the style with the 2019 sci-fi film Paradise Hills. Meet Uma (Emma Roberts), someone who wears a metal cage on her face for her wedding veil and sings creepy songs to her new husband for a toast. But to become this perfect bride, some months ago she was shipped off to an island reform school for headstrong upper class ladies (Uppers) called Paradise Hills. There she meets the very odd head of the school known as The Duchess (Milla Jovovich) and immediately starts just telling her all about her life and secret lovers even though she doesn’t trust anyone there. She also meets fellow “students” Chloe (Danielle Macdonald), Yu (Awkwafina), and famous singer Amarna (Eiza González), and despite their strong desire to escape one night, they all fall asleep instead and never speak of it again. Uma spends her weeks on the island wandering among the many rose gardens, eating meals of two asparagus and a glass of milk, and engaging in therapy with The Duchess. Eventually, Amarna graduates and is sent off the Island, and the next that Uma sees of her on TV Amarna seems to be a completely different person; spooky. Sam grows increasingly exasperated with a movie that seems more interested in making weird looking scenes than in making sense. To wit, one day Uma is strapped to a carousel horse and lifted high in the air and then shown a looping video of her arranged fiancé—whom she does not like—proclaiming how awesome he is for hours on end. Why this is done is utterly baffling, and made only more so when the movie’s big twist is revealed. Well, one of the big twists, because the ending is so totally bonkers it nearly breaks Sam. So join us for a movie that’s fun to watch and pretty to look at, but is perhaps the most-nonsensical media we’ve covered this year.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

For more delightful weirdness, follow us on Bluesky or YouTube.

If you like our content and want more of it, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

This week Sam starts the epic recap of the 1989 Dan Simmons novel Hyperion. Far into the future after humanity has spread through the stars to many planets, a group of seven people are tasked with undertaking a pilgrimage to the Shrike, the mysterious and deadly creature that guards the Time Tombs on the planet Hyperion. The Time Tombs are opening and there is also an Ouster migration cluster that is threatening to take the planet, and the secrets of the Tombs, away from the Hegemony. Thus Meina Gladstone, the CEO of the Hegemony, sends a message in a “fatline squirt” to the Consul, who is one of the pilgrims, and tells him to be on the lookout for an Ouster spy among the group. If none of that made sense to you, don’t worry, Danielle is convinced this story is perhaps the most incomprehensible one Sam has ever shared, and totally crazy to boot. Aboard a massive spaceship made from an actual, living tree, the pilgrims gather and agree to tell their stories so they can better understand why each of them was chosen for this journey. First up to share is the Catholic priest Lenar Hoyt, who tells the story of another priest, Paul Duré, who was exiled to Hyperion by the Church for falsifying data at an archaeological dig. Duré plans to study an isolated tribe on the planet, which is composed of people supposedly descended from the crew of a seedship which crashed there hundreds of years ago. To reach the village, Duré must traverse the deadly Fire Forests filled with tesla tress which both absorb and emit lightning, a phenomenon that greatly annoys Danielle since the trees don’t seem to burn themselves down in the resulting conflagration. When Duré finds the tribe, he notices they are dimwitted, physically bland, and seemingly bereft of humanity, and show a cult-like devotion to maintaining their population at seventy people. As he stays with them, he starts to uncover a horrifying secret that shakes his faith and leads him to extreme actions. Before all that, however, is the introduction of a word gross enough to challenge “khui” for the throne of uncomfortable words: Gymnosperm. So get ready for a deep dive into a massive space opera, full of stellar sci-fi words and technobabble, that only gets weirder and more incomprehensible the more it’s explained.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

For more delightful weirdness, follow us on Bluesky or YouTube.

If you like our content and want more of it, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

This week Danielle and Sam are rerunning one of their favorite episodes about the 1976 pulp horror novel Night of the Crabs by Guy N. Smith. Enjoy!

When a pair of swimmers disappear off the coast of Wales it’s up to well-known botanist, and uncle to one of the missing swimmers, Cliff Davenport to uncover what happened. Why, exactly, it’s up to him is anyone’s guess, but Cliff quickly proves himself by uncovering crab tracks on the beach (is that a thing?) and concluding his nephew was murdered by sheep-sized crabs. Spoiler: Cliff is wrong, they are, in fact, cow-sized crabs; c’mon, Cliff, do better. Cliff is made to quickly forget the grief of his lost nephew in the arms of the nubile and newly divorced Pat, who is one-hundred percent on board with giant killer crabs, having seen crab tracks herself (no seriously, are crab tracks a thing?!). The two investigate and have sex in about equal measure, but it’s not until the nearby secret, but not too secret, military base is attacked by an army of giant, invincible crabs lead by, as dubbed by Cliff, the cunning King Crab, that anyone else takes notice. Cliff, now somehow a marine biologist, works with the department of defense to devise a plan to entomb the crabs in their underwater cave. This plan, predictably, fails spectacularly, and so many are killed by the enraged crab army Danielle had to give up keeping count. All Sam knows is that he has a new hero: All hail King Crab!

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

For more delightful weirdness, follow us on Bluesky or YouTube.

If you like our content and want more of it, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

This week Danielle brings the exciting conclusion of the 2015 freezing-hot erotic sci-fi Ruby Dixon novel Ice Planet Barbarians. When we last left off, a group of women and been kidnapped by aliens then abandoned on an ice planet (the title doesn’t lie) and while most of the women slowly freeze to death, one, named Georgie, goes off to find help but instead has a sexual liaison in a cave with a different blue horned alien named Vektal. Now that we’re all caught up, it’s time for Georgie to try and guide Vektal back to her dying friends. She does this by eating a bunch of raw meat (which is gross) and falling into an ice chasm full of giant fish-faced Sasquatch things (which are also gross), and engaging Vektal in more sexual activity (which is the grossest). Eventually, Vektal finds the frozen corpse of one of the other girls, but never mind her, this means there are more women that he can bring back to his tribe, which is conveniently experiencing a dearth of women and, also conveniently, all the human women are sexually compatible and interested in the aliens, a fact Sam finds nigh inconceivable. However, the women are overjoyed to see Georgie has brought help, and only slightly perturbed by the notion of her having freaky alien sex with the blue dude accompanying her. Georgie agrees to go back with Vektal to his village to retrieve supplies for the women so they can all move there. Off she and Vektal go to the spend the night in the cave of ancestors where there’s a crashed ship frozen in the ice. Georgie pushes a button and the ship’s computer of plot convenience springs to life! The computer explains a whole bunch of stuff about how the blue aliens came to this planet and how they live, but none of that really matters since this books deals with none of that (a fact Sam is greatly frustrated by). What does matter is that the computer can magically download modern “Earth English” to the aliens’ brains, and their language to Georgie’s brain. Oh and also the girls will need to have a parasitic worm implanted in them post-haste or they’ll die from the planet’s toxic atmosphere. After much trekking to the village and back with rescuers in tow, and more alien sex than is necessary, all the women have to make a very hard decision: Die immediately or get the parasitic worm shoved in their necks. Tough call. Anyway, the girls learn that the aliens that originally abducted them are headed back, and also Georgie is likely pregnant with Vektal’s giant alien hybrid baby, but that’s a horror show we sadly miss since the book ends immediately as soon as Georgie has her man. If you want to learn more (maybe), feel free to dive into the other 21 (again, not a typo) books in this series, but as for now, please enjoy Sam’s complete breakdown at the ending of this book.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

For more delightful weirdness, follow us on Bluesky or YouTube.

If you like our content and want more of it, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

This week Danielle brings some steamy, sci-fi erotica with the 2015 Ruby Dixon novel Ice Planet Barbarians. Georgie is your average, nondescript 22-year-old woman who finds herself abducted by aliens and thrown in a cage with several other women on a spaceship. There are also some women in suspended animation tubes around the cargo hold the cage is in, but they don’t matter for this book, but if you’re curious you can dive into one of the other 21 (not a typo) books in this series. The aliens that have abducted Georgie are cliché little green men accompanied by a security detail of giant orange aliens. Neither of these alien species are particularly relevant because the ship starts having engine trouble and they decide to jettison the cargo pod of women onto a nearby planet to pick up later. Sam takes extreme umbrage with this plan, since some of the women die in the crash landing (and their deaths are entirely brushed aside), but if the aliens had merely left the cargo pod in orbit they wouldn’t have had any problems. After suffering an apparently inconsequential head injury, Georgie is nominated to go explore the barren ice planet in search of food or anything else useful. Georgie is immediately caught in a snare trap and blacks out. While out, a blue alien creature named Vektal finds her, and the symbiotic parasite that lives in him and controls his libido goes absolutely gaga for Georgie for reasons that are beyond comprehension. Vektal decides to take Georgie to a cave and just starts going to town on her. Georgie wakes up from her second recent bout of unconsciousness to this large, blue alien with his mouth just all over her and thinks “Yeah, I’m into this” and goes with it for a while. When Vektal gets a little too frisky, she pushes him off her and that’s when they decide to do a little round of basic introductions through the alien language barrier. Camped out in this cave with Vektal and Georgie is where we leave part one, what about the other dozen-plus women slowly freezing to death in the crashed cargo pod? They’re not nearly as important as Georgie getting her alien freak on.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

For more delightful weirdness, follow us on Bluesky or YouTube.

If you like our content and want more of it, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

This week Sam brings the classics, sort of, with the 1979 animated TV special Romie-0 and Julie-8. The classic Shakespeare tragedy Romeo and Juliette has been adapted innumerable times, and this is certainly another one. In the far future—or maybe the distant past, who knows—there are two warring robotics companies getting ready for a highly competitive robotics conference. The Mega Stellar Corporation is releasing the Romie-0 robot, and Super Solar Cybernetics is releasing the Julie-8. What is the purpose of these teenage humanoid robots? That is never explained, but Danielle and Sam have some entirely unwholesome theories about the market for these things. At the conference the two CEOs, Mr. Thunderbottom and Ms. Passbinder (which Sam misheard as Ms. Fassbinder due to poor audio quality, he was paying super good attention he swears) and their quadruplet clones perform a large musical number where each try to insist their robot is the best. However, when a creepy thief dude named Gizmo in the audience tries to walk off with Julie-8, Romie-0 comes to her rescue and they instantly fall for each other. Later they decide to run away to be together and end up going with Gizmo on his space garbage barge to the junk planet while the two CEOs blast off in Mr. Thunderbottom’s corporate building, which is also a rocket ship, to track down the wayward robots. On the junk planet Julie-8 is kidnapped by the ruler of the planet, a giant robot named Sparepartski, who disposes of Romie-0 while Gizmo tries to persuade Julie-8 to marry Sparepartski. We won’t spoil the twist ending, but it’s clear that while this animated special may have only been a half-hour, it packs enough insanity for a feature-length film.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

For more delightful weirdness, follow us on Bluesky or YouTube.

If you like our content and want more of it, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

This week Danielle brings the conclusion of the 2020 film Wonder Woman 1984. When we last left our heroes they had just returned from a magical invisible jet flight to Egypt and had determined the best course of action was to either get everyone to unwish their wishes, or to kill Maxwell Lord, who had wished himself to become the magic citrine, lest we forget. Speaking of Max, he’s slowly unraveling mentally and physically, and finagles meeting with the President where he declares he’s a sovereign nation unto himself. Also, the President lets slip that they have a magic satellite thing that has a beam which will override the screen of any device the beam touches. And if you think the term “touches” is used there figuratively, boy would this magic wishing-citrine-now-human like to have words with you. While Diana as Wonder Woman shows up to stop Max, Barbara is there to foil her plans because she is also power hungry and won’t give up her wish-granted superhuman powers. Wonder Woman is defeated because her powers are waning due to her own wish to have her beau Steve back, who now inhabits the body of another man whom they have no regard for, and which is still totally not okay. While Max and Barbara fly to the satellite control island, Diana lets Steve go and renounces her wish (finally) and then lassos a jet plane to get her home. She also lassos lightening to travel, but this is a concept so astoundingly dumb that Sam refuses to acknowledge it’s a thing. Anyway, after Diana grabs some magic armor of a long dead (but not really dead because comic books) Amazonian warrior, she chases after Max and Barbara for a showdown on Satellite Control Island. Max has been broadcasting to the entire wold enticing them to wish using the magic of him touching them through a satellite beam video feed (seriously, how the wishes work in this movie is something beyond mortal comprehension). Chaos engulfs the Earth as wishes are granted willy-nilly, but before Diana can get to Max she must first fight Barbara, who has been transformed into a cheetah woman via the magic of the script says so. If you think their showdown is intense, wait until you hear how Diana defeats Max: Via the superpower of a very compelling, moralizing speech.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

For more delightful weirdness, follow us on Bluesky or YouTube.

If you like our content and want more of it, please consider supporting us on Patreon.

This week Danielle brings the superhero craziness with the 2020 film Wonder Woman 1984. If you didn’t see the first Wonder Woman film, don’t worry, neither did Sam, and Danielle barely remembers it, so no context needed! Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) is your average working 80s girl, only she’s really an immortal Amazonian from Themyscira who is still pining for Steve (Chris Pine), the love of her life and a pilot who died in World War 1. When a botched robbery brings a mysterious citrine in to the Smithsonian where Diana works with her mousy new friend Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), things start to go awry. While holding the stone, both Diana and Barbara make wishes in their heads and then a magic wind blows, foreshadowing the granting of their wishes. Barbara wished to be strong and beautiful like Diana, but Diana’s wish is a surprise for later. That’s when Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) rolls in, he’s the head of an oil company/Ponzi scheme who has just made a large donation to the museum, which seems to grant him carte blanche to just touch evidence, like the citrine, in an FBI investigation. He invites them all to a gala that night in his honor and Barbara is instantly taken with him and agrees while Diana declines. That night at the gala, Diana is now suspicious of Max and shows up anyway, and is immediately sexually harassed by every guy in there, since all men in this world are completely terrible. She brushes them off, but then one of them says a phrase that Steve once said to her, and Diana realizes her wish came true: Steve is back! Only, Steve is not himself, his consciousness has been shoved into the body of another man. What happened to the mind of the man whose body this was originally? Who cares, certainly not our supposed “heroes” Diana and Steve, who immediately drop everything to go have sex in that poor, possessed man’s home with his unable-to-consent body. Meanwhile, Max Lord (seriously, that name) has initiated a make-out session with Barbara in order to steal the citrine. With the citrine safely in his castle/home, Max does something absolutely bonkers and wishes to become the wishing stone. It might be reasonable to take a moment here to discuss the rules of the magic citrine, but the rules for this wishing stone are so arbitrary and crazy you’re just going to have to listen to all our rants to get it, there’s too much to include here. Maxwell then starts coercing others into wishing things that benefit him while touching him, and then also taking something from them in exchange for the “wish”, and if that’s confusing, get used to it. Anyway, Max jets off to Egypt while Diana and Steve, now back on the case, follow him in the dumbest way imaginable. This movie is so long, and chock-a-block full of nonsense, that Danielle has to end it there before Sam gets so angry at the inconsistent wishing rules and dumb Wonder Woman lasso tricks that he quits the podcast entirely.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

For more delightful weirdness, follow us on Bluesky or YouTube.

If you like our content and want more of it, please consider supporting us on Patreon.