Cinemanimals

Take it to the bank! We dug deep into the pit of the SINERFAMICALS archive for this gem, recorded over a year ago and nearly lost: an hour of absolutely scalding takes and forceful zingers about the saddest animal movie ever made: Robert Bresson’s 1966 bleak as hell AU HASARD BALTHAZAR about a mule named Gus who kicks field goals  a donkey named Balthazar who is repeatedly tortured. This movie is very artful and confusing. We didn’t understand it, and we didn’t like how it made us feel.

We dare you: [email protected]

This week we honor America’s Real Team the Cleveland Browns, historic defeaters of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the NFL franchise most associated with classic animal-based cinema. We’re talking, of course, about D.T. IN ‘DAWG TERRITORY’, a 1988 film featuring Lil’ John Rinaldi as a dog from outer space marooned in the Brown’s locker room, and several ACTUAL Cleveland Browns, such as Bob Golic. Anyway, D.T. and his new Browns friends take on some evil alien cats who, like the Steelers, hate America and are in turn hated and have lasers. D.T. IN ‘DAWG TERRITORY’ is strangely punctuated and you should watch it? It’s brief and free on YouTube.

FREE GOOFBALLS: [email protected]

Welcome to SEASON FOUR of Cinemanimals, a podcast about relationship problems. This week we watched SKY DOG, which made us sad and angry. It’s mostly Allen’s fault. Most of the episode is about Allen, who recommended SKY DOG to us. Allen is a great guy but he messed up. SKY DOG theorizes a world where you might be in the CIA and not know it, which, actually that sounds great. But don’t watch it! What you should watch instead is Mikal watching movies, a new service we are offering. Anyway, this movie felt like a personal affront to us because there is hardly any dog in it.

Don’t you dare email us: [email protected]

WE ARE BACK!  Season 3 of cinemanimals. This week we watched THE GREAT RUPERT, the 1950 squirrel movie starring Jimmy Durante as a vaudevillle performer who moves his family into a basement apartment, discovering later that the apartment has a hole that rains $16,000 in cash every Friday afternoon. We get to the bottom of everything about 50s culture: milkshakes, horniness, and cans of beans tied to strings, swinging from the rafters, smashing your dingle.  Simon reveals an extracurricucritters film he saw which he claims is mainstream, Mikal opens up his extracurricucritters vault, we don’t remember much about THE GREAT RUPERT, actually we don’t remember anything. Don’t email us.

There are many movies that feature guard dogs, but there can be only one GUARD DOG, an insane 2015 movie about Chance, a boy whose mom dies of cancer, and Abba, a talking dog played by a grown man in a dog suit and voiced by the director. Abba and Chance have a series of adventures that devolve into a Christian allegory, and (spoiler train) at the end a bunch of kids go through a slide, mass hallucinate the same talking dog, and appear to start a church. This movie has everything: an abusive dad obsessed with disposable cups, important lessons about racism, and much more!

If you or a friend need help, email us: [email protected]

This week we put our therapists on retainer and tuned in to NIGHT OF THE LEPUS, the most frightful film in the entire history of American cinema, in which a colony of rabbits meets the hubris of Texas Science and mutates into a colony of larger, bloodthirsty rabbits. Before certifying NIGHT OF THE LEPUS with the first-ever official Cinemanimals 1000% AA+ rating, Simon launches an exciting, new, and very long segment where he reads the names of animal movies from the upcoming Cannes Film Market. Mikal does his Jay Leno impersonation, Mike tells a story about black market iguanas, and we offer a legally binding taxonomy of which animals are scary. THE NIGHT OF THE LEPUS: we watched it.

Dare you to email us: [email protected]

America asked, and as usual, we over-delivered: this week we watched QUIGLEY, a 2003 film in which Gary Busey slips on dog poop and later . . . becomes a dog. Can the dog talk? Why does Gary Busey fall in a bush? What is Oz Perkins doing here? What are some things women have invented? Is heaven crowded? Like all great narrative art, we feel there is a lot to explore here, and also like all great narrative art, we don’t understand it and we barely care about it. QUIGLEY is bad. Don’t watch it, and don’t listen to this episode. Instead, send us an email:

This is a throw-back, one of our very early episodes, originally recorded around Halloween 2019.  We review this 1977 “classic” which at the time was the first animal-themed horror movie for the podcast.  But we’ve grown up and if you are familiar with our podcast, you might notice how the show has evolved (devolved?).  But there are a lot of new fresh drops in this episode.  I hope you know what drops are.  Maybe you call them stingers.  In any event, they were all made recently and we are excited about them.  But who cares about the drops?  I know that you, the faithful listener, are here for the animals.  Do we deliver?  Well if you consider Leslie Nielsen shirtless in the rain to be an animal, then we definitely talk about animals in this episode.  There is lots of film history to explore here, and Simon does not hold back.  We start to heat up about half-way through as we realize how much we dislike yet love this terrible awesome movie.  We discuss what is potentially problematic in the film, and Simon & Mike educate about women’s rights.  This episode might be for the hardcore cinemanimal fans.  Simon accuses us of being “low energy” towards the end.  We are not “low energy”.  Or maybe we are.  You decide.  The most striking thing about this episode is I’m not sure if we hate this movie or love it.  Or maybe we just hate ourselves?  Maybe we hate you?  It’s really hard to be sure of anything after watching this movie.  As always, we have an email address: [email protected]

We watched A SUMMER TO REMEMBER…, a 1985 film about an ASL-literate orangutan who escapes captivity only to stumble into an even bleaker reality: the prison of the American family.

Is blasting the Sesame Street theme song into a cornfield considered an example of PSYOPS? Is it good or bad for a stepdad to say, “I’m your only dad now?” Did we really watch this movie?

We can’t remember. But Mikal saves the day with an iconic new segment called THE SAD SIX.

Emailing us is always a possibility: [email protected]

After launching an exciting new social media celebrity challenge, that may or may not involve marijuana and slicing off fingers, and may or may not include the singer of Smashmouth eating too many eggs, the #22 top-ranked animal movie podcast, CINEMARMIANLS, risks it all by trying something new. This week, Simon watched DEADLY EYES, a rare 1982 horror film about rats, and Mikal watched MOM, CAN I KEEP HER?, an even more rare 1998 family film about a boy who finds a gorilla in his garage. Mike watched neither, so Simon and Mikal compete for the honor of mailing him their DVD. Tune in to find out once and for all what makes a gorilla a gorilla, what the acronym DVD stands for, who wins the TERRY FUNK/ SCATMAN CROTHERS name face-off, the reveal of the first (and perhaps only) example of an animal acting as another animal in a film, and which dogs are KNOWN ASSHOLES. Stay to the bitter end, when Mike makes a shocking confession that changes everything.

Booking info and in person sessions: [email protected]