Clamshell Case Files

In honor of the 35th Anniversary/Public Execution of Mario, we’re talking about the movie that TWO major corporations and pretty much everyone involved in the production wish you would forget. With a bafflingly great cast (Bob Hoskins! John Leguizamo! Dennis Hopper! Samantha Mathis! Mojo Nixon...wait), how could this first-ever live action video game adaptation be a bob-omb? Join us in absolute confusion how a game about throwing fireballs at turtles was turned into a dystopian, anti-fascist, pro-comminist, hyper sexualized, cyberpunk movie!

It’s our two year anniversary, and we recorded live in front of an audience of the internet, from the safety of our own personal fallout shelters! You voted for it, so we talk about Blast from the Past. So break out those champagne cocktails, box up those Rogers Hornsby cards, and settle in for a nice, sweet, kind-hearted movie. What, do you like us or something? We’re honestly baffled.

Peach? We can talk about a peach for hours. And we do! We clear out the dove infestation left by director John Woo and chat about this great act-off starring Nicolas Cage and John Travolta. We hit all the big topics: dove kings, salmon spawning, actors who have appeared on The Wire, and of course, the importance of blood type.

This week the crew strikes first and has no mercy talking about The Karate Kid. It’s a movie that deals in tropey Eastern Mysticism, but also talks about the horrors and realities of Japanese internment camps with more accuracy and honesty than any public school system in 1980s America! Also, some whiny kid really kicks the hell out of his bike. I don’t know, that whole plotline doesn’t seem that important.

Special Guest (and Matt’s sister) Laurie Spring is here to Unleash the Kraken and talk about the open-mouthed, dead-eyed Perseus trust-funding his way into bed with the beautiful Andromeda in Clash of the Titans! Come for the amazing Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animated beasts, stay for their sweet, stop-motion abs and belly buttons!

Welcome to Bahstan, kid! Jeff Bridges plays a BPD bomb squad officer with an inexplicably terrible accent. Tommy Lee Jones is playing a mad Irish bomber with an inexplicably terrible accent. Lloyd Bridges is playing a retired Boston cop who emigrated from Ireland 60 years ago but still has an...you get the idea. Together, they bend the rules of space and time as Boston is primed to explode due to what we can only assume is a bomb under every resident’s bed. Get ready to be...BLOWN AWAY.

Pop Quiz, hot shots! You have a wildcat cinematographer that wants to direct his first action film. He enlists a young polite Canadian and America’s ACTUAL sweetheart. If the film makes under $300 million the bomb explodes. What do you do? What, get on the subway? Oh, you don’t want to do that either…

Auld acquaintance may be forgot, but the Clamshell crew forgets nothing (except all of the times that we do). In this very special New Year’s Eve episode, Bridget, Matt, and Quintin give 2020 a boot in the ass, and rank their top and bottom five movies from the year (minus one film that shall not be named). Thanks for the memories, 2020 Clamshell Cases. You let us escape into worlds with stop-motion dinosaurs, talking gorillas, and a predatory upper class trying to murder the poor. Oh, come on!

We’re ringing in the New Year with not one, but TWO New Year’s Babies, in the form of Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger, in Twins! Bridget decided to give the crew (and you listeners) a break from 2020 as we talk about this sweet, slightly misogynist but ultimately heartfelt Ivan Reitman comedy.

Later this week, join the gang as we hold our annual tradition of ranking the 5 Best and Worst movies we watched this year.

‘Tis the season...TO DIE. Apparently, in 1984, the only red thing more offensive to the American public than the Soviets was...a murderous Santa Claus. Gene Siskel shamed the producers on television. Phil Donahue had outraged parents on his show. Theaters flat-out refused to play the film. We...were not impressed.

Content Warning: Sexual assault.