Crackpot Cinema Podcast

Homicidal headcases hunt their heartthrobs in two early-'80s sagas of celebrity worship gone wackoid: the sanguine Lauren Bacall showcase THE FAN (1981) and the meaty German new-wave mouthful, DER FAN (1982).

"That's enter-taint-shit!" We salute two nostalgia-sopped, putty-mugged, magnificently moronic Golden Age of Tinseltown biopics from 1976: GABLE & LOMBARD and W.C. FIELDS & ME! (Billy Barty IS included!)

"Master!... He is DEAD!" [Applause] Come mourn the passing of BLOODSUCKING FREAKS perpetrator Joel M. Reed as he's crackpotically honored by hosts Mike McPadden, Aaron Lee, and our first-ever special guest—L.A. comedy legend JOE WAGNER!

Don your colors for two of 1979’s most stupefying street-gang epics. No, it’s not THE WARRIORS & THE WANDERERS. It’s not even BOULEVARD NIGHTS & WALK PROUD. It’s SUNNYSIDE with Joey Travolta and BOARDWALK with Lee Strasberg & Ruth Gordon. Wisconsin film scholar Ben Reiser also guests and prospers through QUITE the beat-in initiation ceremony!

In a salute to recently departed side-spitter supreme FRED WILLARD, we take on two of his more unsung efforts: the sketch comedy CRACKING UP (1977) and Buck Henry’s White House romp FIRST FAMILY (1980). It’s a pod-slapping Fredstravaganza!

After Woody Allen’s one-two knockout plotz of ANNIE HALL and MANHATTAN, audiences so clamored for more New York Nebbish/Tall Drink of Shiksa rom-coms that movie cash-ins cropped up both high to low. We’re here to kibbitz about the low—i.e., SOMETHING SHORT OF PARADISE and SOUP FOR ONE.

Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast co-host FRANK SANTOPADRE joins Mike and Aaron for a platinum-wigged, girdle-straining, Vaseline-smeared salute to Mae West’s camptastic 1978 swan song, SEXTETTE! So why don’t you come up and listen sometime? (i.e.—now!)

Go gay all the way with us for a Pride Month salute to a pair of, let’s say, “non-pioneering” homosexual-themed comedies: ZORRO, THE GAY BLADE (1981) and PARTNER (1982). Note: Mike’s audio is a little distorted this ep (fixed for next time).

ZORRO showcases George Hamilton going high el campo as both the titular swordsman and his “swish-buckling” twin brother. PARTNERS teams macho straight cop Ryan O’Neal with tender-hearted gay cop John Hurt in an attempted comedic spin on, of all things, CRUISING (1980).

Plus: The DEATHTRAP Rubik’s Cube debate; Clint Eastwood almost meets Woody Allen; the cocaine-consumed FRIDAYS movie; the hunt for YOUNG LUST; Gene Siskel takes on SENIOR SNATCH; and one co-host estimates he’s 10% gay while his wife places him at “a minimum of 70%.”

Brian Saur of Pure Cinema Podcast (and Just the Discs and Rupert Pupkin Speaks) joins us to take out Danny Peary’s trash—specifically, the movies rated “T” (for Trash) by our beloved author in his 1986 masterwork, GUIDE FOR THE FILM FANATIC.

We also focus on SATAN’S SADISTS (1969) and NURSE SHERRI (1978), in honor of yet another landmark totem for cult movie mavens, Severin Films’ recent, impossibly great box set, AL ADAMSON: THE MASTERPIECE COLLECTION.

To celebrate their utterly monstrous, mind-roasting, epic new documentary series TIME WARP: THE GREATEST CULT FILMS OF ALL TIME, director Danny Wolf and producer Paul Fishbein drop by to talk in depth about the very movies Crackpot Cinema loves the very most.