Crackpot Cinema Podcast

Crackpot Cinema: Ep 18—Make Mine Morricone: ORCA and SO FINE

Let’s all dab our eyes with a fresh slice of gobba-gool as we salute the late, great Ennio Morricone with two of Il Maestro’s more Crackpot-oriented efforts—Dino De Laurentiis’s blowhole blow-out ORCA (1977) and Andrew Bergman’s ass-joke approximation of Italian sex farces, SO FINE (1981).

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.

Brian Saur of Pure Cinema Podcast 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.

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).

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!)

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.

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!

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!

"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 JOE WAGNER!