Drat Pack

Like a full moon occurring on Halloween, this year our annual Spooktacular episode coincides with our 100th episode. How exhausting to think about! To commemorate this occasion, we dust off a movie we’ve kicked around covering for years, dunked in a vat of eels and amniotic fluid, and brought it to horrible, horrible life. That’s right, it’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Kenneth Branagh’s turgid adaptation of the classic sci-fi / horror / sin against God novel. Leigh, Brendan, and Chris go back in time to discuss Hollywood’s brief infatuation with prestigious horror movies based on literature, the film’s tendency to deliver dialogue as though it’s playing to the last row of the balcony, and Branagh’s inability to keep the damn camera still. We also make a suitably sour cocktail to mimic the sensation of being brought back to life by the jolt of a swarm of electric eels. SHOCKING, isn’t it?

At long last, closure! Our jukebox musical mini-episode miniseries comes to a manic conclusion with the ultimate theatrical cop out- a jukebox musical based on a movie. That’s right, for Brendan’s turn he’s taken the Great American Songbook-esque tunes peppered throughout the 1972 Peter Bogdanovich screwball throwback What’s Up, Doc? and attempted to turn them into the spine of a theatrical adaptation. There’s also some other changes in there, so don’t worry, it’s less lazy than it sounds on paper. We’re also prepping for our annual Halloween spooktacular (and 100th episode), and we can think of no better way to do so than by getting pretty drunk for the occasion so be sure to try out the cocktail we’ll be making for it.

In today’s increasingly fragmented society, one fact is sadly becoming more and more evident: you are either with Lucy or against Lucy. To get to the bottom of this hot-button issue we decided to watch Jon Sherman’s 2002 romantic comedy, I’m with Lucy, a fairly simple movie bogged down by multiple gimmicks designed to make everything more intriguing than it actually is. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we talk about Monica Potter and her coterie of five potential love interests- a sexy douchebag, a misogynist jock, a horny international-type, a nerd, and miscellaneous. We spend a lot of time covering the five dates, but also discuss bogging your plot down with a load of high-concept nonsense and how the blond WASPy Monica Potter was somehow begat by uber-mensch Harold Ramis. And hey, it’s a pretty easy cocktail we made to accompany this one, because we all deserve a lil break.

As our summer murder mystery miniseries has ended, our entirely different mini-episode miniseries is still well underway, and in this episode there’s a lot of ancient drama served up with it. This time, we continue our individual jukebox musical pitches with Chris stepping up to bat. Get ready for a lot of 80s alternative / pop / punk mixed in with some ancient Greek drama- a night of theater with plenty of singing, dancing, and messy dismemberment! Also we introduce our lower stakes movie for September and an equally lower stakes cocktail to accompany it, because we all know things will get more hectic as the holiday season kicks in so for the love of god can’t we just relax for a bit now???

As with all good mysteries, our murder mystery-themed summer is drawing to its natural conclusion with a not-good mystery. In this episode, we’re going back in time to both the 1980s and the 1870s with Barry Levinson’s Young Sherlock Holmes, a prequel featuring the famous detective but younger and with a less involved mystery. Enroll in a Victorian boarding school with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss the Sherlock Holmes mythos, the Temple of Doom-style vibes the mystery itself gives off, and how every character here is maybe .5 dimensional at best. Also, it turns out the villains are a murderous cult of Egyptians seeking justice because a bunch of British dudes destroyed their homes, which definitely holds up when viewed through a contemporary lens. Naturally, we also drink a tea-based summer cocktail to get ourselves into the mood of “England during a snowy winter,” which really helps when it’s like 90 degrees and constantly muggy outside.

As summer draws to its unbearably hot closure, we dust off an old mini episode topic chestnut, Pitcher’s Mound! That’s right, that thing where we pitch a movie, or in this case, a MUUUUUUSICAL! A jukebox musical, point of fact. The first of three (!) mini episodes kicks off with Leigh pitching her very specifically-focused punk rock jukebox musical featuring a lot of music you might remember from the early 2000s and such. Sorry about the air conditioning, to repeat, it was VERY hot. Almost as hot as the ticket sales will be when this baby hits Broadway! Also we announce our final Summer of Murder Mystery movie and the drink that will accompany it, wot wot.

Much like Kenneth Branagh’s recently-discovered passion project of making Sad Boi adaptations of Hercule Poirot mysteries, our Summer of Murder Mystery continues unabated with 2022’s Death on the Nile, a limp effort starring a cast that couldn’t be more cursed if they desecrated a pharaoh’s tomb. Hope aboard the S.S. Karnak with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we try to solve the dual mystery of who killed Gal Gadot (honestly, you probably don’t need Poirot for this one, it’s pretty easy to work out on your own) and why Gal Gadot keeps getting cast in things. Also up for discussion- the weirdly lumpy plot structure, how successful the movie is at updating certain elements, and the lengthy prologue in which the origins of Porot’s mustache are at long last revealed. And of course, we drink enough champagne… to fill the Nile! Or at least enough to fill a few champagne flutes, anyway. Listen up and have your immmmmorrrtal longings fulfilled!

Hey, did you hear about how the UK publisher of the Roald Dahl books did some weird overcorrections that no one seems to have asked for and removed words like “fat” or the mystery of why women might wear wigs from their most recent editions? Or how Disney apparently is censoring language from the streaming version of The French Connection, lest you be shocked that New York cops in the 70s tossed around racial slurs? Well, we did and we decided to talk about it, so please Hollywood allow us to record introductions to this sort of material placing it in context, our prices are cheap. Also we introduce the second movie of our Summer of Murder Mystery and the drink we’ll be guzzling to make it feel like a well-paced plot.

The sweaty misery of summer is finally upon us, and what better way to forget our reality than the comforting escapism that only murder can provide? (We see you, Albert Camus’s The Stranger!) Our Summer of Murder Mystery kicks off with the forgotten 1994 mystery / slapstick comedy / farce / comedy of remarriage / so much other crap, Radioland Murders, straight from the minds that brought you American Graffiti (and Howard the Duck). Leigh, Brendan, and Chris dive into this exhausting mess of over-the-top shtick and antics, attempting to make some sense of what the hell this movie was supposed to even be. Truly, there’s something for everyone here (provided you are a baby boomer who loves old radio programs and farcical comedy), including an appropriately old-timey cocktail accompaniment, so heck, give it a watch and you’ll probably find SOMEthing that works for you.

In this Why Watch mini episode, we’re living in the Land of the Lost! And by that, we mean we live in a world where we were initially promised that streaming content online would allow unimaginable access to movies and television, only to find shockingly that we actually live in a world where exclusive content can be taken down and hidden on a hard drive somewhere to suit the whims of large horrific media conglomerates. While the concept of “lost media” is nothing new, we seem to be entering an entirely different way of classifying things as such. For example, what happens when you spend a bunch of time and money making a Batgirl movie, then your new corporate overlord decides to bury it in a box somewhere for tax purposes? Anyway, we use recent events stemming from these sorts of decisions as a springboard to talk about a variety of topics related to what happens when you can no longer watch something legally (or indeed, if you’re not allowed to ever see it at all). As is fitting for such a mysterious topic, we also reveal the theme of our summer block of movies along with an old-timey drink to accompany our next subject, which will surely bring you back to the time when media was mostly considered lost because no one thought to record it or left the film in a shoebox in Argentina or something.