It's Been Done Before

This week we are totally obsessed with dancing and rebelling against authority. We are talking about the 2011 remake of Footloose with special guest, Sue Batch. This touching tale of institutionalized religious oppression and authoritarianism in a small Texas town seemed a little old fashioned in 1984, but in 2011 it seems like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Did the adults and lawmakers really think music and dancing was responsible for the horrible car wreck or were they just making up for their own lack of guidance and oversight? Why do most of the adults dislike Ren from the moment they meet him? How don’t Ariel’s parents know that she has been acting wild and crazy since her brother’s death? What’s with Ren’s car? School bus demolition derby racing? Why do the authorities make a bigger deal about Ren having a joint than anyone does about Ariel getting hit by her ex boyfriend and her father or a teenage boy getting punched by a grown man? Lots of illegal dancing and 80’s nostalgia in this one, get loose!

This episode is all about family. A creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky family. We’re celebrating our first Thanksgiving episode in style with Addams Family Values. This movie is wonderful. It is filled with incredible actors, a good director and has lots of crazy moments and funny one liners. It feels like a really good extended episode from the TV series. The family welcomes a new baby, Fester and Wednesday both find love and the Native Americans exact revenge on the Pilgrims. Is this the most attractive Joan Cusack has ever been on film? How great is the chemistry between Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston? What’s the deal with Camp Chippewa? Have the necessary authorities been notified about Gary and Becky? What did Fester and Deb have on their wedding registry? Why didn’t Debbie realize that Fester couldn’t be killed by conventional means? When do we get the sequel about Fester and Dementia’s life together? How many versions of “Whoop There It Is” did Tag Team make? This one was a nice treat that all three of us enjoyed, we hope you do too.

This week Claire and Matt are going on an adventure to a small unnamed stereotypical Arabian/African country in the romantic action-filled comedy, The Jewel of the Nile. This sequel to Romancing the Stone can best be described as a mashup of a 1980s romantic comedy and a forgotten Indiana Jones storyline. The on-screen chemistry between Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner helps to make this a very watchable film, even if the story can be a little thin. How could anyone get tired of traveling the world on a private yacht? Why didn’t Joan ask her agent to get some information about Omar before agreeing to abscond with him? Did Jack have insurance on that boat? Why did the guards think shooting up the graffiti on the wall would do anything to prevent people from reading it? Why didn’t Jack or Ralph ever ask what the Jewel looked like? Why didn’t Joan have a million questions when the Jewel turned a stone into a butterfly? Wouldn’t a few bullets to the head do the job just as well as this elaborate death contraption? Is Omar auditioning to be a cult leader? This movie was extra cheesy but it was a good time and a fun one to talk about.

The idea of watching this movie again frightens me more than anything I saw during scary movie month. This week we’re talking about one of the worst movie sequels of all time, Grease 2. We lost Mike to illness this episode but we have a special guest joining us, our good friend, Roxy De Luca. This is the first musical we’ve done on It’s Been Done Before and boy was it terrible! We get horrible stand-ins for all of our favorite characters and songs from the original classic. I guess this is what we should expect from the writer of Airplane 2: The Sequel and the director of Cyndi Lauper: 12 Deadly Cyns...and Then Some. Why are the T-Birds so concerned about doing well in class and winning the talent show? Is Michael the most beautiful nerd in movie history? Will Frenchy go on to found the Maybelline Corporation? Are there any responsible adults or authority figures in this town? How are these “high school seniors” allowed to smoke, drink and drive motorcycles wherever they would like? How many other movies give the soundtrack top billing in the end credits? Well, at least Michelle Pfeiffer looked gorgeous. This one is a good episode because the movie was sooooo bad.

Our scary movie month is coming to an end and we are closing things out with the prequel to John Carpenter’s sci-fi horror classic, 2011’s The Thing. This movie does an excellent job of paying homage to the original. The director and set designer took great care to reverse engineer everything about the Norwegian camp down to the smallest detail. The story begins three days before the events of the 1982 film and explains how the alien was set free on the world. A nice change of pace with Mike’s beloved M.E.W. (Mary Elizabeth Winstead to us normal folks) being the heroic badass female character that runs the show and keeps her wits during a crisis. Why didn’t anyone else object to the doctor cutting into the alien? Is the alien able to copy it’s victim’s clothing if it is non-organic? How did that blood in the shower get cleaned up so spotlessly in such a short amount of time? This movie teaches use that our imperfections are what make us human because anyone without fillings in their teeth or piercings in their skin was subject to death by flamethrower. It was a fun ride to see how the story would sync up with the original and they did a pretty good job getting there. Listen to us tell you what we think and then let us know what you think. Enjoy!

Could we have a scary movie month without a Wes Craven movie? We didn’t think so either. This week’s episode is all about the college campus slasher Scream 2. How old are all these college students? Why are all of these “adults” (i.e. Dewey, Gale and Cotton) allowed to roam the campus so freely? No one really ever rushes to tell the police about the victims or spends any great deal of time mourning their murdered friends. Dewey should be dead! From the cast to the music and wardrobe this one was a trip all the way back to 1997. Spoiler Alert, if you saw the first one you won’t be too shocked by the twist. Happy Halloween everyone!

Scary movie month is in full swing as we discuss Eli Roth’s gorefest, Hostel Part 2, with our special guest Claire Swanson. This movie is very similar to the original, it has lots of blood and guts with a few new twists and several new characters. How did Beth and Whitney become friends with Lorna? Who chooses to stay at a crummy hostel instead of The Four Seasons? Why does “the smart girl” get on a small boat with a strange man in a foreign country? Why aren’t Beth and Whitney more concerned when “their friend” Lorna disappears? Why would you make your customers at a super-secret torture and killing club get very recognizable tattoos? We want a lawyer to review the contract that Todd/Alpha and Stuart/Beta have to sign before they get to start killing because it cannot be legally binding. It seems that there is a sliding scale at the auction based on how injured the victim is. Beth uses everything at her disposal to get out of the situation and really gets revenge on Stuart and Axelle. We also have some good news and some bad news to get out of the way. Our beloved co-host Brittny will be leaving us after this episode so she can prepare for the birth of her upcoming child and Claire will be joining our team of oddballs until she gets tired of talking to Mike and Matt. We also have a short interview with Claire near the end of the episode to introduce her to our audience. Congratulations to Brit and her husband Tony on their little bundle of joy! Lots of stuff in this episode. Enjoy!

We keep the scary times rolling with this week's zombie-virus outbreak movie, 28 Weeks Later. The franchise that reinvented the modern zombie, quickly sets the tone in the opening few minutes; and shows what it might take to save your life in this apocalyptic hellscape. It is a high tempo horror ride that is a bunch of fun and stars some pretty good actors. Our coward, Don, learns that he should not tell people someone is dead unless you see them die and pays a heavy price because of it. We learn that none of us like it when siblings have rhyming names. Why won’t Flynn just help get the group of survivors out of harm's way? Why doesn’t Scarlet make a bigger deal about the possibility of Alice, Tammy or Andy potentially having the cure to the Rage virus in their blood? We had a real good time with this one, we hope you do too.

We’re continuing our scary movie month this week with a super creepy movie remake, 2002’s The Ring. This one is a tale as old as time. A reporter investigates her niece’s mysterious death, she finds a weird VHS tape, she watches the tape, she is cursed to die in seven days. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times. The VHS tape dates this movie a little bit, but it is still a really entertaining flick. We get an emotionless child and a jangly walking female monster to keep the tone very unsettling. Whomever cast David Dorfman as Aidan deserves an award because he is one of the spookiest kids in cinema history. Why would Rachel bring the tape back to her house? Why was she so quick to show the tape to Noah? Did the cameraman that filmed the tape and the editor that cut it together die a week after it was created? Who did they pass on the copy of the tape to? If you are the kind of person that gets scared easily, you might want to listen to this episode with a dog in the room.

In this week’s episode we’re talking about Romeo and Juliet with vampires and werewolves, better known as the wildly popular Twilight: New Moon. Happy Birthday Bella! One of us loves this movie (Brit), one of us hates this movie (Matt) and one of us owns this movie (Mike). Most of the story and tension in this one is born out of the idea that Bella really wants to be a vampire and Edward and Jacob really don’t want her to be a vampire. Matt and Brit are Team Jacob and Mike is strongly in Team Edward’s camp, even though Edward is a creep. How does Edward get away with giving Bella the Harry and the Hendersons treatment when he breaks up with her? Why isn’t Jacob using that sexy body and boyish charm to find someone better than Bella? So many of the problems in this movie could be resolved by having the characters talk to each other. Vampire breaks girls heart, werewolf heals girl’s heart and then vampire and girl live happily ever after? Sounds like Jacob got the short end of the stick in this story. Listen in and enjoy our silliness.