The Spandex King of L.A. is delighted when his wife is kidnapped by two bumbling criminals, less so when he's blackmailed by two even more incompent criminals. It's "The Ransom of Red Chief" in high 1980s Memphis-Milano decor.

Starring Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Judge Reinhold, Helen Slater, Anita Morris, and Bill Pullman. Directed by Jim Abrams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. Written by Dale Launer.

Loosely based on an H.P. Lovecraft novella and produced by the maker of Society, Re-Animator is the gory, gross, graphic, and goofy parody of Frankenstein that spawned a horror-comedy franchise. After a screening at the gallery/studio Space 1026, we interviewed Bruce (@gumball_eyes), the curator for the film series Space Melt, and talked about the film, exhibitions, and why it's fun to watch movies with people.

Starring Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, and Robert Sampson. Directed by Stuart Gordon, and written by Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris, and Stuart Gordon.

We bring back writer Alana Phelan (@hellolibrarian) to talk about the horror-comedy Waxwork, which features the great David Warner doing his best Vincent Price impression as the villainous owner of a waxwork museum, and a group of college students as his victims. 

Starring Zach Galligan, Deborah Foreman, Michelle Johnson, David Warner, Dana Ashbrook, and Patrick Macnee. Written and directed by Anthony Hickox.

This adaptation of a Bram Stoker novel is a campy bit of folk horror about a villainous pagan priestess who feeds the unsuspecting to the subterranean serpent she worships, and the hapless villagers who battle her, including a young archaeologist, a pair of sisters whose parents are missing, and the foppish local lord. It’s a Ken Russell film, so naturally it’s a subtle piece. Loosely based on the English legend of the Lambton Worm, it's a silly, smutty, absurdist bit of gothic comedy in the vein of An American Werewolf in London, sitting somewhere between a Doctor Who serial and The Wicker Man.

Starring Hugh Grant, Peter Capaldi, Amanda Donohoe, Catherine Oxenberg, and Sammi Davis. Written and directed by Ken Russell.

We jump back to the 1940s for a little British war-time musical about a nerd who is joins the army, is tricked into thinking he's found Excalibur, and decides to capture Nazis using it in a real "Dumbo's feather" situation. It's slight, silly, and mostly harmless.

This is a preview of the episode, part of our series Hollywood Avalon, a podcast dedicated to Arthurian film; to hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies

An Indiana electrician encounters a UFO and goes insane, a baby is abducted by aliens, and scienists have a battle of the bands against a spaceship. Steven Spielberg's follow-up to the massive success of Jaws turns out to be a blueprint for the rest of his filmography: the dissolution of the nuclear family through parental abandonment; strong religous themes and yearning; aliens and horror; the difficulty of communication. Even specific scenes we find in later films first show up here. It's a skeleton key to his body of work, a fascinating bookened to 2022's The Fabelmans, and arguably his best film.

Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and the great François Truffaut. Written and directed by Steven Spielberg.

This sequel to Stanley Kubrick's visionary masterpiece 2001: a Space Odyssey is a frustrating, uneven, but ultimately enjoyable and well-done science fiction film that is more about the need for world peace and space exploration than Kubrick's grappling with the mystery of consciousness and what it means to be human. Not the groundbreaking weirdness of its famous predecessor, but still worth seeing.

Starring Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren, John Lithgow, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea, and Elya Baskin. Written by Arthur C. Clark and Peter Hyams, and directed by Peter Hyams.

A film that boldly asks “What if we made a good version of Ferris Buehler’s Day Off?” It has all the beats of a John Hughes teen movie—especially that one—while actually saying something about America, capitalism, and class. It’s the film that made Tom Cruise a star, and unfortunately is saddled in pop culture memory with one very silly dance scene that has very little to do with what’s otherwise a very dark, funny, nervy movie about facing adulthood and disillusionment. A smarter film than expected, it eviscerates the model of “teen goes wild when his parents are away and has to set everything back the way it was before they get home” just as that template was being set for teen comedies.

Starring Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay, Curtis Armstrong, Bronson Pinchot, Joe Pantoliano, and Richard Masur. Written and directed by Paul Brickman.

We're back to school and already we want to drop out, thanks to what might be John Hughes' worst movie, an obnoxious take on Pygmalian that had us begging for Bill Paxton's Chet to come back to the movie early and bully these horrible little nerds. A film with only one redeeming value--a pretty great theme song. 

Starring Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Kelly LeBrock, Bill Paxton, and Robert Downey Jr. Written and directed by John Hughes.

We wrap up the summer watching a movie that Mary loved as a kid, but Dennis has never seen--the original camp comedy and star-making vehicle for Bill Murray, Meatballs. It's the snobs-vs-slobs story that gave birth to a million imitators and inadvertantly the Wet Hot American Summer franchise. Does it hold up? Is Mary embarressed by a childhood favorite? Will Dennis regret never going to camp as a kid?