The Gen X Files

No show this week.

April Fool's! Today, we're covering a subversive dark comedy that may or may not be horror: April Fool's Day from 1986. Starring Thomas F. Wilson, Deborah Foreman, and Griffin O'Neal, it's a twisty-turny, what's-happening-next, slasher film.

Join us as we cover one of the forgotten horror movies of the 80s: House!

The 1985 movie stars William Katt, George Wendt, Richard Moll, and Kay Lenz, with a story by Fred Dekker, screenplay by Ethan Wiley, and directed by Steve Miner, who directed Friday the 13th Part II!

It's a great haunted house tale with some amazing practical effects.

What do horse head bookends, a gangly super bendy Gumby-like dude, and heavy breathing have in common? They're all parts of Student Bodies, the the first horror spoof movie, in the nature of Friday the 13th and Airplane!. Released in 1981 and written and directed by Mickey Rose, childhood friend of Woody Allen, it does a good send-up of the young slasher genre.

Join your ol' Stepdads as we discuss the new movies, TV, and video games that have been entertaining us this month, including Alien Earth on FX, Brightburn on Peacock, Haunted Hotel on Netflix, and Gotham Knights, No Man's Sky, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. We also have a very special guest to discuss Tron, Tron Legacy and Tron Ares!

This week, we cover one of the most ill-advised, weirdest adaptations of any kind: Super Mario Bros.! Released in 1993, this movie was a travesty of an adaptation of the NES Super Mario Bros games. Based on Super Mario World, having been recently released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the movie barely resembles the bright, colorful world that everyone knew with the original Super Mario Bros, released in 1985 on the NES. Brought to the screen by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Samantha Mathis, and Dennis Hopper.

Join us as explore a sadly underrated gem, The Last Starfighter. It's every video game kid's dream: get so good at a video game that an alien comes down and asks you to save the universe. It also featured a ton of early CGI sequences. Directed by Nick Castle, starring Lance Guest, Dan O'Herlihy, Catherine Mary Stewart, and Robert Preston.

We dive head first into CompuKids month with our first entry: the original Tron from 1982! Starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, and Cindy Morgan. Written and directed by Steve Lisberger. Find out the history of Tron before Tron Ares hits the theaters.

We wrap up our When Animals Attack month and welcome in a special guest. We also discuss the movies we've seen (we went to the theater!), TV shows we've been watching, and games we've been playing.

NO, NOT THE BEES!!!! Sorry, wrong movie. But the sentiment stands. The '70s were fraught with Killer Bee Phobia and The Swarm was the movie that ended it all. And the disaster genre. At least for a while. All orchestrated by Irwin Allen, master of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. The Swarm is a good indicator of how one needs to grow and change with society. Starring Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, José Ferrer, Patty Duke Astin, Slim Pickens, Bradford Dillman, Fred MacMurray, and Henry Fonda.

Today, we explore a world of runaway spiders, mostly tarantulas, that are killing everyone in sight! It's the super-weird Kingdom of the Spiders, starring William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, Woody Strode, Altovise Davis, and Marcy Lafferty.