Cargo Cult

In Season 2 of Cargo Cult, we explore the great year of 1973 and why it's such an important time, not only in the lives of Jimmy and Justin, but for the great movies, directors and producers of the world.

Jimmy and Justin discuss their favorite holiday movies including a sit down with The Corleones, a shared car with Del and Neal, decorating the tree with Mr. Joshua, after dinner acrimony with King Henry and Eleanor of Aquitane, and a heartfelt national television seasonal toast with Frank and Claire after a live version of A Christmas Carol. Can you name those movies? And, yes, Justin and Jimmy Ma...

As Joseph Campbell points out, there is a "threshold resistance" to the call to adventure. A decision must be made to head out onto the road, and often it cannot be made until the hero has looked into their soul. That decision is very much on the mind of Justin and Jimmy Mac as they discuss the fateful choice to move to Los Angeles. The penultimate episode of season one, "Refusing The Call" ranges...

Once more with David Bruckner, Cargo Cult careens not only through Mel Gibson's turn as Max Rockatansky but also into Tom Hardy's take as well with Mad Max: Fury Road. Of course, Tina Turner gets a Thunderdome shout out, but ultimately, this episode celebrates the benefits of a simple plot, the demands of an analog approach to filmmaking, and the story of a 71-year-old man, "who's doing it for rea...

Director David Bruckner continues to take the ride, as Cargo Cult races head on into a collision course of a conversation about transportation technology as an adversary. Duel, Maximum Overdrive, Christine, and even John Frankenheimer's Ronin are all part of tradition where anthropomorphized machines overpower the human factor. All of this merges into the beginning of an analysis of George Miller'...

Director of the new Hellraiser and The Night House, David Bruckner joins the gang on his birthday to talk antagonists, villians, and some of his cinematic inspirations. Engaging in a wide ranging discussion about the nature of what makes a good "bad guy", Bruckner, who directed Justin in The Signal, focuses on the terror of the unknowable motive trapped inside an antagonist's psychology. Listen fo...

1976's Assault on Precinct 13 is a blueprint for the career of master of horror John Carpenter. Every film he would make afterwards can be found inside it. The director's own version of a Howard Hawks' movie, Assault features a pair of taciturn highly professional heroes, a modern take on the "Hawk's Girl", and a relentless adversary that can only be stopped with enough bullets. Jimmy and Justin a...

From the utterly ridiculous to the positively sublime. Cargo Cult shifts its focus from looking at films of pop culture importance but questionable quality to a movie truly great in all its aspects. Robert Altman's MASH accomplishes the nearly impossible: it manages to be wildly funny while breaking your heart, is deeply humane despite its graphic brutality, and is simultaneously a work of exquisi...

After all the explosions, wrecks, and bulging biceps of Convoy, Over the Top, and The Cannonball Run, Justin and Jimmy Mac take an exit ramp for a minor grace note with Daniel Petrie's lovely-if-slight Six Pack. A peak-of-his-stardom Kenny Rogers plays minor-circuit racer Brewster Baker who ends up being a surrogate father to a half dozen orphans. Two of those kids, Anthony Michael Hall and Diane...

As much as Jimmy Mac dislikes Over the Top, don't even get him started on The Cannonball Run. Justin rightly points out the gleefully mean spirit of a movie that is cynical without being clever, sloppy without being wild, and not-quite-suited-for-kids despite having the maturity level of one. It covers all the bases of bad. Dean Martin is wasted in one of his final roles and Jackie Chan in one of...

Have you seen the recent Canadian trucking movie Rodeo? You should if only to see it get everything right that Over the Top gets wrong. Sighing in frustration, Justin and Jimmy Mac put themselves in the unenviable position of having to criticize Sly Stallone's turn as trucker Lincoln Hawk in the 1987 movie. They sold it as a tale of fathers, sons, trucks, and arm wrestling contests. But all of tho...

Flawed, fascinating, and not-as-good-as-you-remember-it, Sam Peckinpah's Convoy is often framed as a more truthful version of Smokey and The Bandit. The truth of the matter? It is an ill-conceived mess better discussed as a noble failure undermined by the desperation, addiction, and self-destruction of its director. Like the shoot out that concludes The Wild Bunch, Convoy feels like a lost cause t...

The enemy of my enemy is worth a box of ammunition. Using the filter of Sam Peckinpah's career, Justin and Jimmy Mac discuss the concept of allies, what it means to be one, and what role they play in Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. They also find time to talk about Peckinpah's fellow workman directors and what it means to work hard and fast. In 1977, Peckinpah was working too hard and fast havin...

Once more into the dark with author Felix Blackwell. Just as Jimmy Mac loves Halloween III, Justin adores everything about Kathryn Biglelow's cult classic Near Dark including redneck vampires, Tangerine Dream's soundtrack, and even young love. Jimmy has reservations, but Felix gets to cast the deciding vote while working through his thoughts about The Lost Boys. "One thing about living in Santa Ca...

Having gone down the dark, sinister rabbit hole of Felix Blackwell's success, Justin, Jimmy, and Felix emerge and finally turn their attention to Carpenter's Halloween. In their analysis, the introduction of Michael Myers becomes an inflection point for the history of the genre, The Shining notwithstanding. The discussion uses the movie to talk about why horror is where it is today in regards to m...

Emerging from the bowels of reddit, viral sensation horror author Felix Blackwell joins Justin and Jimmy Mac. They celebrate all things spooky with a wide ranging discussion of Roger Corman's tales of terror, a history of jump scares, and writing the fiction of dread. They never quite get to John Carpenter's seminal classic Halloween, but that just means Felix will return for the next conversation...

A noble near miss and one of Jimmy Mac's favorite horror movies, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is packed with some great ideas, one terrific performance, and all the cringe-worthy culture of the early 80's. It's the Halloween without Michael Myers. Justin has some reservations, but the longer he talks with his co-host the more he comes to see there might be something great underneath the hood...

Since no one can hear you scream in space, Jimmy Mac and Justin fill the vacuum with their analysis of Ridley Scott's 1979 cosmic haunted house Alien. Jimmy Mac attempts to make the case that Alien, even more than Star Wars, might be the ultimate science-fiction trucking movie. It's also a movie we do not recommend watching with your ten-year-old. "No blood; no Dallas."

Director Philip Kauffmann's 1979 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, along with John Carpenter's The Thing, is considered one of greatest remakes in movie history. It is also one of Jimmy Mac's favorite films. Its villainous obstacle of a replicating alien race threatens the very nature of human identity and holds a dark mirror up to the time period of Jonestown, the Iranian hostage crisis,...

Wrapping up their exchange of ideas with stuntman James Logan, Justin and Jimmy Mac express disappointment with the missed opportunities throughout Hal Needham's cinematic love letter to stuntmen Hooper. They also start tracking a troubling trend at the end of the 70's with people making movies having a better time than those watching them culminating with 1981's Cannonball Run. Want to hear the f...

The conversation with James Logan continues with an examination of Richard Rush's Academy Award nominated The Stuntman. Along the way, the hero's journey includes the career of composer Basil Poledouris, the directing skills of Robocop's Peter Weller, and how stuntmen assist in the creation of movie stars like John Wayne. They trace a line of stuntmen from Duke all the way to The Mandolorian. Want...

Stuntman James Logan joins your hosts in studio after attending the annual stuntman awards ceremony, and he shares his insights into the profession along with showcasing his vast knowledge of action and horror cinema. James also figures out which horror movie character is best suited to Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Want to hear the full episode? Click  here  to find it on the SiriusXM App.

"Outside the bounds of acceptable behavior" is the meaning of the phrase "beyond the pale," and that idiom could easily be applied to the cinematic career of director Dario Argento. His Suspiria breaks boundaries in terms of subject matter, visual style, and execution, and its impact is the topic of Justin and Jimmy Mac's conversation. A witches' coven controlling a ballet academy? That is as "bey...

A surprise success when it first hit the screen, Disney classic The Rescuers might be the sweetest film Cargo Cult will ever cover. But Jimmy Mac and Justin discover that it has all the thrills, comedy, and adventure of the two other big hits of that year, Smokey and The Bandit and Star Wars. Bob Newhart and Ava Gabor don't hurt either. Want to hear the full episode? Click  here  to find it on the...

A retired veteran and a cocky rookie join with a seasoned smuggler and his furry best friend to transport precious cargo. Justin and Jimmy Mac set off "long ago in a galaxy far, far away" to talk the ultimate hero's journey that is 1977's Star Wars. You could make a case the movie has the best space trucker to ever grace the silver screen. Want to hear the full episode? Click  here  to find it on...