70 Movies We Saw in the 70s

In the first installment of our two-episode tribute to the late, great Carl Reiner, the mighty Kat Ellinger joins Mike and Ben to keel over laughing in tribute to his shock comedy masterwork, WHERE’S POPPA? With Kat in the UK, it’s an intercontinental orgy of ferocious film scholarship, gigantic guffawing over grievously distasteful humor, and gushed love for Mr. Reiner (and Ms. Gordon, and Messrs...

On this special "mini" episode, Ben pitches dopey podcast ideas to Mike. We talk Seagal, Bronson, Van Damme, Phantasm, Ernest, Madea, ELO, Fury Road and much more. Plus, listener feedback and just general jibber-jabber, McPadden-and-Reiser-style!

70 Movies We Saw in the 70s: Ep 6—HOT STUFF (1979) Robust funnyman Dom DeLuise mounts the director’s chair for the first—and last—time with HOT STUFF, a Miami-set crime farce wherein he co-stars with Jerry Reed and Suzanne Pleshette. Together, they play kooky cops who set up a phony fencing operation to bust an array of contraband-peddling oddballs. Oh, does it not work. What DOES work, however, i...

70 Movies We Saw in the ’70s: WHAT’S UP DOC (1972) Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal run brilliantly, hilariously berserk through San Francisco’s built-for-slapstick landscape, propelled forth by screwball comedy history, cartoon crack-ups, and director Peter Bogdanovich’s superhuman mastery of controlling chaos. Brooklyn boys Mike McPadden and Ben Reiser are also on the scene and you are, too, as...

Episode 4: CONVOY (1978) “Breaker! Breaker! Good buddy! Smokey! Bear in the air! Um… Is this facacta thing on?” This week, we roll out madman auteur Sam Peckinpah’s novelty song muscularization CONVOY (1978). Kris Kristofferson stars alongside Ernest Borgnine, Burt Young, Franklin Ajaye, and C. Thomas Howell from SOUL MAN—oh, wait a minute, that’s Ali MacGraw! It’s an open road with glide-in stops...

70 Movies We Saw in the 70s Ep#3: BENJI (1974) Fluff your fur and throw your paws in the air as we revisit the beloved canine classic, BENJI. Writer-director Joe Camp’s triumphant underdog story (pun absolutely intended) introduced the world to the supremely talented four-legged scrapper of the title, his elegant lady-pooch Tiffany, and the power of a perfectly cast, expertly executed kiddie flick...

70 Movies We Saw in the 70s: Ep2—“Beware! The Blob!” (1972) “It’s the movie that J.R. shot!” Ooze back to acid-blasted SoCal ’72 for Larry Hagman’s BEWARE! THE BLOB! A psychonaut revamp the 1958 original, BTB features “Charlie X” from STAR TREK battling the title slime as it threatens (among others) Godfrey Cambridge, Cindy Williams, Gerrit Graham, Burgess Meredith, Dick Van Patten, and Hagman him...

Episode 1 covers CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (1972), inspired by a beautiful, moving, and mind-bendingly awesome “You-Are-There!” photograph of five-year-old Ben and his grandmother across the street from the Embassy theater in Times Square, CONQUEST’s logo in full blaze behind them, accompanied by quite the head-scratching Judith Crist review quote—“It’s all fine fun!” That also sums up ou...