Hot Date with Dan and Vicky

1967's The Jungle Book was Disney's attempt to adapt the series of Rudyard Kipling's books into a children's animated film.  Initial attempts to create a screenplay were nixed by Walt Disney for being too bleak and violent.  The final version of the script by Larry Clemmons, Ralph Wright, Ken Anderson, and Vance Gerry was chock a block with songs, talking animal characters, and toned down threats....

Highest 2 Lowest, out today on Apple TV +, is the latest joint from Spike Lee.  The film is the latest adaptation of Ed McBain's King's Ransom and follows in the direct foorsteps of Akira Kurosawa's version, High and Low.  Shot on the streets of New York City by frequent Lee collaborator Matthew Libatique, the film also fuses several different musical cues and genres to create the story of a kidna...

Originally envisioned as a vampire dominatrix with a dungeon to torture and feed on men, 1936's Dracula's Daughter underwent a radical reinvention to accommodate a more sensitive Production Code.  Gloria Holden's daughter is a more thoughtful, melancholy blood sucker, trying in vain to turn her back on her vampiric roots.  The only character from the original to make it into the sequel is Van Hels...

1981's Tattoo, the lone feature effort of commercial director/co-writer Bob Brooks, was fraught with pre and post production problems.  The film, about a tatto artist (Bruce Dern) unnaturally obsessed with a fashion model (Maud Adams), had it's release date pushed back after Brooks protested the edit producer Joseph Levine created without his input or approval.  Transit authorities in NY took down...

1959's It Happened To Jane was the rare Doris Day film that didn't hit with audiences at the box office.  Columbia attempted a re-release in 1961 under a new title, Twinkle and Shine, with similar results.  In the film, Day plays a Maine lobster farm owner pitted against a large railroad company when they damage her reputation and livelihood.  The comedy co-stars Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, and Ste...

A Quiet Place to Kill (aka Paranoia) was the third collaboration between Golden Globe winning American actress Caroll Baker and Italian horror and thriller filmmaker Umberto Lenzi.  Baker, disillusioned by the American studio system, moved to Europe in the late 60's with her family and formed a working relationship with Lenzi that spanned four films.  In this one she plays Helen, a race car driver...

Hot Date is shaking things up again by choosing a recent date and a movie hot from theaters to discuss.  Dipping into the John Wick universe, Dan and Vicky discuss Ballerina, the next film in the Keanu Reeves lead action franchise.  Wick takes a back seat to Eve Macarro, played by Knives Out and Blonde star Ana de Armas.  Eve is on a mission to avenge the murder of her father - a journey that take...

1947's Crossfire, directed by Edward Dmytryk, is based on the novel The Brick Foxhole by Richard Brooks.  In Brooks' novel, a gay man is murdered by a soldier on leave but the film had to adhere to a Hays Code which didn't allow for depictions of homosexuality so anti-Jewish sentiment became the reason for the killing.  Ironically, it was the film's theme of anti-semitism that put it's makers in t...

Hot Date has reached it's next Top Ten episode and for this episode, Dan and Vicky pick their most favorite movie adaptations - films that started as books, plays, musicals, songs, even Twitter feeds!   Your hosts also talk about what they've seen recently including Sinners, Drop, the new season of Black Mirror, Kevin Bacon starring horror show The Bondsman, The Lincoln Lawyer, and the Broadway mu...

2000's Born Romantic is a little seen British comedy about dating in the Y2k era.  Chock a block with UK stars including Craig Ferguson, Catherine McCormack, Jimi Mistry, Adrian Lester, Olivia Williams, David Morrissey and Jane Horrocks, the film follows a group of lonely hearts finding love and laughter with a London salsa club as the center of their romantic universe.  Dan and Vicky discuss the...

Based on the Stephen King short story, Oz Perkins The Monkey tells the story of a wind up toy monkey that haunts the lives of twin brothers Hal and Bill.  Christian Convery plays the twins as teen boys and Theo James plays them as adults.  Produced by James Wan, the film also stars Tatiana Maslany, Sarah Levy, Adam Scott, Elijah Wood and Perkins himself in the role of the boys' eccentric uncle. Us...

The Rickshaw Man, Hiroshi Inagaki's 1958 film about a gruff rickshaw driver who becomes the surrogate father to a boy who loses his father unexpectedly, is a remake of his own 1943 black and white film of the same name.  The 1958 version won Inagaki the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival and was one of 20 films the director made with his favored actor Toshiro Mifune.   Dan and Vicky dis...

Originally titled Shelter and produced independently in 2010 with Swedish filmmakers Måns Mårlind  and Björn Stein co-directing, the Julianne Moore starring Six Souls, written by Identity's Michael Cooney, was eventually purchased by the Weinstein Company under their Radius banner.  But the Weinsteins were in the midst of serious financial woes in 2010 after the failure of Nine and many of their a...

Struggling to find a role that would break her from beautiful girlfriend, adoring wife parts, 1992's My New Gun gave Diane Lane her first starring vehicle.  It was a role that got her noticed and some of the best reviews of her career.  Supporting her were Stephen Collins, James LeGros, Maddie Corman, Tess Harper, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the tale of a handgun that sets off a chain of distre...

1973's Slither was the directorial debut of Howard Zieff (Private Benjamin, My Girl) and the screenwriting debut for W.D. Richter (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Big Trouble In Little China). In the freewheeling comedic thriller, James Caan goes on the road looking for a stash of embezzled money with Peter Boyle, Louise Lasser and Sally Kellerman in tow.  Famously, Caan was quoted saying he took...

Of his time working with then burgeoning film actress Marilyn Monroe, Fritz Lang recalls a 26 year old who struggled with self esteem issues, set tardiness, and lack of preparation.  On 1952's Clash By Night, adapted from the Clifford Odets play, Monroe drove the director to distraction but was surprisingly embraced by leading lady Barbara Stanwyck.  Stanwyck, recognizing an overwhelmed and emotio...

The couples paired up in Martin Ritt's 1961 musical drama Paris Blues were more than just smart casting.  Real life married paramours Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward play Ram and Lillian, a jazz musician and the woman he falls in love with him.  And Sidney Poitier and Diahann Carroll, real life lovers at the time, play Eddie and Connie.  Carroll and Poitier had carried on an extramarital affair on...

Dan and Vicky discuss the found footage horror thriller Megan is Missing.  The film, starring many first time actors and shot for under a week on a $35,000 budget, was the brain child of cinematographer Michael Goi.  Goi was eager to make a cautionary tale on the dangers of online predators and so impressed Anchor Bay Films they gave the movie, shot in 2008, a small theatrical release in 2011.  St...

Our 200th Episode! 200 episodes of Hot Dates and Hot Takes on some of the weirdest, most beautiful and just plain bad movies. We've covered Oscar Winners and Razzie Winners, blockbusters and indie films, classics and guilty pleasures.   To celebrate this milestone, we've invited Alexandra Kopko from the Film Bros Podcast to discuss our favorite directorial debuts.  Dan and Vicky and Alex offer the...

The 2002 film Home Room imagines the unlikely friendship between two survivors of a school shooting - women from very different backgrounds united in tragedy.  Busy Philipps and Erika Christensen play Alicia and Deanna respectively and Victor Garber is the police investigator hoping the two will help answer questions about the deceased shooter.  With Columbine fresh in the world's memory, director...

The 1990 Australian film Blood Oath (aka Prisoners of the Sun) is the harrowing true to life story of the military tribunal put together on the Indonesian island of Ambon to investigate the mass killings of Australian soldiers in a Japanese POW camp.  Leading the charge is Captain Cooper, played by stalwart Aussie actor Bryan Brown (FX, Cocktail, Anyone But You) and a whole battalion of great supp...

Joan Bennett and James Mason, in only his third US film, play blackmailee and blackmailer respectively in director Max Ophuls' The Reckless Moment - his tale of a harried housewife whose life is turned upside down when her daughter accidentally kills a cad boyfriend and Bennett tries to cover it up.  After directing only five American films, German born Ophuls returned to France, where he was a ci...

Shot on location in New Orleans, blaxploitation horror film J.D.'s Revenge  was the introduction of two of the hardest working and respected Black actors in the business - Glynn Turman and Louis Gossett.  Already established presences in lots of TV and film projects, J.D.'s Revenge  gave them the opportunity to play leading roles.  With able support from Joan Pringle and Fred Pinkard, the movie, a...

Shot on location in foggy San Francisco, Blake Edwards' Experiment in Terror was his follow up to Breakfast at Tiffany's - again engaging a young sophisticated city girl with a handsome leading man but this time in a very different context.  Lee Remick plays Emily Sherwood, a bank teller menaced by a blackmailer and serial killer and Glenn Ford is the FBI agent assigned to protect her and capture...

Hot Date is shaking things up for our latest episode. Instead of reaching back in history for a random date, Dan & Vicky stay in the present and discuss the serial killer thriller and recent release Longlegs, directed by Osgood Perkins and starring Maika Monroe, Nic Cage, Blair Underwood and Alicia Witt.   Along with Longlegs, your hosts chat about some recently seen including Sing Sing, Kneecap,...