Mary Versus the Movies

A right-wing paranoid fantasy where a Cuban-Russian communist invasion is defeated by child soldiers in Colorado should be a lot more fun than this incoherent slog of a movie. Politics aside, this movie just isn't very good, with interchangable characters and a plot that feels stitched together from boys' adventure magazines and John Bircher rags. How did the man who made Conan the Barbarian make...

A dark and sober look at the consequences of a nuclear war between the US and USSR, full of panic and confusion, and surprisingly light on sensationalism, released at the height of the Cold War. Still one of the highest-rated tv programs of all time, and possibly influential enough to get Reagan to come to the table for armament talks. Starring Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, John Cullum, Steve Gu...

Well, here we go--a movie which boldly asks "what if we took the Arthur legend and made it Dances with Wolves meets the atheism subreddit?" Starring Clive Owen, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgard, Mads Mikkelsen, Ioan Gruffudd, and Ray Winstone. Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Dave Franzoni. To hear the entire episode, join the  Mary Versus the Movies  patreon for $3/month to hear this and t...

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 La...

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 mov...

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...

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...

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 episo...

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 d...

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 seein...

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...

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 R...

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 a...

George Romero's rare departure from horror is an Arthurian tale about a band of traveling performers who have a kind of Renaissance Faire-meets-motocross-meets-professional wrestling, lead by the idealistic King William played by Ed Harris. It's a defense of independent film, a rumination on selling out, a celebration of a receding counterculture, and a clear-eyed examination of utopianism and its...

Everyone is shocked that Mary hasn't seen this comedy classic about Clark Griswold and his family's ill-fated trip across America to visit Wally World. From the suburbs of Chicago to the Kansas plains, the mountains of Colorado to the deserts of Arizona, and finally a sunny California full of disappointment, this turns out to be a very familiar trip for Mary and Dennis, who have a long history of...

It's summer, and we're still at the beach. Unfortunately, just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, the beach is closed because a shark ate a helicopter. That's right, we're watching Jaws 2 , the unnecessary but completely expected sequel to one of the greatest films ever made, Jaws , and are, at the very least, disappointed by an unfocused story full of wasted potential, the waste...

We wanted to hang out at the beach this episode, and felt it was time to finally see the movie that made Keanu Reeves an action star. We've got surfing, bank robbers in US president masks, Patrick Swayze spouting new age nonsense, skydiving, more surfing, a lot of guns, and Gary Busey. It's pretty great.

Blake Edwards' 1980s remake of a Weimar-era German film about a gender-bending cabaret singer and the mobster who falls in love with her/him in 1930s Paris, starring Julie Andrews, James Garner, and Robert Preston, is a delightful creampuff of a movie that should have absolutely no relevance to the incredibly stupid political and cultural climate of the United States in 2023, and yet here we are....

We're back in Los Angeles for Steve De Jarnatt's apocalyptic thriller with Anthony Edwards as a musician who accidentally finds out that nuclear war has broken out, leading to mass panic through the city, and Mare Winningham as the girl he's only just met but now wants to save from nuclear annihilation. We also get a chance to talk to musician George Korein of George Korein and the Spleen, who wro...

We're back just in time for the end of the world. An unsubtle but fun romp through a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, where two sisters and a random guy fend off zombies and mad scientists bent on harvesting their blood.

We take on a more recent movie this time around, a charming British kids' film about a boy who finds Excalibur and learns he and his friends must defeat a reawakened Morgana before things get worse in Britain--and things are already pretty bad there in the dark year of 2019. We were lured in by the promise of Patrick Stewart as Merlin, and while he's not in it as much as we'd hoped--the man's in h...

We're still on hiatus, so we pre-recorded this bonus episdoe with an old friend of ours, writer Carolyn West (@Firebunny3000), a viewing of the 1954 monster movie Creature from the Black Lagoon , the last of the great Universal monsters, which was shown at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia back in early June of 2023. We'll be back recording soon, but in the meantime, enjoy.

We welcome Dan Wade of the Wheel of Randy podcast to the show to talk about the Robert Redford baseball movie with a Randy Newman score. There's a lot of Arthurian myth talk, too, so this is a stealth  Hollywood Avalon episode. We talk baseball--a  lot of baseball--Randy Newman, and mythology in an episode that goes into extra innings.

It's the surprisingly sweet and often funny story of a Swedish boy coming to terms with his mother's illness and death during the late 1950s, while also learning about love, sex, and the fallibility of adults. Throw out any ideas of dire stories, black-and-white cinematography, or terrible child actors, this film is light, colorful, and thoughtful in ways that really surprised us.

We were not prepared for this absolutely bizzare horror flick, but it will stick with us forever. A perfect combination of 1980s sleaze, iffy acting, body horror, and social satire, it's also thorougly nauseating. We have no regrets.