Recovered

Dan and Keith head to a trio of spooky wax museums, where the figures are a little TOO realistic. Beginning in the golden age of 1933, Mystery of the Wax Museum tells the tale of Ivan Igor, a dedicated wax sculpturer betrayed by his greedy partner, who finds a sinister shortcut to rebuilding his collection of lifelike waxen historical figures. A plan imperiled by Plucky Girl Reporter Florence Demp...

While we sort out some technical difficulties and prepare a mini-saga for your enjoyment, we harken back to the time when the Video Vulture, John Tebbutt, introduced Dan and Keith to the time a Roger Corman sci-fi b-movie somehow got remade and ended up even cheaper. Join us again for It Conquered the World and Zontar, The Thing From Venus, as we explore how maybe Roger Corman did in fact have the...

Grab your tommy guns and say hello to our little friend as Dan and Keith tackle the Scarfaces! Back in 1932, as prohibition was about to end but Hays Code Hollywood was about to start, Howard Hughes commissioned Scarface, a film adaptation of a novel loosely fictionalizing Al Capone's crime career. Paul Muni, the Daniel Day-Lewis of the 30s and 40s, plays Tony Camonte, a gangster with dreams...

Things get hairy in Europe as Dan and Keith explore some American Werewolves! Back in 1981, John Landis followed up his classic comedies Animal House and Blues Brothers by blending surreal comedy with classic horror in An American Werewolf in London, where an American on holiday must grapple with a curse turning him to a killing machine three nights per month. Dan has appreciation for random comed...

Dan and Keith dive into the Girls of Steel with two takes on Supergirl! Way way back in the 1980s, low-rent producers the Salkinds took one last shot at cashing in on the Superman brand by introducing his cousin Kara, who must fight a brave battle to... prevent a witch from kissing the groundskeeper of a girls' boarding school? So that he can continue to pursue students? Oh no. Four decades a...

Dan and Keith head to Eternia for He-Man and the Masters of the Universe! From its humble yet apparently iconic beginnings as an 80s cartoon, some of the characters hit the big screen in 1987 with Dolph Lundgren fighting through a language barrier as He-Man while Frank Langella has a blast as his nemesis Skeletor, in a movie that managed to be extremely low-budget get still financially ruin its st...

Munsi Parker-Munroe rejoins Dan and Keith to delve into the cinematic universe of "What if multiple fancy murderers were all in a place where you wouldn't expect them to all be?" In the beginning comes Smokin' Aces, a full deck of current and future stars as a variety of feds and hitmen circle the one drug-riddled informant who could bring down the last Castra Nostra boss. Viol...

Dan and Keith dive into some theoretically romantic Faustian bargains with two takes on Bedazzled! Back in the 1960s, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore riffed some bits on a man meeting the Devil until they spun it into Bedazzled, in which a quiet cook named Stanley is offered a deal by Lucifer, aka George Spiggott, and given seven wishes, seven chances to find a way to win the heart of his crush, Marga...

Dan and Keith head beyond the veil for some Jacob's Ladder scenarios! In 1990, a biblical term and also electric desk toy becomes a thriller starring Tim Robbins and a bunch of future stars, as a Vietnam vet named Jacob gradually learns maybe he never actually made it home from the 'Nam after all. Keith has some glowing praise while Dan digs into the layers of the storytelling: what IS r...

With a cry of "Klaatu barada nikto," Hugo Book Club founder Olav Rokne returns to help Dan and Keith break down two takes on The Day The Earth Stood Still. In the 1950s, an alien named Klaatu and his robot pal Gort arrive on Earth with a message for all for mankind... but finds it difficult to get the leaders of mankind in one room to hear it. Then we jump to the 2000s, as an all-star ca...

Dan and Keith hit the Amazon river for not just ANaconda, it's TWOacondas! In 1997, a handful of rising stars and also Eric Stoltz went looking for hidden indigenous tribes, only for Jon Voight, making a big choice with his accent, to hijack the expedition to find giant man-eating snakes. CG carnage ensues! Then we jump to last year, as Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Thandiwe Newton, and comedy assas...

Dan and Keith return to the Coen Brothers for tales of Ladykillers! In 1955, Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers led a gang of thieves making their home base the spare room of a doddering widow. The heist goes well, but the escape proves difficult under their landlady's eye, and dark hijinks ensue! Five decades later, the Coen Brothers took the gig of remaking it and transporting the story from E...

Dan and Keith return to the Hyborian Age for two tales of the iconicly armoured redhead, Red Sonja. Back in 1985, schlock kingpin Dino De Laurentiis attempted to bring Conan the Barbarian ally (via Marvel Comics) Red Sonja to the big screen... without being able to feature or mention Conan himself. Despite talking Conan actor Arnold Schwarzenegger into a cameo that got stretched into a co-lead in...

Dan, Keith, and guest Gina return to dig into the big screen version of Stephen King's It, the prequel spinoff Welcome to Derry, and more from the original novel (yes, there is still weird sex stuff left to unpack). In 2017, Andy Muschietti brought a new version of It to the big screen, one that drifted further from the source material... well, half of it, specifically the kid half, and when...

Dan and Keith head into the sewers of Derry, Maine to confront Stephen King's IT in all ITs current forms. Back in the 90s, IT became a very famous TV show, a two-part miniseries that tried to squeeze 1100+ pages of novel into three hours of movie with network TV standard to uphold, which meant some substantial cuts from the novel. Thankfully, guest Gina Stewart is here to walk Dan and Keith...

Grab your mops and get ready to clean up this town as Dan and Keith take on the Toxic Avenger! Way way back in the 1980s, b-movie titans Troma Films accidentally created a surprisingly mainstream franchise when bullies sent a neurodivergent janitor into a vat of toxic waste, creating mutant superhero the Toxic Avenger, who set out to clean up Tromaville with a mop, a mission statement, and a radar...

At last, the Phantom Saga arrives at the most influential and successful adaptation of Gaston Leroux's doomed romance horror novel... Andrew Lloyd Webber. Dan and Keith are joined by musical theatre aficionado Colleen Bishop to break down Webber's adaptation of the story, and what happened when Joel Schumacher was tasked with bringing it to the big screen. But wait, there's more! De...

Hollywood hasn't stopped remaking and rebooting the same stories over and over since we began this journey, and it was inevitable that at some point past topics would see new versions. Dan and Keith check in on the latest editions of iconic heroes, chocolatiers, or holiday-themed mass murderers. Timothée Chalamet pits whimsy against ruthless capitalism (while Keith questions if music makes yo...

Strap on your sneakers and get ready to bolt as Dan and Keith jog into two very different takes on Stephen King's The Running Man! Way way back in the 1980s, secret government employees frame Arnold Schwarzenegger for a mass murder he'd refused to commit, and he ends up recruited to the police state dystopia's most popular game show, The Running Man. Arnold and his pals must survive...

Dan and Keith head down once more into the lair of the Phantoms and their various operas, if not of the box office. One made-for-TV movie sets Jane Seymour and Michael York against a Phantom whose motives go from sympathetic to sinister on a dime, while another stretched the story to a full miniseries to soft-launch a rival Phantom musical. In between, an animated version tries to speed-run the or...

Dan and Keith head to Germany for two movies on three key things: dance, magic, dance! In 1977, Italian director Dario Argento told the tale of an American ballerina caught up in a German dance academy secretly run by witches... witches that go from zero to murder alarmingly quickly. The visuals were sharp and colourful, but the story seemed thin... then in 2017, Luca Guadagnino went with starker...

And we're back into the Phantoms & Operas sagas, seeing how two distinct film eras take on the Phantom: the auteur era of the 70s, and the slasher horror era of the 80s! In the time when creative vision was king, two Phantoms emerge. Wicked, Wicked attempts a new cinematic technique called DuoVision as a Phantom haunts a mid-range hotel, while Brian De Palma and Paul Williams unite for th...

'Tis the season to embrace, be merry, and hope the rich jerks in your life get haunted, and to celebrate, Dan and Keith take on a Curated Selection of Christmas Carols. Trying to cover every version of Dickens' classic holiday haunting would be an act of madness, so after travelling back to 1901 for the first ever film Scrooge, the boys examine ways Scrooge cinema tried to add elements t...

At last it arrives! In sleep it sang to you, in dreams it came... the Phantoms of the Operas Mega-Saga begins! Dan and Keith head way, way back to the silent era for the first film adaptation of Gaston Leroux's gothic horror novel the Phantom of the Opera, with Lon Chaney as the signature Phantom. Then it's off to China for Chinese cinema's first ever horror movie, the loose Phantom...

It's the big 100th episode, and to celebrate, our hosts (or are they?) dig into our lords and saviours, the RoboCops! In 1987, Paul Verhoeven satirized capitalism through a hero that was part man, part machine, and all cop, and John Tebbutt explains what got lost from the later director's cut, while Emma Gallaher relates her first-time-viewing experience. Then, 27 years, two sequels, a T...