Reel Deep Dive

This recording is intended to be the first of a series of podcast episodes focusing on X-Men: The Animated Series. Instead of framing things on key episodes or writers integral to the series, this particular facet of Reel Deep Dive will instead take a character from the program and break things down from their perspective. Since Jubilee served as the audience POV figure for much of X-Men: The Anim...

9 to 5 centers on the vicarious charge yielded from three working women overthrowing their company's corrupt, misogynistic, and bigoted boss. Initially pitched as a dramatic vehicle for Jane Fonda, 9 to 5 struck gold once it was retooled as a wacky office comedy with its feminist subtext framed in a satirical vein. While very much an ensemble story that gives just as much screen time to Fonda and...

One of the cornerstones of the period that animation geeks refer to as The Disney Renaissance, Beauty and the Beast loosely adapts the classic French fairytale into a 90 minute musical extravaganza containing equal parts humor and pathos. Pleased with the success of The Little Mermaid (1989), Disney executives instructed the filmmakers to take an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to the f...

Suspiria, whether we're talking about Dario Argento's original film or the remake directed by Luca Guadagnino, centers upon a young American woman attending a prestigious German dance academy run by a coven of witches. That being said, the two films differ greatly when it comes to length, storytelling, music, acting, editing, color sense, and thematic subtext. Rachel really wanted to put both movi...

We're checking off a big one here. Arguably the most celebrated film produced during Hollywood's golden era, The Wizard of Oz takes L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's novel and throws an unprecedented amount of money, care, talent, and hammy performances at it. The result is a miasma of iconic visuals, memorable songs, and iconic one-liners that still retains its ability to overwhelm the senses decad...

Following the smash success of Double Dare, children's cable network Nickelodeon produced a flurry of game shows over the course of the next decade and a half. Legends of the Hidden Temple, like most of these programs, imitated Double Dare's blend of trivia questions and obstacle course challenges. However, as one would likely infer based on the title of the program, Legends of the Hidden Temple f...

Shortly after his ascent to pop superstardom and teen idol status, Elvis Presley ventured into filmmaking with Love Me Tender (1956). The strong profits of that feature led to lightweight musical comedies becoming the central focus of Presley's career. He appeared in over 30 movies between 1956 and 1969, most of which are forgettable trash made to promote mediocre, hastily-written songs that Presl...

Spinning off from Beavis and Butthead, Daria is a coming-of-age animated sitcom centered upon its titular protagonist, an intelligent, disaffected, and cynical teenage girl making her way through a school and home environment that doesn't understand her. One of the more popular and well-reviewed programs of its particular era on MTV, the show has had a lasting impact on an audience of American mil...

While releasing the long-delayed final season of Samurai Jack, animator Genndy Tartakovsky was surprised by how much viewers loved the lengthy stretches that presented action and/or contemplation without any dialogue. This energized him to dust off an old idea and refurbish it as Primal, an adult animated fantasy series centering upon the unlikely partnership between a Neanderthal and a Tyrannosau...

Slaxx, a 2020 Canadian horror comedy, is about a clothing outlet being terrorized by a pair of jeans possessed by the vengeful ghost of a slain sweatshop worker. As that brief description implies, Slaxx is both deeply absurd and highly didactic. It crams a lot of indictments of fast fashion, the retail mindset, and capitalism into its lean 77 minute running time, but also tosses in plenty of slaps...

Felix the Cat has taken quite a few strange turns since the character's debut in 1919, but the absolute oddest take is arguably the feature film co-produced by a Hungarian and American partnership. Development dragged from 1985 to 1987 and the resulting movie, which inexplicably dropped the character into a high fantasy setting reminiscent of He-Man or Heavy Metal, was released to critical dismiss...

Loosely adapted from John W. Campbell Jr.'s novella by Howard Hawks' production company, The Thing From Another World was a moderately profitable sci-fi thriller with a surprisingly lengthy reach across pop culture. Its plot points quickly became common tropes in genre filmmaking, its most memorable scenes were widely imitated, and it has gotten several remakes over the course of the past seven de...

Adapted from the French comics series by Jean-Claude Forest and produced by Italian film kingpin Dino De Laurentiis, Barbarella shared cast and crew with Danger: Diabolik and went through a slew of writers (including Terry Southern) before reaching its final form. It's odd to remember that Jane Fonda was far from the first choice for the starring role when one considers how strongly the part looms...

Developed during the troubled production of The Black Cauldron (1985) and released when Disney was at a very low period, The Great Mouse Detective was a modest success that convinced new CEO Michael Eisner and new chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg that animated features were still a relevant facet of Disney's business strategy. Based upon Eve Titus and Paul Galdone's Basil of Baker Street, The Great Mou...

Judy Garland suffered a significant blow to her reputation when, plagued by addiction problems, she was fired from 1950's Annie Get Your Gun and then spent three months in a Boston rehab facility. Summer Stock was conceived by MGM as a comeback vehicle for Garland since it harkened back to the backyard musicals that served as reliable moneymakers for the star throughout the 1940's. Director Charle...

Generally speaking, vintage comedy fans consider the golden era of The Three Stooges to be the shorts made between 1934-1946 with Curly Howard as the third player. However, all things must pass and the group was forced to soldier on after Curly suffered a massive stroke and was rendered unable to perform. His brother Shemp Howard, who was part of the act in its earliest days, was brought in as a t...

Based upon Winsor McKay's pioneering comic strip and animated short, Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland was a joint production between Japanese and American animation studios that went through almost fifteen years of development hell before it was released to dismissive reviews and indifferent ticket sales in 1989. The roll call of those who worked on the film in some capacity can feel like a...

Envisioned as an unofficial sequel to the completely unrelated 1986 horror comedy Troll, this infamous turkey was shot in Utah by an Italian schlock factory and was cast with locals with no acting experience. Troll 2 suffered from a variety of technical issues over the course of its production, including (but not limited to) cheap props, little attention paid to continuity, and a crew that didn't...

A remake of the 1925 film that was first greenlit after the success of Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), Universal's second adaptation of the Gaston Leroux potboiler tries to mix the gothic horror of its monster franchises with the pomp and opulence of a Hollywood musical. While financially and critically successful in its day (it's the only classic-era Universal horror movie to get any Osca...

Spinning off from the TV show of the same name (itself a spin-off of the 1982 film Creepshow), Tales From The Darkside: The Movie is a horror anthology movie produced by George Romero, directed by John Harrison, and featuring performances by Steve Buscemi, Christian Slater, Deborah Harry, William Hickey, David Johansen, Rae Dawn Chong, James Remar, and (in her movie debut) Julianne Moore. Moderate...

Following the success of the Incredible Hulk television show that began airing in 1977, American networks tried to find another Marvel superhero who could captivate the viewers at home. Among their selected candidates was Doctor Strange, a heroic wizard whose comics had attracted a cult audience of children, fantasy nerds, and collegiate stoners ever since he was created by Steve Ditko and Stan Le...

A heavily-rotoscoped sword and sorcery adventure film produced by iconoclastic animator Ralph Bakshi and beloved fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, Fire and Ice's crew featured such notables as Peter Chung ( Æon Flux ), James Gurney (Dinotopia), Maggie Roswell (The Simpsons), Roy Thomas (Conan), Gerry Conway (Spider-Man), and Thomas Kinkade (a bunch of ugly paintings at your local Hallmark dealer). Gr...

A virtual band descended from the precedents set by the likes of Alvin & The Chipmunks and The Archies, Jem & The Holograms were launched in 1985 by the toy company Hasbro. Hoping to capitalize upon the smash success of the music video format popularized by MTV, Jem would lace pop songs alongside a formula set by syndicated animated programs like He-Man & The Masters Of The Universe, T...

This recording is the third in a series that breaks down The Twilight Zone through its writing staff. If you'd like to visit (or revisit) the prior installments centering upon Jerry Sohl and Charles Beaumont, feel free to scroll down. You will not, however, miss out on any important context if you just dive in here. Probably the most esteemed Twilight Zone writer who isn't Rod Serling, winnowing d...

Osamu Tezuka's popular manga Dororo got adapted into two beloved anime series, once in 1969 and again in 2019. We're not talking about either of those here. The subject for today's episode is the 2007 live action Dororo film; it was intended to launch a trilogy, but that plan was scrapped after indifferent box office returns. Despite the film's disappointing gross, its connection to Tezuka's legac...