Reel Deep Dive

One of the defining cultural touchstones of the decade it came out in, Flashdance is a sloppy, tonally-inconsistent, and amateurishly-crafted film that happens to have an exhilaratingly charismatic lead actress, some instantly-memorable dance sequences, and a soundtrack filled with absolute bangers. While Flashdance got miserable reviews and its studio expected it to be an utter failure, that soun...

Originally envisioned as a trashy, lowbrow exploitation thriller, Rebel Without A Cause got a massive boost to its budget when the success of East Of Eden (1955) convinced Warner Brothers that James Dean was a rising star worth more of an investment. Alongside director Nicholas Ray, Dean carefully molded the coming-of-age story into a tragic, Shakespearean melodrama. Released just after Dean's sud...

This episode features a frank discussion about the multiple scenes of sexual assault that occur in the film. If that doesn't sound like the sort of thing you'd like to sit through, we'd advise you to sit this installment out. After some poor business decisions from founder Osamu Tezuka, animation studio Mushi Production was in dire financial straits. Thinking that a shift in creative direction wou...

One of the most popular, acclaimed, and widely-seen Hollywood films ever made, The Godfather contains a multitude of thematic subtext and its behind-the-scenes drama is about as thoroughly documented as humanly possible. As such, while all art is subjective, The Godfather is especially emblematic of this since there's absolutely no way that Ryan and Rachel can cover absolutely everything over the...

Spinning off from the popular and acclaimed Batman: The Animated Series, Mask Of The Phantasm was initially intended for a direct-to-video release. However, Warner Brothers quickly decided to give the film a theatrical release and, after a rush to convert the animation to this format, Mask Of The Phantasm was released to little fanfare and indifferent box office. Despite this, Mask Of The Phantasm...

Loosely adapted from Kazuo Koike and Kazuo Kamimura's manga series, Lady Snowblood is a chanbara film centering on a young lady (Meiko Kaji) striving to enact vengeance for the murder of her father and rape of her mother. Filled with stylized melodrama, bold storytelling choices, and gallons of cartoonish gore, Lady Snowblood struck enough of a chord to result in a sequel, at least two remakes, a...

One of the bedrock pop cultural institutions of its time, The Simpsons is unsurprisingly a formative TV experience for many of the commentators on Reel Deep Dive. Like with The Twilight Zone, Ryan has decided to tackle the program by doing a series of recordings where he and his guests break down the program by focusing on the most influential members of its writing staff. First up is Conan O'Brie...

Partially a romantic comedy and partially a coming-of-age drama about Catholic teen angst, Mermaids centers upon Rachel Flax (Cher), a flighty single mother who suddenly relocates to a small Massachusetts town on a whim. Most of the dramatic tension comes from the conflict between Mrs. Flax and her daughter Charlotte (Winona Ryder), a neurotic teen who's embraced Catholicism at least partially to...

Based on a goofy, satirical comic book published by Marvel in the 1970's, Howard The Duck was produced by George Lucas when he was considered the man with the Midas touch. One of the most infamous box office failures of all time, the movie lost money, ruined careers, and flooded the world with duck puns. However, because of its omnipresence on basic cable and video rental store shelves, this film...

Duck Soup (1933) is currently seen as one of the best comedic films ever made, but its reception was a bit lukewarm in its time and The Marx Brothers were soon looking for a new studio for their antics. They ultimately found a juicy contract with MGM, at that point the biggest filmmaker in Hollywood. In an effort to make the Marx Brothers more marketable to audiences, MGM insisted that the comedia...

This is the second of an ongoing series where Reel Deep Dive examines clusters of Twilight Zone episodes by writer. The prior installment focused on the three episodes ghostwritten by Jerry Sohl on behalf of the dying Charles Beaumont, so it felt appropriate for the follow-up to focus on the stuff Beaumont wrote himself (or, in the case of "Number 12 Looks Just Like You", an episode based on a Bea...

The network execs who greenlit The Tick as a Saturday morning cartoon were baldly trying to replicate the smash success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is a bit more obvious upon examination; like the Ninja Turtles, The Tick was based on an indie comics series by an eccentric artist from New England, the show features many toyetic character designs, and much of the TMNT cast was hired to...

George Lucas' Star Wars prequels were received with widespread scorn by the geek community upon their release and, while their reputations have been somewhat rehabilitated by endearing memes and the passionate, nostalgic support of those who loved the movies as children, much of the eventual goodwill surrounding these films was likely engendered by the higher quality of their animated spinoffs. St...

A loosely autobiographical account of Prince's rise in the Minneapolis music scene, the Purple Rain film is a wild, messy, silly, uneven, and idiosyncratic time capsule. While one could argue that Purple Rain is a bit slight as a movie, its soundtrack was a juggernaut that sold millions of copies, was played endlessly on Top 40 radio, captured the essence of an era, and even spurred congressional...

The third (and most beloved) installment in the long-running Vacation franchise, this film centers upon suburban patriarch Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his vain efforts to recreate the fun, old fashioned Christmas celebrations of his youth. As ever, slapstick, property destruction, cutting remarks, kidnapping, and other assorted forms of mayhem ensue. Ryan is joined by Rachel and Sylvan for an...

For most of its history, the horned, anthropomorphic figure known as The Krampus was a seasonal folk icon that was pretty obscure outside of Austria and southern Bavaria. However, soon after the turn of the millennium, The Krampus became increasingly more popular as a folkloric curio and as a fixture in snarky internet culture. By 2013, he was well-known enough for filmmakers to use him as the ant...

Shot and released during a troubled period where Hollywood was losing audiences to both television and the "white flight" to the suburbs, White Christmas used vibrant technicolor, an expanded aspect ratio, playfully light acting, and lots of expensive spectacle in the hopes of giving people a reason to go out of their way to buy a ticket to the movies. It was an impressive success, taking in far m...

Released with little fanfare and modest box office, The Nightmare Before Christmas gradually attained a significant audience of millennial children through home video and, by the early years of the 21st century, was widely seen as a seasonal favorite of the same stature as A Christmas Story (1983) or Miracle On 34th Street (1947). These days, the film is a holiday staple whose merchandise clogs de...

After writing, directing, and producing a number of coming-of-age comedies that have since become generational touchstones for Gen X and millennials, John Hughes shifted his focus to adult characters for this feature. Centering upon two strangers with little in common besides their painstaking quest to reach Chicago in time for Thanksgiving, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles uses gross-out gags, cri...

Ostensibly a remake of the low budget 1932 horror movie, writer/director Stephen Sommers' take on The Mummy borrows more heavily from Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981) than German Expressionism. A rollicking, high octane adventure story with scenic vistas, elaborate special effects, and a bombastic score from Jerry Goldsmith, The Mummy received mixed reviews and bountiful box office. While it was pre...

A dazzlingly unique cult film directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, House follows seven teenage girls as they unwittingly enter a realm haunted by the bitter (and voracious) ghost of a woman waiting in vain for her long dead fiancé. That's a fairly basic premise for a haunted house feature, but Obayashi's avant garde instincts collide in kaleidoscopic ways with the movie's homemade special effects, amate...

The first and only feature film by producer/director Herk Harvey, Carnival Of Souls was made under a quick timetable and with little money; like the German Expressionist films it borrows from, this movie relies heavily upon inexpensive atmospheric elements that are supposed to showcase the psychological interiority of its characters. It made little impact upon its initial release, but Carnival Of...

Slapped together under a shoestring budget and released directly to video by schlock movie mogul Charles Band, Puppet Master was an instant cult hit that launched the longest running franchise of the infamous Full Moon Features content farm. As of this date, there are over a dozen sequels when you factor in crossovers, reboots, and spinoffs. None of these movies are particularly good by most stand...

Adapted from his own novella, Clive Barker's directorial efforts on Hellraiser are often lambasted for their amateurish touch and brusque storytelling (and few critics were harsher about it than Barker himself). Still, Hellraiser struck a chord with audiences for its bold ambition, its uncompromising commitment to the grotesque, and its unapologetic exploration of sadomasochism. This film led to n...

Pitched shortly after the success of Dracula (1931), but not put into development until after Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man outgrossed most of its predecessors in the Universal Monsters megafranchise and is probably one the main reasons why the studio kept cranking these things out for the next twenty-five years. Reasonably faithful to its source novel (H.G. Wells had veto power over the...