Rogues Gallery

The leaves are changing color and the air is feeling a little crisper. Fall is here and you know what that means... It's time for Fall Verhoeven! It's our annual retrospective of the films of Paul Verhoeven and this year we're enlisting for a tour of duty with the brave citizens of Starship Troopers. Although it's loosely based on Robert Heinlein's seminal (and controversial) novel, the movie is l...

We're canceling the apocalypse and opening up a case file on Guillermo del Toro's kaiju vs. mech slugfest Pacific Rim . Topics include: how the film reignited del Toro's passion for filmmaking after a handful of other projects fell apart, the deliberate decision to avoid any gratuitous references to its key influences,  whether or not the incredibly detailed lore is offset by occasionally thin cha...

In honor of its 30th anniversary, we're opening up a case file on The Fugitive ! Although the film wound up being a critical and commercial hit, it first had to survive a surprisingly arduous development process and an even more chaotic production. It's actually kind of a miracle that it turned out this good. So join us as we investigate The Fugitive 's long journey from development hell to bona f...

Park Chan-wook's action/thriller Oldboy was a watershed moment for South Korean cinema. Here in the West, the film's success led to a slew of "extreme" movies that emphasized over-the-top gore and violence. And while Oldboy certainly doesn't skimp on bloodshed, its most disturbing aspects emanate from the taboo subject matter and dark themes it's exploring. Topics include: the original manga that...

It's time to re-open our case film on the Springwood Slasher and investigate the chaotic production of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child . We're entering a particularly rough patch of this franchise and by all accounts, everyone involved with this entry realized pretty quickly that the deck had been stacked against them. Topics include: the producers settling on a title and a poster bef...

The plot of  World War Z is pretty straightforward, but the film's journey to the big screen was anything but. In this episode, we investigate why the filmmakers deviated so substantially from the novel and how this became one of the most troubled productions in recent memory. Topics include: why they rejected an initial script that was much closer to the source material, how almost everyone invol...

There have been several adaptations of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels, but 1999's  The Talented Mr. Ripley remains the definitive cinematic interpretation of the cunning con artist. And that's despite the fact that it makes some pretty substantial changes to the source text and the title character. In this episode, we compare and contrast the book and the film, discuss Highsmith's complicated...

For many fans of the  Predator franchise, Prey was simultaneously a welcome return to form and a refreshing expansion of the mythology. In this episode, we track the film's top-secret development, detail its grueling production, and speculate where the series might go from here.    Facebook | Twitter | Instagram Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Spotify Chris's Instagram & Twitter | Kriste...

The Mist is a largely faithful adaptation of Stephen King's original novella with one major exception. It's a decision that viewers have been debating since the film was released in the fall of 2007. In this episode, we compare and contrast both versions of the story, the film's long road to the big screen, how its box office success was hobbled by its marketing and release date, where it ranks in...

When Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released in 1984, many audiences and critics felt it was too dark and too weird in comparison to its predecessor. But for a whole other subset of the fandom, those elements were precisely what made this one so special. In this episode, we investigate the behind the scenes circumstances that led to an Indy sequel that zigged instead of zagged and see ho...

Gird your loins!  The Devil Wears Prada gave Meryl Streep an opportunity to sink her teeth into a deliciously villainous character, but you might be surprised to discover how different the film is from the bestselling novel it's based on.   In this episode, we investigate the real-life inspiration for the character of Miranda, how that bolstered and hindered the development of the movie, a major s...

  When it was announced that Heath Ledger would be playing the Joker, a firestorm of controversy erupted. But when The Dark Knight hit theaters in the summer of 2008, naysayers found themselves with a whole heaping plate of crow to eat. This isn't just the best villain in a Batman movie, it's one of the great movie villains PERIOD. In this episode, we're investigating the way Christopher Nolan and...

  Although it's one of the most beloved movies of all time,  The Wizard of Oz was also nightmare fuel for a lot of us when we were kids. But while The Wicked Witch and her flying monkeys terrorized Dorothy and her friends on screen, it turns out the real nightmares were taking place behind the scenes.   Join us as we investigate the troubled production of one of Hollywood's most iconic films, the...

Try as they will and try as they might, whoever steals his gold won't live through the night! Join us for a (slightly belated) St. Patrick's Day celebration as we revisit the 1993 horror/comedy Leprechaun .   We discuss the reasons behind the bizarre tonal shifts in the film, the vaguely defined powers of the title character, how Jennifer Aniston really feels about her big-screen debut, the savage...

  We're back! And on this episode, we're putting together a case file on the ghost with the most - Beetlejuice... Beetlejuice... Beetlejuice!   Our investigation digs into the original (and much darker) version of this script, the pivotal point Tim Burton's career was at, the unusual first choice for the title role, our favorite sequences, other media Beetlejuice has appeared in, whether or not th...

This week we've got a Thanksgiving Turkey Triple Play! Each of us has chosen a movie that was critically maligned upon its original release and we're going to debate whether or not they've earned a reappraisal. On the chopping block we've got Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Volcano, and Alien 3! The RG gang is going to be taking a brief break for the holidays, but follow us on social media using the li...

We're going all the way back to 1933 to investigate one of the most influential films of all-time: the original King Kong . The technical innovations employed here catapulted the entire industry forward by leaps and bounds, but Kong also set the template for the structure and pacing of modern action/adventure films. We explore the cinematic landscape it was released in, some interesting alternate...

As part of our ongoing retrospective of the Halloween franchise, we're heading back to Haddonfield for 1988's Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers . After the lackluster box office performance of the Myers-less Halloween III , the mandate for this installment was simple: back to basics. Too basic? Maybe. But at the time, Return 's adherence to a tried-and-true formula was what fans were lookin...

It's Fall Verhoeven on Rogues Gallery! This is the magical time of year where we revisit the films of Paul Verhoeven. And WOW is this one a doozy. Showgirls was a critical and commercial failure when it was released in the fall of 1995, but the film found new life as a midnight movie and went on to become a cult favorite. So what's going on here? Is this so bad it's good? A misunderstood masterpie...

Domestic thrillers were all the rage after the success of Fatal Attraction in 1987, but it was the early 90s that marked the zenith of the subgenre's popularity. Which made 1992's The Hand That Rocks The Cradle a perfect choice for revisiting this particular trend and unpacking all of its conventions. Facebook | Twitter | Instagram Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Spotify Chris's Instagra...

The title alone made Snakes on a Plane an internet sensation, but by the time it finally hit theaters the whole thing had become more meme than movie. And by that point, the joke was pretty played out. So instead of the blockbuster the studio had been anticipating, Snakes became a cautionary tale about online hype not always translating to actual ticket sales. On this episode, we're investigating...

After an unbelievable two-year hot streak where every Jim Carrey movie was doing bang-up business at the box office, The Cable Guy became a sobering reminder that nothing lasts forever. The film was not a bomb by any means, but when compared to the performance of his previous hits, it was unquestionably a major disappointment. And there's no shortage of theories as to why - it was too dark, the ma...

Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange is now regarded as an incredibly accomplished and influential film, but it was a lot more divisive upon its original release in 1971. And one of its biggest detractors wound up being the original novella's author, Anthony Burgess. Burgess wasn't just critical of the movie, he had very complicated feelings about his own book. This wasn't like Steph...

Throughout the 80s and 90s, a lot of top-tier genre filmmakers took a crack at developing a modern update of The Mummy. In the end, it was writer/director Stephen Sommers who landed the gig by reimagining the story as a family-friendly Indiana Jones -esque adventure as opposed to a more straightforward horror film. In this episode, we examine the earlier iterations that were considered, why Univer...

Whoever wins... we lose. That's what the poster for AVP: Alien Vs Predator proclaimed and that's certainly how most audiences probably felt walking out of the theater. That was almost two decades ago though and now that we've sat through some of the subsequent entries in both of these franchises... is this one really that bad? We decided to investigate. Topics include: the original Dark Horse Comi...