The Laser Age

In the middle of the 1970s, producer Dino De Laurentiis wanted to make a big movie, maybe the biggest movie. And what could be bigger than Kong? The original 1933 classic was arguably more popular than ever, having picked up new generations of monster movie fans over the decades. All De Laurentiis had to do was make a bigger and better version for 1970s audiences. Did he succeed? Short answer, wel...

At the end of the 1980s Godzilla needed to solidify his comeback. After a few years of silence, the big lizard had made a return with 1984's appropriately named The Return of Godzilla (re-edited and renamed Godzilla 1985 in the U.S.). a film that played it safe by taking Godzilla back to basics. It performed well, but that didn't necessarily mean that Godzilla could thrive in the changed, blockbus...

What's more terrifying than giant rabbits? Well, just about everything. Nevertheless, this film still exists. Longtime pop culture writer Jordan Hoffman joins the show to discuss a film that regularly turns up on the list of all-time worst movies. Does it deserve to be there? We'll try to figure it out. Released in the summer of 1972, Night of the Lepus was an attempt to make a 1950s-style giant m...

Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa, a film studies professor at Seattle University and author of The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life joins The Laser Age to discuss the 1949 film Mighty Joe Young, A kind of companion piece to King Kong made by most of the same team, the film features a far gentler giant ape hero, a depiction that reflects the different era in which it appeared, on...

The Laser Age is now up and running again with a slightly tweaked approach. Going forward, we’ll be doing five-episode seasons, if that’s the right word, built around a theme. First up: giant animals! Dan McCoy of The Flop House was kind enough to revisit one of the most influential giant animal movies: 1954’s Them! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

RoboCop: Who is he? What is he? Scholar, pop culture writer, and longtime Paul Verhoeven fan Donna Bowman joins The Laser Age to discuss RoboCop , Verhoeven's ultraviolent 1987 sci-fi satire about a police officer's second life as a cyborg law enforcer. Did it offer a vision of things to come? Is it a vessel for Verhoeven's particular notions of what an American Jesus might look like? Why not both...

Throughout the 1990s, film after film explored the possibilities of the then-new concept of virtual reality. The trend reached a seeming peak in 1999, with the release of the semi-forgotten The Thirteenth Floor , the anything-but-forgotten The Matrix , and, like a shadow cousin to those big-budget studio efforts, eXistenZ . With his first film taken based on a wholly original idea since Videodrome...

Released in 1984, Thom Eberhardt's sci-fi comedy takes a (mostly) lighthearted look at the end of the world via the story of two teens who survive a visit from a deadly comet. Jen Chaney, critic and author As If!: An Oral History of Clueless, joins the podcast to discuss a decidedly '80s teenage wasteland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There were few bigger movie stars than Jerry Lewis in 1960, the year he released three films: Cinderfella , his directorial debut The Bellboy , and this adaptation of a popular Gore Vidal play. Lewis plays Kreton, a traveler from the other end of the universe who drops down to Earth, talks to dogs and cats, jams with beatniks, and generally stirs up trouble. Longtime film and pop culture critic No...

SERIES PREMIERE: In 1972, special effects genius Douglas Trumbull made his directorial debut with a story of conservation, space travel, robots... and murder. In this premiere episode of The Laser Age we're joined by author, actor, and podcaster John Hodgman to explore a vision of the near-future rooted in the early 1970s. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.