The Magnificently Huge Podcast

It’s the annual ham-fisted #MagHuge attempt at a Halloween-themed show as we scare up some laughs with a bloody awful talk about horror comedies! It’s monsters, zombies, vampires and homicidal, ax-wielding woodsmen galore in a parade of classic films that took the normal fright tropes and added some killer jokes that always make us smile in between the gruesome deaths. Plus, The Paul Lynde Hallowe...

Do you like heists? Guns? Method actors? Method actors playing coked up characters? Method actors getting coked up and chewing scenery while doing heists and shooting a LOT of guns? Have we got a movie for you! This week the #MagHuge crew revisits the 1995 Michael Mann crime classic “Heat” starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer, and pretty much everyone else who was awesome in the mid-90s....

Grab your broadsword, put on your loincloth, oil up those abs, and prepare for a magical journey into peak 1980’s Sword & Sorcery movies! From 1980-1985, this nudity-filled, blood-soaked Fantasy subgenre was all the rage thanks to the early success of studio offerings like Excalibur and Conan the Barbarian. While these titles brought a veneer of credibility to the genre, it was soon overrun by inc...

The Office was better left in the UK. Rocky is schlocky. Nintendo Gameboy was an overpriced Tetris brick. The Godfather is...boring. Terminator 2 is big, dumb & loud. This week, we press a few buttons and go after a few sacred cows when we take a cold, hard look at some things our culture has elevated into legendary status and ask: Were they ever really any good? | 0:00 - Intros | 3:45 - Dave Chap...

Where are we going? Planet 10! When? Real soon! Yes, the MagHuge team finally gets around to the uber-geek cult classic to end all uber-geek cult classics: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! This gem was ignored when released to theaters in June of 1984, but soon found an audience on home video who discovered a unique sci-fi/comedy/action/adventure epic about a famous neur...

John Candy created some very iconic comedy moments during his career. Blues Brothers. Stripes. Vacation. Splash. Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Spaceballs. Uncle Buck. Home Alone. SCTV. That’s quite a run. But take a closer look - from his early SCTV days through his final role in 1994 - and you'll find a staggeringly uneven filmography. We hate to admit it, but all those classic movies we love a...

Music in the 1990s was about a lot more than just flannel shirts. Well, it was about a little more than that, anyway. In the days before Napster and Apple Music, bands could still make a living putting out a crappy album with one good song. This week, we’re taking a look at the best and the worst of the 90s one-hit wonders. Because on a podcast, a show about music is about more than just songs - i...

How many sequels are legitimate improvements over the movie they spawned from? Let’s face it, most are pointless exercises in redundancy and made to be straight up cash grabs. They typically lack whatever alchemy drew us to the original in the first place. Producers merely slap a big 2 on the title and call it a day, then count the receipts But every so often a sequel comes along that actually imp...

If you’ve ever dreamed of seeing an episode of CSI: Miami co-starring The Golden Girls caught up in a drug cartel murder, have we got a show for YOU! That’s right, we’re delving into the world of ill-conceived television show crossovers. What is a TV Crossover? That’s when characters from two distinct shows wind up forcibly coexisting within a single combined storyline that ultimately diminishes a...

The book is always better than the movie, or so the conventional wisdom goes. But some films get things mostly right and are actually watchable, regardless of whether or not you’ve read the source material. This week we discuss 3 random examples of a Good Adaptation: Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, and Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. All are fine novels in t...

Bugsy Malone (1976) is an intensely weird movie starring Scott Baio and Jodie Foster. It’s a gangster epic set in the 1930s about a turf war between two rival mobsters. All the normal gangster film cliches are present, including the regular archetypes - the street tough mob boss, a sultry, world-weary femme fatale & a smooth talking con man caught in the middle. But it is cast only with children u...

In 1992, Oliver Stone said, “John Ford makes Westerns. I make Vietnamers.” (No - seriously. He really said that.) And like John Ford with westerns, Oliver Stone may not have invented the genre, but he definitely dominated it with three films (or four, if you include “JFK”) about America’s first dalliance with imperial conquest and the war we couldn’t win. Join the gang this week as we explore the...

If Vince Clarke is one of the fathers of synth pop, Ron and Russel Mael are the insecure older stepbrothers of synth pop. Yes, Sparks is one of the most influential anti-pop pop bands you've never heard of. And we aim to change that pronto. Sparks excels at songs about vanity, sexual frustration, and grooming that taught a whole generation that wished they looked a little better how to avoid being...

SPOILER ALERT! Spider-Man is back for his second solo MCU outing - Spider-Man: Far From Home - and we’ve got a spoilerific minisode for you that is brimming with hot takes and nonsense! Endgame is over, The Blip is now part of continuity and Iron Man is gone. What is Peter Parker to do? Why, take a trip abroad and see the sights, that’s what! Yep, it’s a full on European Vacation for your Friendly...

It’s our Dark Knight Do-Over! Way back in the early days of this podcast - before sound man extraordinaire Brian joined the team - our second show ever was about Batman. And it was, well... not great. So we decided to try and correct the sins of the past by rebooting the damn thing, just like they keep doing with the movies. Direct from our Gotham City Studios, here is yet another ill-advised, ill...

Of all the years in film, 1981 was one. It's our look back at a curiously influential year in cinema that rarely gets the acknowledgement we feel it deserves. Lost arks were raided, chariots were on fire, and ponds were golden. Superman kneeled before Zod while cannonballs ran. James Bond had disco music, Arthur was a bit tipsy, and Bill Murray got his stripes. Time Bandits was (and always will be...

Do you love Disney animation, but hate cartoons? Who doesn't? At least that's what The House the Mouse Built is betting on. In keeping with this latest spree of "Cinematic Universes," Disney is now making film versions of all their classic animations. Well, okay, they aren't out and out CALLING them that, but come on: Cinderella, Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, and Dumbo have already been resho...

The new Godzilla movie is out and we REALLY wanted to like it. This latest iteration is part of what is now being dubbed The Monsterverse - a shared cinematic universe that includes King Kong, Mothra, Rodan, Ghidorah and other kaiju who are apparently on this earth solely to destroy crowded cities. But something this time out feels… missing. Godzilla is a lean, mean, 50-story tall CGI machine, pro...

If you could attend a party from any movie, which one would it be? From Bachelor Party to Animal House to 16 Candles and beyond, cinema is brimming with crazy ragers & unforgettable fiestas... and every single one of them is a tad problematic. We take a look at some classic movie parties from the last 50 years and can’t decide what we enjoy most about them - the overt misogyny and casual racism, t...

Episode 89 - Tapeheads: Parabellum Yo Friends, check this out! The 1988 cult comedy Tapeheads was way ahead of its time. A weird, anarchic, and purposely silly poke in the eye to the second wave of MTV culture that put image above all else, this film can arguably be seen as the opening salvo in what would become the slacker Gen-X ethos of the early 90’s. Featuring early lead roles for John Cusack...

Deep Impact Vs. Armageddon. Two movies. Same basic plot. All stupid. The MagHuge team tackles the strange film phenomenon that literally hundreds have already covered before: Two movies released in the same year by different studios that tell the same basic story. This round we blast-off to destroy 1998 Extinction Level Event meteor movies Deep Impact and Armageddon. Each film is a star-studded ro...

Pew! Pew! Pew! It’s another look at a few more not-very-good movies released between 1978 and 1985 that wanted desperately to be like Star Wars, but fell comically short. That’s right, it is Part 2 of our ongoing series about space adventures that did everything they could to ride the Skywalker gravy train all the way to the bank. This round we marvel at recycled Roger Corman dud Space Raiders, od...

SPOILERS ABOUND! You’ve been warned! If you haven’t seen the (kinda sorta maybe) final Marvel movie about the Avengers - appropriately titled Endgame - then A) Crawl out from that rock you’ve been under and watch Avengers:Endgame, then come back; or B) Keep listening to our amazing, full-on fanboy, spoiler-filled lovefest about the most epic superhero sequel EVER MADE. The OG6 Avengers are all her...

Hair metal came on strong in the early 80s and quickly became the soundtrack for suburban teens looking to party. Fueled by incessant airplay on MTV, these new bands borrowed heavily from the look of glam and hard rock of the 70s. The music was slick and polished guitar rock that covered deep topics like girls, partying, having sex with girls, sticking it to the man, more partying, having a good t...

In 1978, iconic rock band KISS conquered the globe with their all out rock assault and unrivaled marketing savvy.  Their fans - The KISS Army - were legion and happily bought the records, saw the concerts and collected the limitless merchandise. It was peak KISS. Naturally, the band decided to put one more notch on their studded leather belts and conquer ALL media - with a tragically conceived, po...