DAC Episode 388 - Top Secret! (1984)

This is the first installment of our series of episodes on the films of Val Kilmer. In accordance with Mr. Kilmer’s final wishes, we are calling the series Valapalooza.

In the wake of World War II, George Orwell wrote a searing novel of government repression and propaganda called Nineteen Eighty Four, in which the ideological polarity of the post-war order was satirized and refigured as a world of constant surveillance and terrible entertainment. Orwell was spot-on in some of his predictions - but crucially, he failed to predict 1984’s Top Secret!

What would Orwell have said if he had lived to watch this madcap comedy packed chockablock with sight gags and Cold War larks? Probably that it was occasionally inspired but largely silly and not particularly memorable, save a few set pieces and a wonderful performance from Val Kilmer. One can picture him turning to a stranger in a darkened cinema to say “that Kilmer fellow, he brings a surprising grace and physicality to the role. He really carries this film. This is a man who would have smirked at Big Brother and danced his way out of the Ministry of Truth.”

Anyway, why don’t you give a listen to Adam and Aidan’s discussion of Top Secret!? We do not mention George Orwell.

DAC Episode 387 - Superman (1978)

proof that superman has a special interest in railroads.

Dah-da-da-dah, Su-per-man
Dah-da-da-dah, SUPERMAN

For this week’s Destroy All Culture, we invite D.J. Kirkbride, late of our Robot Jox episode, to talk about Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman. Our hot take of a conclusion: this is a pretty good movie, despite how strangely it’s structured and how it whips back and forth across tones and genres. Listen below or find us your podcaster of choice! Even if you have to reverse the Earth’s rotation to do it.

DAC Episode 386 - At Close Range (1986)

a dead lion who has a tale to tell.

If you threw James Foley’s At Close Range into a centrifuge, its constituent parts would probably sift out into 75% exceptionally mean neo-noir, 5% stealth inspirational courtroom drama and 20% Madonna’s hit single “Live To Tell,” which chimes through every scene like a snooze-proof alarm notification on somebody’s phone. The main reason to revisit this film is a charismatic and evil performance from Christopher Walken, playing a rural crime boss who takes his estranged son (Sean Penn) under his wing. Listen below to our discussion, or go steal it from your podcaster of choice.

In the meantime, please enjoy this song, which you can hear once below or 9,000 times in the fucking movie.

DAC Episode 385 - Weird Science (1985)

John Hughes famously wrote the script for Weird Science in only two days, but it’s likely that he was carrying around this particular fantasy in his head for at least a couple of decades. How else do you characterize a story about horny adolescents who create the perfect woman in their bedroom?

Granted, most raunchy ‘80s teen comedies don’t escalate the stakes into absurdity in the same way that Weird Science does, with nuclear missiles and mutant bikers spicing up the third act. So listen below - or find us on your podrelayer of choice - as Adam and Aidan take this one apart and reassemble it, Frankenstein-style, on the slab of their minds. Their mindslab. You know.

DAC Episode 384 - Rocky Balboa (2006)

somehow, still, a live dog.

Before Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan rebirthed the Rocky franchise with Creed, but after Sylvester Stallone kicked around the corpse of his own creation in Rocky V, there came the odd bridge of Rocky Balboa, a wistful and occasionally charming examination of what happens in the decades after the balloon of fame has slowly leaked into something wrinkled and dusty. Unfortunately, Stallone can’t trust us to watch that film, pushing the story into a fight so indifferently shot and edited that you can feel the entire series shrug its hormone-enhanced shoulders. But hey, let’s talk about it! Listen below or find us on your podcatcher of choice.

DAC Episode 383 - My Blue Heaven (1990)

now there’s a live dog.

Did you watch Goodfellas back in 1990 and think “Hey, this should be a wacky comedy with Rick Moranis and Steve Martin”? If so, you’re in luck. You’re in so much luck.

Like Goodfellas, My Blue Heaven is loosely based on the story of Henry Hill, the mobster who went into the witness protection program. Goodfellas ends with a vision of Hill standing in front of an dull suburban tract home, haunted and disappointed, an anonymous schnook. My Blue Heaven starts at that very moment, as Steve Martin’s smooth criminal slides into suburbia like a streak of mercury. There, restless and bored, he meets his case handler, a buttoned-down bureaucrat played by Rick Moranis.

From that point on the film becomes a perverse buddy comedy, as Martin teaches Moranis to loosen his buttons a bit, and Moranis teaches Martin… well, nothing really. But he writes an extremely entertaining book! Listen to Adam and Aidan talk about sartorial tips and merengue lessons below, or find us on your podmaker of choice.

DAC Episode 382 - Midnight Run (1988)

True facts about Joe Pantoliano:

• He fought and defeated the last living dragon of the moorlands, but showed mercy at the last minute and spared its life. They’re now good friends and have a time share in Palmdale.

• He once jumped back in horror and screamed “It’s the ‘haint of Loch Gullmar!” at a passing vehicle.

• He had hair in the ‘80s, as evidenced in 1988’s Midnight Run.

• He was cursed with invisibility in the seventeenth century by an ancient witch. What you see on screen is not Pantoliano but an ingenious moving matte painting that’s actually part of the background..

  If you like these facts and want to hear more of them, try listening to Adam and Aidan talk about Midnight Run. Listen below or find us where the podcasts roam.

DAC Episode 381 - Footloose (1984)

everybody cut, everybody cut.

What if normal, but dancing? What if dancing, but really bad dancing? What if James Dean, but Kevin Bacon? What if Natalie Wood, but Lori Singer? What if Sal Mineo, but Chris Penn? What if John Lithgow?

What if Foot… but Loose? Listen below, or find us where podcasts jump and twirl.

DAC Episode 380 - A League of Their Own (1992)

one dead lion, one live dog.

There used to be a sports league
The A-A-G-B-P-G-L
They used to play some baseball
They’d get out there and give them hell

Okay, I’m too hungry to come up with more lyrics. Adam and Aidan put on their baseball pants and talk about the baseball that isn’t Bull Durham. Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own is a lightly-to-highly fictionalized story about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Adam and Aidan discuss the film’s choices and take time to bemoan the fate of the recent TV series. Listen below or find us on your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 379 - Legend (1986)

now there’s a live dog (whoops, it’s a dead lion)

Filmmaker and YouTuber Patrick Willems once attempted to define what he called a “vibes movie”. A vibes movie, more or less, is a film that prioritizes atmosphere and filmmaking elements over a coherent plot. Willems lands on Tenet as the ultimate vibes movie, but if Tenet did not exist (And who’s to say? Maybe it doesn’t!), Legend would surely land that coveted spot. What else but a complete dedication to vibes could explain Tim Curry’s enormous latex Beast outfit, Tom Cruise’s tiny leaf tunic, or the allergy-inducing forest sets?

This week, Adam and Aidan discuss Legend and all things Legend-adjacent. Listen below or find us where podcasts roam.

DAC Episode 378 - Ladyhawke (1985)

better to be a live knight than a dead hawk.

DRAFT #1
You know what they say: sometimes you hawke the lady, sometimes the lady hawkes you. That may not be the premise or the moral of 1985’s Ladyhawke (the ‘e’ is silent), but -

DRAFT #2
Few works of modern cinema adress the question of who hawkes the lady on the ladyhawke of world hawkeladies, but 1985’s Ladyhawke -

DRAFT #3
Lady, every morn you glow and turn into a hawke
You eat mice and stoats and hang out on my wrist
Night time, I become a wolfe (the ‘e’ is silent)
Sometimes I wonder if a wolfe and hawke can kisse

You know what, let’s go with #3. Adam and Aidan watched Ladyhawke, the breezy medieval fantasy actioner where magic is real and every hawk gets an extra vowel. Listen below or find us on your podcast aggregator of choice.

DAC Episode 377 - John Carter (2012)

did we learn nothing from zardoz?

I don’t know where to start with 2012’s John Carter. Andrew Stanton’s first foray into live action, adapting a work that inspired most of the science fiction pulp classics of the 20th century, did not go well. Mired in production troubles and studio tensions, John Carter (of Mars???) bombed at the box office and produced a crater in Disney’s finances so deep that entire careers vanished into it.

Adam and Aidan were hoping that John Carter was due for a reappraisal. It was not, unless you’re of the select camp that enjoys a running joke in which Carter is repeatedly called Virginia. Listen below or find us your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 376 - Flash Gordon (1980)

a live woodbeast.

Every so often, Adam and Aidan watch a movie that feels like the equivalent of someone trying to write a 20-page English paper at 3 a.m. without having read the text. On the other hand, sometimes that mix of Monster Energy and desperation produces weird bursts of genius. How else to explain War Rocket Ajax, angry Wood Beasts and combative football in the court of Ming the Merciless? Honestly, it’s impossible to say whether Flash Gordon is any good or not (it’s not). Listen below or put your hand inside your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 375 - Barbarella (1968)

In 1968, fans of science fiction movies had two options (please don’t fact check this, there’s no need): 2001: A Space Odyssey or Roger Vadim’s Barbarella. Which movie was superior? Critics are still fiercely divided on the question (again, please don’t fact check this), but I can tell you one thing: Stanley Kubrick never thought to shoot an entire film inside a lava lamp, which certainly seemed to be Vadim’s ambition.

The real question is: what did Adam and Aidan think of this splashy, groovy, junky, barely coherent but extremely entertaining Matmos of a movie? Listen below, or find us on your podspitter of choice.

DAC Episode 374 - The Silent Partner (1978)

a live dog pretending to be a canadian.

Quick: who’s the least Canadian man ever to walk this Earth? Who resolutely refuses to embody a single particle of Canadian-ness? If you answered with Elliott Gould, you’d be right. So who better to portray a mild-mannered Torontonian bank teller who runs afoul of a psychotic criminal, played by Christopher Plummer, aka The Least Criminal Man of All Time?

That’s the main appeal of 1978’s The Silent Partner: watching two co-leads play so against type that the movie transcends its story and becomes a pure cultural object. Listen below as Adam and Aidan get into things, or find us on your podbeast of choice.

DAC Episode 373 - The Warriors (1979)

once a live dog, always a live dog

The Warriors! The million-meme spawning, reality-adjacent adaptation of a 2,400 year old Greek poem, transformed into a carnivalesque vision of a New York City run by elaborately themed gangs straight out of a Lucy Sante book. Best known these days for David Patrick Kelly’s “Warriors… come out to play-ay-yay” line, The Warriors feels like an elegy for something that never quite existed: an action movie with not much action, a musical that misplaced its score, a dystopia that barely redrew its map.

Come listen to Adam and Aidan as they discuss this weirdo classic. Listen below or find us on your podmachine of choice.

DAC Episode 372 - Risky Business (1983)

some dead lions think they’re live dogs.

Capitalism! Dream states! The non-narrative oneiric space of fulfillment that may be a train, or it may be the celluloid strip of film itself! Oh yeah, and Tom Cruise is there. Join Adam and Aidan as they break down Paul Brickman’s Risky Business. Listen below or find us on the podcasters of choice.

DAC Episode 371: Mr. Mom (1983)

a live dog discovering that he doesn’t want to be a dead lion.

The year 1983 had its share of radical concepts, but perhaps none pushed the envelope quite like Mr. Mom, which dared to ask: what if a man… took care of his children? The answer, it turns out, is chaos and wackiness. Can a harried Jack Butler (Michael Keaton) figure out which ham to buy? How about keeping track of his kids in a grocery store? When his wife Caroline (Teri Garr) finds gainful employment, will the sexual lopsidedness of the arrangement completely unbalance the marriage? Will Jack ever figure out how to use the vacuum cleaner? So many questions - all of them tackled in this episode of Destroy All Culture. Listen below or find us wherever podcasts roam.

DAC Episode 370 - Young Guns (1988)

a buncha dead lions.

There’s something I need to clear up before I get to the end of this sentence: Young Guns, the movie, should be called Young People Who Use Guns. I thumbed this bad boy into my VCR, expecting a detailed treatise on the age of every gun shown in the movie (at the very least, a consideration of what constitutes youthfulness in a weapon). Instead, it’s a thoroughly entertaining ‘80s-era take on Billy The Kid? Not what I signed up for when I pulled it from the shelves of The Beta Barn.*

Look, the opening credits show every member of the main cast in closeup, certifying that they are in fact pretty young. Then they shoot their guns. A lot. What are they shooting at? Possibly the horizon. Are the guns themselves young? The movie never answers that fundamental question. A promise to us, the audience, made but never delivered.

We were so shocked by this basic failure of storytelling that we didn’t even address it in our discussion of the movie. We failed you, Young Guns failed you, the gods have turned their faces away in shame. Other than that, though, it was a fun film! Listen below or find us on your podcaster of choice.

*The Beta Barn was a video rental store in my hometown. Not, as it sounds these days, a storage facility for insufficiently masculine farmhands.

DAC 369 - Repo Man (1984)

two guys destined for a ride to the stars, or maybe just mars.

(in which Adam and Aidan spend some time talking about the prequel to Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday) (diversions include embarrassing high school anecdotes, soundtrack enthusiasms, and the terror of a man with a disintegrating mind driving endlessly and aimlessly through Los Angeles in a Chevy Malibu, death and transcendence slowly fermenting in his trunk)