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Halloween

TGTPTU hosts take a breather from the ongoing eternal damnation that is Squib Season, but also from the big screen, to celebrate the season of spook with coverage of the six-episode BBC series: GARTH MARENGHI’S DARKPLACE(2004). A mainstay of the Koral Clan (original hosts Ken and Jack along with regular guest and songstress Andi) and frequently quoted over these fifteen seasons of the pod, the British mockumentary-slash-homage-to-bad-TV series defies easy summation, but your humble narrator of staggering talent will try:

The conceit of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is that you’re watching a never-before-aired in Britain (it had a brief run in Peru), early-1990s, low-budget fright-of-the-week television series set in Darkplace Hospital (over the very Gates of Hell) and revolving around its main character Dr. Rick Dagless, M.D., a man more perfect and humble than yours truly if one can imagine such a fictional character existing. What adds a layer of complexity is that this main character Dag is played by the fictional author-dream weaver-visionary-plus actor (eagle-eared listener, did someone say Season 10 of TGTPTU early title confusion before settling on Side Hustle?), the pulp horror novelist Garth Marenghi who is actually played by actor Matthew Holness, the series co-creator along with the estimable real life author-actor-director-comedian Richard Ayoade who plays Dean Lerner, the series’ fictional producer and first-time actor portraying Thornton Reed, the Darkplace Hospital’s administrator and Dag’s boss. These two are joined in the show by Dag’s best friend and fellow M.D. Dr. Lucien Sanchez portrayed by fictional actor Todd Rivers as played by BAFTA-winner and What We Do in the Shadows (2019 spin-off TV series) vamp Matt Berry along with new hire Dr. Liz Asher, woman-emotions and psychic prone as fictionally scripted by the fictional Marenghi for fictional actress Madeleine Wool (IRL: Alice Lowe), the only one of the four fictional actors to not appear in the fictional actors’ commentary segments that intercut episodes of the show.

Fun fact: Three of the four main actors have gone on to write and direct movies of their own.

This episode Jack pops in; his pops Ken brings deep research on the cause célèbre, Holness’s inspiration for the Marenghi character, and Thatcher-contemporary: Gareth Morenghi; host Ryan doesn’t pop off; and Thomas can almost pronounce Richard Ayoade’s first and last name correctly (consistently getting at least half his name correct). Andi, originally slated to appear this ep, is nowhere to be found, presumed dead, but she was always like a candle in the wind: unreliable.

Well done, fellas and Liz.

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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

Finally, Squib Season (Season 15 of TGTPTU) returns to massive gunplay! This week the hosts repel into the 1980’s sci-fi quasi-horror bro-action all-muscle (except maybe Shane Black and/or Elpidia Carrillo) high-octane totally-bitchin’ jungle of some unnamed Latin American country to encounter PREDATOR (1987).

Director John McTiernan’s follow-up to his 1986 freshman feature film (maybe named “Nomads” who knows? Pierce Brosnan and perhaps supportive family members, maybe the film’s producers, and apparently the up-and-coming action star Arnold Schwarzenegger had heard of and/or watched the moody low-budget flick), Predator would launch the moviemaker into the firmament and keep him in Hollywood’s heavens following up this constrained-budget film with every film dad’s favorite Christmas movie and then their favorite Russian seamen film (before making Medicine Man and Last Action Hero and falling to earth).

If you don’t know the plot, why spoil it and who the heck are you anyway and why are you reading the show notes to a movie podcast? Seriously, let us know: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com. (Unless you’re AI, in which case, thanks for helping edit this episode!).

This ep, dive deep into the production (teasers: James Cameron on a plane inspired the alien’s design + the Predator’s vision not shot on thermographic cameras + stunt-simian monkey + JCVD + Montezuma’s revenge + mods were made to the M134 Minigun to make Old Painless work on film) with hosts Ken and Thomas, shallowly with host Ryan, and enjoy some good ol’ action fun along with guest host Jack. And if you love butchered quotes and impersonations, this is the ep for you.

Now, Ken, get to the choppa-block and edit this episode, you one ugly motherf--ker. You ain’t got time to read.

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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT WILL DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

Your TGTPTU hosts jump right into the Squib Season episode this week eager to discuss MONA LISA (1986), a neo-noir that’ll get squibby towards its end (or its original, comedic intro with its criminally bad British accents attempted in a reenactment of a forgettable moment from the film confiscated and presently being used as evidence by Scotland Yard).

Co-written and singly-directed by Neil Jordan six years before The Crying Game, the film stars Bob Hoskins (five years before Spielberg’s Hook) as George, a role originally intended for Michael Caine (also in the film but in a significantly smaller and more sinister role as George’s crime boss Mortwell) but rewritten for Hoskins to bring in his comedic background and general warmth, even when playing a working-class British bigot. Playing opposite Hoskins as the film’s femme fatale is first-time screen actress Cathy Tyson as the high-end call girl Simone on the hunt for her missing friend and former coworker mixed up in drugs and the streetwalking and larger sex industry that affords them. Also starring Rubeus Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies (Robbie Coltrane) as Thomas (people in the film don’t get last names unless they’re of Caine’s character’s stature, in which case they don’t need Christian names), George’s best mate and collector of weird objects.

The hosts do their darnedest not to bring up and discuss The Crying Game, instead focusing on amazing parts of the film at hand, including an elevated action elevator sequence and Hoskins’ acting. Also, how Jordan working on a tight budget reworked the London landscape to create a mood and show a side of London not typically captured on film. And in perhaps an episode first, sometimes provisional host Ryan does research!!! and is wrong about a music fact!?!

And then, before you know where you are

You’re sayin’ goodbye

-Boy George

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

Yo, put the da bomb rap-rock mix CD on the Walkman, brush off your fly three-button boxy suit, and get your pre-9/1l cool on fo’ shizzle, home skillet, as TGTPTU breaks with its patent-pending temporal pincer movement to cover THE WAY OF THE GUN (2000).

Before he (strike as appropriate: ruined / renewed / continued) the Mission Impossible film franchise but after winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 1995’s The Usual Suspects, Christopher McQuarrie would write and direct this (strike as appropriate: possible war crime / secret masterpiece / neo-Western action-thriller satire), and land in director jail. Unlike a highly successful sequel he’d write and produce two decades later also with “gun” in the title, McQuarrie’s directorial debut was not “top,” nor would it receive any Academy noms for Orig Screenplay or Best Pic. Instead, it would be twelve years before McQuarrie would direct again when he’d write and direct Jack Reacher (the one ((strike as appropriate: starring / miscast)) with Tom Cruise).

The Way of the Gun was purportedly McQuarrie’s attempt to unmake the antihero criminal movie popular by the late-90s by going further than other films had in making its felonious buddy protagonists not just unlikeable but reprehensible. Selected for the job, after many turned down the role, Ryan Phillippe who got a haircut and adopted a voice for the role of Parker (no relation to the Richard Stark series) and the always magnetic Benicio del Toro as Longbaugh. These two petty but also not-so-petty criminals happen upon a scheme during their brief road trip’s peeing in bottles, punching women, and distributing sperm to banks for quick cash, a plan involving kidnapping for ransom a surrogate mother named Robin (played by Juliette Lewis) who SPOILER ALERT whose baby doctor is her baby daddy who, despite having a different last name, is SPOILER the son of the expected father of the embryo that didn’t take and the plot gets (strike as appropriate: purposively complex / even dumber / more twisted / majorly buggin’) from there. Another Lewis, pod favorite and Juliette’s father Geoffrey, is introduced (strike as appropriate: losing / winning) at a complex variation of Russian roulette as part of James Caan’s Members-only posse who mount up for the film’s squibbiest moment, a finale at a Mexican cantina and whorehouse.

O.G. host Ken casts Jonah Hill as Jonah Hex in a McG remake of the film while hosts Thomas and Ryan introduce Natural Born Killers into the chat, wondering if it not The Friends of Eddie Coyle for the 90s. Guest host Jack defends the movie’s inclusion in Season 15 as all that and a bag of chips and not wiggity wiggity wack.

Next week is Robocop. Psych! My bad. That’s in the pairing after next. Follow and subscribe if you want the 411. Also, send an electronic mail down the information superhighway to thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com if you want Thomas’s copy on DVD. We outtie.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

What’s the rumpus? This week TGTPTU gives the Coen Brothers movie classic MILLER’S CROSSING (1990) the treatment as part of its Squib Season, see.

Lensed by Barry Sonnenfeld in his last frolic as the brothers’ cinematographer, Ethan Coen told the man with a golden eye that Miller’s Crossing should be a handsome film about men in hats, and Sonnenfeld delivers the goods with one spectacularly shot period piece from the Prohibition Era.

The picture stars Gabriel Byrne as Tom Reagan, the hard-drinking, harder-gambling Irish consigliere who knows all the angles, who’s having an affair with his boss’s skirt Verna Bernbaum (played by Marcia Gay Harden, who shortly after filming would originate the role of Harper Pitt in Tony Kushner’s two-part play Angels in America, see Season 7 of TGTPTU for more!).

Pod favorite John Turturro plays her brother Bernie, a conniving low-life crook who causes the friction in the ranks and can turn on the waterworks when needed. Jon Polito plays a loving dad allergic to the high-hat and with his right-hand J. E. Freeman playing the Dane (same year he’d star in Wild at Heart, see Season 4) they plan to take over the town from Albert Finney in one of his two roles as Tom’s boss Leo (the other appearance uncredited, spoilers during the episode for this Easter egg). Also, director and occasional second-unit-for-the-Coens-director Sam Raimi (and, can you believe it, brother of actor Ted Raimi from Hard Target covered earlier this Squib Games season!) shows up to plug a speakeasy patron grabbing air before himself getting gatted. And if you still haven’t had your fill, at this buffet of talent we even get a smattering of Steve Buscemi delivering ratatat dialogue for a scene.

This ep, Jack brings the book report, Thomas the Danish facts, Ken reenacts the experience of watching Miller’s Crossing with him by dropping movie quotes throughout the episode, Ryan brings up Gabriel Byrne’s acting chops, and all four hosts harmonize on the greater good.

Now get outta here. You’re stinking up the joint.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

Squib Games Season (S15) continues with an 80’s cable classic and special effects extravaganza, the eponymous F/X (1986).

Director Robert Mandel best known for his 1992 drama School Ties had no major studio film to his credit when he was hired to direct the two top tiered Bryans: Aussie sexpot Bryan Brown as the Hollywood special effects guru Roland “Rollie” Tyler, an immigrant framed by crooked law enforcement in an intricate double-fake out murder leaving him a marked man, and Brian Dennehy (returning to the action genre, see First Blood from earlier this season) as Detective Leo McCarthy who plays by his own rulebook and likely soon up for retirement who suspects Rollie might be innocent. Pod favs Diane Venora (Bird, Heat, The Insider) has a minor role as the aspiring actress love interest and Tom Noonan (Manhunter this same year) plays a tall goon. Surprisingly for an action-intrigue movie set in the 1980s, there are a pleasant number of professional women getting the job done, although those who pop most on screen are Rollie’s and Det. McCarthy’s respective sidekicks.

Mixing reveals on how effects are done in real life with FX in the reality of the movie’s world provides a great primer for this season’s gun play as well as lets the movie’s hero exact lethal revenge without having to hold a gun. Such a fun concept, the premise spawned a sequel five years later starring the two Bryans and five years after that a forty-episode, two-season Canadian TV series starring neither Bry/i/an.

The hosts this ep spitball alternate castings for turning F/X from a action-thriller into a b-movie gorefest; Ken’s feels safe to share his big glasses frame fetish; Ryan’s presents a theory on why straight women wore out copies of their VHS’s; and Thomas gets the opportunity to mention both The Rage: Carrie 2 and Psycho III in nearly the same breath.

Jack, this season’s visiting guest host and inspiration for Squib Season, is off again this week on some continental op but will return for next episode with the book report for Miller’s Crossing.

Fun final fact: F/X is the first movie since TGTPTU Season 4’s Cage/Uncaged to have a forward slash (or a “stroke” for our speakers of British English) in its title. That prior movie, of course, was our first John Woo film covered.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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SPECIAL NOTE: SEASON 15 OF THE GOOD, THE POD AND THE UGLY CELEBRATES THE USE OF THE PRACTICAL AND DIGITAL EFFECT KNOWN AS THE SQUIB. IRL GUN VIOLENCE IS INTOLERABLE AND RENOUNCED BUT... CINEMATIC VIOLENCE WILL BE CELEBRATED IN A WAY THAT MAY DISTURB SOME LISTENERS.

This week TGTPTU covers the film Elephant, no not the 2000s school-shooter mood piece by Gus Van Sant filmed in Portland, OR and covered previously and paired with Scarface (1983, not the earlier, black-and-white 1932 Howard Hawkes version) in Episode 8 of this Squib Season (it’s Season 15 after all, not Season 14’s Redux where the hosts covered films already covered) but, rather, the 39-minute, made-for-British-TV short film directed by Alan Clarke also entitled ELEPHANT (1989).

Chosen by host Thomas for its un-celebratory violence, the film tracks with Clarke’s influential, wide-angle following shots (camera, not bullet) people who shoot other people (with bullets, not cameras) in mostly silent milieus but for environmental sounds, mostly very bloody. (As mentioned by cohost Ken, and for more on this camera placement and its effects and influence on Van Sant, see this video essay on the Film & Media Studies’ YouTubeTM channel: https://youtu.be/Z5B8_IDhJQo.)

Produced and defended by Danny Boyle, Elephant’s unspoken (again, mostly silent with dialogue barely heard in just one scene between four blokes kicking around the football toward the middle of the flick) subject is The Troubles in the UK. In what is either bravery or foolery (callers into the network after this movie aired were split), working class and Brit-born Clarke--by then a celebrated veteran of the medium of the British TV issues film--stripped the original screenplay of dialogue when making the film in order to focus on the act of gun murder as was then currently occurring. With one un-notable exception, each of the eighteen scenes of gun violence has the shooter followed into the setting where the homicide is to occur, shoot his victim, leave followed by the camera/audience, and then cut back to silent moments of each murdered man filling the frame with his recently un-lifed corpse.

Elephant would be Clarke’s penultimate work, with The Firm (no, not the adaption of the John Grisham novel that gave Holly Hunter the nom for Best Supporting Actress the same year she won Best Actress for The Piano as The Firm you’re thinking of is by Sydney Pollack) also shot for British television and aired in 1989 as his final. Clarke would cross the pond to see if he could sell out in America (according to Ken) and die in 1990 at the age of 54.

The film resoundingly fails the Bechdel test.

Host Ryan calls Clarke a coward.

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This week, TGTPTU again interrupts its Season 15’s Squib Game coverage for something unique, a return to Year 1998 through film and to Scarf Season 11 with the new wide release from Darren Aronofsky CAUGHT STEALING (2025).

According to one summary (to be read in the voice of Roger Ebert):

In late-1990s New York City a former baseball player whose career was cut short by a tragic accident has his life turned upside down when his neighbor asks him to watch his cat while he is out of town. Austin Butler plays the ex-baseball player, and the stakes rise fast with a host of violent and quirky characters all after what the neighbor left behind. It is directed by Darren Aronofsky in what is a clear break from his previous films we covered last year. It’s CAUGHT STEALING on The Good, The Pod and The Ugly.

This ep, host Ken talks screenplay writing’s twists, payoffs, and literally saving the cat; host Thomas brings up Clifford actor Martin Short and his (Thomas’s) disdain for late-90s three-button suits; and host Ryan fills in again as the human jukebox.

One thumbs up, one thumbs down, and one thumb pointed hitching a ride for reasons covered by spoilers in the latter half of the ep.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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Podcast: goodpodugly
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