Space Truckers and SpaceCamp - Talking Pondo

 In this episode, Marty gives Clif the movie Space Truckers to watch and Clif gives Marty the movie SpaceCamp to watch. 

Clif and Marty take on a space themed double feature with SpaceCamp and Space Truckers. Plenty of space for everyone!

SpaceCamp (1986) taps into that 80s spirit of adventure and imagination. What happens when a group of trainees are suddenly launched into space for real?

Space Truckers (1996) heads in a much stranger direction, blending sci-fi with offbeat humor. Clif and Marty explore what gives the film its cult following and whether its oddball approach ultimately lands. Anywhere.

 #TalkingPondo #SpaceCamp #SpaceTruckers #MoviePodcast #SciFiMovies #FilmDiscussion #80sMovies #CultFilm 

Transcript

Marty 0:00
Really exceptional type stuff. But meanwhile in the movie Space Camp, we can't even label the hoses. It's the green one next to the blue, next to the just write which hose it is. Why do you want to make it so hard on yourself?

Clif 0:17
Label the hose. So here's what I don't understand. So, okay. I'm locked into the MMUs prepared to open the CBDs. Alright, so it's no wonder that CBDs made sense to me as a comic book store name because CBD I heard years ago. Welcome to season four of Talking Pondo. Talking Pondo is a podcast where Clip and Marty give each other a film to watch and talk about them in detail. Some episodes will include special guests.

Marty 0:58
Or space chimp free films. About space. About space. And there's no chimps. No chimps. There's a camp and there's some trucking, but there's no chimps. There's a super annoying robot, but there's no chimps. Perhaps if they had made a sequel to either of these films, you would have gotten some space chimps.

Clif 1:21
Maybe the space chimps are the friends that we made along the way. I don't know where we're going with this.

Marty 1:26
Because you were like, why is space chimps in your collection? Well, it's a joke that you stumbled upon. And I thought he was looking for space truckers, I said. I was. But we're back. That's right. I almost said it's Pondo Theater. No, it's well, I mean, I guess, in a way, it's Noah's Talking Pondo. That's right. Season four.

Clif 1:47
Episode 11?

Marty 1:50
11. Wow.

Clif 1:52
Uh Marty as always. Cliff right here. Got two movies for you. Got some two got two space movies for you.

Marty 2:02
Yeah, they both have space in the title. Space Chimps. No. Space Camp and Space Champs. Space Truckers. And our space guest uh spaced out on us, I guess, today. Yeah, well, you know, it happens. The guests brought us the Space Truckers movie. And unfortunately, it's not here to talk about the movie with us, but it happens sometimes. And like Cliff mentioned before the show, maybe it's a good idea to let the guests know that if for some reason you can't make the date, odds are we're gonna go ahead and do the episode anyway, because we don't have a buffer. We want to make sure that the show comes out every week. And yeah, so it's never anything personal. No. If anything, sometimes we'd probably rather not cover something.

Clif 2:48
No, no, but look, you know, hey, sit back, relax, and we got you covered. We watched both these movies, and uh we're gonna we're gonna trust us, we're gonna take you there. And and again, our guest we will reschedule, hopefully. I think it was just uh I think it was for God or something. That leaves us with Space Camp and Space Truckers.

SPEAKER_02 3:13
Sweet.

Marty 3:20
Listener mail. Listener male. So they're both about weapons. That weapons episode. One of them you already know because you responded to it. Uh Derek Schlender, who's hopefully listening right now, said it was nice to be quoted in correct context for once. Talking about his diatribe that I repeated on the uh weapons episode about the straight line. Yes, the whole way of the water.

Clif 3:50
It was a good quote. Uh I mean, to be fair, the two lines did intersect, so of course you would draw a circle around that and immediately go. But is it true? But but yes, but yes. But of course, you know, his point is, you know, fuck the dogs and the police and everybody else. Nobody's thought of this except for Josh Brolin, but yes. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Marty 4:15
Let me pull up the other one, which was more of a basic uh response, I guess you would say, not not like a written-in email, but they repost it the link, so that's always good. Uh and that one was from our buddies over at Suns and Shadows. They say, I love Pondo Theater and weapons. Well, I don't know if you listened to the episode, but no, we enjoyed weapons. Even if I gave it a low rating, it was still fun to talk about. And I still think about the weirdness of it. So like we say, sometimes I give a movie a low rating, but that doesn't mean that it's not watchable or interesting.

Clif 5:01
I uh, you know, I sometimes it means that, yes, of course. Like we talked about it, it had that Stephen King feel. It gave me hope. You know, I'm I'm a lot of these movies, these these, you know, hereditary, a lot of these things are there's they're so, you know, some of this ariaster, it's so atmospheric, and I felt like weapons did a bit of that, but also kind of gave some good payoff, right? Amy Amy Madigan's fucking creepy, you know, the the kids down in the basement, the whole thing's got a really good creepy real mind.

Marty 5:32
Yeah, there it is. I Heart Weapons and Talking Ponto. So that was our buddy Kevin Smith over at Sons and Shadows. Not the Kevin Smith from Clerk. The the Mystery Science Theater fan, Kevin Smith. The differentiation. So it's good to know that everybody's still digging the show. Like uh hopefully our uh Reels of Justice episodes come out by now where we do paranormal activity. And it's just cool to see the the rings getting larger and we're all kind of connecting and stuff.

Clif 6:06
It's fun, yeah. The connections have been the best part. Getting to know these different podcast people and getting and kind of creating this little group of of people that we kind of talk to and and you know, go on their shows, bring them on our shows. And I'm I that last episode of Reels was one of my favorites of all time. That take out of paranormal activity was just the best. We kind of went for it. We did we really went for it. Like we really went for it. And uh, I'm hoping that it plays as well on to the to the listeners as it did to us since we were making it, because yeah, I I was kind of chuffed with how well it came out.

Marty 6:43
I'm uh curious to see when it drops, if it's like when our episodes uh on vacation are coming out at the same time, so we're just inundating people with that entire week for a good three weeks there. Because if you don't know, we had a semi-vacation a couple weeks ago, and we did a lot of fucking recording during that week, and it's all coming out. So I'm sure it's out by now, time you've heard this, but by the time we're recording this, we're still uh waiting. I think the first of it drops this weekend. The uh to you listener, classic Love Witch Blade Runner episode, I believe. That's right. That's right. The now classic.

Clif 7:24
And then Cobra and the Voices is next.

Marty 7:26
Yeah, I hope that those weren't too tricky to edit because we were recording with different sound equipment.

Clif 7:32
As long as they were in sync, we were good. But if they if they drifted even a even a few milliseconds, that then you got that that crazy, you know, echo. And uh but so once they were locked in, they were they were good to go. So what are we gonna talk about first?

Marty 7:50
What are we starting with? Uh I want to do the one about space. That's refer it's a defer to the guest to or which one that we want to start with.

Clif 7:59
Guess what would you like? Uh that's a bad joke. Okay.

Marty 8:02
Uh let's do space camp.

Clif 8:06
Okay.

Marty 8:07
This really don't matter, you know. No, but let's do space camp. So what is baby Joaquin Phoenix? Little Leaf in the movie that's gonna make me bring Ruskies onto the show at some point. Oh, okay.

Clif 8:24
Little Leaf Camp in Space Camp. Space Camp, rated PG, 1986, one hour and 47 minutes. The young attendees of a space camp find themselves in space for real when their shuttle is accidentally launched into orbit. This is directed by Harry Weiner. Well, I mean, yeah, to them it's an accident. Director by Harry Weiner, writers are Clifford Green, Casey T. Mitchell, Patrick Bailey, stars Kate Capshaw, Leah Thompson, Kelly Preston, and a host of others. Um, let me get your storyline here. Okay. American kids go to a space camp during the summer holidays. They learn how to operate the space shuttle. A team consisting of a guy who just entered to meet girls, a wannabe astronaut, and an instructor who wanted to go on a mission instead of teaching can sit in the shuttle while testing the engines. Then they're launched into space by mistake. An impossible mistake, put them into space. The adventures of their lives will be getting back home. This is Leaf's Joaquin or Leaf's uh feature film debut, yes.

Marty 9:27
Yep, yep. First one, which means Ruski's is probably like the second movie or third or something, because it's still very early on. And uh we riffed that movie back on the public access show, Bondo Theater, as I was talking about earlier. Maybe that's why I was thinking about it. But this movie just totally gave me that same vibe as as that film. It's corny, it's 80s, but there's still something I enjoy about this, the the you know, the dumbness of it.

Clif 9:57
I know I know what you I know exactly what the fuck you mean. No, I I I know exactly what you mean. There's a there's a charm to it, even though it's just super it, I mean it's not a good movie, uh, but it's not a bad movie. No, and there is a weird charm to the film. Um, and but there are also times where you want to kind of peel the skin off your face while you're watching it, where you're just like, oh, next scene, please. Please move to the next scene. And most of them have to do with Jinx, the annoyingly fucking annoying fucking robot. The uh I think you called it the Johnny Five sidekick robot, is that what you called it?

Marty 10:39
Well, it's as if in the movie Short Circuit, it's as if Johnny Five had been reduced to a supporting character in his own movie. If you imagine Short Circuit is Johnny Five only shows up maybe like every half hour or so for like five minutes and then disappears again, and you're like, wait a minute, is this movie about this robot or not? Kind of like that.

Clif 11:05
Have we had an ABC have we had an ABC motion pictures film on the show?

Marty 11:09
No, we haven't, because there was only like eight or nine of them that were ever made. Interesting. I looked up about this company. This was the last one they ever put out. Their big hit was Silkwood. I think they had another movie that might have been a marginal hit, and then they had some very cocaine-infused early films, Young Doctors in Love.

Clif 11:30
Oh, that's a great one.

Marty 11:31
And National Lampoons Class Reunion. Oh, wow. Now that's one I haven't seen, but I've heard about. Yeah. Makes 1941 seem downright sober.

unknown 11:43
Ooh.

Marty 11:44
But yeah, ABC uh and they just, you know, went bankrupt. Uh this movie didn't do what they had hoped for many different reasons. And I'm guessing ABC being ABC probably just absorbed everything back and is a big tax write-off. Apparently, CBS had a theatrical thing for a little bit too. I fell down a Wikipedia rabbit hole looking that stuff up. Because I was like, what is you know, you see ABC Motion Picture Company or whatever. It's a very weird logo.

Clif 12:14
ABC Motion Pictures. You're like, what? Not the okay.

Marty 12:17
Not paying for TV, though. They were trying to branch out.

Clif 12:20
So right away we get the trope of the little kid in the wheat field in the middle of you know, the middle of the country, looking up at the stars and talking about going up there one day, you know, as the film starts. And then was that arrival? And then huh? We're talking about arrival? We're talking about the just the trope of the whole trope of it. I mean, it's just um the beginning of space camp. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. And then we cut to Tate Donovan, who has popped his collar and never looked back in the 80s. And and let's be honest, this is the most 80, one of the most 80s movies out there. Um, it's just 80s written all over it, but he pulls up in his Jeep with his you know Eric Clapton fucking blaring, and and it's just trope. Yeah, trope after trope after trope with this movie. It's really great. It's it's trope after trope. It's like chrome. Trope over trope, yes. My father wants space camp. It's like, dude, it's not fucking Harvard. Like, you know, well, you know, I I didn't want to go to military school, so I still have space camp.

Marty 13:26
It's like, oh well, okay, so why did he have to lie to get onto that team? It seems like a weird and unnecessary device. Because he's trying to because he's trying to meet Leah Thompson. Okay, well, what I'm saying is, why we even write it that way? Just have him be part of the team. He doesn't really care about anything. Instead, we have this hey, doesn't other dude ever say, hey, that's my spot, motherfucker. I'm still on this team. And you could have just wrote it a little different, and we never would have blinked an eye. He's the related member of the team.

Clif 14:00
We're trying to establish that he's the bad boy, you know. Again, he pulls up. He pulls up in the Jeep and he he parks in the wrong reserve parking, you know, and and you know, he tells I mean, what does he tell Kate Capsaw the Shaw the first time he says to her? Nice boosters. You know, I mean, he's a fucking shitty kid.

Marty 14:20
He's an asshole, you know. It's just like it is kind of funny where it's like there's a few things that are definite hand waves where it's like for the sake of a joke or something, it's like, well, sure. Literally makes no sense in this movie trying to be somewhat realistic that he isn't just gonna be able to take somebody else's place on this scene where this kid is supposed to, he fucking paid to come to space camp. He's got the credentials, he's just gonna get all quiet and never tell anybody that he's not supposed to be on their team, and they're not gonna question that Tate Donovan's not there.

Clif 14:54
Well, then why is nobody freaking out that fucking 12-year-old Joaquin Phoenix has somehow wormed his way into the fucking program?

Marty 15:00
Because it doesn't matter, sir. Right? It's the same reason that Joaquin Phoenix is the wrong thing.

Clif 15:07
It's the same reason that he uses the changes the name and gets on the team. It doesn't matter. Well, yeah, he can't. We're just maneuvering the kids together.

Marty 15:17
No one notices that AI Jinx is gone, that he's been kidnapped by Joaquin Phoenix. Nobody even notices. Well, I think maybe it's because they just let this thing roam around the campus, like these drone droids at the con that bring us our food. All they gotta do is put a little AI in there, and you got Jinx, you know. Yeah, yeah. It is kind of weird to think Jinx is that robot. You can ask him questions and shit, and he'll give you these literal answers, and it's like, well, he's AI bot, you know.

Clif 15:52
I think um also did you notice that that uh Max has apparently Wi-Fi or Bluetooth ability? Like when he walks into the when Max rolls into or Jinx, sorry, when Jinx rolls into the room with all the other computers and he just begins to wirelessly communicate with them and yeah and you know, turn them on and make them, you know, do their computations and shit. It's like uh hey yeah, it was uh so NASA's got some pretty advanced shit, I guess, is what we're trying to say.

Marty 16:21
He may just be a puppet in real life, but they were definitely showing some advancements of uh you know of future technology there. And also the the kid's obsessed with Star Wars walking Phoenix kid, but he's also kind of an Anakin Skywalker rebuilding the robot of Jinx before we see Anakin build C3PO. And then isn't Jinx kind of like a pit droid a little bit? I don't know what the fuck is it? But remember in the beginning when you first see him, he's helping them out build shit, and he's the little scurrying thing that brings you a wrench or something, right? And I'm like, I feel like they were re-influenced by Space Camp in a way. Who knows? But the people who made Phantom Menace, I feel like it's circular, you know. Possible, might be we ran out of Star Wars movies in the 80s, and so we started getting stuff like this and The Last Starfighter to fill in the gaps. But I was just like, wait a minute.

Clif 17:22
This is a very um packed cast. Um you get Kate Capshaw, Steven Spielberg's wife, you get Leia Thompson, who this is during a big, big upswing in her career. Uh, you get Kelly Preston, who what what's kind of surprising for a kid's movie considering that the two movies she had done before were pretty racy. Um Mischief and and um Secret Admirer were 85. This is 86. Uh and but I mean she's a great actress. Um Larry B. Scott from who plays Lamar from fucking Revenge of the Nerds, Joaquin Phoenix, he's not my favorite actor, but whatever. Tate Donovan, Tom Scarrot, um Terry O'Quin. Quite a packed Terry O'Quinn. Yes, thank you. Quite a packed cast. Um really good. It's basically like it's just a bad script. It's a really bad script.

Marty 18:18
Just marooned with kids.

SPEAKER_03 18:20
Mm-hmm.

Clif 18:20
Yeah. And and look, it's it again, like we talked about, it's got its charming moments. I think I like Kelly Preston's character. I like her kind of like, I'm a smart airhead type of thing. You know, I think that's a lot of fun. Um I like watching her uh Leia Thompson try to boss everybody around and uh, you know, all that type of stuff. And watching them in the space program is kind of fun. It's got these weird, weird, weird um uh what's the word I'm looking for? My goodness. Space. Montages. Sorry. It's got these weird montages where they're showing you the they're showing you the, you know, like uh here's this thing over here, and here's the suits, and blah, blah, blah. And you can hear K Capshaw doing the ADR over it, but it doesn't fit, and it seems so fucking weird. Where uh, you know, like uh she's trying out the um the the three rings spinning and trying to fix it, and they and you can hear Kate Capshaw's ADR. No, do this, do that, and then suddenly they cut to her. It was fucking weird. It just weird production, very, very strange.

Marty 19:33
Well, yeah, their production company was going out of business. But this was this was poised to to be a bigger hit, and I think in a different reality it probably would have because it's just a simple, relatively non-offensive family movie. Absolutely straight up PG.

Clif 19:55
Yeah.

Marty 19:56
It has the unfortunate timing of coming out in theaters just a few months after the Challenger blew up. Yeah. And I think people weren't ready to go see a movie about people in the space shuttle in peril at that point. I saw it. I saw it in the theater. I mean, it did all right. It made what, like almost 10 million domestic$18 million budget. It was considered a failure. It certainly wasn't the uh propaganda success piece they wanted it to be. That went to top gun that year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think it would have been a lot more successful had that mission gone through, right? Because then it would have been sure I think so. Yeah, I definitely think that's a little more hyped about it because that really did set things back. And strange, strangely enough, they just got back from the uh moon voyage yesterday as we're recording this episode. So we're watching these space movies while actual space stuff is happening, and you said you wanted more science fiction. Well, we're getting some right away here. And uh is it science fiction?

Clif 20:56
I guess I I think it's got science fiction hard sci-fi or something. But it is more much more hard sci-fi for sure. I mean, they're they're definitely going for all most of this technology exists, right? Except for except for Jinx. And and a robot like Jinx, I'm sure I'm sure he existed in '86. He just didn't exist to that level of sophistication. Um, so one one of the things when Leia Thompson lands in the plane, right, and she gets out, she tells her dad to uh check the left mag because it's sticking, and all I could hear is all I could hear was uh Chevy Chase doing the guy, doing the mechanic, airplane mechanic in Fletch, where he was like, now you prepare that Spitzer valve with some ball bear, some gauze and some 30 weight oil. You know, come on, guys, it's all ball bearings nowadays. It's just it's kind of just like just nonsense language to make her sound like she's smart. You know what I mean? It's like, oh my goodness. And that's kind of what I mean about this movie. It's it's like you said, it's got these goofy things in it, but it's like you said, it's also a non effective. Offensive, kind of fun family movie. Yeah, it's almost a real movie. It's so close to those uh computer who wore tennis shoes, escape from which mountain type shit. You know what I mean? It's a little better than that, but yeah. Right. But I mean, I'm talking about that family feel, right? Um, because it's just other than that, it's pretty non-offensive. I mean, it's there's nothing really super offensive about the movie or to get really worked up about. You'd have to really look to get really pissed off at this movie and be offended at it, in my opinion. Yeah, I think so. Oh, uh, Tate Donovan does a Jose Jimenez impersonation, linking the film to the right stuff.

Marty 22:40
Oh, yeah, and you would see something that says the right stuff at one point in there.

Clif 22:44
Yeah.

Marty 22:45
Well, you know, this movie happens because of the success of the right stuff, I think, and things like that, right? Because it's only a few years after. So you can still get some space realistic space movies green lit. Yeah.

Clif 22:58
Yeah.

Marty 22:59
It's a it's a I rented this one. Yeah.

Clif 23:03
Yeah, I I I watch this a lot. So um apparently Pamela Adlon's in this film. I don't know if you've if you see her, but she's one of the kids in the control room when the space shuttle launches. Uh watching the shuttle, watching the uh shuttle go up, which I thought was pretty funny. Pamela Adlon being uh Lewis C.K.'s kind of TV wife for eight years on various pre programs that he did. And also the voice of Bobby Hill.

Marty 23:31
Apparently Jinx is in two episodes of Family Guy, which I'm gonna have to subject myself to now, because I do think that is pretty pretty crazy. One of which is Chris goes to space camp and is made fun of by everybody, including Jinx. So that's awesome. They remembered they remembered this movie, somebody on the writing staff enough to make him a recurring character.

Clif 23:57
I think that this movie personally did kind of a uh um Philadelphia experiment where it didn't do super well in theaters, but I think it found its home audience on cable where it played for a while. And and I think, you know, like Eddie and the Cruisers and movies like that, where I because I remember talking to a lot of kids when I was growing up that liked this movie, you know, or had seen it at least.

Marty 24:24
I don't think the Challenger incident really affected our enjoyment of this movie. I know marketing-wise, it was kind of a disaster, but it never made me not want to watch space.

Clif 24:38
Exactly. No, exactly. Yeah, it's I feel exactly the same way. And in fact, the the Challenger disaster never dampened my interest in space and space travel. I I was thrilled to see Artemis II go up and go around the moon. I just thought that was fucking awesome. And I'm super excited to see us doing stuff like that again because it's you know, it's things that are like that that are bigger than all of us, all these people on this, you know, rock we live on, right? Really, really exceptional type stuff.

Marty 25:04
But meanwhile, in the movie Space Camp, we can't even label the hoses. It's the green one next to the blue, next to the just write which hose it is. Why do you want to make it so hard on yourself?

Clif 25:19
Label the hose. So here's what I don't understand. So, okay, I'm locked into the MMUs prepared to open the CBDs. All right, so it's no wonder that CBDs made sense to me as a comic book store name because CBD I heard years ago in this fucking movie is cargo bay doors. But getting past that, so we we put a Kate Capshaw in a suit in one of those mobile unit things, and we send her out to get the oxygen from the little weird grid space station that hasn't been fully set up yet, and she can't get to it because she's too big. So what do they do? What's their answer? They put a child in a fucking spacesuit, and somehow, even though most spacesuits are going to be all the same size, bulk and fit-wise, because it's got the same tank on the back, the same fucking helmet, the same size rings, the same size gloves and boots, they are able to belt him into this fucking thing, and he's able to worm his way through the thing and unlock the tanks. Magic belt. It's like a plus five belt of shrinking. Is that what that is?

Marty 26:28
They're showing us that they have the technology in place, so if this happens, we can fit the little kid into the spacesuit, so we don't have to worry about it.

Clif 26:38
So follow me on a different journey. Follow me on a dark, follow me on a dark turn that this movie takes, where Kate Capshaw and Leaf are getting the bat, the the things, she gets the tank, right? And it in the tank accidentally and it goes off and it hits Leaf, and Leaf goes spinning off into the blackness of space, not to never be saved or heard from again, screaming and crying for his life.

SPEAKER_03 27:05
Yeah.

Clif 27:06
Jinx finds out about it and realizes that he's in a fuckload of trouble, and they're gonna figure out that Jinx sent the shuttle up and they're gonna just fucking demagnetize Jinx. Jinx is not going to exist anymore. They're gonna shred him into pieces. So he kills them all in space, and fucking he has the you know, shuttle like come back in on a bad angle and just burn up on re-entry. And the last thing we see is Leia Thompson fighting the controls as it burns up, and Jinx slowly you know, just rolls out of the control room with something like, that'll do it, you know. I think that would have been a very interesting movie, I think.

Marty 27:45
And then in the sequel, it's like Joaquin Phoenix becomes like John Carter from Mars or something because he uses the force and he's he controls his spinning eventually. Spinning's a good trick, but didn't it feel like they were like the good thing she caught him because he was like that close to the moon, man? He was almost there.

Clif 28:04
Yeah, yeah. There is a moment where she thanks Max, and I think this is why this work worked for kids, and I think it's why it's it works for as a kid's movie. She thanks Max, and as a kid, you you know, you want to be Max. You want to help an adult, you want to be the person that helps solve the situation, and you want an adult to thank you and treat you like a you know, like you're not a kid. Um uh so yeah, and I think that's the problem with all of us now, basically.

Marty 28:39
Yeah, it's a cute movie, but it's certainly no Manhattan Project. I'll I'll give it that. Yeah. But, you know, if this was the other movie, they would have already had that liquid oxygen. Not to get too far ahead of myself, but you might recall in the movie coming up, they seem to have a lot of locks just sitting around. They were prepared, you see.

Clif 29:05
At one point, she says the trainer remember the trainer, and all I could hear was Star Wars in my head. And I will say I was grateful that for the most part uh Leaf's character, Max, drops a lot of the Star Wars references. Like, cause because about 18 minutes in, I'm like look, I I okay. There are two scenes in this movie that are very 80s, and they are older kids picking on little kids and making them fucking cry, right? The scene where Jinx is in the fucking closet and they want to see Jinx and fucking Max won't let him, and then they they figure out how to they they break Jinx, right? He overheats like a real AI unit. Yep, he overheats, Max freaks out and starts crying, and what do the kids do? Fuck's broke and they just leave. Because that's the fucking eighties for you, right there, right? And then and I think they do it again. They they they there's another one just like that where it's just like, yep, that's the 80s for you.

Marty 30:09
So well, I'm grateful they eventually noticed the Morse code. Or should I say Jinx eventually noticed?

Clif 30:16
Jinx eventually noticed the Morse code, yes.

Marty 30:19
And then doesn't get a proper wrap-up of his story, but I do appreciate the movie just stops once they land. That was good not to have because you're you're done at that point.

Clif 30:30
Yeah, see, well, and it's it's interesting seeing that shuttle land six months after it was destroyed in the air as the end of the movie was kind of a poetic end. Um I was going somewhere with that thought, and I just lost it. Anyway, yeah, so uh the answer is to send more children into space um because they're they're small and they can get into places to fix things by accident. Um and having said that, I still enjoyed watching it.

Marty 31:05
Yeah, it was.

Clif 31:06
Having said all these negative things about it, it was I still laughed at certain parts, I still had a kind of a smile on my face. Uh mainly just out of pure fucking nostalgia. You know, nostalgia four. I would give it a four on the nostalgia scale easily. Well like and subscribe. I give it two. Oh, I give it two and a half, a real score, yeah.

Marty 31:30
Oh, two and a half. Four, I'm like, really?

Clif 31:32
Oh no, no, no. On the nostalgia scale, like how much nostalgia it induced, a four. As a real one, two and a half. It's not that great of a movie, and uh I I just don't like I really don't like Joaquin Phoenix as an actor. I think it's a kingdom.

Marty 31:46
The things that I picked on could have been very simple script fixes that wouldn't have changed the story, and then it would have made sense. So I don't. Like, Tate Donegan was supposed to be on the group, but he's just a dick. And we go. So I'm not left wondering what happened to the other kid.

Clif 32:05
The whole the whole movie's doesn't make any fucking sense.

Marty 32:08
Well, if you make the other kid is the one who sends him into space, right? Because he's mad that he was replaced, you see.

Clif 32:14
There's there's no way NASA is ever, and I do mean ever, putting six kids on a fucking space shuttle when they fire the rockets off for anything. Ever. That's never happening. The liability alone is ridiculous. No. Anyway. That was fun. Uh space camp, folks, 1986.

Marty 32:33
We did it. If you wanted to know why did we pick that, now you know. Now you know. Because it's 80s and the crazy nostalgia of the 80s, and it's an important one of the eighties.

Clif 32:44
I think so.

Marty 32:45
It points to a different reality had we embraced the space uh program a little bit more towards the end of the 80s, rather than backing away from it after the Challenger for a bit.

Clif 32:57
And then we jump forward an entire decade. Boom. From 1986 to 1996.

Marty 33:05
That's right. For a movie that didn't come out until 99. A movie from uh uh 80s filmmaker who was making some strange shit as he kept going, but he did he did dive into some some sci-fi and stuff. What is Stuart Gordon's space truckers? Well, it's exactly what it says it is. It's truth in the title.

Clif 33:31
Stuart Gordon's Space Truckers, 1996 PG-13, one hour thirty-five minutes. A space trucker and his cute fiance are on their way from a space station to Earth with an unknown cargo. When space pirates hijacked them, 5,000 disintegrator robots are found in the cargo. Uh directed by Stuart Gordon, writers are Ted Man. Stuart Gordon stars Tim Lone, Ian Beattie, Ulwen Fre that's not who stars, that's just the they're listing him from the beginning to the end. Anyways, we'll get into that in a minute. Um, storyline John Canyon is one of the last independent space transport entrepreneurs. Rough times force him to carry suspicious cargo to Earth without questions being asked. During the flight, the cargo turns out to be multitude of unstoppable and deadly killer robots. Rated PG 13. For Stuart Gordon is a weird, weird thing.

Marty 34:22
Yeah, but I mean they went on to do the honey I shrunk the kids as well. So, or at least it was Brian Yesna, one of those reanimator people. So they always were trying to do something a little more palatable, but yeah, right. You think it's gonna be some crazy reanimator from Beyond Gore Fest. And we do get a little bit of like the weird doctor.

Clif 34:44
You do get a little weird alien. Oh, I love the weird doctor thing. My favorite stuff in the movie is him trying to trying to pull start his dick and get it working. That shit had me howl, and I was like, oh my god, that's a brilliant, you know, and then she's just laying there on the bed with a disgusted look on his face while he's got his back to her and he's working, you know.

Marty 35:07
Oh my god, dude. So you're telling me that both of today's movies had similar budgets? That's the claim. I don't know. I can see Space Camp having the 25 million, but space truckers cost 25 million ten years later?

Clif 35:25
I don't know. I mean, they now they did do a lot of miniatures and effects. Like the space effects were pretty decent, to be to be honest. For what I consider a B movie, yeah, the space effects were really good. Yeah, but a little bit, I'd even say a little bit above Jason X, because I feel like Jason X takes advantage of CGI where this is much more um kind of the old school methods.

Marty 35:53
Oh, there's CGI all over this movie.

Clif 35:56
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's a lot of um there's a lot of models too.

Marty 36:00
Well, that's yeah, yeah, there's more models in this than Jason X, yeah. But I'd say they both have the equal amount of fake blood CGI.

Clif 36:08
Oh, sure. Fake yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, you know, cast-wise, you get uh right away you have two fucking actors from Game of Thrones in this. And two entourage actors. Two entourage actors. You get you got Dennis Hopper, George Went, for fuck's sake, Sean Lawler, who's um Sean Lawler, the most easiest way to pick him out is the dad uh in um he's William Wallace's dad in Braveheart. Uh you got Debbie Mazar, you got Steven Dorf, who at this time was pretty friggin' hot. Um Jason O'Mara, Sandra Dickinson. Uh it's a it's a stat Shane Rimmer, it's a stat cast. It's an absolutely stated cast. Um, so I I but it's just and it's a wildly creative movie. Wildly creative movie. I give it that too. It's basically I had never seen this fucking thing.

Marty 37:04
I hadn't either. It's basically Moon Zero 2, if it was made in the 90s. You're getting to see like the the you know, the guy who transports shit in space, kind of like Jonah and the MST reboot. You know, I'm thinking, did Joel see this movie? Because that's a Dennis Hopper. It's basically, you know, it's his job, like what Jonah was doing. He's a space trucker. But you know, and it's kind of like the uh middle-aged beat-up guy is the hero, and he's gonna in that movie, he's gotta land the sapphire on the moon or some shit. And this is like, well, on a different day, I'm hauling, you know, killer robots, and I didn't even know it, you know. And I was like, oh, that's kind of funny. So, Western aspect to it. Yeah, the square pegs. I mean, no, not square pegs, square pigs. Square pigs.

Clif 37:54
It's definitely a space western for sure. Uh definitely a space. The only thing missing is a gun on the hip of Dennis Hopper uh in the film. And the fact, you know, he happens to have a bunch of guns on the ship once they finally get into trouble.

Marty 38:08
And locks. They have plenty of locks, so they don't have to go to a space station and have the smallest member of the crew reach their hands in to grab the locks. And I don't mean the stuff you put on uh bagels. It's a different type of locks.

Clif 38:25
Um the helmets at the beginning, like right the first the first minute of this film when the soldiers come rushing in wearing these like they look like tits on the side of their ears on their helmets. I just started laughing and I was like, oh boy. Here we go. Like Yeah, here we go. And and it feels this movie feels like you know that moment in Reanimator where um uh he's he's got the he's reanimated the cat and he's fighting with the cat, and it's just a and it's just a stuffed cat, and he's just flinging it around and it's so bad. It's like it's so bad it's good. That's this movie completely the whole way through. It's that it's that moment stretched out into a 90-minute film. It's amazing.

Marty 39:18
Yeah, apparently the makers of this were displeased with how movies like Star Wars and stuff were showing the atmosphere always being the same on the ship as on planets. So they made sure to have everybody be more space shuttle-like floating around in their spaceships, and then when they're on a planet, they're grounded and they have gravity. So that's why you get all that wire work on the ships. A lot of wire work, and a lot of mixed for an easy-to-watch movie, but I get what you're trying to do.

Clif 39:49
Yeah. Yeah. One of my notes is that I see way too many wires in this film. Like they're just all over the fucking place, you know. Um, which is unfortunate because you know, I'm sure on a big screen it probably would have sold okay, but man, on digital, you can see, I mean, he you know, at one point he punches that dude and he goes flying backwards and exactly.

Marty 40:08
Oh man, that's bad. It didn't get a theatrical, it went right to video, and that's why it lost all of that money that you have to wonder if it was there in the first place.

Clif 40:20
I can see why this film would have a cult following, and I can see why people would dig it. Like I it's got that weird, it's it's well made. You think it's gonna be bad, and you go, well, this is actually kind of you know it's it's fine. It's it's goofy, it's out there. Like I said, the dude's trying to freaking pull start his dick in one scene, you know. The it's why it's kind of wild and out there at points, you know. That what I really love is the um when when it at the beginning when he pulls in, and of course the pigs are just creepy looking, and then he gets off the shuttle and he goes into that cafe that's spinning. So, you know, it's it's built more that way in this weird, round, octagon way. And it I I loved it. I thought that was one of the coolest things. The art direction in the film in particular is really, really well done.

Marty 41:06
They did a lot with just a couple of locations.

Clif 41:09
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. George Wentz's death is fucking hilarious. Oh, yeah. Getting sucked out of a porthole ass first. Because I want to at first I thought I you could see it coming that he was gonna be sucked into the the thing, but I thought, well, they'll he'll just be stuck there and they'll figure out a way to know. He starts like just getting sucked out ass first through that window, and it was just hilarious.

Marty 41:38
Good makeup too. This is much better than the Super Mario Brothers movie. If you want to talk about the 90s Dennis Hopper low budget, I have the same size.

Clif 41:48
I have the same note that it feels like the same art director or the same production designer. I have the exact same note, yeah. Yeah, but much better, but still that that it feels like that yeah, better than Waterworld too, to be honest with you.

Marty 42:01
I think so too, but I've never been a fan of that one. I don't understand people trying to rehabilitate that one either. Yeah. My boat. Um Steven Dorf is not a good actor. Steven Dorf is a client of mine. So it's really funny when I think about Entourage and Debbie Mazar saying that line, and I'm thinking, well, she actually does know the guy, and he got her part in this movie, apparently. Well, apparently both him and Dennis Hopper were a fan of hers and said, Well, let's get her to get be the third person, was the Wikipedia story.

Clif 42:36
This is uh this is this is pre-Empire Records for my my cousin Vinny on a spaceship. Yeah. Well, she's gorgeous in this, she's just she's definitely uh uh she's really good in this. Uh I I I like what she does. That fucking zero dreet G undressing scene is just super awkward. Like I know it's supposed to be sexy, but it's just super fucking awkward for some reason. I don't know.

Marty 43:00
It's PG 13. It's like a it's a 12-year-old's version of you know in the 90s. I thought it was just silly, fun, breezy overall. You know, doesn't demand much from you. It's short, which is nice.

Clif 43:22
Yeah. Forty minutes in, fucking Vernon Wells suddenly shows up and you're like, hey! Of course, yeah. It's the dude from Mad Max and fucking what? Okay. At the very end, Barbara Crampton shows up. Yeah. You get some bar uh as soon as they he showed the locket, I was like, of course it's Barbara Crampton. Like that's it makes perfect sense. Uh I could have sworn I saw uh uh Ogre at some point in uh it look like uh like Dan uh somewhere in there at that mix. He's just a big dude. Uh the uh robot star So here's the thing I don't understand, right? In the beginning of the film, this robot comes through, cuts through all this stuff, breaks into this thing, kills all these soldiers with this gun thing on its head, right? And then kills the guy who made it with the gun thing on its head. But then once it starts fighting later in the movie, it doesn't use the gun thing on its head. It starts using blades and other things and kicking and kung fu fighting. And it's like, why not just use the particle weapon on your fucking head that the guy said is literally 25 years technology, 25 years advanced that nobody has. And instead he's just stabbing people.

unknown 44:38
What the fuck?

Clif 44:39
Anyway. It's the Superman conundrum.

Marty 44:41
Why don't you just use your heat vision all the time? It's there. Oh for for reasons. For reasons. You know, for reasons. Yeah. Because we forgot, or it would have been too easy, or uh yeah, a slightly different model, and we didn't really kill that guy anyway, because he comes back later.

Clif 45:02
Oh, I love I love that the Tywin Lannister comes back and uh he's he he's unhinged later on, it's great. And you can you can see the actors really enjoying he's relishing kind of playing that goofy ass part.

Marty 45:14
They know what kind of movie they're making, and I think it can be the way they intend it, too.

Clif 45:19
So I agree. I agree. And and again, I can see how this would appeal to a certain audience that likes this type of movie because it's it's it's done very well in that manner. You know, if you like these type of like kind of bee sci-fi comedy, if you like darkstar, you're gonna fucking love this.

Marty 45:38
Yeah, yeah. Darkstar with a budget. Darkstar with a budget. I mean, not the same story, but that kind of vibe, yeah.

Clif 45:50
Um even in a movie with no nudity, though, Stuart somehow finds a way to make it kind of sexually gross. You know, where with the dude climbing on top of her and all that.

Marty 45:59
It's like were they expecting that? It's like, well, if we're we're gonna make one of your movies, we want a scene like in that movie, you know. Oh okay, okay.

Clif 46:07
Oh, the the head between the girls. Okay, I guess we could do something. All right, sure. All right, sure. I guess that's what I'm known for. It's be like it'd be like Nirvana not playing Teen Spirit, you know. Yeah, get out there and fucking play the hits, right?

Marty 46:22
And that's that's why you get the uh lawnmower uh penis. You'll see it. But that's basically what happens. And there's so much more to the movie than that that we keep talking about that one scene, but that's the big shocking scene in the middle of the movie where you're just like, What? I loved it. I I thought it was just the funny though. You know, it's not like it's gross, it's funny. So yeah, it's batshit crazy in the best way. Like movies, it's it's not gory. It's just it's gross, but it's everything's all spacey, blue, purple. It's not like it's gore, right? Yeah.

Clif 46:58
No, yeah, the the blood and the gore is all pink and purple. So it's not it's not super gross or or uh scary in any way. It's it's it's like a fucking comic book, to be completely honest with you. Yeah. Sci-fi comic, you know, comedy type thing. It just keep but it just keeps going and going. I feel like about an hour and ten minutes into the film, it kind of falls down its own fucking rabbit hole and just kind of starts chewing at itself with 20 minutes left. Yeah.

Marty 47:27
You're like, wait a minute, couldn't this be over when it's like the plot started to shift a little?

Clif 47:34
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly the plot.

Marty 47:38
So I think I think they launch off on another ship at the end, right?

Clif 47:42
Is that what uh let me think. Um yeah. Yeah, they launch off in the in the ship that uh because the president shows up and tries to blow them up, and the sh they had gotten a sh this new shuttle as a as a gift, and so the three of them take off, or four of them take off. Oh, yeah. You could tell you could tell it's supposed to be Dennis Hopper's gonna be with Barbara Crampton and Debbie Mazar's gonna be with Steven Dorf. They're gonna live happily ever after.

Marty 48:08
It's Futurama. That's right. Well, in a way, it is Futurama. They were a delivery service, weren't they? So they were space truckers. If you like Futurama and you want to see it in live action with Dennis Hopper, then watch Space Truckers on Tubi.

Clif 48:24
That's a good call. I really was hoping I was hoping to see some Mega Wang, dude. Like I was really, if this is rated R, it would have been turned around pull starting that penis, and it would have been fucking hysterically gross and funny. Yeah, I was really hoping for it.

Marty 48:41
I think they wanted to make a movie that was gonna play in theaters and make them a lot of money, and unfortunately it just got handled incorrectly. Because if they had marketed this right, it would have been a mild because if people knew it was something silly.

Clif 48:55
Yeah, maybe. I think I think that pull pull starting penis a bit much, you know.

Marty 49:00
The title is accurate, but the title's bad.

SPEAKER_03 49:04
Right.

Marty 49:04
Space truckers. Oh, that sounds so exciting. But like ice like the ice pirates. Yeah, that's an off-putting title, too. Space Cowboys. But it just doesn't it doesn't tell you anything. It doesn't fucking tell you anything. We're going trucking in space. I guess. Okay. It's like convoy, but with in outer space. It's not because there is no convoy, it's just I like how he makes the sharp right turn and he knocks all the little divider down. Yeah, that's some of the best driving I've ever seen, man. It's a lot of aliens influence in the world a little bit. I like it's sort of that sort of junky future.

Clif 49:50
I again I I like the tech.

Marty 49:52
Um I like movies don't exist without Star Wars, you know.

Clif 49:56
I like the way it looks. I like its production design. Um, it does feel very much like the same people who did Super Mario Bros. Several people with Irish accents speaking of Irish money.

Marty 50:10
You gotta put locals in the movie to make the money, right? Didn't they get like some money?

Clif 50:14
Yeah, they got a they got some funding from the Irish government. The Irish government said we'll give you this under this uh uh financial incentive that we have, we can give you money to help find the picture if you hire, agree to hire a lot of you know Irish workers. So there are Irish actors in this and Irish, I'm sure Irish artisans behind the camera and building things and so on and so forth.

Marty 50:35
And there were some good lines too. I didn't pick them for my ending quote, but things like Dennis Hopper talking about, you know, the guy's disability or whatever, and I mean there were some clever little quotes there.

Clif 50:50
I was like every now and then add some good singers. Yeah. So you got a homemade brain shrug. I thought that was funny. Yeah, lights up. If I had an anus, I'd probably soil myself was another good one.

Marty 51:04
Yeah, there's stuff like that. You know, you don't expect space truckers to have, you know, funny dialogue.

Clif 51:10
That one's mine was another good one.

Marty 51:17
Like he handles it well, the disability or whatever he was talking about, the guy who see the robots try to kill the guy who created the robots, but they leave him for dead, but he comes back as this cyborg who's trying to intercept the stolen robots. And that's the guy who has the lawnmower uh penis. Uh penis, yes. I was gonna say you know, let me put on the hose, you can do do the couch, you know.

Clif 51:52
Like I said, I I enjoyed it. Um it's not something I'd put on a lot, but it's but it I I don't regret watching it, and I thought it was pretty funny and entertaining.

Marty 52:02
Um I had been 12 when it came out, I probably would have been all about it.

Clif 52:05
Oh, totally. If if this had come out in if this had come out in 84 or 85, I would have been like, this is one of the greatest fucking things. I I like I said, I get why people would be into this. It it's kind of made perfectly, and uh whatever Stuart did, he made it perfectly for that audience that he knew that would respond to this. Yeah, right. And it because he did a great job with that.

Marty 52:26
It's a level above a sci-fi original, definitely.

Clif 52:30
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But still in that milieu and still, but also with his signature kind of grossness and camera stuff that he does and and and his his type of art direction and and and some of that other stuff. It really felt like a Stuart Gordon movie. It really felt like a reanimator movie just paired back, right? Like uh trying to take Reanimator into a Hollywood budget. If if they'd given him 40 million dollars and said, go make remake reanimator, it might kind of feel a bit like this. They gave him 25 million. Yeah, apparently. Well, and that was off the back of what he did Fortress for eight, and it went it did really well.

Marty 53:07
Fortress No, Fortress is a better put together movie, but it does have a lot in similar and similarity with tone and vibe to this. Well, apparently he forgot about that one.

Clif 53:20
Yeah, he did Fortress and and um in '92, and it I think he did it for eight or nine million. I can't remember, but it uh the story there is that before that. Um no. Robot jocks. Robot jocks, uh, nice. Uh saw that in the theater. But yeah, apparently the um during an interview he said that um Schwarzenegger was a massive fan of Reanimator. That somebody somebody got him a copy of it and and got him to watch it, and he loved it, and he would have watch parties. And he got uh uh he he invited Stuart Gordon and some others to his house to watch it, and uh they were talking about making Fortress with Arnold being in Fortress and then so he and and Stuart was like, yeah, it was like a$70 million budget. And then when Arnold backed out and they got this other dude, it was like a like an$8 million budget. Um but it did really well. I mean, it was$8 million budget, it it did six million in the theaters, which yeah, which means it went to it went to home video and bought and and cable and made the rest of its money. And so on the back of that, he went and got the other job. Yeah, Fortress was on cable quite a bit.

Marty 54:32
Jeffrey Combs, I think Tom Towels is in that one from Henry and it's a good cast, good genre cast.

Clif 54:39
Yeah, Christopher Lambert, yep. Kurtwood Smith. That's a good cast.

Marty 54:42
That's who they got. Fucking Highlander instead of uh Arnold.

unknown 54:46
Yeah.

Marty 54:47
Fortress two, I don't remember. I remember Fortress. I don't remember it either.

Clif 54:52
Anywho, what do you give it? I give it two. I give it I'm gonna I'm honestly gonna give it more than that. I think I think there's a rewatchability factor. I think it's kind of fun and well done. Uh I'm gonna go three for now. I may go two and I think it's somewhere in between two and a half and three.

Marty 55:10
So if somebody said we're watching Space Camp or Space Truckers, what are you saying? Space Camp for the nostalgia. I'm gonna say don't matter, sir. Pretty equal, pretty equal. I would agree with that. Yeah, so I would agree with that. Throw either one on, I'm be fine. Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. Rarely have we had two movies of equal quality on the show in one week, I thought, where I was like, you know, they're both what they are. Both kind of what they are, yeah. They don't aggravate me. I had fun, but I'm like, they both have their pros and cons in different ways, but it kind of equals self-out. So space is the great, you know, space is the great equalizer over.

Clif 55:57
Well, right on. Um do you know what you have? Is this do I have to give you another one?

Marty 56:02
Well, this was supposed to be a guest, so it's just the schedule is all wacky. The ratio is completely off. But you know, the important thing is we're here every week. Sometimes we'll have a guest, sometimes we won't. I don't know anymore, but the important thing is I do know the show will be here every week. So we'll try to get you that 24-12 thing we were talking about, but it should happen sometimes, as long as we're here talking about movies. So next week should definitely be another guest, though. Yeah.

Clif 56:30
We do, I will say this now. If the cards are line up and we get this right, we do have a humdanger of a guest coming up. Oh, we have to get a big thing. Like a real bust down the house. Holy crap, how did you get that person? Uh guest. I'm very excited. So with that, uh, I guess we'll just we'll see you next episode. And with no and with no, you want to get out of here on a quote?

Marty 56:57
It's broken. Let's get out of here.

Clif 57:02
Smells like somebody's been making hamburgers. That's you. That's you. Later, man.