We’re Hosting a Movie Screening to Benefit PNW Starbucks Workers United!

This December, we are proud to announce that Radio vs. the Martians! is going to be sponsoring a theatrical screening of the craziest, bloodiest martial arts film of all time, Riki-Oh: the Story of Ricky, to benefit the Pacific Northwest Starbucks Workers United relief fund.

When: Thursday, December 8th @ 7:30 pm

Where:  The Beacon Cinema at 4405 Rainier Ave S., Seattle, WA 98118

Cost:   Tickets at $12.50 each, with all admissions for PNW Starbucks Workers United

You can buy tickets now, but seats are limited!


RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS! PRESENTS…. RIKI-OH: THE STORY OF RICKY!

You’d be hard pressed to find a movie as strange, bloody, absurd, or thrilling to watch as RIKI-OH: THE STORY OF RICKY, but this 1991 Hong Kong martial arts splatterfest is truly something special.

Directed by Shaw Brothers veteran cinematographer Lam Ngai Kai and headlined by a then-18 year old Fan Siu-wong as kung fu Hercules and flautist, Ricky Ho, this crowd-pleasing cult film really tests the limits of good taste and how many ways one can creatively destroy a human dummy on film.

In the far future year of 2001, all prisons have been privatized into for-profit businesses (can you even imagine?). The latest inmate is the eponymous Ricky, convicted of manslaughter for avenging his girlfriend’s murder with his inexplicable superhuman strength and mastery of Qigong.

What follows is structured much like a video game, as Ricky battles a super-powered menagerie of increasingly bizarre and gimmicky convicts deputized by the prison’s evil Warden and his hook-handed Assistant Warden (played with a cartoonish glee by Siu-wong’s own father, Fan Mei-sheng), whose glass eye bafflingly doubles as a mint dispenser. Just go with it.

As Ricky is elevated to an almost Christ-like champion of the facility’s abused and oppressed prisoners, he literally destroys his opponents with his bare hands, impressive fight choreography and some charmingly hilarious special effects.

This screening is sponsored by the RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS! podcast as a benefit for the PACIFIC NORTHWEST STARBUCKS WORKERS UNITED labor union, and 100% of the admissions will be donated to their Relief Fund.

Episode 52 – Django (1966)

He killed for gold… He killed for his woman… He killed for himself!

After a month off, we’re back! And this time, we’re dragging a coffin through the desert with the Camp Director and President of Camp Quest NorthWest, Michael Warbington, and diving into the notoriously violent 1966 spaghetti western by director Sergio Corbucci, Django!

When a mysterious gunslinger named Django drags a coffin into a tiny border town caught in the middle of a bloody war between Mexican paramilitary bandits and a Klan of hooded racist Southerners, he sets off a bloody chain of death, vengeance, robbery, and even more death. But is Django here to save this town, or will he just bury it under corpses in his quest for revenge?

Fun Size Episode 65 – From Sublime to Disgusting (And Everything in Between)

We’re back with Kirby Green and talking about the strange and surprising wholesomeness of Jackass Forever, the history of “caught-on-video” media, and the opportunistic moral panics they often inspire.

While we talk about how a franchise famous for dangerous stunts and painful assaults on the testicles has become one of the few things in America that we can all agree on, and how it might just be a model for body positivity. And we look at its far more morally reprehensible and shamelessly exploitative media ancestors like Faces of Death, Bumfights, Girls Gone Wild, COPS, and whatever weird VHS tapes that scary kid from middle school with the shuriken in his pocket was bragging about watching.

Mike Makes a Guest Appearance on Midnight…the Podcasting Hour!

Mike makes his first appearance on Ryan Daly‘s Midnight…the Podcasting Hour to wreak bloody vengeance upon a tale of DC’s favorite murdery ghost! We dissect Adventure Comics #435‘s 1974 horror tale, The Man Who Stalked the Spectre” by Michael Fleisher and Jim Aparo.

Hunting a gang of rabid killers, undead detective James Corrigan finds that both he and his ghostly alter-ego are being investigated by a relentless and naive magazine reporter. Add one-part Death Wish to one-part Freddy Krueger and mix liberally until the bad guys have to hosed off the walls!

Check it out!

Fun Size Episode 48 – The New Quarantine Titans

As time bends and brains melts in the heart of the “Quar,” we’re joined by longtime friend of the show and writer for Emmys.com, David Gutiérrez… and things get weird.

We get into everything from circumcising our children to wanna-be movie theater comedians. We try to understand the confusing relationship of rockstar film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and try to figure out when Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford stopped trying to be good at their jobs.

Finally, we try to retroactively fix the Rambo franchise (and action/revenge films in general) into something a bit less racist and burdened with conservative “white guy baggage.”

Hex & Violence Episode 4 – The Latest in Pickling Technology

“That’s Jonah Hex, his own damn self. He’s killed more men than Hell has souls.”

After a long absence, we return with our fourth episode! This time, Mike and Casey claw our way through Jonah Hex’s 1993 Vertigo makeover as a weird western horror character in the five issue mini-series Jonah Hex: Two Gun Mojo by writer Joe R. Lansdale and artist Timothy Truman!

After being falsely accused of murdering a fellow bounty hunter, Jonah Hex runs afoul of short-tempered townsfolk, embittered Apache raiders, and Doc “Cross” Williams, a murderous snake oil salesman, grave robber, and conjurer who raises the bodies of the dead and bends them to his will — including the corpse of famed Western folk hero, “Wild” Bill Hickok!

JONAH HEX CONFIRMED KILL COUNT: 65 (+24 this episode)

Fun Size Episode 32 – Mistakes Were Made

We continue our talk with Sam Mulvey and dig into the questions that try men’s souls. We ponder the repeated use of various firearms in movies, and why laser weapons aren’t nearly as numerous these days.

We dive into the insane and definitely-not-okay animal stunt work of movies past, and marvel at how Donald Pleasence’s pain threshold can be so impossibly high. Plus, we asked our Patreon supporters about their stupid childhood fears, and more!

Episode 33 – Akira

“KANEDAAAAAA!!!” “TESTUOOOO!!!”

We’ve returned with a long-awaited panel episode! This time, we’re popping some capsules and tearing our motorcycles through the ruins of Neo-Tokyo with Tobiah Panshin and Joe Preti of the View from the Gutters comic book podcast. We’re digging into Katsuhiro Otomo’s groundbreaking 1980s apocalyptic manga epic about psychokinetic powers and mass destruction, Akira.

From its serialized origins in the Japanese Young Magazine to the pioneering animated film, this is a seminal masterpiece of explosions, body horror, secret military programs, and disaffected youth, and it’s cast a long shadow over all of modern popular culture.

Music: 
“Kaneda” from Akira (1988) by Geinoh Yamashirogumi