Episode 60 – Zardoz

Into a world of eternal life, he brought the gift of death

This month, we’re eating green bread and refusing to go to Second Level meditation with Joe Preti of the late View from the Gutters comic book podcast to dive into the weird and psychedelic science fiction cult film, 1974’s Zardoz!

In the year 2293, Zed is a murderer disciple of Zardoz, a floating stone god who arms and commands him and other “exterminators” to roam the post-apocalyptic wasteland and kill human survivors. After learning the terrible truth of Zardoz – that the god is actually an airship –  the disillusioned Zed stows away aboard his “god” and is delivered into the Vortex, a hidden city of immortals that created Zardoz to manipulate humanity. Thrust into a bored and stagnant society that has forgotten about passion, sexuality and death, Zed’s very presence threatens to tear their fragile civilization apart.

Fun Size Episode 83 – The Best Chris [CLIP]

We return yet again for another Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

We’re back in the studio with Joe Preti, and talking about Martin Scorsese’s three hour crime epic, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City.

Plus, a conversation about the death of the movie star as the driver of cinema. Are there any modern stars who can transcend their signature characters or franchises and elevate any movie they star in? And we lay our cards on the table: Hemsworth, Evans, Pratt and Pine. Who is the best and worst Chris?

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Fun Size Episode 82 – X-Pac Heat [CLIP]

We return yet again for another Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

We’re back with Kirby Green to talk about her favorite trash TV obsession: 90 Day Fiancé! We look at the show that throws the best and worst elements of romance, desperation, immigration law, and repulsive people, into a television blender and we look at the horrifying and endlessly addictive slurry that pours out of it.

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Episode 59 – Halloween III: Season of the Witch

…and now the earth will run with blood again!

We’re getting into the spirit of the spooky season with returning guest Kirby Green, and unmasking the underrated black sheep of the Halloween horror franchise: Halloween III: Season of the Witch!

Dr. Daniel Challis stumbles into a mystery after a man clutching a rubber mask is murdered in his hospital by a strange figure who immediately sets himself on fire. He soon joins the victim’s daughter on a quest for answers that leads them to a small California factory town behind the mask, this year’s hottest selling Halloween item. They are soon caught in an occult conspiracy involving a druidic cult, Stonehenge, murderous androids, and bloody mass sacrifice!

Mike Returns Again to Cheers Cast!

Mike returns to Ryan Daly‘s Cheers Cast, for a chat about the twenty-first episode of Cheers‘ sixth season, “Our Hourly Bread.”

When Cliff announces his raise at the post office, Sam and Woody try to confront Rebecca for wage increases of their own, only to get stuck with empty titles for the same pay. But hearing that Cheers’ revenue is down, the gang decides to hold a raffle to raise funds for the bar, with a Caribbean cruise as the prize. But when Woody announces the winner as entrant #66 (or is it #99?), they’re suddenly facing a bar full of angry patrons.

Check it out!

Fun Size Episode 81 – Sadness and Anxiety Being Poured on Your Naked Brain [CLIP]

We return yet again for another Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

Though conflicting schedules this month have made a regular episode impossible, we’re back in the studio to chat about the stuff we’ve been reading and watching, and of course… we’re talking about Star Trek. Plus, Mike talks about trying out some new manga series, including one that he didn’t really care for, and another that may be one of his new favorites. Including one manga in particular that may be one of the most traumatizing and artistically impressive things he’s ever read.

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Fun Size Episode 80 – Dangerous Banned Secrets of the Hidden Masters [CLIP]

We return yet again for another Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

We continue our chat with Sam Mulvey, and tear the still-beating heart out of the world of martial arts frauds and scam artists. From manufactured biographies involving hidden temples and battles to the death, to selling mail order pamphlets through comic book ads promising access to forbidden techniques, we look at the grey area between the real and the phony.

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Podcasta la Vista, Baby! Episode 30 – Twins

Only their mother can tell them apart.

This month, we’re learning the first rules of a crisis situation with returning guest Sam Mulvey of KTQA 95.3 FM radio, and exploring the first installment of the Schwartzenegger/Reitman collaboration trilogy, the wholesome eugenics comedy: Twins!

Genetic superman and polymath Julius Benedict, raised on a utopian tropical island, learns on his 35th birthday that the government experiment that created him in the 1950s also created a twin brother, Vincent, who was sent to a Los Angeles orphanage. Reunited with a sibling seemingly his opposite – a short, balding, and cynical car thief –  the kind and naive Julius drags his brother on a road trip to find their long-lost mother, previously believed dead. Along the way, they run afoul of loan sharks coming to collect, a high-paid assassin, and discover a loving family they never knew they had.

Fun Size Episode 79 – The Assassination of Willow by the Coward Disney+ [CLIP]

We return yet again for another Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

We’re back again with Joe Preti, and chatting about the emerging streaming epoch and its tremendous downsides as corporate studio overlords start making things you love disappear, making it impossible for these shows and movies to find new fans — and for their creators to get paid for their work.

The streaming services are getting worse and more expensive and several beloved shows that have never gotten a Blu-Ray release are fading into the ether. So is it time to bring back… physical media? And now that pirating is the only way to get certain movies and TV shows… does anybody still remember how to use bit torrent?

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Episode 58 – Hudson Hawk

Catch the Excitement. Catch the Adventure. Catch the Hawk.

We’re breaking into the Vatican and trying to get a good cappuccino with Joe Preti as we reappraise the much maligned — and genuinely underrated — 1991 Bruce Willis box office bomb about daring heists and alchemical miracle machines: Hudson Hawk!

Eddie “Hudson Hawk” Hawkins is the world’s most famous cat burglar. He’s just gotten out of prison, he’s trying to go straight, and he just wants a good cappuccino. But instead he’s being blackmailed — by local mobsters, his parole officer, a pair of psychotic billionaires, and even the C.I.A. — into stealing the artifacts of Leonard da Vinci from the Vatican museum, so they can reassemble his legendary device for turning lead into gold, and destroy the world’s economy! So now, Hawk and his best pal Tommy have to save the world in just six minutes and change. How about it? “Side by Side“?

Fun Size Episode 78 – Video Game Dr. Mengele [CLIP]

We’re back yet again for another Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re joined again by Dave Brouillette, and talking about the pixelized Stanford Prison Experiment that was The Sims, and how eventual boredom can turn a gamer into a cruel capricious god tormenting their own imaginary people.

We dig into real and fictionalized depictions of evil from Orson Welles in The Third Man to a documentary about former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara to the subway murder of a homeless man in the middle of a mental health crisis. Are these things an inevitable part of the human experience, or are they only inevitable because we’ve built a world around greed, competition and personal ambition that incentivizes these outcomes?

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Podcasta la Vista, Baby! Episode 29 – The Villain

Vile, virile, vivacious, venomous, varied, voluptuous, versatile, venturesome, vibrant, vulgar, vast, vunniest vilm of 1979!

We’re strapping on our seven shot six-shooters and stocking up on barrels of glue and giant boulders with Dave Brouillette of the Hands Free Football podcast to talk about the underwhelming screwball comedy western from the beginning of Arnold’s career: The Villain!

Hapless outlaw “Cactus” Jack Slade is blackmailed by a scheming banker into robbing a cache of money from a business partner’s buxom (and sexually frustrated) daughter, Charming Jones, who is trying to return it to her father. “Cactus” Jack is going to steal every last trick from Wile E. Coyote’s playbook, but he’s got to get through a certain musclebound Handsome Stranger, oblivious to both the robbery attempts — and Charming Jones’ advances!

Fun Size Episode 77 – A Plague of Ricks [CLIP]

We’re back yet again for another Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re upturning the rocks of our childhoods and looking at all the bugs and worms, like the uncomfortable fact that serial bully and sexist Rick Berman still has any relationship to Star Trek media anymore, and how growing up sometimes means having our love of franchise media becomes more complicated.

Plus, a quick rundown of the history of professional wrestlers owning (and not owning) the rights to their own names — and that one time that Vince McMahon tried to “recast” a couple of names he owned with new wrestlers.

And why are all the worst people named Rick?

And lots more unhinged leftist rantings! We drop the mask and chat about the evils we’re all complicit in by living under capitalism. You know, because we’re a pop culture podcast!

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

We are proud to announce that Radio vs. the Martians! is going to be returning to The Beacon Cinema to sponsor a third theatrical screening to benefit the Pacific Northwest Starbucks Workers United relief fund! And this time, we’re watching John Carpenter’s angry science fiction send up of free market capitalism in Reagan-era America: They Live!

When: Thursday, June 1st @ 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 …JOHN CARPENTER’S THEY LIVE

With a filmography as diverse as John Carpenter’s, it can be easy to forget just how many our favorite movies he directed in his decades-long career. Seemingly alternating between box office gold with HALLOWEEN and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and commercial bombs that have since been re-evaluated as legitimate genre classics like THE THING and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, it’s inevitable that a few are going to be overlooked. Such a film is his 1988 pulpy science fiction tirade about media brainwashing and rapacious greed in the waning years of Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America: THEY LIVE.

Professional wrestling’s bad boy, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper stars as Nada, a homeless drifter who comes to Los Angeles looking for work and stumbles upon to a pair of sunglasses that pierce the veil of a global conspiracy between a race of aliens who have already enslaved Earth through subliminal advertising and their human ruling class collaborators.

Piper’s often unhinged performance is a revelation. He gifts us some of the greatest ad-libbed one-liners in cinema history and, most famously, a nearly six minute-long fight scene with co-star Keith David where Piper reportedly asked David to actually hit him. You know, to make it look good.

THEY LIVE is like a mash-up of the sensibilities of Roger Corman and Noam Chomsky. This is a deliciously angry movie that isn’t concerned with creating the most thoughtful critique of obscene wealth disparity and corporate propaganda. This movie is pissed off, sometimes incoherently so. And in a world where the crimes of the richest 1% have gone intergalactic, THEY LIVE isn’t satisfied with making speeches. It’s too apoplectic for that. It wants to shoot aliens and blow up satellite dishes and burn this sucker down. Never has this movie never felt more terribly relevant.

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.

Fun Size Episode 76 – Make It Work. [CLIP]

We’re back yet again with a new Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re going boldly with Michael Warbington into the deep, inconsistent, and often-confusing world of Star Trek uniform design! Why did Starfleet have the exact same red naval uniform for nearly 70 years before they started to update their uniforms every few years in the 24th Century? Why do they keep designing great uniforms for flashback scenes that we’ll never see again? Why do people keep changing their clothes in Star Trek: The Motion Picture? Why do the crews of the U.S.S. Titan and the U.S.S. Ceritos have completely different uniforms? And don’t get us started on the constantly changing Admiral uniforms.

We’ll need positronic brains to sort this all out!

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