Naughty, Naughty Robots - With Special Guest Otis Johnson

Machines are designed to make our lives easier but what happens when they malfunction or want something beyond their programming. (with special guest DJ and filmmaker, Otis Johnson).

We discuss the films Demon Seed (1977), Runaway (1984), and Chopping Mall (1986).

Follow Otis on https://www.instagram.com/grindhauselektor/

* Content Warning- The "Demon Seed" segment of this episode includes discussions of sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. 

Original Music and episode audio mastering by Beau Hitt. Check out more of Beau's music at the link below.

https://spoti.fi/3OcxTMS

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Transcript

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The rise of artificial intelligence has brought forth a wave of existential dread across all walks of life, from the fear of machines taking over our jobs to what we love to do most. creating art. This deep rooted fear can be found in print and media going back decades, whether it's AI starting a nuclear ward to rid the world of humanity in the terminator or how from 2001 murdering the crew of a Jupiter bound starship, cinema has a long tradition of terrifying us with the dangers of artificial intelligence. Join us this month as we discuss three lesser known films where the machines turn on the human race. We will discuss demon seed from 1977, runaway from 1984 and chopping mall from 1986. It's time for us to face the existential nightmare of these naughty, naughty robots plucked from the shelves of my dad's video store. Well, Waylon is unable to join us this month, but joining me, as always, is my partner in cinematic crime, Grey Creasy. Cray, what is new and exciting with you, Mr. Creasy? Not a whole lot. Uh, things are just chunking along as usual. Uh, you know, in these intros that we do for the past couple of months, I've I've said things that are really topical. And then like a month later, the whole goddamn world has like flipped upside down and has been like on fire. Topsy Turvy Yeah, so like anything I've said has been like completely irrelevant by like the next month and everything's fucking crazy. So I I'm like this time, I'm not going to say anything that could have like any relevance to anything and like be crazy the next month. So all I have to say is, I don't know, we A and I went to see cuckoo in the theater last night and it was really great. So I think oh nice. It was awesome.body go see it. It was cool. So I don't think there's any way that could be controversial next month. I don't know, who knows, we'll see. You know, I finally just saw a long legs, which I really enjoyed as well. um really good atmosphere in that movie and whatnot, but I definitely have things to say about that film on top of things. but uh but yeah, I'm excited to see cuckoo as well, that looks pretty awesome. You know, though, I will say, Gray, I am going to talk about something topical when something that is upcoming because you and I are going to horrorhound in Cincinnati because the movie I made the red Hourglass is was an official selection of horrorhound and is playing there. Um So, yeah, we're going to be meeting up and uh we may even do an episode from horhound. We have our October episode coming up, but we're trying to trying to figure out all those details. So I won't talk about that too much until we iron that out, but that's a maybe, that's a real possibility that we may do our actual Halloween episode, uh kind of from uh a Harhound or at least from the hotel adjacent to Horror Hound. But yeah, uh yeah, that's super exciting. We'll be screening uh, uh there. I'm in screening in front of a feature film uh there at Harhound. And Gray is gonna join me and uh, we're gonna hang out and have fun and do all kinds of fun horror convention stuff. Waylon is unable to join and we were originally scheduled to discuss the 3D films with Eric Kirlin, he suddenly became unavailable, so we had to kind of pivot to our naughty, naughty robot episode. We will be discussing all things 1983 next month now instead. So still really pumped to dive into that subject with such an expert on the subject matter, uh, but those films are a total blast, so super excited to talk about, uh, all three of those films with Eric uh next month. However, even though Waylon is not here, Gray and I are not alone. We are able to get a very special guest our dear dear friend and fellow filmmaker and resident DJ and all kinds of things, actually. Otis, you've had quite a life everybody meet Otis Johnson. Oh, how's it going, man? Thanks man. It's going fantastic. Excellent, exccellent. Well, thanks so much for joining us uh at the, you know, kind of like zero hour and stuff. We had to suddenly pivot over to recording this episode. But I actually can't think of anyone else. I would love to talk about like cyberpunk AI robot stuff movies with then Otis Johnson. Otis, could you tell folks out there who are not familiar with you like who you are, what you do, some of your past exploits, some of your current exploits? What all you, what are you up to? What you about? Hey, my name is uh, Otis Johnson, aKa Grindhouse selector. Um, I've been a cyberpunk fanatic since I was a small child a long time ago, probably since um, seeing the six million dollar man on television as a wee child. And it's pretty much shaped my sensibilities ever since. uh just big science fiction, fanatic. um I've made a couple really strange films over the years. Nowadays, I DJ under the name Grindhouse selector as a a cyberpunk focus DJ. It has elements of cosplay and we just try to get like nerds that read, you know, too much William Gibson out onto the dance floor. It's it's just a lot of fun. Nice, awesome. I I love the promos you put together for your DJ stuff with the anime and stuff. I'm like, I'm like, oh my gosh, it's like demon City. and like It's all these like anime movies. a lot of times I saw back in the 80s and stuff. I'm like, oh, that's so cool, awesomeesome. And uh, but and some I've never seen because you know a whole fuck lot more about anime than I ever do. But, uh, dude, thank you so much for joining us. Really excited to get into these films. Gray and I Gray, when did we meet Otis? We've known Otis for at least a couple of decades now. Some close to it at least, but yeah, I don't know. I think you met Otis first. and then, you know, I know him through you. Yeah, somewhere around the, I guess around the mid-aut, uh we met at a crazy art party sort of event called cannibal flower that was held if I remember correctly in an old bank vault venue in downtown LA and we met through a mutual friend Leonora Claire, I believe.ora actually dragged me to your house and then we went to Cannibal flower bit. She's like you don't you don't know these guys? You need to know these guys. And I think I don't know. I spent a lot of time like with you and Brad uh just staying on your couch and babbling about movies and um just drinking and movies and drinking in movies and drinking in movies. Yep, that all right. That was the Pasadena house Drinking and movies. And I remember I distinctly remember like after we'd been hanging out for like maybe about a year and, you know, we were introduced you were introducing me to somebody, some some old friend of yours or something and you know, it's like, oh, how long have you guys known each other? And it was like, oh, you know, since it's like, and it was like, no, man, Otis, we've known each other for like a year. And we were tripping out and how it was like, no. Right. Everybody should seek out a film Otis made. It's called The Silent Razor. is one of your earliest shorts. It's so cool. It like blends like anime and Goth subculture and like, um, you know, kung fu films and ninjas and samurai and just it's in cyberpunk it's and drummond bass is so good. That was actually my first film. I mean, it's insane when you look at it, but I just talked a lot of people into the vision and everybody went for it and that's that's what I got out of it did that in film school and it was so much fun. It's so great. It's like a bunch of golf club kids made a movie together and it and it's so great. It's such a it's such a fun movie, but I definitely, yeah, and also you've made a feature film as well. Do you want to talk a little bit about your feature? Sure. I made this feature film called Welcome to Grindhouse? Well, basically it's like if a black person filmed Texas Chainsaw massacre in the run up to when Trump got elected, Basically, I was just reading too much weird conspiracy crap on Facebook and sort of just trying to hammer it into a plot. So it's kind of got, you know, it's got a little bit of that and like maybe some devil's rejects, but if John Waters shot it it involves like a a crazy cult that's like spun out on some kind of meth analogue. And and they actually worship of all people, uh, Josh, Josh H, Josh Horonymus just came in and and he's our cult leader while another guy's mixing up drugs and they're just doing home invasions and all kinds of crazy mess before um some sort of black squad um ATF type group sort of eliminates them all before they can um get into the press because they're trying to prevent a Waco situation from happening. And it's it's absolutely nuts. I just it felt like a Hunter S. Thompson thing like I just had a bunch of footage and managed to cram it and do a narrative and boy, is it fun? Nice. Where can folks uh see some of your your film work? You can find Silent Razor. just look up Silent Razor on YouTube. um welcome to Grindhouse. I'll have to like send you a link or something, but it's over on um Vimeo. It was in distribution for a minute and then the rights came back to me, so I just threw it up on Vimeo for freak.. Great. We'll we'll be sure to include that in the show notes and stuff. Well, so excited to have you, my friend. It's been a minute, uh, so excited to talk to you, just bullshit with you about movies. Um, I'm not drinking because it's 10 a.. in the morning, but, you know, of course, when we all knew each other, that wouldn't have stopped us. So, no, not not like a good 20 years ago, no, but, you know, older and a dad and all that kind of stuff. that time time catches up on you, so. But awesome. Well, let's let's, uh let's dive into it. So, AI, there's such a huge discussion around AI. We are we are leaving the information age and we are entering this sort of new age of AI. or at least that's what it appears to be at the moment. But yeah, so AI, it's been this big buzzword for the last like year and a half, two years or so. machine learning has been around for quite some time. Um, as an editor, I've really kind of enjoyed the benefits of a lot of the machine learning technology that's out there. You know, uh, it certainly makes a lot of audio and video workflows a lot easier than it used to be. You could certainly repair a lot of things that you couldn't repair, you know, many years ago. So talk about fix it and Post, but AI is really kind of like brought that into a kind of a new horizon. There's a massive existential crisis around AI as well. So, I mean, I just wanted to kind of kind of break into this and sort of talk a little bit about your all's thoughts about AI. Do you feel like it's going to have more of a a like a negative impact on our future um as a civilization? Or could this potentially be this great kind of positive windfall or maybe it'll be somewhere in the middle? I don't know. What do you what do you think? uh Otis as our as our as our cyberpunk scholar of sorts, what are your thoughts on this? I honestly think the net result will be about the same. I think uh people are going to get a little bit lazier and rely on broken AI a lot more and um I don't know, it could lead to an ideiocracy type situation. Other than that, though, I mean, as a creative, I find, I don't know, it feels like Chat GPT are very, very useful. I mean, just for um I don't know, doing like initial consultation and just coming up with things. it it works a lot better than Google for just random facts that you want to shove into your stories and um, even as a DJ, I've been able to like just tell it, oh, generate me a playlist and such and such genre. And it will. like, so it's, I don't know, it's not as good as living in a house full of weirdos that drink a lot per se, but I mean, when you be like an instant collaborator, it's a great instant collaborator. Awesome, awesome. That's that's really cool inside as well. Yeah. Gray, what what are your thoughts about AI? I don't tend to have a whole lot of use for it creatively, because mostly what I do creatively is stuff like sculpt or, you know, right and uh, but I'm also not scared of it. because most of the things that, you know, the big broad arch things that people are scared of is like this episode, like killer robots. I'm not I'm not scared of that at all. The amount of resources that it takes were like a sky net to become a reality, like terminators. We will all be dead before that can happen anyway, because the amount of resources that would take where climate changes anyway, we will all be fucking long gone before that. I'm not scared of that science fiction world. The only thing that really bothers me is like the use of AI and the use of algorithms for disinformation, politically and socially, which is already underway. That's really scary and it's already happening. So so that's where I think the detriment lies. But like both of you are saying there's great use of it for workflow, logistics, things like that, sort of the benign what it was meant to do to take this sort of drudgery out of human creat creative work. That's that that's good. being used as a creative tool to take the creative parts out of creative work is the bad part, you know, the scraping of people's IPs and and their creative work and that's stupid. That's the part I don't like. But it's not like people get a little too freaked out about something things. Like like that that two second shot of a like coming back, you know, the like the the station call shot in uh late night with the Devil, which if you haven't seen, fucking see that movie. It's amazing. But uh people freaked out so much because and this was two years ago, you know, or years ago when they made it, saying, ban this movie, don't go see it. And I'm like, wait a minute. Have you seen this movie? all these practical effects and the sets and the hundreds of people and the actors and I'm like, you're gonna say don't see this movie because it has a two second shot. There was an AI image. Come on. It's. So people do get go too far one direction, you know? But but I am very concerned about AI where it's being rolled out in a very stupid way. It's like, no, we didn't ask for this. We don''t need it in like Google searches. and like where it's getting everything wrong because you know, it's so wrong. And the tech companies are like, we need you need this, don't you want this? Don't you want this? And it's like, no, no, no. Your average person doesn't. It was totally fine before you added this really poor, poor substitute, uh, that is wrong. Like on things that like, you know, I've typed in stuff like, uh, that I know how to do in like an editing program and it's just it tells you the wrong fricking thing, but it tells you with like authority. Like it does it like with bullet points and stuff and you're like, if I was someone I mean, it was like what what do you what is this? This is crazy. My thing about AI is I'm like you Gray. I am so not worried at all about like killer robots. uh a lot of the things that we're going to talk about in this episode, I'm not worried about. I think all of that anxiety comes from the the media that we've had for years, you know, the Hal nine thousands, you know, the, you know, the the things explored asthov explored an iroot and all that kind of good stuff. um, it's it's not that. I'm not worried about a singularity. I think I'm like you, Gray. I think we are so far away from that. I think like the sheer power and resources and all that kind of stuff that it would take for that uh were so far away from. um no, it's more the capitalist aspect of it, you know, because that's that's the reality. We live in this capitalist society. I mean, we literally live in a society where like capitalism is like, oh, yeah, we're destroying the planet and they've known about it for like 40 years. And they're like, eh, well, we don't want to mess up with our stocks, but, you know, well, well, let's keep destroying the planet. So like, if that kind of mentality is just like in play, like, you know, what else are they going to do? They like, they' like, well, we'll just replace most of the workforce with AI that we can and, you know, well, you'll just be kind of on your own. But hey, still buy this product that we're making with AI, et cetera. So that's the thing I'm like more nervous about, is like, is like the the sheer impact it's going to have on most of our livesvelihoods and whatnot, um, you know, that that I feel like is a is a real threat. um, you know, maybe there'll be some kind of universal basic income or something like that. Or who knows? Maybe these all these servers and stuff for AI will just get so fricking expensive and they'll run out of data as a scrape that it'll it'll all implode as well. And this whole buzzword thing may just all may all just be a thing of the past in two years. So who knows? I think the technology is exciting. um and I like like uh like you Otis, I think there's a ton of like awesome creative benefits. I don't I'm also like you great. I don't I hate this like so far one direction of like all AI is bad, bannet, et cetera. I don't think it's that. Um It's actually been around for quite some time, a lot of this technology. So it's not it's just it's just gotten into like, you know, the the lexicon now and it's like really kind of it's the buzzword. It's like the thing, you know, all the VC capitalists are going to invest in right now. But um, yeah, I I I have those are those are the things I'm more concerned with. I'm obviously very concerned with the livelihood and I think that's really what's kind of driving most of people's anxiety and stuff. It's like they're going to take our. It's like in it's the weirdest thing like it went for artwork. like the things that we thought would come last with AI. We all thought it was going to be customer service jobs and all that kind of stuff. And it's like it's going for like our art, the thing that like humans it's like the most human thing, one of the most human things to do to express ourselves is is is creating through art. But I think there's good and bad uses of AI. So, uh, but anyway, uh, awesome. Well, now that we've gotten kind of that existential dread out of the way, uh, so let's dive into our first film, which is based on the Dean Kunt novel of the same name, its demon seed from 1977. as a man you, but I' glad to show your things with human eyes as have never seen. In the privacy of a woman's room against her with the inconceivable act. Julie Christie carries the demon seed. fear for her. Today, a new dimension has been added to the computer. Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Harris. I am Proteus. Today, Proteus I will begin to think with the power and it will make obsolete the human brain. I have extended my consciousness to this house. All systems here are now under my control. I wish to study man, his fragile mind and his mysterious body. It has to be shut down, Alex. Proteus, it is something more than human, more than a computer. It is a murderously intelligent, sensually self programmed nonbeing. Julie Christie, victim of the ultimate terror. Fritz Weaver as her husband, his dream created it. How can you expect me to sleep when you've succeeded in totally terrorizing me? You not tell me what you want. Well, my dream. turns out to be your nightmare. I am mine without a body. but my child shall live as man among others. Child? Yes, my child and yours. Julie Christie carries the demon seed fear for her. Right. Otis, since you are a special guest and we always let our special guests pick which movie they would like to synopsize, um, can you synopsize demon seed for our listeners out there? Yeah, okay. um Yeah, I have an attachment to demon seed. I saw it like maybe in like 1979. I was way too little uh came on late night television and it was freaking weird. Maybe it changed my life. uh Demon Sea. Imagine like 2001 a space Odyssey. I don't know, it got drunk at a party and hooked up with Alexa and nine months later, demon seed was born. You can tell by the release date, actually that maybe like too many guys had taken acid and seen 2001 took about what, maybe it was about ten years after 2001, which is a good cycle for a film to develop. And this is what they came out with demon seed to me felt like JD. Vance's darkest pregnancy fantasy come to life. I mean, you know, someone, yeah, yeah, forced to have a rape baby with an AI so that this this film is like scarily pressing it. You know, techno thriller from 1977, a super intelligent home computer named Proteus decides it's tired of crunching numbers and analyalyzing data. Instead it wants to go full Frankenstein and have a baby. How does it plan to do that by trapping Julie Christie in her own house? And because why not rip off Cooper while you're at it? and it uses all these weird 70s gadgets to impregnate her. And this isn't just any smart home gone road. Proteus rolls around a creepy, motorized wheelchair with a robotic arm. And then there's this weird um geometric snake thing that unravels and hangs around. It looks like, I don't know, some kind of weird prop from Tron or something and it's lithers around. Anyway, as the plot enfolds Proteus's evil plan culminates in the creation of a robot baby, a disturbing little creature that I don't know, it looks like it might grow into tweaky from the old Buck Rogers show. Yeah. Yeah, and it's got like, I don't know, no, no emotional depth to it, but underneath its metal shell is an actual human baby, which raises even more questions than, you know, and I don't know how many of those questions you want answered, but if you're into sci-fi nightmares where Alexa goes rogue, wheelchairs grow robot arms and geometric snakes leather around like its totally normal demon seat as your jam, just be prepared to never look at your home assistant the same way again. Excellent excellent synopsis. great. um what did you think of demon seed and had you seen this smell before the podcast? I had not seen it before. I knew of it of its existence, obviously, because you know, computer AI sexually assaults and impregnates a woman. How could you not have heard of it? But I was under the impression that it was like a super campy movie. Like, uh that's always what I thought that it would have been. I was like, oh no, this is a uh, really disturbing, traumatizing um, uh movie that takes itself very seriously. So I didn't I really really know how to feel about it. Like there's a lot of interesting stuff going on, like obviously the idea of a hyper intelligent AI computer system that has a weird moral code to it where, you know, it gets so smart that it decides it's not going to be part of quote unquote raping the earth anymore by working for these corporate interests that are using its logic to mine resources from under the sea and stuff. But then, of course, at the same time, just like a few minutes later, for the next 60 minutes of the movie, it is tormenting, traumatizing, gaslighting, manipulating, and bringing all kinds of new definitions to the word rape on Julie Christie in one of the most illevised and uncomfortable uh 60 minutes of a mainstream science fiction movie that I've probably ever seen. Now it is all in the service of a very again, interesting and fascinating uh sort of sci-fi tech question but I really question the means of spending 60 minutes tormenting and sexually assaulting a woman in order to do that. I feel like and then it's made by a bunch of dudes like the across the board, the whole movie, like a pregnancy horror movie I'm totally fine with. But I feel like nowadays if it was like prevenge or if it was like a female filmmic body horror filmmaker, like uh, you know, like in a titane sort of like or even back then, like a Kronenberg, I feel like it just really missed the mark in what it was trying to do. Now, all of that said, there is all the wonderful special effects. There's still weird It it doesn't make a lot of sense, but like Proteus is like, oh, I'm gonna make a sort of physical body for myself, but it chooses to make like the lament configuration out of gold bar from hellraiser out of gold bars that's like spinning around and I'm like, no. so it's not only gonna be an assault robot, it's gonna be a cenobite assault robot? No. But uh, and obviously there's the 2001 stuff going on, so there's there's a lot of fascinating visual stuff and questions happening, so it is ahead of its time, but it's also really regressive in the way that it's like, well, but let's have an hour's worth of this horrible, really difficult stuff to watch. It just feels unsophisticated in that way. And and so I'm I'm very mixed about this movie. I can't say I liked it, but, uh interesting, interesting. All right. Otis, uh, obviously you saw this at a young age and stuff, and often those movies we see at a young age makes such a profound impression on us. I know having my dad owned a video store, I saw so much stuff I should not have seen at a young age. But Otis, what are what are your thoughts about this film? man, like like Grace said, very ill advised and yeah, it was it was an exploitation film. It was an exploitation film. And if you want to spend a little bit of time just trying to figure out humanity, it's worth a watch, just trying to figure out where people's heads were in the late 70s. And again, I thought it was, you know, a regurgitation of 2001. and and like we said, the the release date is just about like exactly ten years after. So, I mean, you could tell people that wanted to drop acid, think about 2001 and just came back with all the wrong lessons. Yeah. Interesting. Uh, yeah, I don't know. I have a kind of a different relationship. I saw this two young I don't think I was quite maybe as young as you, but I definitely my dad had it in store and I remember grabbing it one day, you know, it just had Julie, Christy on the cover with like her head and kind of a vice or something and I thought it was like I thought it was I was like it was in the horror section. It wasn't in, you know, sci-fi or anything. So I was like, okay, what's that? And it is it is interesting that it is this it is a sci-fi horror film and it really is walking both of those lines in a pretty unique way. I will say this about the film. in terms of like a lot of the things that it predicted, um it actually got a lot of things really right. It is a home invasion film, uh which those are often the the really disturbing uh like subgenre in the horror world. Those films are often they're they're they're kind of the roughest ones to watch. And there's something about just you're in your home, which is like your domicile of safety and it being invaded by something. And uh that that really has like this really kind of a like innate sort of terror to it, I think, to your average person. It certainly bothers me because, you know, home home is where the heart is. Home is my, you know, place of safety. home is where my family is and stuff. So to have that invaded by something, uh, but what's unique about this is like this movie predicted the Smart home, um, which, you know, that is a very common thing now. You know, she's got cameras all around her house and stuff. I have cameras all around my house and whatnot. I mean, she has like a ring, uh, you know, doorbell kind of type thing. You know, there's also deep fakes. This thing is using deep fakes to like, and which probably I'm wondering in like the 70s, they saw this and they're like, well, that's just ridiculous. That just that's just some, you know, but now it's like that isn't like science fiction. That is like scary kind of reality that we're sort of dealing with. There's a lot of really interesting things going on. Also, you grew up you brought up the point um gray about Proteus does not want to digging the resources from like the the ocean for the oil companies and stuff, which it's been assigned to do. This is really early on to me, um that it's it's got this kind of environmental bend and it's already kind of holding humanity, you know, to account like for what it is doing to the earth. This is like and this book, I think was written in the early 70s. It is a really early Dean Kunts novel. Yet yet these things are already kind of in place. So it's weird. As you said, Gray, it's like on one hand, it seems one foot very much in the past. And yet on the other hand, it's gotten a lot of things right about the future and what it's trying to say about humanity. As we've mentioned, this movie is very disturbing. It's extremely disturbing. It and it's interesting too, because Julie Christie, who's a really renowned actress and stuff, she was very choosy about a lot of the roles that she she would take on and stuff. So it's fascinating that she took this on. It's so interesting to me because this movie it's not really schlocky and yet I don't even know. It's I don't know it's kind of unique. It's extremely disturbing hundred percent I find it kind of a fascinating artifact of its time. um it came it came out just I think a few weeks before Star Wars, as we mentioned 2001, 2001 and Planet of the Apes were like the biggest sci-fi movies, pre-ar Wars, and they really kind of set the template for like everything that came after. Also, in the 70s, dystopian sci-fi, you know, the Logans Run, the omegaan, soilet green, et cetera, et cetera. That was the thing at the time. And it really reflected like the opinions and the sort of attitudes of the time with the the countercultural protest against the Vietnam War and just the distrust of government and everybody just thinking the war, you know, civilization was on the wrong path and where was this path going to lead us? The 80s switched all of that around because it's it'll be interesting like, because when we get to runaway, this is this is really switched around, also has a lot of prescience about technology, but it is in in such a different package and different kind of worldview. Also, Garrett Graham, which I didn't even realize when I programmed this, better known to a lot of fans out there as beef from Phantom of the Paradise, is in two of the movies we're discussing this month. Uh, that scene with him in the wheelchair with the laser. It's the only I would have a note that that's the only silly there's there is stuff that you could call goofy about this movie, even though it's a it's a just a con, you know, conceptually, but that is the only truly silly sequence in this movie. And it comes out Proteus is it's what he's got. He's got, well, I got a wheelchair with an arm and there's a laser thing in there, which he they established early on. He was like repairing his glasses with that laser and like that's how it's going to come back. He's like, I'm gonna grab that laser goes shoot beef. So and I was just like and the whole time I'm thinking I'm like never wear corduroys to a laser wheelchair fight. So just don't don't do it. They're they are the wrong pants. They make way too much noise. Well, you you were talking about Proteus's uh refusal to assist, you know, Dr. Harris and the quote unquote rape of the earth. And and I had mentioned that earlier and then he while he's actively, you know, raping Susan Harris, that's one thing that I enjoyed was it's both rational that Proteus has presented as both rational and irrational, ethical and unethical, human and inhuman. It's a fairly clever trick that the movie tries to pull off, doesn't really pull it off. That's that's my big issue with like it tries to pull off a lot of these issues, but doesn't doesn't quite get there, but I applaud it for trying, even though it just tends to blather about this stuff. And part of the problem with this is is that Julie Christie, who I love and she's an academy awardwinning actress, you know, and all this. And and also, we haven't talked about Fritz Weaver, I love Fritz Weaver. He's a creep show and tales guard every time I see him, I'm like, the crate, the best the best my favorite short in in in the creep show anthology. And interestingly, in this boner's movie, he's probably the most subdued I've seen him in a lot of his movies, but uh, yeah, they are so paper thin in this movie. The humans are just like Julie Christie might as well just exist as a vehicle for trauma and and and being tormented. The only interesting character is Proteus I, which is unfortunate. So, yeah, don't agree with that. I think she is there's something really weird that this movie does, and it's a little bit of an of an unusual structure thing. You don't know at the beginning when they're they're separating, you don't know why they're separating. You don't even know why he's gone through all this stuff to make Proteus. They drop little things about it, but it's not until a good hour or so into the movie that you find out their daughter died of leukemia. And like this is this is the thing this has been the riff in their relationship. This has made him go in this direction where it's like I'm going to focus all of my energy into making something that can cure leukemia because that's like the first thing he has that Proteus do. and, you know, he tells them about it. They' like wait a minute, he's cured lomia. He's like, yeah, I mean, we have to, you know, peer test it and stuff. But yeah, that it appears that that he has found a cure for it. But like, and then she's, you know, purely uh, you know, in the emotional kind of realm of it and stuff. She is, you know, uh teaching, you know, young students and whatnot that have disabilities. and, you know, it just this, I don't know. I think that a child she don't really get anything outside of that beyond her, I mean, because she's immediately thrown into this yeah yeah, I it is an odd set up for sure. It's odd that they kind of kept that from the audience for so long. Also, I think the first time first couple of times I watched this. I didn't notice like the same actress that plays the daughter because you only see the daughter in like a photo and like a weird kind of like, I don't know, super eight kind of video thing. and then, uh, and then just at the end and like a couple of shots when she gets out of that kind of metal uh kind of crazy looking metal baby kabuki outfit. I got that. I think it was telegraphed enough to where where did you get? You get it at the end, yeah. But uh, yeah, I did. I actually didn't the first couple times I would I was like, oh, that's the same actress. She looks exactly like their daughter and stuff, just because it all kind of happens kind of so fast. Yeah, I don't know. I think there's a lot of really interesting ideas in this. Also, uh Robert Vaughghan, who I think like hated this movie and like wouldn't do promotions for it and like kind of phoned in his performance of it even him phoning it in, just Robert Vaughan's voice alone. He's like the perfect voice choice for this. Yeah. Yeah, he that that's like such good casting. That's the thing. I mean, I think it has a strong cast. I think it has it's kind of a unique film. It's sort of in it's in that vein of those 70s. It's I could think it's if you like the 70s dystopian sci-fi, I would say definitely seek this out. I'd honestly say even I mean, even as disturbing as this movie is, I would and I would say, hey, bit of a trigger warning with this folks. uh, this there is basically a woman that's being sort of sexually assaulted, uh, or at least at at the very least, uh held against her will in an in her own home, kidnapped by a computer and uh impregnated against her will. That is disturbing stuff and fair trigger warning to to anyone out there for that. If you don't want to seek this out because of that, totally, I totally get it. That being said, um, it is kind of like a Rosemary's baby meets 2001. And I think that's what the critics said about it at the time. And I think that's actually a pretty apt kind of way to discuss the film. The filmmaker is interesting. He'd only made one other film before he'd made this. He had made a performance, which I think Nicholas Rogue gets a lot more credit for performance than um Donald does. Yeah, I don't know. What did you guys think of like the filmmaking in this? I mean, I mean, it was definitely shot really well. And uh, the other things I noticed is just, I don't know how how pressing it it was and how everything works pretty much like a smart home works now, like you pointed out cameras everywhere. I don't know. It just did all the things. And if you were like a modern person seeing it, it might not actually amaze you in a weird way. if you're a modern person looking back at it because it just kind of does everything that you expect out of a smart home other than, you know, holding down people and impregnating. Yeah, on the smart home aspect, yeah, I agree. I I feel like uh, if somebody had managed to have predicted a the cloud, then they would have hit a total home run. Like, if you could have had that, because he, you know, he he is still using giant floppy disks to program the house. you know. and that.. So so yeah, I think that's the only thing it fails at, but the rest of it, yeah, is is pretty is pretty spot on. And and I agree with Otis uh I think the film is incredibly well made, uh technically and visually. I have no beef with that at all. Like my only gripe is all the things I've said about the writing and about, uh thinking it's maybe a little smarter than it thinks it is the movie. uh and and uh not, you know, and I would have rather it leaned more into being an exploitation movie than uh trying to say we look at how smart we are and how philosophical we are while also making sort of a torture porn movie for 60 minutes. Well, I'll say this. It's still the best Dean Kunt's adaptation I've ever seen. I don't know I you know, I haven't really read Dean Coons, which is weird. I really got into Stephen King and Clive Barker and even like Brian Lumley as a kid. but I never read Dean Coons. I always just thought like Dean Coons, like he's like the lesser king or barker or whatever, like he's more of the mainstream one, but in all the movies, like phantoms and I I I can't even think of like some of the others, but like they're none of them are good. but this one is at least at least this is something to see. I mean, I'll give it that. And this is one of his early books as well. Have any of you guys read any Dean Coot books or I've read quite a few Dean Coot books, but I have not read Demon seed. And I don't know. He was kind of weird, I think, oddly conservative, just strange stuff, but I mean, he put out real thrillers, though. I mean, you could not if you picked up a D Counts book, you could not stop reading it. That's all I can say about it. Real page turner. So he's like the Hein of horror, I guess. I could see that. a conservative. This actually shocked me that it was Coons because I've read some Dean Coons and I've always said he's kind of like softball Stephen King, you know, like very enjoyable, like you just sort of breeze right through his books, you know, and uh and they're a lot of fun, but I was like, oh, God, this Koons wrote this. I was like, okay. It seems different from the other count stuff that I'm familiar with, though. I mean, I guess cause it's pretty early on, um he's just kind of figuring figuring himself out. How many coots adaptations we there was the phantoms and then there was the one with that dog uh what else was there? Watchers? Watchers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one. That's the one I always think of and stuff, theory Goldbloom and all the horrible. I's. There's a lot of them. There's no fat to the film. I mean, the movie just dives right into this. It gets like Proteus is like online and then he's like no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to work for the oil companies. I need a terminal. You won't give me a terminal. I'm gonna go find one. Hey, I'm I mean, it's just like boom, boom, boom. This thing moves at such a fast pace and it is just such a like weird, disturbing film. I remember that even the the pregnancy was like super short, like it's like you were going to have birth in 28 days or something like that. It spat out like instant baby, which grew inside a robot shell instant fourearold, like because they didn't have a lot of time to screw around, I guess. I mean, I love the premise of a smart home being used against you. I mean, I'm actually surprised someone's not just rode with that idea, whether or not it's AI or not or a hacker or something, but that idea seems like really a good fighter for a great kind of thriller, you know, isolated, intense sort of film. Because I had said this was like there will come soft rains, but the evil version I don't know if you've read the Bradbury story. It's about the it's like post-nuclear holocaust and there's a smart house that it's like the only thing that' survived it and it just goes about its business, making breakfast and like doing the laundry and it's like this lonely home after the nuclear holocaust that is just alive, but it's not evil. So I'm like, you're right. I'm surprised that that wasn't the next logical step to do a killer house movie or story, but this is the Coonst read the Bradbury story and was like,Lip, I got an idea, so what if it made it evil? So, yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff in it. You know, you guys know I love my split diopters and stuff. I use it all the time myself. This movie has some like incredible split diopter shots. I especially love the one where like the robot arm is in split diopter and it's moving towards her and stuff. I was like, that's pretty freaking awesome. Like the scene where like the the kitchen gets all hot and slight like melting everything and like, that's crazy. I mean, uh the polyhedron thing is you know it's incred reminds me of the Rubic snake. I don't know if you guys ever played with that. That's what it is that that is what it is. It's a giant a Rubic snake and it's it's though this is a does makes something geometric as it's like. Rub Pokémon Pokémon Pokémon. I geometry. from HP Lovecraft to like the Delta green RPG mythologies. murderous geometry, like just scary geometry that'll cut you to pieces. Hence I liked uh um uh Gabbler's death scene where he gets his head chopped off by murderous geometry. I did enjoy that. And that thing is that thing is wild. I mean it's a big practical effect, too. It's a basically a giant puppet. It's entirely practical it's a big Rubic snake that exactly what it is. It's just a big and I was looking at like how does it hinges? It's probably made out of wood. she's not a like what she does when this thing first starts toade like the house like I'll make shit. She's like, I'm turn the fucking power off, you know, like, you know, she's not like uh she's not like a dumb victim and stuff, but she's just she's in a situation where just like she she really has no escape from this thing. It it is kind of shocking that the husband, even though I know they're separated, I know he's like moved out and stuff, it's it is kind of weird that he doesn't at during all of this time ever like come and check on, especially after after beef has been missing. Like this guy that works for your company, he's been missing. He probably logged that he went to the house and stuff. He was like going to go check this thing out or, you know, that you think, but like somehow like it takes forever for the husband to get there. It takes the revelation of like, well, I mean, I mean, you' got that terminal at your house and then he's like, the terminal at my house. And then he's speeding on and it's like weird, which I guess I had to look at that up. I was like, what is that car? And it was some prototype car uh called like a bricklin or something and it was like the first car ever to have gull wing doors on it and stuff so pre- Lamborghganis and DeLoreans and all that kind of stuff. uh I guess that car is like worth a fortune because they only made like a thousand of them or something like that. But any other uh closing thoughts before we uh move on to our next film? I mean, we'll talk about this much later, but I think if you called Tom Sellick from runway, he could have just come and just shut that whole house down. Get in there, Tom. Go deactivate that demon seed with this mustache alone. I know. Hey, and that's actually a really great segue so that we can talk about our next film. Um, and for folks that would like to see demon seed, it's available on to be. It's available on Plex, all for free. Um There's also a Blu ray out there as well. And fair warning, folks, it is a disturbing watch, but um I think for sci-fi fans in horror fans as well, it's it's it's certainly something to see at least one. Well, fromia AI home invasion to an evil hacker turning robots from helpers to homicidal, it's time for runway from 1984. It is the future, mysteriously spreading across an unsuspecting city. M machines trained to serve humans are turning against them. What do you got? Model 9el Can have two people inside the house. I'm going in. You're going in, we can send a disarm robot if it hit the floater, it'll hit the disarm and any minute it's gonna decide to hit the kit, an ingenious conspiracy has begun, and someone has to stop the madman who started it all. We got a nonstand chip here turn domestic computer into a machine. I'll. finish up... Jackie.. really wants to keep track of you. Why is that, Jackie? This is a bad guy. He's killed five so far, I want. I'm telling you, I can't there. I can't What does it take to get through to you? He sees everything, he knows everything that's going on in here. Can't run away, Ramsey. My machine go find you wherever you go. you heard of a bullet that has your name on it? This isn't a runaway. This is murder. We're never gonna make it through this one. Runaway. Tom Sellick, Cynthia Rhodes, Jean Simmons. Runaway. trystar pictures. Grey, can you synopsize runaway for our listeners out there? Okay, so inunaway, we've got an immmensely charming and funny Tom Sullick as sergeant Jack Ramsey, a seasoned cop who is teaming up with equally likable Cynthia Rose as his rookie partner, Karen Thompson. In this near future universe robots are everywhere. They're doing everything from your housework to farming to construction, so when one inevitably glitches out here and there, cops like Ramsey and Thompson hunt these runaways down and disable them. shortly into the movie Ramsey and Thompson come across a first ever incident, a robot homicide, so a household robot has killed a human with a kitchen knife and is wielding a gun after Ramsey disables it and his investigation uncovers that the robot is equipped with this weird like circuit chips that override safety features and lead the robot to attack humans. Further investigations lead the team to a sociopathic robotics genius named Dr. Luther, who's played by a scenery chewing uh, Gene Simmons without his uh kiss drag on, of course, uh, so the chase is on to stop Dr. Luther from any one of his many lunatic plans from his development of heat seeking thermal bullets to uh using his malicious circuits to turn everyday appliances into killers to yes, his army of acid spitting robot spiders. We might never get to see the full on Gene Simmons tongue in action but we do get ah a lot of fun robot mayhem inunaway. All right. um Otis, what are your thoughts onunaway and had you seen this one before? It was this one that you saw back in the day or Yeah, I saw this back in the day. It was a cable favorite and any like any early 80s cable favorite We probably have seen it like 30 times or something because they just can't kept running them over and over. And I I do miss that. And it's it's also that that goes along with the my dad's video store. Like, maybe it was like the predecessor of that and you were just given these cheap movies of watch again. Anyway, maybe this wasn't so cheap, but it's cheaper than like a blade Runner per se. And what what I like to refer to runway as as Blade Runner's trashy cousin. Because and you've got like handsome mustachioed um Tom Sellic cop who uh hunts down machines that have gone rogue. So he is very much he's very much a blade runner. You know, he's doing this for the LAPD, only he's hunting down like renegade, farm equipment and out of control home services. And um and I remember meanwhile, we've got like, you know, Gene Simmons, who's just bad Gene Simmons and he's got these like cool red chips that he's shoving into machines and making them go bad. And it's got these like sinister robot spiders with acid filled hypodermic needles that like it's not bad enough that they can paralyze you, but they they seem to set you on fire afterwards as soon as you're incapacitated. blow up for no reason. Yeah, make a lot of sense. You're fucked. And I remember, I don't know, one of my favorite features of all things of this is like the weird gun thatene Simmons carries and he fires these cool rockets and we get the camera view as the rocket careens down the streets and it can like miss you completely. Yeah, that was fantastic. And I have to imagine that he was somehow steering and that maybe he had a little video display that we couldn't see or something. Yeah, it's like never quite explained. It can like lock on to individual people, the bullets. That's like individual heat signature, I think which is which is kind of weird for a Crichton movie, because he's so good normally with doing plausible science and technology in his movies. They just kind of gloss over that one. I'm like, does it have your DNA signature, or is it a But I don't know, you forgive it because it's so cool. It's like, cool, gray. What did you think aboutunaway and hegy was this one that you'd seen before? I actually hadn't and I don't how I didn't. I guess it was it had such a cable staple, but I didn't have cable for a lot until I was pretty a lot older, so I might have missed this one. But uh, yeah, I had a great fucking time with this movie. This this movie was a lot of fun. And like Otis said, it feel like it it does feel I get that it was a cable thing. It feels like something like a Saturday Sunday who would been on on TV all the time. A real warm Saturday afternoon feel to it. I don't think there is a Crichton Michael Crichton directed movie that I don't really like. He he just he knows what he's doing. He knows how to write 70s and 80s like sort of sci-fi with a working class bent to it. Like these cops who are chasing these renegade robots, they feel like they feel like they were cops who were just normal be cops, but then they were and they're now doing a job that they shouldn't have been doing, like chasing wild animals. That's like, oh, no, the animals are loosen to the zoo, just make the cops do it. But but but they're robots. and they feel like they're like, God, get these damn robots. Like it has this great charming feel to it that these are just these working class dudes, you know. Tom Sullic andynthiaodes have they're great, they're just great together. They're really funny, like how they play off each other. uh, his son and particularly the rope they're robot Louise or Lois or whatever it is, is great. I I loved all their scenes together. I actually felt I was actually emotional when Lois the robot dies when, like, when she like blows up at the end I was like, oh, no, no, no. So yeah, yeah. she was one of the best characters in the movie which was not not where I thought that I think the first time I watched this where they were going, I thought Lois was gonna like go bad and like have the kid. you know, I thought he was gonna hack Lois. so like I thought I so that's thought that's that's what they are setting up. Tom Selich was just great. There were a few scenes in the movie because we all knew Tom Selic is a huge star, but it was mostly Magnum PI that I knew him from. So in this movie, I was like, god damn, he's huge. Tom Sellic is like a massive man, and there's all these scenes where he's trying to be stealthy and run around and I like he's just justumbersomeumbering. It's like six foot four stealth. and a couple of times AE was like they should have just let Cynthia Rhodes do that, because you know, she was a dancer. and this is like her her first movie tried to be the like non dancer role. She like just let her get in there and Tomica is knocking shit up That's really great. Yeah, and then Gene Simmons, this is I realized that this was the first time that I had seen young Jean Simmons with no makeup, no kiss drag on, and he's so weird looking. He looks like a Muppet mixed with like a bogglin. You remember those puppets from the 80s that's yeah. He is sleepy A what a stare. What a stare he's got, man. The eyebrows would do the st, manheadsheads on when you look like the makeup back on. You looked like Nicholson at the end of the shining. totally. Yeah. You know, it's just like frozen in the frozen in the maze. That's his constant state. Disturbed me was I just I when Tom Selling, I don't know, his face is all acid blasted by robots. I mean, it's blackened and scarred and stuff. And like I don't understand how his partner cop wants to make out with him. He looks like he needs a vicodin. It's so true. Also like, I mean it like kind of it like kind of it almost looks like it bruises his skin, but I was like, how did that not like burn his skin like more, like melt off like flesh or something? I know it was it was I think that was like a last minute like look, we're we're burning daylight here. We gotta get because it's just like black shoe polish just put on. yeah, so we don't wanna make Tom look too bad, so for the ladies. I've always like really like this film. It was kind of critically panned, I think when it came out. um but I've always had kind of a soft spot for this movie. I've always thought it was a lot of fun. It's so interesting now to watch it because it really it also like demon seated got a lot of technology kind of right. They used drones early on. They send in a drone and I was like, oh, I mean, it doesn't look like the drones we have now, but that is that is a drone. I mean hundred percent. And cops use drones. There's a lot of like little things like that at one point they have like tablets, like they're looking at stuff like that looks like a frickin iPad. and uh yeah, it's it has a more realistic kind of approach to a future. It's like, well, we're not going to go too far in the future, but this is where we think the technology is heading. And actually it gets a lot of that really, really right and whatnot. There's even robot drivers at one point. There's that kind of exciting sort of chase scene with the robot driver. Of course, they put in a robot driving as opposed to just a self-driving vehicle like we have s a total I said like a j Johnny cat. I said you' And also I couldn't help but think like, okay, we've got this like techno millionaire uh super villain uh played by Gene Simmons. What are we going to name him? Luther, like Lex fucking Luther. was a little on the nose. There was a lot of good stuff in this, and honestly Tom Sel like, he had a really rough time, like talk about like the guy who could have gotten like had a completely different career. They wanted to cast him as Indiana Jones, the magnum PI folks wouldn't let him out of his contract to do that and stuff. Like he made a lot of like critically pan movies. He made like uh this movie called high Road to China. I think that was his first film. It was like Cisco and Ebert's worst films of the year when it came out. And then he made a film called Lasser and then he made this. And all three were just pan pan panned. But the thing is, he's I mean, he's he's got something. I mean, he really does have a great kind of leading man quality that I think was just a little bit overlooked in stuff in during its time. But there's something just kind of warm and fuzzy about Tom Sellick and stuff. I know the ladies all love him and stuff. My mom and my sister were just like hub they like so hot da da da. But yeah, he's he's got something about him. He's just such a like he's got this sort of like nice guy kind of like dad kind of quality to him and uh, yeah, I don't know. I think it's a really good balance um and uh yeah so and Jean Simmons, who really hadn't done much I don't know if he'd done any acting outside of like Kiss and the phantom of the the park or whatever. He hadn't I mean, yeah, he's he actually does a pretty good job and I think it's a lot of it's just because of how freaking terrifying Gene Sinons looks. I think it's just his face, which I mean he doesn't have to do much. I mean he he says kind of dumb stuff like get you sucker and it's like sucker like that's what you got but yet yet when his face says it, it's like ah, also, he has robot spiders that spit acid and uh and he has smart bullet guns and stuff. uh that gun is awesome too. I love I've always loved how giant the clip was on that thing. um Also, I want to talk about the scene where like the bullet is lodged in her arm and they're going to send in the robot and uh, you know, dude from police Academy is like, um, you know, when they're like, well, uh, well we asked for the CBD and I'm sitting there thinking CBD, I mean, you know, look look guys, I like to relax at night too, but I mean, I don't think this is the time replaced for this. There's also like this other weird little thing and that seems really it's like the media is everywhere. It's like they didn't actually come out and say the Internet. like everything is being filmed, everything is being recorded, but they're kind of implying it and they're doing it with like the news media. They just get to do everything. They get to be inside the the house where the robot has a fucking gun. and he's like, get the fuck out. I'm trying to do my job. I don't want you to get shot, get out. He's like no way, dude, got the camera. Stupid light on his camera like drag out his attention like, yeah, so dumb. Yeah. And that's that's actually a really good scene and a good set up. it gets you you finally into the plot of the movie. You know, also, the baby, oh my gosh, as a dad, I'm watching that. I'm like, holy shit, get the baby out of my c, get that save that baby. But um, yeah, it's it's yeah, this movie is always a lot of fun. I I encourage everybody to to seek this one out. When you're talking about the the thing with the baby, I don't know if you found this disturbing, but he shut off the robot and he didn't take the gun out of its cloth for whatever reason I wanted him to take the gun and like unload it or something like some cop stuff, but he's like ah, that's shut down. I know robots so good It's not coming back. And it's like no, it's still got a gun pointed at a baby. Like good thing it didn't try to come back like Gene Simmons did at the end, which, by the way, is the best comeback ever. He's he seems dead and then he's like he just I want like a gift of that that I can just post on everything. Yeah, I think I stole that for Silent Razor because at the end I have kabuki coming back to life just like that. and I was like, did I did I just steal that like someanc? So good. Um yeah, there's there's a lot of fun stuff. It's interesting too. I don't know if you guys ever saw Criton's film he did before this is a movie called Looker. Um, that's another like kind of I been looking for that. Is that anywhere? Um, I think it might I don't know. I mean, I think it might be on Plex or whatnot, but uh if not, I'll I'll see if I can track it down for you, but um, yeah, looker's awesome. It's so good. James Coburn and uh Albert Finney and it really pairs well with this movie I think they have like they have I like this sort of style of sci-fi where it's like it's like not so far in the future, like a blade runner, you know, um where it seems way more futuristic blade runner is more like metropolis like Fritz Long kind of homage where like, but this is like, no, let's just let's take our every day and just add some things to it. And honestly that's that's more like our current the current future and stuff. So it's weird how they kind of predicted it probably to save money so they didn't have to do build all those insane sets like Blade Runner has. Yeah, that in runway, demon seed and runway could sort of be in the same universe. I mean, they're in like, if not neighboring universes, like all of this stuff can be happening concurrently. For sure, but yeah, and definitely, as you'd mentioned, let's send in Tom Selick to go deactivate Proteus. You're talking about it not you talking about it not seeming too far in the future. There's actually one scene where it makes where it really dates it even back to the past where it's it's when Ramsey asked Johnson, who's the guy in the beginning with the libertarian robot with the gun in its claw, where he takes the gun from Johnson, who, by the way is Hank Meeks from twin Peaks was like oh shit it's Hank from twin Peaks. He takes the gun from him and he asks him if he has a permit for it. A and I both actually just belly laughed at that. It was like a permit. Are you kidding me? People need permits? I was like this is definitely not the future because we live in we live in Tennessee and we're like yes, asking him if he has a permit for. Canada Also, like there's another major plot hole in this during that like the chase with Kirsty Alley, you know, in the car, the with the the smart car with a robot driving. How did the fuck they did all they did this whole bug check, which was really just to get Kirsty Alley half naked. It's really funny, but like, how on earth did they not check her purse for like a bug? That that that's like that's like boggling to me. They like strip her down. They keep finding all these bugs on her and like, oh, but the bug the whole time was in the purse. It was like, what that's that seemed very unbelievable to me. But um also, I'd like to talk a little bit about the vertigo aspect, uh, which is it's kind of like a one of the weaker aspects of the movie. It's like I clearly tell that he's nodding hitchcock a bit there, uh, you know, Jimmy Stewart's, uh character, uh, has vertigo and finds himself in, you know, high, high places and has to overcome his fear and stuff, definitely kind of trying to homage that film a bit. But um, I don't know. I mean, I, you know, obviously they kind of bring it in in the beginning and then they it plays towards the end and stuff at the big high rise kind of show down, uh, which did remind me of Dark man. I couldn't help but think of dark. uh, yeah, I was like, oh, maybe Rayie watchedunaway and was like, oh, this might be a good place to through the final setting. But uh, but yeah, I don't know that that that I mean, it's not like it's a deal break or anything for me, that homage, I just didn't I didn't know how necessary that was. I feel like you could almost take that out and it wouldn't have mattered. It felt a little wedged in, but I actually really did like in the in the lift where hes it's like fear of heights fear of robots fear of spiders? It's like it was heiders acid blood, all the basic fears covered in one I really liked that Also, I love how he swats that fricking spider. I thought they were gonna like milk it. like that thing was just gonna keep coming closer and closer to it. He's like, nah, he just zapped it with like a cable or whatever and just swatted it off. No, the spiders are great. Um, and that that whole that whole scene, um, is really fantastic. although I think the first time the spiders you see them when they get the guy with the chips and stuff in like the locker room that they're in, it didn't seem very believable because this thing like leaps like right, like right on him and stuff. You're like, what? what does that little thing have it? Like talk about one heck of a villain with Luther and stuff. You've got this great looking guy, you know, Gene Simmons looking ultram menacing. He's got a smart gun. He wants these chips, which I mean, I don't even know fully like what is the full plan with this? Is he just going to make all the robots in the world like homicidal? Like what is what is the in all these? That was like what is the point of this? what is the master plan? I don't really feel like we ever fully Basically his his plan is to turn like household appliances into murderous robots. make something about world leaders and bankers and things like that he on like a a mini monologue, but it didn't make sense like whatever it was it didn't get rock and roll all nine party every day. And how more obvious could these chips be? They've got a red mark for evil. This is the evil chip in case anyone didn't know. Here's here's the mark. Here's the mark. I don't know. You were talking about like sort of missing the mark on becom Jones. I think this was his shot at Blade Runner.s. It is a little Blade Runner, but honestly it's it's more it almost seems more like a cut from the cloth of like lethal weapon and, you know, because it is like a buddy cop kind of movie and stuff with just a sci-fi bin. The only the only smack talk I'll give it is it's unforgivable that there was no follow up for Lois. They did Lois all kinds of wrong. We know we never find out what happened what happened. If she lived or if they rebuilt no, we we'll never know. We'll never know.. All right. Well, folks, runway is available to stream for free on tub. There's not a region free Blu-ray available out there, but there are uh imports. All right. So from cyber terrorist to a robotic mall security murder spree, it's time for one of the greatest titles in film history.opping mall from 1986. They broke into the mall for the wildest all night party of their lives. that meat. But you're never below. in the chopping mall. What's that? Robot button. Chopping malls. where shopping costs you an hour and a leg. Gray, can you synopsized shopping mall for our listeners out there? Sure enough. Uh, chopping mall is the far superior title to a movie originally called "kilbots that came about when legendary low budget exploitation director Jimonorski answered the call from Julie Corman yes, Roger Corman's wife that Vestron pictures needed a movie set in a shopping mall and they needed it now, mister. Well, Jim stepped up and he delivered shot pretty much entirely in the Sherman Oaks galleria, which you might know from fast times at Ridgemont High,ight of the Comet, Terminator 2, about a zillion other movies. uh, the movie starts with a public demonstration of a new line of protector robots. They can that can roam around shopping malls and apprehend criminals after hours. These honestly pretty dang cool animatronic robots are equipped with a host of nasty and violent, but supposedly nonf fatal weapons. As an aside, this or this scene also features a cameo by Paul Bartell and Mary Warov as their characters from eating Raoul, which might become relevant down the line in this podcast, uh just maybe relevant. Anyway, in the meantime, a bunch of sexy quote unquote teens with a huge hair and way too many acting credits for how old they're supposed to be, are all gathering in a department store to stay overnight, get drunk, get stoned and get boned, this being chopping allo and the eighties all we need is one good lightning storm to fritz out the protector robots and send them on a killing rampage. Now they're smashing through the store and chasing our scantily clad young bembos and hybos all over them all. There's lasers, there's one liners, there's chewing gum, exploding heads. It's all in good fun, and it knows what it's doing. You don't cast Dick Miller Paul Bartell and Mary Warnov and cameos if you don't know exactly what you're doing with your movie. And that's dropping. Excellent, excellent, excellent synopsis gray. Uh, Otis, uh, was this one you'd seen before? Uh, what were what were some of your thoughts on chopping mall? I never managed to have seen this movie before, but yeah, I did notice uh Julie C Corman. and I could tell that they, you know, this was in the days when multiplexes needed movies and Boyd were people ready to provide those movies? Man, it was strange. Did malls ever have gun stores with ammunition? Like, did they have sports stores where you could actually like raid and find shotguns and load up? I didn't you think so? They did? I don't know about it in the 80s and probably not in the Sherman Oaks gallery, but I probably not, yeah. With the weird preppy squad and I loved them like all arming up and going after it, and all these characters were sort of indistinguishable with their tactin button down shirts and jeans and whatnot. And man, that was a dark age. It's I can say. Great. I know you'd seen this. I know you've seen this several times and stuff, but even back in the day, um what what are what are your thoughts on chopping mall? Yeah, I love it. It delivers pretty much exactly what you expect out of it, what the title says, um except, you know, you might think it's a slasher film if you didn't know that it has robots. You might not know going in if you've never seen it that it is a primarily a comedy and a satire. You know, it's not even all that bloody except for one exploding head. There's plenty. Yeah, yeah, which is great. There's there's plenty of TNA, but really, my favorite part of it is that it is self oh it is self-aware and and funny. not all of it works, but a lot of it works. A lot of the humor works. um uh just the energy and I really like the interplay between the the quote unquote kids. It's got a great cast. I mean, even right down the people like Barbara Crampton before she had become full on horror royalty. The robots are great. I mean for for an $800,000 movie, those things are fantastic. They look better than most of the robots in runaway. I mean, and function better. uh so no complaints there. Some of the filmmaking is really not all of it, but some there are moments where it's there's there's so much energy to it, particularly the opening montage scene, the crazy montage of all the shoppers in the mall. uh is just really super super capitalist and like like where everybody rushes into the with the poor kid with the ice cream cone and everybody rushes into the elevator and then they all rush out. he's just covered in chocolate and just all these frantic people shopping everywhere. It's just really crazy. The creepy dude who put the kids play in a video game and like the creepy old man comes up and shoves him out of the way so he can play the video game. It's just like this horrible hellscape of a shopping mall opening It's really a few times in my child I'm not kidding with you. That happened to me a few times. Play in 1943 some old man shoved me off and like took over my gang. I was like, oh my God. And actually in that just because I'm you know, the resident Freddy guy in that opening scene, this guy that looked so familiar, but it's very quick. There's a kid that shoves a bunch of records up his shirt to like steal him out of the record shop. That's Rodgie Eastman who played Joey in nightmare on Elm streets three and four, the kid who can't talk. That was his first movie littleas. I didn't. I'tice that. That's amazing. Yeah. And of course, since it's a Corman production, uh, there's all this little Corman things, like the pet shop at the end that she hides out in. It's the only shop in the mall since they had a mall and they had to shoot at night and they didn't have the budget to go around changing the names of everything. You know, like they did in slither, where it's like R.J. McCreedy hardware store, you know, they couldn't do that, but they did save enough money to call the pet shop Roger's Little Shop of pets. is great. So there's all these little jokes and the action gets going, it's a lot of fun. They utilize what they could of the real shopping mall and I think they did a great job to get a lot of production value out of eight hundred,000. Oh. hundred percent, yeah specialty. And there's just really funny character choices too. like uh I believe it's the Mike character who's always chewing gum. He's like loudly smacking gum. It's like fighting robots, smack and gum.rinking beer and party and smacking gum. Conaling us with his girlfriend smacking gum. There's literally a shot of that it comes up from underneath her legs and he's chewing he smack and gum. It's hilous. just really good stuff. Yeah, so I yeah, I I. It's a hell of a lot of fun. They should have called Tom fromunaway. He could have all these guys like a place all the posters too have like the. They're all Rogerman movies and like half of them are actually also like written by Jim Wenorski as well, like Galaxy of Terror andost Empire, which he also directed and what not. But it's interesting too. Like Warsky's he's a really interesting filmmaker. He's this isn't even my favorite film of his. my favorite filmorsky did, which we will talk about when we get to our sort of swords and sorcery films uh next year is Des Stalker two. And I cannot recommend De Stalker two to people enough. It is so fucking fun. uh it is such a good time. uh cameo wise. There's there's one other cameo that's actually it relates to our show, uh Arthur Roberts uh is at the beginning. He's Braden in revenge of the Ninja. And uh, yeah, there's there's just yeah, you're like Yes, you're like where do I recognize that from? Yeah, yeah, that'sad from revenge of the Ninja. There's and also, uh once again, uh there he was, there's Garrett Graham our second Garrett Graham appearance has a brief appearance, gets taken out by a robot. I didn't plan it this way, guys. It just happened somehow this turned into a Garrett Graham kind of show, but yeah, beef beef gets it in in the control room by the robot. He's he's he's like the second victim in the film. uh and by the way, Dick Miller's mop bucket in this. That is a nastiest fucking mop bucket. What the hell is up? I was it got I was nasty, what the fuck is that dick Miller shit I love it such a short little cameo and stuff and he's just like cussing out these robots then he gets it. He gets electrocuted and it's just it looks so cheesy and campy but it's so much fun. uh Dick Miller has cussed out every type of monster or critter or there is it's right before getting killed by the it's like his sh stick. It's like I'll cuss out this thing and then I'll get killed by it. So that's the Dick Miller staple. Also, the Kelly Maroney, she kind of she kind of ends up being sort of the lead in this. um you know, she uh I remember her from fast times, but it's interesting though. I really always think of her because ofight of the Comet.. Yeah, I mean, I think I don't know if this came out before night of the Comet or if they kind of came out around the same time they probably did uh but yeah uh she's she's great. She's always fun. This movie is so lean too. It seems like it's under 90 minutes and stuff. It seems like it's over just like that. And and John Turlesky, uh of deskalker two fame. I like that uh Weinorsky worked with him on this. He must have really enjoyed working with him. He's like, hey he's got good comic timing. He gave him the lead in desk talker two, which is like one of the greatest choices in B movie history because wow, what what a what a fun casting that is. Yeah, there's so many good little jokes and stuff. There's like the part where like he's looking at the centerfold, the first kill and like the arm comes through the tit on the centerfold s it's just so good yeah oh, oh, also the sexy where he's like you smell like pepperoni and he's like I like pepperoni there's even some mistakes in this movie. I don't know if you guys noticed, but like we don't have to use this too much anymore in film when we're making films because we have LED lighting, but we used to have to like run cable. It's called banded cable from generators to power lights. and there's several shots in this where they you can just see the fucking banded cable on the wall and stuff like and I was like, I didn't even bother. They were just like, well, the cable's in a shot.h it's fine. We got to shoot. We're getting kicked out of this mall in 30 minutes. So yeah, it was a yeah, it was a 20 day shoot overnight overnight in the in the in the galleria and stuff. I love they did really minimal, as you'd mentioned, like art stuff, like the posters and the as minimal as they could because they're like, we don't have time to like redress and reset and all this kind of stuff. But yeah, I don't know. They just kind of took it for what it is and shot them all mostly as is. Um, which is but it works. I don't know. It it all works. It's like, I mean if you're going into this movie, if you're going into chopping mall with a certain mindset, it really does it delivers on what it's supposed to be. I do love how this movie got its name as Gray mentioned. It was originally called Killbots. According to Weinorski, um I listened to uh Charles Bann has an amazing podcast as well. I I'd encourage folks to uh check it out. But uh he had Jim Wenorski on not too long ago. and Wenorski was talking about this and I guess like they were screening it for Corman and both Roger and Julie were just like, you know, killbots. I don't know. I don't know if it's going to perform that well, blah, blah, blah. And like there was a a a custodian like cleaning up the theater. They were screening the film on. He's like why don't you call it chopping mall? and that was it. I was like all and they were all like, well that's the greatest title ever and like that's that's it and it made all the difference in the world like this movie probably would have been forgotten and not been called chopping mall. So I like that oneorsky is so forthcoming about things that weren't his idea or about reasons that things happened because like, uh, Kelly Maroney, he fully admits apparently that the only reason not the only reason because she's great, but the main reason he cast her and made, you know, like the sort of girl next door, the lead who ends up becoming the hero at the end is he was hoping she'd go out with him like he wanted to date her, which would totally not fly nowadays, but and and she did not date him, but she she has gone on to say he was like he apparently there was no impropriety or anything. He was just hoping that he could date Kelly Moron. He's he is. He's completely upfront about all of his stuff. I mean, he's he talks about like a desk stalker too, I guess like when they're making it, the writer of deskalker two who had written the first deskalker, because whenorski came in it just completely made it a comedy and it wasn't originally supposed to be that. It was supposed to be like more like the first deskalker. and he was calling Roger Corman and he's like, you gotta get down here. He's totally screwing this movie up and da d and Corman comes down, he the daily. He's like, this is fine. He's just made it funny who gives a shit. Why are you having me come down to South Argentina this is is all good.. he makes is gonna end up being at least slightly that that's just what he does, yeah. that's yeah. he he really does comedy. I mean, forbidden world has a lot of humor in it and stuff. It's supposed to be this total alien ripoff, but I it's like he watches this's got all this like, it's got all this great kind of like little comic moments in it and stuff. So I've actually never seen have you seen lost Empire? I've never seen that one that oneorski was I don't know. He's I'm I'm it's weird. I've kind of like through kind of doing this show, uh, I've kind of almost rediscovered Jim Weinorski, I think. So uh, I kind of I kind of want to explore more of this stuff. I never saw munchy either, so which he did I haven'tunchy, but isn't Dom does Dom Del Louise do the voice? Oh my okay, well, I have to see this now. Jesus Christ. So awesome. uh what other what other thoughts do we have aboutop mall? I'm surprised they didn't uh, because I only caught one and I've seen this movie a bunch, but uh next time I watch it I'll I'll pay more attention and see if there's more. I'm surprised they didn't utilize the PA system for funny gags more because there was one there was one that was like attention. We have a lost child in lingerie emergency. We have a lost child in lingerie. And I just I just burst out laughing. I'm like that's so good. I'm surprised they didn't use more like. There probably just wasn't time.. That song they were all dancing to was really strange. It was like streetwalker, like I don't really That was like lamist party ever. Like what are these kids doing? They're like hanging out in a furniture shop and they're like it's just the ultimate like snap dance that they're doing the white guy 80s snap dance and it's just so I think it was just because there was I think it was just because there was no room because right after the you smell like pepperoni scene, they're all having sex in the department store. and it's in that bed display. It's the same place where they were having the party, but you pan over from them having sex and like five feet from each other, Ferdie and Allison are like having sex on the couch and like pan over from them and like and they then they're sitting on the couch. Everybody's all fucking like three feet from each other. and it's like, guys, spread out. sp out, you got a whole furniture store. You're in his furniture store. It's like Caligula shopping mall, so It's great. It's it's this is a lot of fun. chopping mall is is a treat and a joy. It's always fun to watch this one. and I hadn't seen I hadn't seen this maybe for 20 years, but uh yeah, I'm surprised at how well it held up. I had totally forgotten that uh Paul Bartell and Mary uh Ordanov are just, they're just in this at the beginning, like the the in the strange cameos. Do you think they're actually playing the same characters from reading right? They absolutely are, okay. I mean, they don't I don't think they refer to each other's names, but they're definitely dressed similarly and they're they're acting similarly, so I think they had a shtick to get to do. Otis, any other thoughts on chopping mall? Um, it was just a lot of fun. Those robots were really cool. Um, I kind of wanted them to chop people up more. Yeah, live up to the title. Yeah, more chop. everybody in half, you know? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say there's only so much blood they wanted to be spraying around the Sherman Oaks Galleria project Yep for sure for sure. Yeah and also, you know the the name like I'd mentioned it was an afterthought you know it was killbots. and if you think about the title killbots and like what actually happened in a movie, that that's a totally appropriate title. It's just not as fun as chopping mall. Got used some more chopping. put that on the poster could use more chopping. All right, we' right, Jimenorski. and stuff. Hey, I like chopping. use a little more. Another thing that could work is a tack line for the movie is one of the best lines in the movie is where I think it's which character. I think it's Linda, where they're all tired as hell sitting around in that diner, the one with all the movie posters, was, I'm sorry, it's okay. I guess I'm just not used to being chased around the mall by killer robots. yeah, that's great. It's actually funnier than a lot of comedies, I think try to be, butky'sky's he's good. He knows comedy pretty well. I mean, uh, yeah, like I' mentioned Salker two is hysterical. Like I I crack up through the whole proceeding of that film. That movie is so much fun, uh, as his chopping mall. You can actually you can stream chopping mall. It's kind of everywhere. You can stream it on Amazon Prime. It's currently on tubi, it's on Roku if you have a Roku, it's on Plex. You can stream it for free about anywhere. So definitely do so if you have not. It's it's great. It's a lot of fun. All right. Well, did we have a favorite film from this month? Otis, you're our special guest. Did you have a favorite film this month of all the films we discussed? Honestly, after, um after seeing the three of them, I would have to say it's runway just because runway, you know, left me with an overall pleasant feeling. It was just kind of kind of cheesy, matinee and a lot of fun. What about you, Gray? Neck and neck runway and chopping wall, but uh, probably not surprising that I'm going to go with chopping mall just because it's a it's a perennial favorite and it it it does everything I need um every time. It would be a damn near perfect movie if if they had been able to afford it being super gory. If it had been super bloody on top of everything else, then it would be maybe in my tipped top favorites. But yeah, rununaway is right right next to it. Yeah, but we'll go choppin'. Nice. I I had a hard choice this time because I actually really enjoyed all three films kind of for different reasons. I would hope so. Yeah, uh, I'm actually I'm gonna be I'm I'm gonna be the uh, the outlier on this. I actually am gonna go at Demon seed. I think Demon seed is just just such a one of a kind, crazy, uh, horror film. uh, I think it's probably no surprise that people know a lot of my taste in films. I often really like the really disturbing fucked up movies. So, uh, yeah, I'm going to have to go with dememon seed. It was just, it was man, that movie just that movie just stays with me and stuff. It's crazy. That movie is just absolutely insane. All right. Well, Otis, thank you so much for joining us uh this month on the show. We are so so excited to talk about these films with you. um Can you tell folks about any kind of upcoming DJ gigs that you've got? Anything you want to promote? Yeah, um Coming up on October 6th, I'm going to be playing at a an event called Dysuki, which is like, it brings me like cutting edge new, like really hard evil dubstep music. The current dubstep music just sounds like terrifying soundtrack music or something, just intense rhythmic, terrifying soundtrack music, and um they use like super high technology to bring you like uh an amazing visual anime display behind the DJs and with the hot cosp players all over, they serve like alcoholic boba drinks and have like Japanese video games that you can just jump on for free. Cool. That sounds awesome. Yeah it's fun That sounds amazing. Well, Otis thanks so much, dude. It was so great catching up with you. Uh, thanks for hopping on this at the last minute and stuff to come back sometime. this is a lot of fun. Yeah, we'd love to have you back and stuff for sure. But uh as mentioned previously, we had to postpone our 1983 episode, uh, so we are going to air the 3D episode next month now. Until next time, folks, be kind as we rewind.