May 18

Total Recall ,1990

Welcome back to another installment of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers ! Dion Baia and J. Blake are taking on a popular fan request, a real favorite from their childhoods that was a blockbuster when it was released. The boys are getting their asses to Mars this week as they cover the Arnold Schwarzenegger epic, Total Recall, from 1990!

Total Recall Poster

Blake and Dion jump right into it, revisiting this classic and discuss how happy they are that this movie still holds up. They compare the finished version to the original Philip K. Dick short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale as well as the differences within the novelization, and explain the long process of getting this from the page to the screen. They unpack the massive Practical Effects in all their splendor, something that probably will never be seen in a Hollywood film like this again- along with a whole lot more. So come on down and check out another really late night meditation in an all new episode of  Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers !

*During the podcast, actor Michael Champion was mentioned as perhaps the villain in the 1991 film The Hard Way, when it was in fact the great Stephen Lang.

Extras!

Check out the original theatrical teaser trailer to Total Recall!

Watch the making of titled, Imagining Total Recall!

Take look at these rare, behind the scenes!

Here’s a great little featurette about the miniature work from Total Recall!

Last but not least, have a look at this Special Effects Featurette that explains the Skeleton Scene, among others!

September 29

Blade Runner, 1982

Hello and welcome to another episode of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers! The boys are back and taking on one of the most iconic Sci-Fi movies of all time, one that is still lauded and debated 35 years after it was first released. J. Blake and Dion Baia are chatting about the Future Noir classic, Ridley Scott‘s Blade Runner, from 1982.

Blade Runner

The fellas are probably tackling their biggest topic to date, meaning with arguably 5-8 versions of the film, entire books written about the movie, and even a 3 and a half-hour documentary on the subject- there seemed to be a lot to unpack and get into. Applying the SNMS method, Dion and Blake decided to watch the original 1982 International Cut of the film (which was the version subsequently released on home video and laserdisc), as well as read the original source novel, Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? by Science Fiction legend Philip K. Dick. Also for reference, they screened the little seen 1982 Workprint version which was released in the massive 2007 boxset. The boys compare the film(s) to the book and discuss the differences that were dropped or added, and lay out a sizable portion of novel’s subplots like the Empathy Boxes and the religion Mercerism that were eliminated to condense the story to fit into a two-hour feature film. They get into a very in-depth, semi-intellectual conversation about the moral questions posed within the book and film, as well as how the movie’s title came to be. Delving probably into their most ‘meta’ discussion on the podcast to date, they highlight the ethical and fundamental issues raised within the story, as well as their own personal feelings regarding these huge topics. So, how different is the original 1968 book to the 1982 version that was released in theaters? What about the various versions that have come out in the years since and the subtle differences in each? And what about the notorious and highly polarizing “voiceover” track by Harrison Ford that was dropped in the later cuts of the film, and the reasons why it was included and then excluded in subsequent releases? And the biggest question for Blade Runner and Do Android Dream of Electric Sheeps? fans: is Rick Deckard an ‘Andy‘ or Replicant? Well, you better grab all your Poopsheets, your Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test kits and dial your mood organs to the correct settings, because the lads are taking you for a ride in their Spinners, in this all new edition of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers!

Extras!

Check out the original 1982 trailer for the film!

Have a look at all the deleted, alternate and extended scenes from Blade Runner!

Discussed in the podcast, here is the 2015 BBC Radio adaptation of Do Androids of Electric Sheep?!

Here is all things Blade Runner, on the fansite BRmovie.com!

November 14

Mindwarp,” 1992

The boys really searched through the proverbial video store racks for this week’s pick, the little known and probably even less-seldom seen sci-fi treat, Mindwrap from 1992, starring Bruce Campbell and Phantasm‘s Angus Scrimm.

mindwrap poster

This underrated, low-budget post-apocalyptic/technological/CHUD-style tale explores themes probed 7 years later in the highly popular 1999 film The Matrix (though the viewpoints of the filmmakers couldn’t be more carbon opposite), and Mindwrap seems to be an amalgam of some of the best sci-fi films out there, e.g. The Time MachineTotal Recall, Blade Runner and THX 1138.  So please have a listen and enjoy us waxing over a true forgotten sci-fi and Bruce Campbell classic!

(There in fact is an out of print, region free remastered Blu Ray edition put out by Twilight Time Studios, which can be found on Amazon.)  

(Dion misspoke in the cast when he referred to Philip K. Dick‘s iconic short story We Can Remember it For You Wholesale being linked to Blade Runner, when he actually meant Total Recall. He does tend to get a tad over-zealous at times.)