Oh, God. Oh, my God.
And no matter what I do, Peter yells at me.
Yeah, that's true.
Sorry, Sean.
Now I feel bad. Good.
Welcome back to Cage Match, everybody.
Colon around about wave meeting Nicholas Cage.
I'm Sean here with Nick and.
Hi, I'm Peter, the producer of this show.
And this week we have some special guests.
Why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves?
Hello, I'm Alex.
And I'm Sammy.
And we're the original siblings.
Cut that please.
Nailed it. Nailed it.
Excellent.
No, that's perfect. That was flawless.
Yeah, tell us a little bit about your show before we really jump into things.
Yes, we're from Star Trek, the original siblings.
That's our podcast where we watch old episodes of Star Trek.
And we talk through the whole thing.
And it's pretty fun. We make jokes.
Sammy talks about how hot Spock is and we just kind of goof around and have a good old time.
I get it.
Young nemoi.
Oh, yeah.
Actual nemoi.
He still gives me like stern uncle vibes though, even when he's young.
That's valid.
So, yeah, Cage Match is a bracket style, 64 Nick Cage movies going head to head.
So they're all seeded better to worse.
And this week we have a three seed going up against a 14 seed.
This is the fucking weird part of our bracket.
Yes. So.
Yeah, these films definitely occupy a very specific corner of Nick Cage's career.
And I think it's very fitting that they are up against one another.
The bad part.
We've had this weird, perfect storm where just the right movies go up against each other
without trying to solve just an aggregate score based on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, Peter.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's just been sort of random how the matchups shook out.
But there's always something that kind of blends between the two movies.
So kind of cool.
Maybe it's just Nick Cage.
Sometimes it's mustaches.
It could be mustaches. Yeah.
These two are both late stage Cage.
Modern Cage.
2018 and 2021?
I think so.
Yup.
Before we really jump into that though, what's your relationship to Cage movies?
You reached out to us, Alex, and said that you were a medium Cage head.
Yes, and that's only by the standards of fanatics.
By the standards of an ordinary person, we're both fanatics, I'd say.
Yeah, we've been long time Cage heads.
We just love the crap out of Nicolas Cage.
We've been really into him for a long time.
We got back in high school or something back in probably like, I don't know, 2008 or something.
We got into a big Cage war where we would send each other on Facebook.
We would Facebook, remember that?
We would send each other pictures of Nick Cage's face photoshopped onto other stuff
back and forth.
We said we were having a Cage match and we'd just send them back and forth.
But going back, gosh, I can't think of quite what the movie was that made him click for
me.
Definitely an early favorite that still...
I think it was Adaptation, probably.
Or Matchstick Man, or Weatherman.
Weatherman was the one I was going to say.
That's the first time I remember really clocking how much I loved him.
And it's still one of my very favorite Cage films.
I think it's a genuinely good one, so I don't know.
Do you guys hate it?
Oh, we haven't watched Weatherman yet, but I hope you haven't listened to our Adaptation
one.
You guys don't like Adaptation?
Oh, one of us does.
I love the Adaptation one.
And I love that there's two Nick Cages in Adaptation because the more Nick's, the better.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
I love that Peter looks like Charlie Kaufman.
No, I look like Donald Kaufman.
Oh, shit.
You went through a windshield.
And I don't give a fuck.
Am I correct in remembering that you said that you guys watched Prisoners of the Ghostland
at Thanksgiving?
Yeah, a couple years ago, like right when it came out, we were together and I was quite
excited for the release.
I get pretty excited for all his new releases these days.
I watched, I picked 20 books to watch the old ways, like the day it came out on YouTube.
Like I had friends over, I shaved my facial hair into a handlebar mustache, I wore a cowboy
hat.
It was like an event for me.
Did you shave it into a handlebar and then immediately shave it after five minutes?
Because that would be appropriate for that movie.
Just as soon as the flashback's over.
He should have had it for the whole film.
It would have made the movie worth it, honestly.
Alright, well.
So Mandy, why don't you guys run us through what this movie's about?
So this is the movie that they show kids to discourage them from doing drugs.
It's also not meant to be watched without drugs for the record.
Neither of these movies are.
I was really high the first time I saw both these movies.
I was completely sober.
Now the second and third time I've seen both of these films.
And it's a mistake.
Like definitely watch these movies high.
In a sentence, Nick Cage's wife Mandy gets abducted and killed by a crazy cult.
And Nick goes on a furious rampage to get revenge on them involving chainsaws and giant
medieval looking battle axes and a lot of screaming and a lot of drugs.
And it's fucking wacky and he descends into a sort of hellscape of weird cults, visuals.
The whole thing's kind of like a music video, but there's dialogue.
Yeah, I don't know if this is the right time to say this, but for a revenge movie, the
actual fights and killing people was kind of lame.
I feel like all of the killing scenes were just like the camera was all over the place
and I was like, I can't see what's happening.
And then the one that you can see is just him getting his face squished.
I'm like, okay, that was cool, I guess.
Yeah, a lot of the fights were very dark.
I had no idea what was happening.
Did no one see the dick sword?
It was a dick sword!
It was a dick sword.
Yeah.
Oh, I saw a dick sword.
I think there's a really excellent like 35, 40 minute movie in the middle of this two
hour movie.
Like there's an hour of like nothing at the front except for an awesome King Crimson song
that they open with, then just a whole lot of meandering and like boring being in love
scenes.
But once she gets abducted and set on fire, it really picks up in a fun way.
When I did my third watch of it, I just fast forwarded right to that point.
That's not even one.
I thought that the beginning of the movie really did a good job of like pulling me in
and easing me into the visual style and easing me in.
I mean, they throw you right into like red shots and stuff like that, like hugely saturated
colors.
If you just walked into a movie and it started as fucked up as...
Oh, I don't disagree.
But also to be fair, the movie is framed where at the halfway point after the burning of
the game is when the title card drops.
I think you could easily chop 30 minutes of it though, of that first hour.
Like there's good stuff, I like them laying in bed and stuff, but then it's like it's
just a bunch of them laying around and her reading her book being like, the primordial
sky is within my heart.
Can you just get set on fire already?
I rarely agree with Nick, but I'm on board with him.
Just like, nah, I loved all of it.
And then there was like the animated sequences.
Oh yeah, that's right.
That's so good.
I forgot about those until I watched it a second time.
I was like, hell yeah.
This movie felt to me like an even better version of Heavy Metal.
Thank you.
If Heavy Metal could have been good, it would have been man-made.
Yeah, no, agreed.
I mean, the animation is very similar.
Before you get to see a wiener.
You do see a wiener.
They drop full hog.
I don't know if that was a full hog.
That was, it was enough of a hog for this movie though.
I do want to point out, this is this director's second film.
Oh wow.
And that's awesome.
Yeah, director is Panos Cosmitos.
And I'll say he is doing exactly like what he is intending to do.
Like it's not like poorly put together or like nothing is an accident.
Like it's very, he clearly has a vision and those parts of it that I don't love, but it's
very intentional.
Like he's definitely like making the film that he wants to make sort of a thing, you
know?
I watched an interview today with the director and Nick Cage and Nick Cage was saying how
it's so great when you have a director that has that kind of vision and working in a smaller
studio space.
Because as an actor, he doesn't have to worry about shit.
He doesn't have to worry about producers coming in and fucking with shit.
He can just do what the director wants.
Plus he spent several scenes just like laying there almost asleep or literally asleep.
So like that's also easy probably for an actor.
He made a joke about Eric Estrada.
Come on.
I didn't get it.
Yeah.
I don't think anyone got that joke.
So Mandy, I hated her art and that was like supposed to be some, it's just van art.
It sucks.
I hated her whole vibe.
I thought she was irritating.
As somebody who really wishes they had a wizard van.
Fair.
Okay.
I'm just wondering why would she possibly be with him or is this just my like female
perspective?
He's like this old loser guy.
He's a fucking lumberjack.
He's a sexy lumberjack that listens to all of her boring mandarings.
He's so much older than she is.
Can I just say when the old woman hit on him at the end of the movie, I was like, there's
an age appropriate partner for you, Nick Cage.
Ouch.
She did seem a lot younger.
You're right.
Now to be fair, Mandy didn't look like a spring chicken.
Life hadn't been easy on her.
No, I mean everyone in this looks like that.
Also, it really made me think like if I'm going to have a cult, I want to have an attractive
cult because every cult I see seems to be real fucking busted.
These ones have the best cultists though.
There was like baby teeth.
Baby teeth are really good.
There's that big boy.
Yeah, the big boy with curly blonde hair.
Yeah.
Jeremiah's got a perfect combination of like great hair, but like he's kind of disgusting,
but like he has this beautiful mane of hair.
Like it looks like a wig, which I suppose probably was because this is a movie.
No, no, he grew it.
Believe, just believe.
It's definitely uglier people that you usually see in a movie, which I guess is refreshing.
I mean, Drive Angry also had a cult that was full of pretty busted people.
Yeah.
I think it's just kind of the thing.
Cults for uglies.
I mean, if you're only going to give someone three lines and then they're going to die,
do you really want to pay for beautiful people prices?
Well, here's the thing.
You can't have a movie about a cult with pretty people because Scientology won't allow it.
Oh, there you go.
The cultist roles, though, would be awesome to play.
I always think about that.
Like if I were acting in one of these movies, like being one of those cultists, there's
that slack jawed fucking dude sitting in the car, like rolling the window up and down.
Like he.
Oh, that was great.
So we haven't really talked about like what this movie is.
Is.
OK, yeah.
So I think it wouldn't be a cage match episode without a Nick and or Sean quick, quote unquote,
recap.
I've noticed the quick recaps tend to not be quick.
I'm trying really hard.
I'm working on things.
The problem is I've gotten really good segues and Nick's gotten good at summing things up.
Yeah, I'm real good at brevity.
So Manny's it like takes place in some woods.
By Crystal Lake.
Nick Cage is a lumberjack and Manny's a stay at home artist.
No, she had a library job or something.
She worked at a convenience store that charged five dollars for a tomato in 1983.
Oh, this movie takes place in 1983.
For no reason.
I mean, the great tomato shortage of 83.
The tomato famine.
The Italians were up in arms.
I'm not joking.
So he's a lumberjack.
She's an artist that also works at a convenience store selling overfries tomatoes.
And one day, like she's out just like having a smoke in the red lighting.
This wild ass van drives up on him and it's got the cult leader in it.
And he kind of does like a roll by and he's like, and he sees Mandy and he's like, nice.
I like her vacant eyes.
Yeah.
I really like the way it looks like her face has been run over.
And I want to point out, you're describing this as though that's the first plot beat,
but that happens at like the 45 minute mark.
Well, I mean, OK, you've got a lot of like development for 45 minutes and then.
But developing a character who just dies.
I mean, but immediately we need to understand his reason for want to murder.
Look, you wanted it brief.
I'm trying to be brief by cutting out a third of the movie.
There you go.
Thank you.
I think it's a good synopsis.
And I think that's the third of the movie that should have been cut out.
I just like that they're like justifying to the audience why we why he said that his wife
died by like spending all this time with their characters.
It's like it's his wife.
Of course, he's upset.
We we assume that they like each other.
We could suss that one out.
They watch cheddar goblin commercials together.
Oh, my God.
I love the cheddar goblin.
So cheddar goblin is a scene where after Mandy dies, Red, Nick Cage walks into the living
room and there's a commercial playing, which could have been a commercial right out of
the 80s, because I mean, that's what they're going for.
But I wasn't unsure that I hadn't seen that commercial before about a goblin who eats
all the macaroni and cheese and then like throws it up in kids faces because it's goblin
good.
Oh, I was just going to say, it's clear that I didn't love this movie.
But every time there was something they were watching on TV, I was just like, wow, I wish
I was watching that instead.
But the cheddar goblin is like a freaky puppet, and the other thing I like about him is the
way the cheddar goblin commercial is cut.
There's like a lot of like oddly lingering shots.
It'll be like cheddar goblin, like puke on a kid.
And then it'll just kind of be like a frame of cheddar goblin just kind of like standing
there for like several seconds.
It's not at all how the commercial would be cut.
It's like a weird art film and it makes me laugh a lot.
I'm like, cut away from cheddar goblin.
But they made the cheddar goblin thing for like five thousand bucks or something to the
contract of the guy to like make a puppet and do the whole thing.
I could have done that for two thousand dollars.
You should have talked to Cosmos Panatos.
I got a goblin right here.
Panos Cosmitos.
I really want a budget breakdown of this movie.
I know Nicolas Cage was the most expensive thing, but I want to know how much everything
else cost.
Oh, the actual real budget breakdown.
A lot of red light.
I mean, yeah.
That's a lot of red light.
Yeah, that's the most expensive light.
Yeah.
So he goes back and he goes back to his cult.
He tells like Red Foreman that he needs to like go out and not.
It's like meth Foreman.
He's like Red Foreman.
If you like, yeah, he's like, I need that girl.
She makes me feel complete or I can't remember the exact word.
It was kind of creepy, but in like a beautiful way, he's like, I need you to get her and
do whatever you got to use fatty over there for payment or whatever.
Do you have the horn of a Braxis?
Yeah, I thought that was a euphemism for a penis, but it wasn't.
It should be.
It is now.
Oh, man, I love the relics in this.
So that's Foreman takes fatty and a couple of the other like cultists out in their Winnebago.
OK, I do want to say when they're sitting in the car and the slack job one is just playing
with the window.
That's totally what you did in the 80s when not every car had automatic windows.
Yeah.
Self on days and meth Foreman's obviously getting upset.
He's like, you're going to kill the battery.
You can see it in his face.
He's like, kill the battery.
We're going to be lost out here.
So he grabs the the horn of a Braxis, which is just an ocarina.
Yeah.
And he plays some like bitching tunes out in the woods and I think it was two notes.
Like it's a summoning.
Yeah.
And they're like, did it work?
Then you see the red lights coming from the distance behind them and then the cinnabites
on motorcycles show up.
The Ghost Riders.
Yeah.
They drink some stuff from a weird paste jar.
And they were in both movies, but they were they were a bit more agreeable and prisoners
of the ghost land.
They were mean in this one.
So they give up fatty as a blood sacrifice because the cinnabites like blood for blood.
So we were talking about how the yeah, some of the cinnabites to go kidnap Mandy.
Yeah.
And they go and like and they do.
Yeah, they do.
Successfully beat up red did like in that scene, though, he thinks they drug her up
and then he thinks this time I'm going to win her over.
I'm going to play her my single.
Oh my God.
He makes her listen to his fucking mixtape.
Jeremiah was a really swell guy.
It's an incredible album.
It's 17 minute long song that they put up on SoundCloud.
Did they really?
Yeah, when they released it, it's it's the song which did become a bestseller after the
movie, but it also has a 17 minute in character interview with Jack.
Oh, OK.
Well, that's fucking awesome.
Talking about his life and God.
Well, yeah.
So before that, they drug her up with the like.
Yeah.
LSD.
They dropped that right in her eyes, but then they also sting her with a giant bug.
It's a tarantula hawk wasp.
But why?
Just to contribute to the yuckiness of the movie, I think.
I'm well, it was apparently marinating in some kind of chemicals, so I'm assuming this
is headcanon that.
Yeah, they just like soak it in LSD and then it stings you.
And not only is like the pain going to make your high like that much higher, but there's
also just, you know, extra poisons and venoms in it to like get you that next.
Also, if you're asking questions at this point.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I take it back.
I don't know, man.
Yeah, I would try it.
So I do want to say I did appreciate that you had the you had the hell riders, the center
bike bike riders.
We had one guy with just a four wheeler.
Yeah, it was the less talented one.
I used to growing up, I used to be the kid who was always riding a scooter with all my
friends riding a bike.
So that was that was the me equivalent of the of the place, OK, because I couldn't ride
a bike.
He plays his mixtape.
He shows her his wiener and she laughs.
As you should.
Yeah, because I mean, I'm not as worldly as I'm sure some mandies are.
But that penis was not like a highlight of my life.
It could have been a grower.
Probably not.
Yeah.
And actually, if you zoom in on the screen a little bit, you can actually see the penis.
I mean, after most non.
Adult documentary penises I've seen on TV mostly mostly be an HBO.
Like they all have the weird CG penis that's just overly large.
That's just the watchman.
He does have that big blue shawl on.
But I will say it was it was the smallest movie dick I've ever seen.
Yeah, it made me feel good because it's like not only am I bigger than this guy, but I
don't have to hang out with all of his weird creepy cult friends.
Yeah, it's like when he takes out his dick suddenly his entire personality makes sense.
Yeah, it just all gels right there.
Oh, this cult.
I get it now.
So OK, so she laughs.
She laughs and then the cult leaders like, well, fuck that.
And so now apparently she doesn't complete him and he goes out to Nick Cage.
He's like tied up with barbed wire like his hands are bound to a fence and he's got like
a barbed wire like a fucking gag in his mouth.
And he's like, hey, man, I'm going to kill your bitch and then I'm going to kill you
too.
And so one of the cultists like strings up this sleeping bag that's thrashing and they
pour gas all over and they light it on fire.
It's like it's probably Mandy, but we don't know for sure.
We never really find out.
That's true.
You don't see her in the bag.
They couldn't be burning anyone in that bag.
Anyone.
She could have joined the cult.
That was the easy out.
They're like, OK, she's in.
We got to fake her now because that's what you do when you join a cult.
You think you're dead.
I just assume she's painting vans somewhere in like Vermont.
So they set her on fire and Nick Cage gets to do some sweet like silent screaming and
stuff and we have like just real intense visuals.
And then the movie starts, the movie starts.
And then the Mandy title card shows up.
We're solidly an hour in.
Yeah, I got to say those chapter cards were fucking sick.
Yeah, yeah, dude.
Those were nice.
They all like nice, like old 80s metal.
Album art.
So they leave and Nick Cage, you know, gets his shit together and he like pulls his fucking
hand out through the barbed wire.
He's like, just cut himself.
Also, does he have a T-Rex tattoo on his left arm?
I hope so.
I think so.
Yeah, that was fucking sick.
T-Rex like a tyrannosaurus or T-Rex like, like, yeah.
Banger gone.
T-Rex.
What is it with this era of Cage?
Because this and what was the one with the ghost wife and the daughter?
Between Worlds.
Where we just instant classic.
He's got like a long sleeve, like baseball shirt with a tiger on it or something.
And then tighty whitey.
Yeah, just a tighty whitey look.
You know that vibe kind of kicked off with Joe that one he did a couple of years earlier
where he's like drilling sap from trees or whatever.
Have you guys seen that one?
I feel like that was like where he kicked into this era of like, I'm redneck lumberjack
Nick Cage now.
We just did that as our last episode.
I think once your body starts to change in older age, you sort of figure out what roles
you want to take.
Yeah, he's going for the adult thing.
We're all going to be redneck lumberjacks one day.
So Cage gets himself out, has a sad moment with supposedly his wife's skull.
Has a good tequila scream.
Best scene in the whole movie, in my opinion.
Agreed.
Yeah, goes in and like cleans up by like rinsing himself with vodka and getting drunk and sitting
on the toilet screaming.
Lots of screaming.
It's one of the best Nick Cage freaking out I think we've seen in cinema.
It's a top tier Nick Cage freak out.
He said he was taking a lot of his emotions from his recent divorce from like divorcing
his 14 year, wife of 14 years.
And I think it was his 14th wife in two years.
But he used it as like, you know, therapy.
And I love that aspect of Cage.
Character acting.
It gives us the best acting style that he's going to write a book on one day.
So he gets all cleaned up, then he goes and visits his buddy Carruthers, who gives him
his crossbow back.
Like it's Cage's crossbow that he's been holding on to.
And he's like, what are you going to do with that thing?
He's like, I don't want to hunt.
And so he's like, well, then you're going to need this other thing.
It's in the cabinet there.
And he opens it up.
And it's just two arrows to go with it.
It's like, cool.
He's like, I've made those myself.
And I'm like, that is fucking impractical.
You can do that.
And he goes and like, you see, like picking off four wheeler dude.
No, you don't.
Yeah, you're missing an important thing.
Because then he goes and makes an axe.
Oh, yeah.
So he goes home.
Forges an axe.
What the fuck is up with the axe?
Well, I know that we're the Star Trek people, but that was like such a Klingon weapon, you
know.
It's very much like a Batliff.
Was that what he was going for?
It's like it's like halfway between a Batliff and a Lurpo, right?
Exactly.
The design of the axe is inspired by the metal band Celtic Frost's logo.
Yeah, why wouldn't it be?
The F of the Celtic Frost.
Celtic Frost.
Yeah, I just thought that was obvious.
So I didn't think we needed to say it, right?
You do that instantly, right?
It's productive.
I mean, this is bad podcasting.
We'll just cut that explanation.
It's fine.
This is the biggest pain point in this movie for me.
It's just like, why?
Because it's awesome.
It is.
But why?
He's got he's got fucking he's got a murder to do.
He's forging.
He's smelting and melting things and then re-
Well, you don't rush into revenge.
I think outside of a few very selective sections, you could kind of say why about most of the
this movie.
So it's like the why, I guess, is for stylistic purposes at the end of the day, right?
Because that's kind of the whole thing is like an exercise of stylized this like.
100 percent.
But then it's immediately taken from him and then he finds it again.
So like he could have just found it.
Yeah.
That's not that was funny.
Makes it himself.
Then we get the scene.
So not saying it's not cool.
It's like impractical.
Why cooler than Iron Man making an Iron Man suit on a computer?
He had a hair enough.
He did once have a hammer.
So he goes with his newly minted FX.
Fax.
Fax machine.
He takes his fax machine to the cinnabites and he like shoots quad guy and then immediately
gets it is like Bronco and fucking rips around and just gives the guy in the quad a header
with the Bronco.
But it launches his car into the air.
And so then they capture him and take him back to like, I don't know,
Cenabite.
Yes.
And these bikers kind of vary between being nearly indestructible and being really easy
to kill.
Yeah.
Unlike the context of the scene.
Yeah.
What I mean is like they'll bleed a lot and not die.
But then they could also just like get a hangnail and die.
Well the next one falls down a pit.
Yeah.
But he didn't die.
Yeah.
Then he climbs out of the pit.
So Cage is like handcuffed to a radiator in a basement and his left hand is nailed to
the tile floor, which is impractical, but loosens up this pipe and like tricks a Cenabite
to coming in over to him and then he knocks him with it and sends him into the previously
mentioned pit.
The previously unseen pit.
Yeah.
Previously mentioned, but totally unseen.
Previously mentioned, but not previously shown.
Yeah.
Deus ex pit.
Yeah.
The god pit.
And he like goes upstairs and they introduce us to Sword Deck by first showing us a room
of people who have been butt sexed to death and they have very like bloody butts.
And I was like, oh, I bet they got humped to death.
And then we go into the next room.
It's like I saw a bunch of blood butts followed by a sword dick in that like I did not make
a logical connection between the two.
You guys just saw a bunch of bloody butts.
There's so much weird shit at this point.
But you know what?
You're right.
Check off Sword Dick.
If you see a bloody butt in scene one, there's gotta be a sword dick in scene three.
Those are narrative bloody butts.
Yeah.
So you see the narrative bloody butts.
You asked to be on this podcast.
I'm just going to remind that.
And then you go into this next room and he's like sneaking up on this like Cenobite who's
just sitting there watching porno or documentaries.
Yeah, like the worst.
Yeah.
And the people in the porn look like they're about to fall asleep, but in the reflection
of the TV, Sword Dick sees him sneaking up on him.
So like when he goes to attack, counters and then they get into a scuffle and like sword
also screams before attacking him, which is not the best technique when sneaking up on
someone.
Yeah.
He's had a rough time and it's not the best.
And then, you know, eventually Cage manages to cut his throat and like sword dicks just
bleeds.
So much blood.
Here's the one joke I wrote for this bit.
Oh, you wrote a joke?
Yeah.
Sword Dick like goes to tackle him and gets hoisted on his own.
Oh, that's so good.
Thank you.
Don't encourage it.
Someone appreciates my ether.
So he like bleeds out all over Cage's face and like in his mouth and it's getting wild.
Just because we want Cage to have that bloody face, you know.
Such a good bloody face.
And then after he kills the second guy, Red takes a pull from the mason jar of what I
assume is a badass.
Not even a pull, he gets like a finger touch of it.
And just like has.
And then we see the Raiders of the Lost Ark face melting.
It's extremely high grade LSD.
They said this would turn the monster guys, right?
They said this would turn those guys into being weird chain demon things.
But it's weird because like didn't they give them this mason jar at the Winnebago scene
also?
So do they just keep giving them bad LSD?
I think so.
Well, you know, now we just like bad LSD.
We like having shitty trips.
So, yeah, he has a face melted experience on some really shitty LSD.
More cartoons.
More cartoon scenes.
The last of the cartoons.
Yeah.
Kills one more dude.
I don't think we need to keep focusing so much on the logistics of this dude he kills.
I do want to say this is the leader of the Cenobites who he shoots with the crossbow
through the back of the neck.
Oh, yeah.
And then dude just pulls.
That is pretty cool.
He just shoots through the front and then like just stands there and bleeds for a minute
and then they have a fight.
It was pretty good.
This is the axe.
This is the axe fight.
Yeah.
Where he like gets to use his cool axe that everybody likes the design of and the functionality
of.
I mean, there's only one fight scene in this movie really worth talking about before we
get to the chainsaw fight.
Long saw fight.
Sammy's got it.
But before we get to that, there's the slack job guy who's like waxing the car.
Oh, yeah.
And then out of nowhere, the axis flies and just catches him in the head and he dies.
Yeah, they don't care.
A fantastic death.
No, like obviously the attacking the Cenobites required more attention and more film.
Like killing normal, stupid human cultists.
Pretty quick.
Yeah, that's trash mobs.
And so you can just do those quick one offs.
So the only thing that we kind of skipped over in that is the chemist, the drug, the
chemist.
Yeah.
Oh, but with the tigers, right?
There's a random tiger in the film.
Yeah, that's fine.
We can take that.
It's the only person who doesn't kill in the whole movie though.
Yeah, it's true.
But the only fun part about that scene is the script was originally the chemist had
a lizard like an iguana.
And when the actor got to set that day, the director was like, Lizzie is a tiger now.
I guess like what?
There's a tiger on set.
Awesome.
That's pretty cool.
Just a small rewrite.
That seems like that wouldn't have been the easier thing to acquire.
Yeah, so guy gets the axe in the head.
Yeah, axe head to slack jaw.
I like that he didn't kill that girl though.
I was like, that makes me respect you.
That's right.
Like, he knows she's a victim here.
Yeah, Lucy.
Yeah, she was a victim.
He kills meth foreman by stuff, stuffing the axe in his mouth.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, the back.
That was a good one.
Yeah, that was pretty gruesome.
When I did my first watch this, I wrote my notes check off chainsaw because the first
scene is Nick cage chopping down a tree.
I'm like, that chainsaw is going to come in handy later.
Doesn't it's another chainsaw.
He just comes across.
Oh yeah.
It was not a practical weapon.
As soon as he picked it up, I was like, how is like it takes a minute to turn those on,
you know, and it was a problem.
This is not a good idea.
Use your eyes.
The other guy has a chainsaw that's three times as long.
It starts immediately.
Wow.
It's the opposite of the scene in the beginning where we saw that old man holding hanging
brain.
My parents have his and hers chainsaws.
Oh my God.
Incredible.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, so there's a chainsaw fight, which was pretty bad.
So bad.
Another major highlight of the.
And it's all kind of downhill after that.
Yeah.
The visuals of Jeremiah's church is kind of cool, but he squeezes Jeremiah's head to death
and Jeremiah says, I'll blow you, man.
I'll fucking suck your dick.
And then he smushes his head with his bare hands like, fuck you.
You should bow to me.
And then Nick Cage says, oh, God, now.
Yeah, yeah, like super metal voice.
But yeah, so crush is a Jeremiah's fontanelle never sealed up, apparently, because apparently
soft head just like squishes good.
And then Nick Cage burns down the church, gets in his car.
I loved how crazy he looked at the end.
That was awesome.
He starts having weird visions.
I mean, we we did establish earlier that we never saw the body.
We saw a body.
It was just waiting for him in the car.
He was in the car the whole time.
That's right.
She was in the car.
The whole time she was waiting in the passenger seat.
Oh, how embarrassing that he went on that murder spree.
I hear white snake tapes.
Let's go.
I just love that scene.
I was watching that scene again last night and he's just slow.
Turn to Mandy head covered in blood, just that smile.
And I'm like, that's amazing.
It's a great moment.
Oh, he's fucking lost it.
So good.
Yeah, so that's Mandy.
Yeah.
Pretty brief visually, like visually astounding.
This is a music video disguising itself as a feature film.
Yeah.
I mean, I think we said Nick Cage barely speaks in this film.
Yeah.
I thought it would have been interesting just to do quotes for this movie from other people
reacting to his silence.
Yeah, there you go.
Like the chemist's whole scene because he just talks and Nick doesn't say anything.
Yeah.
And he just keeps continuing it.
Everything was very strong shots, very tight closeups.
If it's a close up, it's a tight close up.
The colors, the filters are like just incredibly saturated.
The set design, like I loved their house.
All the times that it was like an actual alien landscape.
Yeah, it looks like he's going into hell for like a lot of the second half.
It's like he was going into like more cavernous, like scary areas.
Like it almost feels like a like a Dario Argento film for a lot of the second half, like just
like more spooky tunnels and things I'm driving down or now I'm climbing into a pit.
Like who even cares what the plot is?
He's going this direction now.
Like you have a very clear sense of the path, even if you didn't have a clear sense of the
why.
Plots irrelevant.
This movie looks insane.
It does look insane.
I mean, the plot isn't horrendously relevant.
It's not untrue.
I mean, a revenge story doesn't have to have a ton of depth to it.
Right.
Like it's going on the emotion like you really like they're really in it.
They really feel it, even if it's like not complicated.
It's straightforward.
I feel like most of what I felt was like yucky and disgust personally.
Well, I don't think it's supposed to make you feel like butterflies.
So I think you walked away with the right take on that.
Definitely.
It does have like a very gas station bathroom kind of vibe.
Yeah, they accomplished their goal of making me feel bad.
Yeah.
Gas station.
It would be for real matchstick men cage would not have been able to handle the environments.
Not a chance.
All right.
So Nick, what's your quote for this one?
So my quote was like at the very beginning when Nick Cage comes home to Mandy and he
tells it like he knocks on the door, like opens it and then just says, knock, knock.
Who's there?
Erica Strada.
Erica Strada who?
Erica Strada from chips.
It's great.
It's not even a joke.
I think it's the first dialogue in the entire film, too.
I think that's the first thing anyone says.
Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure it is.
When I was in college, I had this friend whose kid would like come up with jokes and like
he would tell me them.
It's like, why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
Because it was dead.
It's like, that's not a joke, but you're like four.
So I'll let it slide.
You don't understand humor yet, but I love a good non joke presented as a joke.
I mean, because it's this podcast for you, but it makes me happy.
Sammy, did you have a particular quote from this movie?
Yeah, I think I was caught off guard by so much of the dialogue.
But the one that like surprised me the most was when Nick Cage read said, you are a vicious
snowflake.
You might as well say that, I don't know.
Mine was from the first bed scene of their Mandy and Reds where they're talking about
their favorite planets.
And he says, is this Saturn?
And she's like, oh, that's the first one we discovered, blah, blah, blah.
I changed my mind.
I like Galactus.
Galactus isn't a planet.
Yeah, but he eats planets.
That's it.
I have no quote from this movie.
Those are all the quotes.
Those are all the lines that we've lived.
That's the feeling I got the whole way through.
Written in script, shot in one take.
Yeah, that would be amazing.
Well, actually, a lot of these were single.
A lot of these were single takes, according to the.
Because the director kind of wanted that rough.
Yeah.
Field.
Well, he got.
I think he was like, oh, I'm going to do this.
I'm going to do this.
I think he got good performances out of everyone.
Oh, yeah.
So I had no complaints about performance in general.
Maybe his performance especially was really good, I feel like.
Like whatever she was doing, she was doing it well, you know.
Yeah, they were all committed for sure.
I loved her big buggy eyes.
She has the craziest eyes.
And I looked at the actress and she does have kind of big buggy eyes in general, but like
they're the LSD.
They managed to play those up so much like in her features.
Yeah, those are black holes.
It's like crazy.
The only fun fact I really have from this one is that the primary reason that Cage did
this movie is because he and Elijah Wood on the set of The Trust, we're talking about
horror flicks and Elijah Wood's Spectrevision is producing different horror flicks.
And he was like, I've got this director and I think you might really like this script.
And then that was the start of it all.
So thanks, The Trust.
Well, one of the reasons like this director took almost 10 years to make a second film
was he was like, I like Spectrevision.
They let me they trust me.
They let me do what I want.
And I don't want to like shop around to.
Places that are going to make me change.
Makes sense.
OK, so before we leave this movie behind, Venn diagram, good cage, bad movie, bad movie,
good cage, good, bad, bad, good, bad, good, good, bad, good.
I'm all in.
This is a good cage and a good movie.
I'm with Nick, good cage, good movie.
Alex, I'm a little on the line.
Definitely good cage movie itself.
I'll say good movie at the end of the day.
I do enjoy it.
There's sections that annoy me, but I'll say good movie.
Good cage, bad movie.
I can't believe you guys all like it.
No, I'm with you, Sammy.
I think this is a bad movie.
I'm glad none of your roots count.
That's true.
We were unimportant on this side.
So following that masterpiece, let's talk about the masterpiece that is Prisoners of
the Ghostland from twenty twenty one is.
Weird.
No, you're done.
Good summary.
No, Nick.
Nicholas Cage is put in a bomb suit and forced and forced to go find Colonel Sanders is quote
unquote grand in the post apocalyptic wastelands of samurai cowboy world.
Maybe the future.
It's like they decided to remake Mad Max Fury Road, except for instead of being feminist,
it was incredibly sexist, which that's kind of cool.
Yes.
It's just like escape from L.A. but Japanese.
I mean, how did I put it?
I was like if like if Tim Burton wanted to make Mad Max Fury Road is how I describe it.
Like there's a lot of cool sets.
It is bright and color.
Yeah, it's like Mad Max with like Western films and samurai films all stacked on top
of each other, basically.
Which is cool idea.
But there's no there's very little crossover.
It's like every character is either a cowboy or like a samurai or like a Japanese sex worker.
Nobody is you're forgetting Ratman and Ratman.
He's a Mad Max guy, though.
Nobody is nobody is.
We'll get into the Mad Max cowboy and samurai or like both a Mad Max guy and a cowboy or
something.
They're all like one of three things.
Yep.
So Nick Cage plays hero.
And at the start of this film goes in is robbing a bank in samurai town with his smoky eyed
companion.
So what the fuck is up with that guy's eyes?
And like bust in, you know, get on the ground, get on the ground like and the dumbest kid
we've seen yet in a cage.
Oh, yeah, this is bad kid.
This is bad.
It's like just looking at a gumball machine full of like rubber super balls and turns
to the turns to psycho and offers him a delicious gumball.
And then the movie starts.
And then some years later, Nick Cage is in prison in underwear.
He's got that like samurai underwear.
That's like.
So before that, though, we see geisha looking females.
Are those Japanese sex workers?
Yes.
OK.
You covered it.
Thank you.
Like, just to be clear for the audience at home, escaping, escaping from samurai town
and getting in a car and driving off.
Let's see, so they escape and then yes.
So now we're pulling Nick Cage out of prison and we're going to send him to go retrieve
the girls who have left, specifically the granddaughter of the governor, who's that
guy from all those horror movies, House of a Thousand Corpses and like Saw and stuff.
Help me.
What's his name?
Bill Moseley.
Yes, he was great.
I mean, terrible, but great.
Yes.
Yeah.
Bill Moseley is Colonel Sanders and they strap Nick Cage.
Well, Nick Cage comes out firstly in like a diaper and all the all the geishas are like,
show us your balls.
There's that one that's doing like a super accurate drawing of him.
And then like when he takes off the diaper, she like erases the diaper and like starts
redrawing and everything super intense.
I can't believe they didn't show the drawing.
That's all Josie and I want.
They were like, just show it what what's Nick?
Look like the door cage won't show his penis even in drawing form.
Terrible.
Damn shame.
This is a mistake for everyone.
You got to pay an extra two mil for the dog.
But they stood him up in like a leather like gimp suit that has little tiny bombs attached
to which looks like he was in a hot place wearing a leather jumpsuit with no underwear.
Oh, God.
And he's not allowed to take it off for three days or three to five days.
The Colonel was just like, I have a penchant for leather.
Oh no, it's supposed to be three days.
He had three days to find what he needed.
Once he found it, he would get two more days.
Didn't he have time to bring it back?
Even though it only took him half a day to find it.
But most noteworthy though, the gimp suit has it has bombs all over it, but most noteworthy
it has bombs on the testicles.
And if he a bomb each arm and then bombs on the neck and then bombs in case he tries to
take advantage of a woman.
Spoke as he does.
He busts in that.
Yeah.
And he so they stood him up.
And so he has three days to go retrieve the girl for the governor.
You give him a car, but then he's like, I'm going to take a bike because I'm different.
I don't know.
Like why?
He like whips like a machete, like jumps, jumps on a bicycle.
He's like.
I want like with a basket.
I want to know what the rules of this world are, because they exist in what I'm assuming
is a tourist attraction.
They're living in samurai town where there are cowboys and the bank they tried to rob.
Yeah, I think you're trying to like put too much of reality on it.
See, but OK, but when we have the flashback to when he like the bank robbery, there are
normal cops.
Yeah.
And the bank looks like totally futuristic and the banks totally futuristic.
But when like when he runs out of the bank, there are normal cops.
And now the law is samurai's and cowboys.
That's a good point.
But when like he does the bank robbery, it's also like it still has like the false front
buildings and things like that.
Yeah, that's like the external.
Swinging doors and all that kind of shit.
We haven't had that inciting incident of the nuclear waste spill to change everything around,
because once the nuclear waste is you're forced to become a samurai or cowboy.
Yeah, well, that's it.
The town's probably cut off because of all the ghosts out there.
Also, did they say samurai town?
Did they say it at the beginning or was it not until the last line of the movie where
they're like, wow, samurai town?
I was like, that's the name of this fucking.
Just the last.
It's so stupid.
Can you imagine having to sit through the entire movie with the knowledge
that the place is called samurai town?
So it's worse like.
OK, that's funny, because my roommate watched it with me and she said,
what is the town called?
And I said, I think it's called Cowboy Town, but I can't remember.
You were this close.
Yeah.
Or like one one half of the block is Cowboy Town, the other samurai town.
Well, it's officially known as Sam.
OK. But then so but you pointed out like, OK, this, you know,
after all the like toxic waste bill, but they have a brand new Toyota.
Just a totally ordinary car. Yeah.
Yeah. The white guy just rocks up and he's got money.
He's got a car. He's good.
It's not even clear what country we're in.
And then there's a little song about how much they love the governor.
Governor governor governor.
Oh, the governor, a role that makes complete sense.
There was the wall of talking women had.
Oh, that was weird.
I was like they were going in and out of vaginas or was that just me?
I mean, it sure did look like that. OK.
And there's also Yasujiro
with the governor's like right hand samurai whose name Yasujiro,
who is constantly like, oh, my God, yes, it was so hot.
He was. And he's constantly like, whinily shouting for him.
He's like, yes, it's a yes.
I was like, get rid of everybody else.
I want to watch a movie about him.
So the governor wants Nick Cage to go find his granddaughter
for totally not sex reasons, totally not sex reasons.
And then like, yeah, Nick Cage said, I see the folks like,
I'd see why you want her back.
And then one of the samurais like, what did you say?
And then everyone tries to kill Nick Cage and then Yasujiro
just starts killing everyone else.
Like, what is the hierarchy of this government?
They all love the governor, but they're willing to like.
Yeah, it's wild west samurais. Yeah.
Yes. A sword sword is the equivalent of a gun, too, in this world, I guess.
All right. So he bikes out of there.
Yeah, I should hear a rock.
Something that gives and Nick Cage gets off his tricycle or bicycle.
And Yasujiro, assumably bikes away.
Yeah, right.
That was my favorite part, right?
So when that scene happens, I because they have a little like
Yashiro saves Nick Cage from the other samurai
and they kind of give each other a knowing smile.
So I assume Nick Cage going off on the bike and Yasujiro rocking up was like, cool.
Now we're going to come up with a plan.
Now, Yasujiro is just like, get in the car and he just Nick.
He drives off.
Yasujiro, you spent a whole film thinking is going to have like a redemption arc,
like because you learn kind of more backstory that he's.
And then Nick Cage just kills him.
Yeah. And you learn he's like conflicted and doesn't want to work for the governor
because his like sister is like a prisoner and all this stuff.
And yeah, he doesn't ever.
Yeah, he doesn't ever come around.
Yeah. And at the end, yeah, they have they have a fight,
which is a great fight.
I thought I thought fighting in general in this movie, I thought was pretty fun.
But yeah, I thought it was well choreographed.
There's a great way he's fighting Yasujiro, too.
There's a great bit of like every time that they're fighting,
they're having a sword fight every time one of them has a backswing,
like several extras like run up to attack them from behind and like get caught
in like the crossfire of like those like each of them.
They swing their sword.
They're killing like five other people while trying to fight each other,
which is very funny.
It's like there's one like 40 guys dies like collateral damage of their fight.
I do love the excessive amount of squibs and like just exploding blood in people.
Yes. But never out of where they're struck,
because there's like one where you're like or or somebody gets like stabbed
in the neck and there's just this prolonged guys or blood
that clearly comes out of the guy's chest.
I did like the guy who gets his head put into a lantern
and then the lantern just fills with blood.
Oh, that's a good one.
Yeah, this director definitely knows how to film.
Yes. Yes.
All right. I have a nice story, too, because this film was originally
supposed to be filmed in Mexico.
But the director had suffered a heart attack.
So Nick Cage had the whole production moved to Japan
to make it easier on the director.
Oh, that's interesting.
I have another fun fact.
Did you guys know that Nicholas Cage's past three wives
have all been Asian women who are like 20 years younger than him?
Isn't that funny?
But you know what?
They're still all older than any of Leonardo DiCaprio.
Also true. Oh, my God.
They've got a solid 20 years on anybody to catch.
You guys catch that this movie has like like seven or eight
production studios made it a lot of these movies like a Louisiana
RLJP, Patriot Pictures, Untitled Entertainment.
Booze, booze, booze, bang, bang. Yeah.
Saturn films and XYZ films all came together to make this.
I was like, that's like, you're not even going to get a good film
with that many studios or.
What? Yeah.
Saturn is Nick Cage's production company.
And then XYZ films actually produced both of these movies
that were I guess it makes sense that Saturn is his favorite planet.
Then is it going to change his production studio to Galactus Entertainment?
Galactus. No, that's trademarked.
True. RLJP also produced
and did a bunch of distribution on a lot of his other things they did.
Mandy included, I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, they did Rage, Pay the Ghost, Dog Eat Dog,
Mandy, Color Out of Space, Prisoners of the Ghostland
and Sympathy for the Devil.
OK, yeah, he goes to the ghost land, I guess.
So I just keep going.
Yeah, drives down the freeway, runs into.
A bus full of samurai mutants.
Yes. Yeah, accurate.
And when one Bernie boy
and wakes up like, well, they're all prisoners of the.
Ghostland prison fatigues.
They are definitely well, except for the samurai.
There were also the samurai.
You're right. Yeah, it was interesting because it's like full traditional samurai
masks and then like stripey outfit prisoners
who like walked like spiders and one Bernie guy and one Bernie guy
with awesome shades with aviators.
He did have six shades.
Yes, there's people, there's people
pouring toilet paper across things.
Everybody's doing basically anything crazy you can imagine.
There's people being built into mannequins.
They're having like mannequin faces put over their faces.
There's people who have a giant rope attached to a big clock tower
and they're trying to pull back the second hand.
OK, I love that whole thing.
They're going, stop the time from moving.
They're all like, if I could hold back.
So this is the clock tower scene.
OK, so they hadn't mentioned anything about like
nuclear waste at this point, but like the clock tower scene.
Like, oh, all right.
15 minutes to midnight.
All right.
I don't think this director understands what a meta is for, but all right.
We're getting there.
So someone gets my jokes, Nick.
I got it. I didn't like it.
I would be that annoying guy who keeps reading Weathering Heights.
It's like who cares, but it's a great story.
OK, I mean, you know,
you know, then they're dragging around
and like a big moving house on wheels, sort of a thing dragging around town.
He's reading to everyone.
Here's where this society completely fails.
You have the rat rat people who have semi trucks
that apparently work, though they never go anywhere.
And literally, they never use those fucking things.
I love them to turn the lights on.
He explained it.
He said like any engine turning on would bring the demons.
So that's why they couldn't.
So he scavenged and like fixed things and like saved all the gas.
But they couldn't use them.
I was just going to say.
I mean, I was just going to say you have big heavy machines,
yet you have 20 guys literally holding the clock
when you could have just tied that to one of those trucks.
All right. That's a good point.
I don't think they're thinking about weight at this point.
Quit trying to take their good union jobs.
Piece of shit scab.
But he finds Bernice in one of the mannequin people.
I like how he goes through two actual mannequins
before he starts deciding to look at people who are clearly like people.
He's a long day.
And he's also very sensitive about it's like Slash maintains these mannequins.
He's got like a top hat and he's like, he's like,
it's like he gets like mad any time that the cage messes with them.
I do love the double.
They tried to do a double fake out where he's going through.
And clearly none of these people are Bernice.
Then you see one that has like her hair.
He takes it off.
Yeah. And then he like takes off the mask and it's her like double.
Well, the mannequin thing is like therapy.
So maybe she just didn't want to lose sight of her identity.
And so she's like, can I be a mannequin that also just looks like?
Well, what did they say?
She was cursed or they would find her.
They just possessed and she can't leave while the spirit is possessing her.
And she was then but then the spirit went into her friend instead.
Who replaced her, I guess.
And you have problems with Mandy's story.
Yeah, this movie is a little all over the place.
This one at least has dialogue.
This movie felt to me like a like a fucked up fairy tale in a way.
And Mandy felt more like a drug.
Yes, that's a fair comparison.
There's a fair description of both.
Like I didn't I didn't like the fairy tale.
But I do have to get this movie props on one thing
because the next scene when he's like dragging Bernice back down the highway
and getting all the mannequin stuff off her
and they do a very sensual pouring water into her mouth.
Also, she's played by he just keeps shouting, take it off, take it off, take it off.
Sophia Botella, whose star has fallen greatly.
And this is what she's in now.
Also, give up and notice
that like she's like none of the main cast is Asian,
but all of the like extras are Asian, which doesn't feel great.
You know, a Japanese director.
I think she was in.
I feel like she's meant to be Japanese in the movie.
That's what I felt. And she's not.
When the production was moved to Japan, the governor and Beatrice got recast
because the original actors didn't want to or couldn't.
Oh, oh, interesting. Yeah.
But this is where we get the great scene of Nick Cage getting horny
and having his left testicles get blown up.
You know, when you're force feeding a woman water, it's just hot.
Can't help it.
You can't help but get your balls blown off.
You've heard of blue balls, but now we have exploding testicles.
Boom balls. Thank you.
Boom balls.
Got his left testicle blown off and then like holds it in his hand.
Says something in Japanese and passes out.
I really was hoping that what he said in Japanese was just testicle,
but it wasn't so.
And then the movie ends.
And yeah, the end.
Good job.
So much for that.
That's when we see the shoot out with him in Psycho. Yes.
That's when we have the flashback.
Oh, that's right. Yeah.
He has his dream flashback.
And we find out that Psycho's aptly named.
Yeah. And Bernice was a child who got caught in the crossfire
when he was like running from the cops.
So he's and her mother.
And we found out that he was innocent.
Yeah. He didn't kill those people.
He was, in fact, the hero.
Yeah. And it saved that child. Right.
But that's how she got that scar, which is my favorite quote from this one.
And how she also became a felon to sex slavery. Right.
That's part of it, too.
But yes, he's undressing her before the testicle explodes.
He says, quite a scar you got there.
You get that roller skating.
Ooh.
He's a little bit wacky.
This one. Oh, man.
OK, so at this point, like so for him to get the extra two days
on his like wrist bomb thing, she has to say her name.
So while he's passed out, she like says her name into the thing
and screams and it finally gives him the extra two days.
Specifically, say like she has to say her name into his wrist.
Wristband.
That has like a voice like recognition software.
Yes.
And the voice thing has like it has like the governor
like recorded on it, like, say your name, darling.
If you're there, say your name. Say your name.
Say your name. I hear you.
I can't quite hear you.
You better speak up a little.
That's when the ghosts show up again.
I like that you're presenting this like there's some degree of like
continuity and this isn't like like the movie doesn't feel that way.
It feels like it's very stream of consciousness.
It's just like, and things are happening.
Yeah, it doesn't even. I'm trying.
You're doing your best shot.
But that's when he gets he gets in a fight.
And then to save Bernice, he pushes her away from Melty Boys,
which sets off the arm bomb.
Oh, that's right.
Because he strikes a woman.
Which doesn't do much.
No.
So it blows out his elbow.
Yeah.
But it's like down here.
And it doesn't.
It's like he builds an army of darkness style robot arm to replace it later.
So yeah. Yeah.
Sweet mannequin.
He does have a sweet mannequin hand.
He passes out again after this explosion,
where he dreams the history of the nuclear wasteland.
Yes. Oh, through the like exposition.
Yeah. Was it a dream or was it another flashback?
I couldn't tell. It was a dream because he's at.
Yeah, because he left with Bernice
when she was still in the mannequin stuff.
And then him and Bernice are standing in front of the clock tower,
hearing this explanation of characters that are actually there.
And then they go back.
It's a lot of back and forth that I couldn't follow.
So maybe that happened.
And then the ghosts turn out to be ex cons.
And one of them is psycho. Yes.
But they're still good friends.
And psycho just kind of lets them go.
It's a really heartwarming reunion.
They go and take out the governor. Yep.
Which is where we've had the fight with Yoshiguro.
Yeah, that just happens.
Like we don't have a lot that happens within that other than just blood.
You know, the governor is like a real he gets broken down real quick.
Like as soon as all the women who have been subservient to him
are just like, you're a limp dick.
Yeah, they take all this money and run.
I was along for the ride most of the whole time until the very end.
When Bernice kills the governor
and one of the people from the ghost land is like sees it and goes
and like runs down the alley and turns a corner.
It's like the governor's dead and she's back in the ghost land.
Like what? Yeah.
No, I think the ghost land is like really just around the corner.
Literally just next door.
When I was in college,
the town my college was in had been a dry town.
Here's a here's just the story.
I've been a dry town forever.
And only recently it started doing beer and wine sales.
No liquor sales in this small town.
But if you went to the edge of town
and then just like around an S curve, so like you've traveled
maybe half a mile from college campus,
you go through the S curve and you're now in Independence, Oregon.
And you can buy liquor in Independence and then just drive it back.
So it literally is like kind of driving down to the 7-eleven,
not the first 7-eleven to your house, like the second 7-eleven.
And it's like that kind of feeling.
It's like all the same bars, like full, I don't know, wild west town.
Oregon. We got two things to talk about as far as I can tell.
Rat man and the minigun.
Oh, God. Rat man. Awesome. Yes, he's fun.
Girl with a minigun. Less awesome.
Oh, Suzy. So, OK, that's very nice.
They're coming back into Samurai Town to usurp the government.
Yes. How could I forget the minigun?
That's a giant Gatling gun. Yeah.
Yeah. She just runs across the street and there's like a minigun sitting
in a fucking OK. So Barrow.
So Mandy had Chekhov's pit.
And no, this pit Machina,
you know, this ex-pit, this ex-pit, and this one has this ex-minigun.
Unestablished minigun that feet away from the crowd.
That minigun has been bolted to the coffee shop for generations.
If you didn't notice it, that's your fault.
That is an establishment in this town.
Samurai Town is known for their miniguns.
Just turrets everywhere.
God, yeah. How could I forget?
And Rat Man speaks like he's got one of those voice boxes
because he smoked too much.
Yeah, he does have like a robot voice.
I mean, yeah, Rat Man looks like he's right out of
Thunderdome.
Yeah, it's like if the cenobites were nice.
So going to the whole thing where they can't drive the trucks
because it'll attract the ghosts.
Once they make peace with the ghosts, they have this whole montage
of getting the trucks ready for war and then just forget that happens.
Yeah, because they don't need to go to war anymore, I guess.
Yeah, I thought those were going to roll into samurai town
and they don't do shit other than light up.
Yeah, but then 15 minutes later, we find out they don't need to
because they're already there because it's literally just outside.
That's right. Yeah, they didn't have to go far.
It's at least like a lot of times when they're doing weird
kind of pointless stuff in this movie, it's kind of like, oh, I see.
It's like for this goofy visual or for this kind of thing.
But it's like there's nothing interesting about like a preparing to go
attack montage.
That's like a boring part of movies for the most part, I would say.
Mandy does it kind of interesting when he makes the axe.
But it's like watching them all like put these cars together.
I thought was boring.
And then it's like and then it also has no point.
It's like, I don't know.
Anyway, it was because they were working together.
Yeah, teamwork to escape.
Nightingale, the ghost land.
Colts cooler if all those cars turned out to be like Autobots
and they like just transformed and then they just fucking.
It's just a new movie.
It's just Ratman at the head.
Yeah. I did.
Nobody would have cared about the minigun because why do they have
fucking Decepticons and Autobots?
If that had happened, none of us would have batted an eye.
We would have been like, yeah, now there's robots like, yeah.
We're like, uh, anything the film could have done to surprise us at that point.
Would have been so normal.
This is now a Gundam movie.
OK. Yeah.
All right. I think I do have the best quote for this film.
Hi, fucking. Yeah.
And of course, like honorable mentions for testicle.
Nick, did you have one?
Yeah. Mine is the entire testicle line, though, because I'm a completionist.
I don't I don't just run around screaming balls.
God, this is highbrow.
You don't get to the top 25 in Germany by just screaming balls.
The cage is like getting everybody amped up.
I got to set the scene for the people. Yeah.
And he's like, oh, yeah, now here this ghost landers tomorrow.
We're getting out of here.
The crowds are like, it's impossible.
Impossible. Ha.
If you had told me three days ago that I'd be standing here with one arm and one testicle.
Trying to reason with you bitches.
I would have said impossible, too.
But I'm telling you, there's a way.
It's like the Ashley Williams.
Like, this is my boomstick.
Yes, because we've got the Ashland's arm, too.
Clearly, the clearly the filmmaker must like Army of Darkness at some level.
Very inspired. Yeah. Yeah.
I think the only other good line was I am radioactive.
Well, yeah, zero evidence.
Must be must be radioactive.
Where do people put a good cage, bad movie, bad movie, good cage, good, bad cage, good movie, bad, bad, good, good.
Good. This is a good like little rap.
Good kids, bad movie.
Me, too. Good kids, bad movie.
Sam, good kids, bad movie.
Great performances in both movies.
How could I not say good kids, bad movie?
But I will caveat with I do really enjoy this movie, even though it's really stupid.
I found it very enjoyable.
Oh, yeah.
Although a good kid is just for screaming as he gets his ball blown off.
Like, just that alone makes the whole thing worth it.
All right. Oh, man.
Wait, we didn't even talk about like in the fight later when he gets kicked in the balls and there's a pause.
Oh, and he's thinking and then he's just like, oh, well, he and Yasujiro both hit each other.
Yeah. All right.
I think I'm the outlier here because this is the one like this is one of the few cage films from like
all I see is just Nick Cage like hammock, like hamming it up poorly.
I'm like, ah, this is this is a good cage.
Well, I mean, he is a ham sandwich.
That's for sure.
But not in a good way, I feel.
That's fair.
Well, I felt the context called for it
because it's like, how are you supposed to give a good performance in this movie?
I don't know. There's so much great Nick Cage around this time.
Pig, Pig, Mandy, Joe, color from outer space.
And that this is just like, oh, that's fair.
I actually I'm probably not lying in saying that I think I like this movie better than Mandy.
It's very OK.
Yeah, you're with me. It's very unique.
I got to give it that.
It's like I haven't seen something else like it was fun.
It was constantly keeps you like it was insane and stupid.
I'm glad I watched Prisoners before I watched Mandy.
Sammy, do you have an opinion as to which ones you're the better?
I hated both of them.
I think Mandy is technically better,
but Prisoners has less things that yuck me out.
So I think I liked Prisoners better.
All right. Well, since no one else's opinions matter on this, Nick, Mandy, Mandy, Mandy's going forward.
It is the better film.
It is so much better. Even if I like it less, it's a better movie.
It is. I agree. It's not for me, but it's better.
It pulls you into the movie and like really just kind of like
soaks you in everything and like like an acid giant bee.
I did feel dirty afterward.
Drugs you and kidnaps you right into the movie.
For both these movies, I was very like mad at Alex while watching
because he picked them.
You're correct.
I don't know.
These are movies like I will definitely recommend Mandy to people
and I will definitely recommend Prisoners to certain people.
That's fair.
Mandy was on Tubi, if anyone listens, wants to launch it.
It's also on Blu Ray at my house, if you'd like to come over.
Yeah, you can do that.
It wasn't Shuttered for years. It's not anymore, though.
I actually thought it was a Shuttered original.
I didn't realize it wasn't like.
Yeah, because that was like when Shuttered first like became a thing.
I felt like they were like that was like their thing for like the year.
They were like Shutter Mandy.
Like it was on the front page forever.
They were like, we'll charge you one dollar for six months
and you can watch Mandy.
In fact, everyone go check them out.
I'm not they don't pay me, but I got to say I love Shuttered.
I want it to stay open.
Yeah, that's that's a good plug for you guys.
And, you know, maybe maybe just while we're plugging things,
maybe maybe we'll also plug Star Trek, the original siblings podcast,
you know, if you guys haven't seen it and maybe we'll even plug out heard it.
You know, you know, it's pretty fun. It's a good time.
Maybe we'll even plug my YouTube channel,
Real Alex Brisson, where I make fun of other bad movies.
Go check it out, guys. It's a good old time.
I just watched Son of Godzilla. Very funny.
I did. I did watch that one.
Peter and I both enjoyed your review of the car.
Oh, my God. I love the course.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. So for anyone who's interested, please rate, review, subscribe.
We're on Reddit at cage match pod.
Yeah. Hit us up if you want to plug anything.
Oh, my God.
You fucking savages.
Thank you all for listening.
Also, if you're out there and want to give us five stars
in review on Apple podcast, I would help us a lot.
It does for sure.
And if you're interested in supporting us, we are on Patreon at cage match.
And special thanks to our sparkle buddies, Josh, Sean, Josie, Rico,
Matt and Adam, and extra special thanks to our cage dancers, Ira and John.
Next up, we've got a six eleven head to head match up
between National Treasure one and a movie called Primal,
which is about Nick Cage being on a boat and priming out
hunting animated tigers, dangerous game of man.
And we get to welcome back our one of our first guests,
Adam, from our National Treasure two episode.
How's Adam been?
I don't know. We'll find out.
Tune in. Tune in.
Find out how I am.
Also, double extra special thanks to XYZ
Productions Films for making these movies.
You fucking rule.
These are great and wacky as shit.
Send us things. It's really.
Tell us, how did you know Nick Cage?
How did you get to know him?
Can you get him on our podcast?
Yeah, we love him.
We do. Thank you, Sammy and Alex, so much for joining us.
This is a lot of fun. I fucking.
Thanks, guys.
I fucking got.
All right. New podcast.
Who wins in a fight Galactus or Unicron?
It sounds like a one episode podcast.
Yeah, this is it.
Nick, who wins in a fight Galactus or Unicron?
Well, Unicron is voiced by Orson Welles, as I recall, isn't he?
So that's hard to beat.
Correct.
All right, he's dead, so that that helps.
Yeah, that weakens his case.
Also, Galactus eats planets and Unicron is a planet.
So Galactus wins.
Yeah, that's fair.
Watching you.
Is that Sweet Caroline?
No, I would never sing Sweet Caroline.
Good.
What was that?
It was Sweet Caroline.
Yeah, I thought so.
Touching me.
I hate that song.
Everyone fucking hates that song.
I love that song.
You would think, but everybody sings that karaoke.
Peter, you're supposed to vet these people.
But I don't want to hear it in karaoke.
There's a I like it in if I'm listening to it by myself.
As soon as a bunch of drunk people are singing it, get me out of there.
I think it's impossible to listen to it by yourself.
I'm pretty sure as soon as you turn it on, somebody rolls up next to you and they're
just like, Oh, is that Sweet Caroline?
Let me hit that chorus, bro.