was Millennial pause. Pause for edit. good
Alright, so this is either the best or the worst idea that I've ever had ah This is Strange Streams. The unofficial... ah official yeah I'm gonna start over.
ah that awful um fuck. edit. Hold for edit.
Warning, the following podcast is in no way affiliated or authorized by Tubi or any other streaming services. The opinions and views expressed by the hosts and guests are their own and not those of their employers, Tubi, that fascist fuck Rupert Murdoch, anyone who likes Dustin Ferguson movies, or your mom.
The following podcast may contain explicit language and discussion of fake blood, cannibalism, Linnea Quigley's titties, graphic violence, horny vampires, goopy aliens, bad Italian dubbing, getting completely fucking wrecked on edibles, and other shit that may offend Republicans, dumb babies, wimps, and nerds.
Please contact a doctor if swelling lasts for more than four hours. You are now entering the Dustin Ferguson free zone. Welcome to Strange Streams, the official unofficial Weird Tubi podcast.
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All right, and here we go.
This is Strange Streams, the official, unofficial, weird-to-be podcast. I'm your host, my name is James, and joining me is my co-host Emily. Say hi, Emily. Hi, Emily.
right, I'm going to start off... you Oh, go ahead. I do want to add, if you're tuning in now because you have an offbeat urology problem, you actually want Peein' Weird with Doc Johnson on the Dude Network.
All right, I'm going to start off by reading um the mission statement that I posted on the Instagram. Our mission is to scour the darkest corners of free streaming services to uncover films ranging from forgotten B-movie classics to no-budget backyard epics to bizarre oddities that defy easy categorization.
We disregard traditional genre categories because the only genre that matters is beautiful, glorious trash. Lo-fi splatter showcases, grindhouse crime dramas, mockbuster monster mashups, sleazy European softcore, 80s boner comedies, made-for-TV monstrosities, and beyond.
Strange Streams will be here every month to give these movies a thoughtful analysis, whether they merit one or not. So yeah, that was our mission statement. I'm on board with it. Otherwise, I wouldn't be sitting here, although it is a feature of your unemployment. I think that you've reached out to me to do this.
Very much so. um So should we start off by talking like how you and I know each other? Yeah, if you want to take that, absolutely. We'll just totally be ah giving free press to two other podcasts for it.
So it started off, um I'm the admin of a niche but active meme page on Instagram called The Weird Part of Tubi. And basically what I do there is i post screencaps of all these crazy Tubi movies along with the title cards and something that I call the weird Tubi political compass that we can talk about later.
But ah Emily, you were an early adopter of that page, an early follower. I followed that page really early, and I don't know if it was an algorithm thing. i want to say if you feature a Bloodsick Productions film early on, that might have been why I followed, because those are Philly locals, I'm from that area. Follow everything they do, love everything they do. I don't know. it just showed up in my life one day, and it was definitely the kind of thing that I was like, oh, I smashed that like button and followed.
Yeah, excellent. And then later we both wound up on the same Discord. We wound up on the same Discord, which is for the Neon Brainiac. Shout out Lance and Ben, RIP Greg. And basically we were talking about movies one day. we were doing this, doing that. I don't know if I reference Weird Part of Tubi or you brought it up. And I was like, wait a second, you're the Weird Part of Tubi? Yeah, well, it's also like we were like the two people in there. If the topic of Wave Productions came up or Andy Milligan, like we were the only two people who would understand those references.
Yeah, we're kind of the pillars of garbage in that discord, I'd say. Pillars of garbage. That's our episode title. ah Yeah, so I think that was a pretty cool coincidence. And Weird Part Tubi is something that I think I reposted the stories a lot. I told people about because I loved, like just like our mission statement, I loved what you were doing with it. It's stuff I haven't seen, stuff I did see that I didn't think anyone else would have known about or like given any time to, let alone posting it and you know having it on a beautiful compass.
How did your like interest and relationship with B-movies and outsider cinema start?
I've got some pretty like quick into the draw like bullet points for this. I would say like number one for me is growing up as an 80s kid I think when I was about three or four so it would have been like 1987, 1988. I was up really late one night and not feeling well and my mom threw a fire and they were doing the blob, the original blob and I remember just being like captivated for two reasons. Number one, I think we can all guess what those are but then Which is this crazy weird cult filming. When you're little, your brain doesn't really process ah yeah weirdness for theater. It's just like, what the fuck? And then the older I got, I'm like, did I remember that correctly? So I think that really stuck with me. I was like child friendly version of Elvira for like the next three Halloweens, whatever that is, is like a tattered wig and a Grim Reaper, you know, plastic robe from CVS or Woolworths or whatever.
And then later on, growing up in South Jersey, we had a theater called the Harwan, old school theater. I think it was one room, maybe one screen, two screens, old marquee, very old. It might have been like an old vaudeville theater, but there were this group of people who put together like a collective called Exhumed Films. And they were kind of very early on the people who would get like actual film of movies like Ms. 45, A Gun for Jennifer, I Spit on Your Grave. They worked at a local, two of the guys worked at a local indie video rental place that me and my best friend at 13, 14 would go to. And they'd always have these flyers that looked like movie flyers from 70s, 80s newspapers. They would put these films on and we would go as kids. So I would be saying, I saw Last House on the Left at 13 or 14 because the exuded film size. And you turned out just fine.
Everything worked out great. In the late 80s, we had ah HBO and Showtime in our house. So like I would get to see things like ah Critters 2 or like Killer Clowns from Outer Space. And those movies really spoke to me at a young age.
When I was eight or nine, my older sister um rented a Nightmare on Elm Street for... from the gas station down the street. And as I had never seen that much blood or that much titty in my life.
And I was just like, oh, I need to watch every horror movie now. So that's kind of what I ended up doing. um In middle school, I had this thing called Bad Movie Night when I would invite my friends over and we'd drink Jolt Cola and watch um Street Trash or Microwave Massacre or Surf Nazis Must Die or those kind of movies. And so it's been kind of like a lifelong interest of mine.
Just kind of like where B-movies and outsider cinema kind of meet up. Just like, how weird can you make this and have it still be a movie? Like, those are the kind of things that like interest me in any art, whether it's like film or movies or even visual artists. Just like, how fucked up can this be and still be the actual thing it's trying to be?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And then when you're a teenager, you know, we have some access to the Internet. But some of the things we had access to in the 90s were like, you know, I'd go to like Tower Records and they'd have Bizarre Magazine or like Pace Magazine. And I think I learned about things like Richard Kern's film. So when you're a teenager, you can kind of issue like...
Oh, the original Halloween, have you seen like Fingered with Lydia Lunch? You know what i mean? You start to up that level. So having early exposure to the weirder stuff, you're just like, you're in that world. You're trying to get weirder and weirder, which is kind of like how I am with relationships also.
I approach a lot of these movies viewing them from like a punk rock lens. It's pretty similar to like... making music in your bedroom on a four track and also like making a movie on a camcorder in your backyard. I feel like they're the same kind of discipline.
I think for the people who love them much like punk, much like, you know, the culture that we were into as like all T teens is like, it's a secret handshake, right? Like who's going to sit and watch odd noggins. What's
So in that way, it's a secret handshake. And i really like that there's a group of people who are interested in similar things. You know, it's kind of like when you see someone at a show or out in public with like a band t-shirt, you can strike up a conversation like, yeah, like I can't wait till I find the person that I could just strike up a conversation about odd hoggins with. It's going to happen.
I would say name three titty scenes, but there's far more. That's an easy one. the other The other reason that I wanted to do this podcast, there's a really cool community around these movies, but also Meta's going to go tits up at some point.
Like, there's going to be a mass exodus off of Instagram, so i you know, wanted to have conversations about these movies going, but not necessarily have them tied to Instagram. Yeah, I get that. And you have to wonder, like, where's it all going? Are we going back to, like, message boards? Yeah. Is there the weird part to be you know, ah page with the 90s gifts on you know, Angel Fire where we have host our ah message board? Because, yeah, I mean, you'd hope that is on the way out, right?
ah People are not very happy with billionaires and trillionaires right now, understandably. Oh, i hadn't heard about that. Yeah, it's, i don't know. it's It's a whole thing. What about the billionaires? What about the billionaires? what do you think of the billionaires.
Fuck's sake.
We picked three movies. I pick one. Emily picks one. And my partner, who we'll meet in the third segment, pick another movie, which is Mark Polonia movie or Mark Polonia adjacent.
But the first movie is Odd Noggins from 2015, directed by Joe Sherlock. And I'm going to read Letterboxd synopsis really quick here.
Odd Noggins is a strange, surreal trip into a small town where nothing is quite what it seems to be. What is it about that horror movie on Channel 12? Why do so many women in this small town work for the same party entertainment service?
What is the significance of their bubble baths? Why so much yogurt? Who is Bob? A wild cult flick full of sci-fi horror weirdness. Odd Doggins was one of these movies that I found, and I was probably some kind of high.
And it really codified for me like the aesthetic of what I would later call weird-to-be, like
you watch this and you're like, this is the kind of thing that I always knew existed, but I had never seen it until now. It's like the dark web, but less evil. Was ah Odd Noggins on your radar? I want to say you might have posted it to weird part, but I was not all familiar with Odd Noggins.
This is a second time watch for me. It was a first time watch for Emily. What did you think of Odd Noggins? Uh, kind of like what I think of all of these things, which I think is why I'm here is that this is like a labor of love. This is somebody's weird idea that they put out to their friends and say, hi this is I had a weird dream. I have a cool idea. Who wants to come to help me shoot it You know, we'll get a couple pizzas. We'll get a bunch of beer. Like, we'll do it at my house. We'll do it down by the elementary school in our suburban town. And yeah, it's aliens. We're doing alien shit and we're doing titties. And your friends are like, oh, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah he's doing this again. Like, but it is fucking weird. And it is definitely like 10 years from now I'll be like, was that a dream that I had?
What's the name of that movie? What's, what's with all this lemon pie filling? What's with the yellow goop? One of the things that we talked about when we were watching this movie was, um,
How well everything is shot and blocked and lit, which you don't really see a lot in movies of this caliber. But you look at Joe Sherlock's IMDb.
um He's been doing this for like 30 years at this point. So, yeah, joe Joe's been making weird shit for a while. What was your favorite scene in Odd Noggins? What made me laugh the hardest was probably, I have i think his name was Tom, who looked like one of the singers from LMSAL. Yeah.
He gets done banging his girlfriend. And he's like, hey, babe, what do you think about pancakes? You want to make some pancakes? Babe, pancakes. He just keeps saying it. And then he's already turned and gooped.
He comes in and she just fucking strangles him. And it's just so funny. Like, it's just so mundane that it really got me. Because he's just like, babe, babe, pancakes, babe. And then she comes in and fucking off them.
That one got me, really. I think the kind of moral of the story here is that if you want pancakes that bad, you should make your own pancakes. You should learn how to make pancakes. You should make your own fucking pancakes. It's not that hard. They have like the all-in-one, like, Bisquick mix, and you just add water, and you're good to go. We're not respecting that she had big titties all day.
She came home and had sex with this striped underwear man who looks like one of the singers from LFAO. And now he's just laying there while she gets up, ostensibly to fix her makeup, check her hair, freshen up, whatever things that we do. And now he's babe pancakesing from the other room.
Absolutely not. I'm just happy to be there. So I'm the one that's making pancakes. Now I'm questioning if she even was possessed by the aliens. Because it was definitely an understandable reaction. Oh, so let's get into that aspect of the movie. So on the local TV channel, ah they're playing a horror movie called, I think it's called Alien Housewives?
Yeah, it's Channel 12. It's on Channel 12, Alien Housewives, or... Which, when I grew up, is PBS. And i didn't i don't I didn't see anything like this on PBS, but... You know, what what if you did? what What if you could see titties on PBS?
Then I'd have the tote bag, because I would have donated. It's not explicitly said, but one of the things that happened is, like, everybody who watches this movie, their girlfriends or, you know, spouse or girl they picked up at the bar, gets possessed by the aliens from this movie... And causes causes all their dudes to have bad dreams. Well, everybody's having bad dreams where they melt in the big piles of yellow goo.
A lot of the effects kind of reminded me of street trash a little bit, just as far as like the yellow melting stuff. Oh, definitely. and We're definitely in the same color wheel as street trash. like If one of those Instagrams that does like the art of film and has like the color swatches on any street trash, odd noggin, same. Yeah, very very very similar. like I'm pretty sure that was an influence.
Everybody's being possessed by this movie. um Everybody's having nightmares, and it eventually causes all the women in this town to decapitate They're lovers before they go back up to the alien spaceship. Kind of like a little bit of Stepford Wives in there, honestly, I think.
The ah movie within a movie, it's pretty much a Waves production video. loop. He's at the very least a Wave Productions enjoyer. And for people who aren't familiar, Wave Productions was this like DIY filmmaking company out of neutrality in the 90s that made basically what we know now as customs, quote unquote, right? OnlyFans customs. Someone could write in to this production company and say, hey, I want to see a girl...
covered in pudding, wrapped in saran wrap, in a tub while an alien probes her, and they would make that fizzle. It was fetish for order, basically, and it came from New Jersey, which makes complete sense. You know, if you ah get off to watching girls being stuck in quicksand, we're not here to kink shame.
No, never. Your ideas for wave productions are your business. But yeah, I can see where there is some crossover there because this film definitely as guy has a fetish for women who get...
like programmed by aliens and kill men like it definitely has like that vibe this movie should be a lot more popular with like people who like like repost things on instagram that they think are very like feminist like the like the good for her meme where it's like ginger snaps all bloody and carry like that kind of stuff like i'm surprised i think odd noggins has a niche that it hasn't hit yet No, i I would definitely argue that Odd Noggins should be in the good-for-her film canon. Yes, good-for-her and good-for-all of them. This entire movie is women drinking beer in warm water with their tits out and then killing the most annoying men. Like,
There are a lot of sleazy B-movies out there, and you watch them, and you think, uh, I bet the guy who made this does not like women very much.
But you watch Odd Noggins, and like you get kind of struck by like how sex-positive and body-positive it is. all about, like, the normal types of bodies all over this and, like, the full-on sex scenes. Like, there is, it's very, like, soft core, but, like, they're showing you got full frontal and they're very open about how normal everyone and is in this movie. Like, no one would be surprised that these are just people from his neighborhood or friends of his or, like, it is very normal and natural. That's another thing that kind of makes it really appealing.
There's kind of like a weird approach to structure in this movie. Initially, I kind of likened it to what if David Lynch made a wave movie, but thinking about it more.
The other thing that it kind of reminded me of, there might be like a Harmony Korean influence, just because there's a plot, scare quotes there, plot in quotes,
But also, that's not the point of the movie. you You just get wrapped up in these characters and these vignettes. and these scenes, and these moments in that movie, and that's kind of more important than the actual plot. Like, structure-wise, it kind of reminds me of Gummo a little bit, but surprisingly less icky. I can see that. Like, we're definitely watching vignettes of these specific characters, and there's a lot of, like, relationship-specific things to this, right? We're rolling our eyes at the pancake guy and he can't keep his hands off of her when she's trying on her Halloween costume. Like, it's pretty natural play between these couples and each woman has her singular story. There's the woman who's the gorilla suit woman for parties. There's the girl who's the belly dancer. Who's trying to become a stripper. They do have like their own individual plot lines. Yeah. And then like one lady is, she's a clown. Like most of the women that's in this movie, like work for the same, like party gram or like stripper gram service. Yeah.
But that also kind of like ties into how close knit small towns really are. The way this opens is so cool. And I'm not sure I've seen another movie that's done this, but we have the blonde who's sleeping and she's dreaming, but we don't know it. We find out a couple minutes later about this alien dissection. She's having this alien dissection nightmare, basically. come to find out throughout the movie, that's the movie that's being played on Channel 12. But that character is a real person who wakes up and has her own little vignette. It's very, like, jarring. And I feel like he did a really good job of doing that in that, like, it makes you feel those things that you feel like in life are, is that a dream? You know what I mean? Like, she exists in the timeline in the vignettes with other women, but she's also the woman in the movie.
Yeah, so that's what made me kind of wonder. The Men in Black character, I forget his name. Mr. Birch. Mr. Birch, yeah. If Mr. Birch is somehow using this movie on Channel 12, or if he's creating this movie with his brain that's getting out to all the other people in this small Oregon town and is making them all boink and then have the ladies all kill their lovers. I mean, that's pretty progressive that if he is picking up this film in his mind, it is specifically to get through to women who should kill their obnoxious husbands and lovers. And really quick, I'm going to go through ah some of the ads that I got for this movie when we were watching it on Tubi.
um I had a Roku ad, which I'm watching this on a Roku. Why the fuck do I need a Roku ad?
I have a note here that I think I saw one for an IBS medication and I'm pretty sure it said, hold on to your colon. I don't think I made that up. It's in my notes. Airwick fragrances.
Okay, I could see you where they think people who sit in their room and watch Tubi all the time might benefit from an Airwick fragrance. That's fair. We're trying to put them all together, right? Like, why are they showing us these ads while we're watching Odd Noggins on Tubi on a, what was it, a Saturday at 8 something?
There was an Xfinity Minions crossover ad, which... Who's paying for Xfinity when we get Tubi for free? Seriously. With ads. and You got a yogurt commercial.
ah I did. Yeah, I got a Yoplait commercial, which is like very ties into this movie. That's a targeted ad. I wonder if they put that in like the keywords where it's just like, ah please show a yogurt commercial during this movie, a mattress commercial.
Yeah, you're laying in bed in your room with your Airwick fragrance covering up your shame watching Tubi on Saturday night. Eating a Little Caesar's Spider-Man pizza. Little Caesar's Spider-Man pizza. Which I said was the most Dada phrase I think I've ever heard.
ah Some financial help commercials, ah which tracks because... ah I am watching this and I need financial help. There's a pattern emerging. Yes. If you're watching Tubi, you definitely do need financial help because, you know, you're doing things on the cheap.
You're part of the proletariat. And I like, I feel like the commercials are something to kind of, if you can lean into it because everyone's problem with streaming now is like what we pay for. We still get commercials. We had commercials when we had cable. We had commercials when we had tv as kids. I mean, they were a little more charming, but I'm sure as a kid, we thought they were annoying then too. Some of us now, some of us, not me, but some of us go onto YouTube when we're really sad and we watch blocks of commercials from the eighties and the nineties. And that's very comforting So I'd like to think 20 years from now, Gen Z will be watching YouTube blocks of Spiderweb Pizza. I also really like the ads because it gives you a a moment to pause and reflect on what you just watched. You know, yeah, you can ask somebody about what they thought of the last part of the movie. It's almost like edging when the ads pop up
um So I'm going to say that the most disgusting thing in this movie for like all of the weird shit that's in the movie The two grossest things were Mr. Birch eating spoonfuls of mayonnaise straight from the jar.
and the pimento loaf sandwich at the end. The pimento loaf overkill. And that comes from, is it Tom? Who is it that says, I think somebody who's going to Bob's drunken Halloween party, which is the core of this movie. And we never see it. We never find out more about it. But the one thing all these characters seem to have as a common thread is everyone's been invited to Bob's drunken Halloween party. Didn't one of these guys say pimento loaf was their costume or did I make that out?
That would be really funny. I would need to revisit it to see if it was, but... I heard what I wanted to hear. Bob's Halloween party has come up in a couple of the other Joe Sherlock movies that ah I've watched, so, like...
I think these are established lore. When we get him on the show, we have one mission, and that's to find out the story behind Bob's drunken Halloween party. Yeah, I think he lives not that far from where my mom lives, so maybe I can pop in on one of Bob's parties and see what's going down. Yeah, we need to know.
I will say the blonde who's originally sleeping in the beginning, she's the first one who sees the movie, is the movie. When she wakes up, she's looking at a tabloid. The tabloid mentions New Jersey and aliens, which is very interesting. And again, that tracks. There's a lot of alien stories that come out of New Jersey for some reason. It's like the...
if Area 51 was in the armpit of the U.S. And there's a number she calls on the tabloid. I called the number today because I was so curious. what What did you get?
I let it ring and I let it ring. And I was like, oh, this isn't even a voicemail. Like, you know, is this like person's just and that's the world we're living in. Right. Like the person's looking at it like, what the fuck is this spam from Pennsylvania? So i'm like, this person's not going answer. I'm not going to get anything. They're just going to deny the call. It's like 10 times. And it went to a voicemail that sounded very much like one of these female characters in this movie. But I did not have the balls leave this.
All right, Roxy Mountains, if that was you, Emily apologizes. I'm so sorry, Roxy. I wonder if the New Jersey thing, also the aliens, but I wonder if that's a nod to Wave.
I don't know. I'm seeing a lot of Wave parallels here, and I wish I had done a little more research. I don't know if we could connect those threads. um Maybe it's just, again, like it's a secret handshake between two goopy alien titty aficionados.
the what but that Where we start with men, really, i feel like, is the construction guy who has the girlfriend, the wife that he's talking to on the phone from work. I refer to him as goth aunt.
She has a very like late ninety s goth aunt vibe. It's like the long black dyed hair, the very deep cut, like black floral 90s dress. I think she had like her nose pierced. not quite a cool aunt vibe. It's more of like a I buy red pillbox Arctic Fox diet hot topic vibe. It's fun. i like it. But that's what she reminded me of. She's someone's goth aunt from 1998. Yeah.
yeah So overall, I would say odd Noggins, definitely part of the weird Tubi canon, um certified weird Tubi banger. um go watch it. Give shut Joe Sherlock your money. Give him that 23 cents from the ad revenue. Definitely one of those weird little, like, you could throw this on around someone who's unsuspecting, I think is your best bet here. I'm not even sure. You could go with another, like, um no budget aficionado. I think they'd appreciate it. But I think put this on someone who's unsuspecting and let them see the vibe of...
A town that's overtaken by a DIY alien dissection video and what it does to all the women in the town. It is like trash Stepford, well, trashier Stepford wives.
Maybe you're not going to the Bob's drunken Halloween party, but if you go to a drunken Halloween party this year, I think you should put this on in the background and you'll find out who your real friends are.
This one is for people who love Big Titties, ah Big Titties and Warm Baths, Big Titties and Warm Baths drinking beer, alien shit, a very stiff Men in Black ah reference. You got David Lynch reference in there. It has a weird suburban vibe that I think people really enjoy between the house decor and the very end of the movie where he's like in a suburban park at blue hour. There's there's a lot here for everyone.
So that's going to bring us to our second movie.
Bad Ronald from 1974. This was your pick.
So Bad Ronald is one of those movies that my Gen X sister used to scare me as a little kid. I want to say, so it originally aired, it was nineteen was October 1974, great time for it to air, spooky season in 1974. It was actually an ABC movie of the week. And as a kid, I remember my Gen X sister saying things about like the boy who lives in the walls, there's somebody in the walls, she was always bringing this up. But I would have been like eight or nine, didn't know what she was talking about.
Later when we were adults, we talked about Bad Ronald. I said, is this fucking movie you've been talking about since I was a little kid? He's in the walls, Ronald's in It was just weird, mean, older sister shit. And I finally looked bad Ronald up many years ago now, probably like 10, 15 years ago and watched it. And I'm like...
People should be talking about this. Like, this is like kindertrauma vibe. This is this is weird old 70s TV movie vibe, but extra creepy and ick because it's like a weird teenage murderer, basically. And that's the basis of it, but it goes so far off the rails. And when I was looking into it...
I realized that it's actually based on a book that was written in 73, so they turned that motherfucker around real quick. Somebody at some studio said, yeah, this jives with after-school specials, but goes off the rails, like, sensationally. Let's get this. It was a paperback book that was about the same character. The name was the same. Everything it looks like was the same, except the book is actually more grisly. There's actually essay in it.
The murder is more grisly, and Ronald is, like, nasty. He's a little less incel-y and nebbish and just nasty. So the book actually sounds like a pretty good time if you're into that. We'll call it ABC Movie of the Week, New Extremity. That's the kind of thing that struck me about this movie is that it definitely has like, even though it's a TV movie, it definitely has that creepy like 70s grindhouse vibe to it. It's kind of like a suburban Texas Chainsaw Massacre kind of. It definitely, it could be, like, for now times, we'd call it, like, the ick.
The Ronald character, just this... i mean, we've always had incels. It's a tale as old as time. Negging on women who don't like you. this is... We're all familiar with this, but Ronald in the 70s feels like the original fictional incel anyway. You know, it's this...
unpopular, very like our seventies nerd, right? Like our Paul from wonder years are squints from Sam. Ah, it's the thick black glasses. You know, he's got a big nose. He's not dressed very well. He's super shabby and he's got this overbearing mom.
Yeah, there's like a lot of pretty overt subtext. They don't explicitly say that the mom wants to boink her son, but she wants to boink her son. Dad is gone.
and Ronald, the man of the house, but Ronald is like hiding in his room, like writing out D&D manuals, but not with the group, just by himself. Because he doesn't have any friends. He tries to go hang out with the neighbor kid.
that he has a crush on and her older brother and their friends. And they're having none of it. No, they know who Ronald is They know he probably leaves hair in her locker and, you know, shit out of her locker and is hiding in his bedroom under his bed. Maybe like,
you know, with other ephemera he's picked up, like an old crust from a sandwich in the lunchroom. That's who Ronald is. And they know it and they smell it on him. And I have to say, like, I don't cheer on bullying ever. But the more we get into this movie, you can understand why the jocks are like, fuck this dude.
The scene around their pool, like they're kind of mean to him, but it's just like sometimes, you know, If you're not welcome somewhere, you kind of need to take the hint. and the Fuck off. But ah she basically tells him, no, I don't want to go to the movies with you.
Take somebody else. And Ronald, if you're listening to this, which you're not because you're a fictional character and you're probably dead or in jail or in some kind of institution...
It's good advice. Take somebody else. He was real for that. I don't even feel like she was really mean about It was one of the kids in the pool. She kind of had that weird like, oh, this guy creeps me out. I don't want to anger him. But also like, I'm not an asshole. I'm just going to try to be as plain as possible and not like give him any mixed signals.
i don't want to go you know with somebody else. That's... what women now are learning that they should do Unfortunately, sometimes you'll die. he didn't kill her though. He took his anger out on a little girl who was riding a bike outside the house on his way home. new It's her little sister, right?
There's three of them. There's Dwayne, which is the older brother. Yes. And there's, is it Jane, the little sister? I think Jane's the little sister, yeah. She's on the bike. She's very hair parted down the middle, blondie, you know, on her little 70s banana seat bike, just rolling down, rolling down the lane.
And he accidentally bumps into her and she's like, you're fucking weird. And your mom sucks. And your whole thing, you're, it's weird. You're giving me the ick basically. and he does not like that. He's already on edge here.
i do think this one is for Michael Myers fans. Oh, definitely. Like maybe, uh, off the ground, on like Bob style.
Bad Ronald as an origin story for Michael Myers is a lot better than what Rob Zombie was trying to do. I could see that for sure. I think Bad Ronald is maybe like the weekend that like Dr. Loomis let him have like at home or with like a host family just to see how he could acclimate. And then they realize, oh, fuck no, he's not ready for prime time. And now this little girl's So what does Ronald do? Ronald's immediate reaction is to hide her?
It's very plausible to say, like like, yeah, I bumped into her and she fell off the bike and hit her head. Like, he had such an easy out, but he overreacted, ah dug a shallow grave in the woods and threw this poor child into the shallow grave.
And he didn't need to do all that. If your moral compass is bent a little bit and you're like, oh fuck, this is going to ruin my life. Yeah, I bumped into her. She fell and hit her head. He doesn't have to say he lifted her up. He could just say, oh, fuck, she she fell and hit her head. I tried to help her. Someone help me. He goes straight to hiding the body.
Ronald, the coldness of a killer. It's at this point in the movie when you stop feeling like any kind of sympathy or empathy for Ronald. They set it up real early that you are like kind of there. You're a little weirded out, but you're like, man, this guy's mom's so overbearing. He's got no friends. It's his birthday. You do start to develop some of that like empathetic feeling. They cut it pretty hard because even at the pool scene, I feel like if we're looking at it like from a more modern lens, it's he's being like, he's imposing himself on them. Nobody invited him. She's not shown any interest in him. So as a, like a woman watching this, I was like, eh, like, okay. Like I, this is, this is going somewhere. Then he just knocks off the little sister and you're like, oh, okay. This is just who this, this teenage boy. Yeah. And even like when, uh, Dwayne, the older brother is bullying Ronald, it's just kind of like, well, you know, he's just being an older brother. He's looking out for sis. Yeah, he knows it's weird.
And again, like, nobody beats him up. Nobody's, like, you know, he's not getting, like, his buns taped together, like, breakfast club style. Nothing, like, that jockish is happening. They're surprisingly subdued. Like, I got bullied worse in high school than Ronald did. Oh, definitely.
I did not kill any children. i did not hide any bodies. So I guess I'm doing better than Ronald. Ronald, it should be noted, looks like Andy Samberg was what my note says.
The cover of this movie, it kind of looks like a 70s jazz album cover. It's nice. They're trying to lure you in. Ronald's going to play you some fucking badass, like, free jazz flute shit. If they remade this movie, like, in the mid to late Ronald would have just had to wait until emo hit, and then he would have been okay.
I almost want to say, like, proto-Columbine vibes. Yes. I could definitely see Ronald like wearing a KMFDM t-shirt. He would definitely want to kill motherfucking Depeche Mode. That's true.
He hides this girl and goes home to his mom. And his mom's like, oh, where were you? Because, of course, like, she knows Ronald doesn't have a life or a girlfriend or any friends. She's confused that he went out to begin with. Now she's even more confused he was out as long as he was. He's disheveled. He's covered in dirt. He tells her, like, you know, at least that relationship is on point because he tells her right away that he, like, knocked a girl over and she's dead and he hit her body.
W for Ronald's mom here is she tells him, don't waste time on people who don't care about you. He was so real for that. And like for all of her weird, creepy faults, like I think that's generally good advice.
Absolutely. she was on point with that. And you know what? she also did come through because it really only took a couple. You could see the gears turning her mind. She's like, oh, we'll tear the wall down to the guest bathroom downstairs. We'll replaster it overnight and I'll put you in there and you can hide in there and we'll create a little cubby in the pantry that runs to the kitchen for you to talk to me through. That's her plan. And she'll tell everyone he ran away.
She was serving boy mom realness in this moment. She came up with a plan. Again, another movie where a woman is taking charge and making it happen. Ronald's just panicking. Ronald should be panicking because her mother has to go for gallbladder surgery.
Mom is hurt and he's very upset. He can't help her. he has to stay in the wall. He can't really come out. She puts meals in there. She reminds him to make sure he does his calisthenics and he's reading and he keeps illustrating his Dungeons and Dragons stories. But she's in pain and she tells him, i have to go for surgery.
Well, he can't come out of this cubby hole and no one can know that he's there. So she just disappears. She's just gone. And then they don't tell you how much time elapses, but it's obvious like she died in the surgery because I think a real estate agent or like a family friend is like walking through the house. Ronald's been hiding this whole time. I get maybe a week, a couple of days. We don't really know, but he's been in the cubby this whole time. And the only woman who will ever love him died in gallbladder surgery. RIP Ronald's mom.
I mean, when the woman who's willing to plaster overnight for you so well that you can't even tell the next day that anything was ever there, ah pour it out for her for sure. So now he's stuck in the wall and there's people coming through. There's a family coming through. and this family has Ronald's favorite, a couple blondes in there. Dabney Coleman is the dad. He was in Dragnet. He also was the boss in 9 to 5, which is a great, of course, Dolly.
Great movie. And he was the voice of the principal on Recess, which millennials will know. Great animated show from the ninety s Early aughts, I think. But there's three blonde daughters, a mom and a dad. Dad is Dabney Coleman.
And I think the thing that I thought was funniest about this is how much they talked about how dingy the house was, like how shitty it was, while Ronald's in this dirty crawl space, getting shittier and dirtier by the moment. This nice, like... This very like well polished blonde family comes in and is talking shit on the only house he ever knew with his mom.
I think he only has one shirt. Which is covered in paint and food and coffee and God knows what else. He's a dirty boy at this point.
Like you'd smell him through the plastered wall probably. Oh, definitely. Like you'd be like. Is there a is there a possum in there? We will buy in this house, but you have to get that dead raccoon out of the wall. The house is a weird old Victorian. It's very like stuffy. I feel like when I'm watching it, everything looks stuffy and a little bit dusty. And you're thinking about the claustrophobia of this like little weirdo in the walls and just like peeling wallpaper. And even when they get it together, because they do decide to buy it, which is funny. They're asking their kids what they think. Like, are your kids fucking paying for the house? Uh, It's a cool old Victorian cool. Like, no one would think that shit was cool. Did Amityville come out by then? I feel like they'd be like, fuck this. Did you see that movie? We're out of here. ah Bad Ronald did it first. Sorry, Lutzes.
We have the trope of the weird old Victorian house and the excited family moving in I'm sure it was a bargain. and That's part of it, right? So he's got to be this amazing bargain. how do you think they got such a good deal on him?
I will say, exactly. i The mom had the genius to at least leave the sink and the toilet in there, I think, when they do the overnight plastering. I do believe that's in there, but I think he's only doing, like, a pits and bits bath, to be honest. I do not think there's shower situation.
Then they have dinner in their nice new Victorian home. They're settled in. Ronald's getting settled, checking out the daughters, seeing what's what. You know, we got new blondes for Ronald. So he can relive the thrill of the little blonde he pushed into the rock. So i think think that i was like, what? They're having dinner.
and the older daughter's boyfriend, Dwayne, comes over. They're having this nice dinner. You know, Dabney Coleman is 70s dad. We got the mom. Everyone's looking great. It's a really charming little family in their new home.
Boyfriend is coming in. Sister's older sister's boyfriend is there, Dwayne. And he says, oh, going go house. Isn't it weird living here? oh, oh pause. What? Haunted, walls bleeding. What do we have here? Someone was murdered. What's going on here? He says, no, Ronald will be lived here. he killed my sister.
when is you get dinner in the house of the murder of your little sister? All six or seven of the huge glasses of milk that they had at the dinner table and the huge pitcher of... mit well All of that milk immediately went bad when he said that line. The vibes curdled it.
The record scratched. I bet you're wondering how I wound up in this situation. That had me like, I honestly, I was cackling. Don't you think that would have come up before? They seem pretty acquainted as a girlfriend and a boyfriend. It didn't seem like they were a new couple necessarily. i mean, maybe she's new to the neighborhood. It's newer. But once she's like, yeah, I live over the hill. Like, I, you know, do you want to walk me home? Wouldn't he be like, oh yeah, the guy that killed my little sister lived in there.
conversation would have come up sooner yeah it doesn't establish like how much time has passed but there has definitely been some amount of time that passes maybe he was holding on to it so if like she didn't put out he would use that as his back pocket like his get out of jail free card like i can't come to your house anymore or hang out with you because my little sister got killed by the guy that lived in your house So the family, of these days, the family goes on like a picnic. They're a little 70s picnic basket, but time before phones, am I right? They go on this picnic. They're gone. Ronald sees this as his opportunity to creep into the house. He comes out, you know, of the little hidey hole, goes straight to the fridge. What does he go straight to the fridge for?
a nice, tall, refreshing jug of milk. So he's chugging this milk. And we didn't, we noticed in the beginning, there's a very nosy neighbor. And in the beginning, you're like, who's this nosy bitch? Like, he's the one who's going to call the cops when the music's too loud. The party goes on too long. She's always involved. She wants to know why you're not at church. She is that neighbor, Mrs. Schumacher. So he's hanging around the kitchen. He thinks he's good. The family's not there.
And we see her little head pop up. Mrs. Schumacher doesn't, you know, come into frame. Her head pops up in the the back door. Ronald freaks. He scrambles. She's like, like old lady. So he runs out the door. And by accident, truly by accident, he knocks her down the steps and she dies?
Question mark? Yeah, that is not a very realistic thing. I mean, who knows what could happen. You might fracture your skull at that point, but I don't think you would die instantly.
Like, at the very worst, that's like involuntary manslaughter. like
Ronald could have could have copped two involuntary manslaughter charges, like done 10 years and then got out and been a free man. But he keeps digging this hole for himself deeper and deeper. And what was he staying free for? There's no girlfriend there. He wasn't part of any clubs at school, it didn't seem like. Had no posters of bands on his walls. What was Ronald staying a free man for? and like, you know, it wouldn't have been that hard for him to leave town.
No, he could have absolutely gone on the lam, especially in the 70s. And who knows, karma could have gotten him. a serial killer could have gotten him. That was a big 70s thing. Maybe if he made his way to Washington State, it would have taken care of itself.
You know, they really could have left the door open for a crossover with Henry, a portrait of a serial killer. Oh, yeah, I could totally see that. i think those two would have gone on well.
That's a good incel double feature. That is. Yeah. I did briefly date a guy in high school who told me that was his favorite movie. And 16, that really cool. And 42, less so So Ronald and accidentally kills neighbor, drags her, hides her.
She's done. We're done with Mrs. Schumacher. She's seen her last fucking thing. She's been nosy about her last fucking thing. So basically, the next night, he's in the wall. He breaks the glass. Littlest daughter, oh, it's a ghost. It's a ghost. And the family's like, shut the fuck up, little, like littlest kid.
What? You're hearing shit. It's not real. She's like, no, I'm getting vibe. I heard something smash in the middle of the night. it's a ghost. The dad is like, yeah, okay, fine, whatever. Just like in all these movies, right? Except in this one, it has huge consequences that they're not listening to the little kid who's telling you exactly what they're hearing and feeling.
So the next next couple days, The family all goes out, but the sisters stay home. The parents go out, the sisters stay home. Little sister comes home alone, which we all did, at least in the eighty s early 90s. She's a latchkey kid. She's about eight years old, nine years old. She comes home alone to their big haunted Victorian mansion.
Yeah, one thing that I wondered is, after Ronald accidentally kills the nosy neighbor, why doesn't he just go live at her house? You did say that. That's a really good point.
Because, you know, um I'm sure there's more than a half bath available. Like, there's probably some... laundry stuff so you could at least like watch that shirt he's just like this is who i am now i think basically ronald is walking around the house doing a snack break doing a milk grab and they see each other she screams because there's filthy dirty teenage boy that everyone thought disappeared after he murdered another little girl is in her house walking around He takes her and dumps her over at Mrs. Schumacher's.
Then the sisters come home. They're fucked because they're supposed to probably be watching the little sister. She's gone. They bring Dwayne over, the boyfriend, kind of for reinforcements. Everyone's panicked. A cop shows up. He doesn't seem super concerned, unsurprisingly.
So the thing that got me about this scene with this is the sisters are, oh my God, like our sister, this is so scary. Is she okay? Where did she go? Cops are doing what cops did back then. They do it now probably. She'll come back. Kids disappear. Eight, nine-year-old little girls disappear all the time. I wouldn't worry about it. She'll come back. Yes, of course. Nobody look, no one panic about a tiny little girl missing, especially in the same neighborhood where a teenage boy just knocked off another little girl like a couple years ago. so the sisters go out to grab a pizza.
You know, nothing makes me as hungry as child abduction. You do think like, wow, I'm so lucky that I wasn't child abducted. Hey, I'm hungry. I should use my life to get pizza.
So in their absence, Ronald comes out and he gets Dwayne. It's like a fight ensues. You'd think that Dwayne would be able to overpower him, but I think Ronald's stench probably knocks Dwayne so much for a loop, he gets the upper hand and ties him up. Also, he's been doing all those exercises in his little hidey hole, just like his mommy said. know. He's been doing the calisthenics that mommy told him to do, and he is probably getting nerd ripped.
W. Ronald's mom again. and milk. Thanks, milk. Does a body good, allegedly. So the sisters come home. And they're looking for the boyfriend. They're looking you know they're looking through the house with a a little bit of a... Apparently a more meticulous eye than anyone has looked through this house at all. And they see an eyeball in a hole in the little half-bathroom. The half-bathroom that everyone can't believe doesn't exist. Ronald...
Kool-Aid man threw the wall at the sister. And I guess the cops had been watching the house the whole time because they are outside to catch him when he throws himself on the ground and just starts screaming, Mommy! Mommy!
and that's and that's the end of Bad Ronald. What did you think of Bad Ronald? Bad Ronald was, I liked it a lot. Like I said earlier, it it has like kind of that grimy...
70s grindhouse vibe, but it's a made-for-TV movie in the suburbs. Not very explicit, but it definitely goes to some very dark places. And yeah, I think um it's worth checking out if you like creepy 70s made-for-TV stuff.
I will note that we're slightly breaking our rules because this isn't currently on Tubi. It's been on and off the free streamers for a while. It's currently off, but if you get a real hankering to watch this, you can just type in bad Ronald 1974 internet archive into the search engine of your choice, and it'll pop right up. So...
technically a free streamer. It's been up and down on YouTube. You could check that too, because I think that's where I originally watched it a couple years ago when I did a rewatch. What I do want to say about the the book that I thought was interesting, I was reading about the paperback that came out in 73. The author is John Holbrook Vance. I don't know if I mentioned that, who was like a sword and sorcery author, actually. So I wonder if that there's the D&D sword and sorcery, you know, they mentioned throughout the film that Ronald sees himself as like, I think it's Duke Norbert, who is protecting the princess of. Atranta.
Atranta, that's right, the princess of Atranta. He sees himself as, of course he sees himself as the protector. um But the book, they said, is that it kind of was a kickoff to the hider in the house genre, which I thought was really interesting. That wasn't what he was going for in his other books. He was sword and sorcery. He did some sci-fi, but he did what they basically call the hider in the house genre. Yeah. and one of the features of that was, you know, this scares without the supernatural. And I think that's a feature of this movie. It does have that...
Super natural vibe. You know what I mean? Except we see the guy. We know what's happening, but the family doesn't. And it does have the Amityville vibe to some extent as much as a TV movie could. Yeah, for sure.
This was also remade in the 90s for French TV. I saw that. Four people on Letterboxd have logged it. I added that saying smile at a mock so fast. All right. So bad Ronald. I liked it. I think it's worth checking out. It's one of my fierce donations as a child. Thanks to my older sister. I'm sure I'll revisit it because it's definitely a creepy watch every time. I definitely recommend it.
Now time for our third segment. Let me call to the mic. My long-suffering partner, the beautiful Chaos Gremlin, and our Mark Polonia Senior Analyst and Jeff Kirkendall Fan Representative.
Hello, this is Heather. They're suffering even more now that you started a podcast. oh I only have to do this when I want. So it's okay. um Do I need to do my radio voice?
Because I can talk like this the entire time if you would like. So who would like to start off about Amityville in space? Would you like to give a summary, a synopsis? And perhaps give a background to Mark Polonia and the Polonia brothers.
Part of the extended Amityville universe. I am surprised that Amityville abs hasn't come out since that was the biggest draw of the remake of the original Amityville with Ryan Reynolds.
I would like to see some haunted abs. The Amityville cum gutters. Yeah, it would just be like, get gains.
All right. Amityville in space 2022 directed by mark Polonia. And this is the synopsis from Letterboxd. Screams go unheard in space.
The ultimate battle against the Amityville curse begins after the infamous murder house is exorcised from Earth and reappears in outer space in Amityville in space. and yeah Yes.
And that that is kind of what happens. Mark Polonia is a veteran B-movie director ah going back all the way to... I want to say the early 1980s, he was at ground zero for the whole SOB thing.
Him and his brother, John, RIP, who is no longer with us Listen, don't listen to Red Letter Media. Feeders. Yeah, I'm calling you out. Feeders is fantastic. love you, Josh. As is Feeders, too. I will fight you, Mike.
Their first movie was Church of the Damned in 1985.
They kept making movies pretty steadily up through the early 2000s until Brother John passed away, RIP. Since then, Mark Polonia has kind of had this late career renaissance starting in like the mid-2000s. He just started cranking out these movies and kind of became like the Roger Corman of DIY movies in North Central PA.
And he has a very, like, John Waters-esque recurring cast of regulars who you'll see in his movies. I'm going to start keeping a tally of all the Mark Polonia regulars.
We have Titus Himmelberger. Boop, boop. ah Captain. he is He is the captain. Cassandra Hayes as Dr. Nermy, who is plural for normal.
And her character is kind of like a mashup of Larry Fishburne in Advent Horizon and Winona Ryder in Alien 3. I said Lawrence Fishburne. I said Advent Horizon. And what was the other movie I said?
um Exorcist. Oh, yeah, because Jeff Kirkendall is very much. Internet sex symbol Jeff Birkendall. Tim Hatch as ah Maitland. With the best line delivery in the whole movie and possibly of his career.
What
the fuck? Where am I? Who are you? How did I get here? Let me go! No! No! Make it stop!
go
What the fuck?
Natalie Helmelberger. who who Please. Madam twist. Tice. Tice. Madam Tice. Space mommy. Space mommy. Space mommy. Space Mark Polonia as the voice of Vox, the robot, whose body is played by Michael Korotish. I think I'm saying that right.
And Yoli Canales as newscaster in the beginning. And there is a very charming voice filter over it that's trying to convince us it's snowing outside.
Respect to Anthony Polonia, you' your visual effects. It's poetic. I felt cold. Jeff Kirkendall, as Father Benna rolls up, and he's like, everybody chill the fuck out. I got this.
And he doesn't got this. He doesn't got this at all. gets pan chopped off. yeah it Not chopped off, twisted, squeezed off. while he's holding the um very, very believable.
you would think him just repeating in spirit and in grace, in spirit and in grace endlessly for about 40 seconds would have banished the evil and kept him the hand that or the very pronounced priest collar. Well, he had his hand holding the cross, clearly a a real a real cross, and it was squeezed off by, well, he went by many names, Beelzebub, Legion, Satan, Asmodeus, which, um if you know your supernatural lore, are um some different individuals in Hell.
Anyway, we can move on. The whole Amityville house shoots off into space, and that's how we get Amityville in space. It is the animal house and it is in space.
And there's a giant pentagram in the space because, ah you know, they're really into a Venom up there. Venom is hugely popular in the Crab Nebula. So Venom, no, in the Aquarius system, because that's where they are.
And Venom is performing a concert. And that is that is just. Incidental, it has nothing to do with the movie. I think I had mentioned that Anton LaVey would have loved to be a consultant on this type of film.
This movie is way too hardcore for Anton LaVey. Devil Drain, eat your heart out. I think it's worth noting also Galaxy Quest came before this, but was definitely an influence. There are a lot of influences on this movie. Ostensibly, this is Amityville movie, but...
What Mark Polonia likes to do, I've noticed, is that he'll sell you one premise of the movie. Once you're past the first act, he'll take it in a completely different direction. Like you have Cocaine Shark, which is ostensibly a riff on Cocaine Bear, right?
But instead, it takes a hard left turn into neo-noir crime drama. And there's another one of his films, House Squatch, which is, you know, Sasquatch movie.
But it's actually Mark and Anthony's quirky indie comedy. It's amazing. And stars Jamie Morgan. That's with Jamie Morgan. you're, you're amazing, Jamie Morgan. I love you. This is ostensibly an Amityville movie, but it's actually Mark Polonia's riff on Event Horizon.
cosmic horror with a two-story craftsman. Ladies and gentlemen, we're experiencing a few technical difficulties on this 4th of July. We'll get things straightened out and get to Robert Redford starring in Jeremiah Johnson, though, in just just a moment.
What the fu- It was at this point that there was a really bad tech issue with our sound, and the remaining audio was unsalvageable. Bummer. Tune in next month to Strange Streams.
If we can get our shit together. And by r I mean James. Until then, keep your DMs clean and your watchlists filthy.
Space Mommy out.