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Drop Dead Fred was our daughter's imaginary friend. When she was a little over two years she came into our bedroom and said Drop Dead Fred was at the window and scaring her. He kept coming and scaring her and we started to try very hard to understand who or what he was and get rid of him and get some sleep. He was a bear, we were told, and "nice during the day but scary at night." I wrote a little story about our trials with Fred and a friend who is a screenwriter caught the thread, optioned the story, and with his partner created a whole new story -- I think they liked the idea of a little girl with an essentially masculine imaginary friend, and the title was great. (We never knew where the phrase DDF came from). Once my mother roped off the living room with its newly cleaned carpet when we came to visit with our toddlers - I think that inspired the dog poo scene, but the rest was all the screenwriters and, significantly, Rik Mayall. People seem to love or hate the movie. We have friends who walked out, but then I keep meeting people who are bonkers about it - one who named her car DDF. I vote with team Mantzoukas and Raphael - Fred was an extension of Elizabeth's own consciousness and it took more than a little chaos to shake off the controlling forces (her mother et al.) that threatened to drown her.

For me, I think I might have enjoyed it if I were in the right mood. It was pretty crazy and it definitely needs to be seen by more eyes. I think my brain couldn’t handle the juxtaposition from The Boys to this

@Cam Bert's Letterboxd review is spot on as this being "One part Rocky Horror", since Richard O'Brien wrote three songs for this movie.

OMG, when the movie started with about 10 newsreels I started wondering if the whole movie was just that - newsreel after newsreel.

To me the biggest problem with this movie was it wanted to be fun but it didn't feel fun. I relate this movie to those that try to parody a style, look, or fashion of a genre. They wanted to make fun of old serials I suppose but the film itself just picks and chooses what to do with that genre. Something like Flash Gordon that came out around the same time is something that took the campness of the serials and ran with it to make a film that embraced it, celebrated it while being fun and fully aware of what it was. Even Indian Jones which was a few years earlier was inspired by serials and runs with it better. This movie is a bit different in that it is trying to be a comedy and for the most part the comedy fell flat overall. That's probably due to an overabundance of ideas that they tried to cram into it.

See kids?!? Gang signs are cool! Captain Invicible flashes them so you can too!

I actually liked this overall. I was wondering if it was an Australian production but I can't confirm that. It had bigger names in it than would be normal. I did like they got Bill Hunter, my favorite Australian character actor, in there as the trainer to get Captain Invicible back in shape. (He played Barry Fife, the evil dance association head, in Strictly Ballroom. He was also the voice of the dentist in Finding Nemo.) I did wonder if the songwriters were about to go on break so they said "Hey! Let's make a song out of only one word!"

If you think I haven’t already Tweeted this movie to HDTGM, you’d be dead wrong. We watched:

For anyone interested, here's the RSS feed: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:325581151/sounds.rss

HOLD. UP. There are Murder, She Wrote movies???

LOL - I was like, “Oh, Jesus, how long is this thing going to be?

YES! I was starting to wonder if the entire movie was going to be told via news clips because once the newsreels finish he's interviewed on the evening news as well.

I was so disappointed. I thought they had made this book into a movie.

Oh! And I totally forgot, now that the first leg of the tour is over, I would like to hear a “baggitry” update about Jason’s bags and June’s opinions thereof. Just wanted to put that out there.

Yes, I believe there were 4 TV movies that are sold as a separate DVD from the series set. There are a bunch of tie-in novels as well, and pretty sure those are still coming out. There was a novelization of the Magnum pilot too which I used to own but as I recall it was not great.

This is a haiku, You can check the syllables, Thank you very much.

Okay there might be an easier answer to this but I started checking out in the last third but who was the mole on the inside? After the vacuum shop set up they go back to the base and everybody is tied up and laughing they suspect a mole on the inside. Did they ever reveal who it was? I remember him talking to the President later and the conversation was odd. Was he suppose to be the mole?

I really liked it overall. You should stick with it.

I'm getting into The Boys now. I liked the first episode but wasn't sure about the second. However the third really picked up and I'm ready to watch the next one.

The Pessimist Sees Difficulty In Every Opportunity. The Optimist Sees Opportunity In Every Difficulty. The Peeping Tom sees you jerking off a lot.

For me, and I assume for others that also love it, it was one of those movies that was always on when you were little. It felt like every weekend. Very few of the people I know who like it actually saw it in theaters. It’s more of something they associate with lazy Sunday afternoons as a kid.

Where I live, there are a TON of late night greasy-spoon places, and those that serve a mushroom swiss burger with fries are all tied for my favorite late-night takeout drunk food. At home, I think my favorite drunk-snack is to just roll up pieces of bread and dip them in random condiments. I try hard not to judge Canadian food on sight, or even on description. I tried poutine for the first time two years ago because my friends were raving about it and I was in Ontario. It's fine but it doesn't read well. The smell won me over enough to try it, I think. Do you think balls of crumpled up wheat bread dipped in honey mustard or sriracha would play up there? If so, I've got a proposition for you ... Thanks Winning the nothing-prize for the most contentious episode ever with a throw-away comment like that might make one hesitant to celebrate a meaningless victory, but ... Although, assist goes to gigitastic, since it was a reply to their post, so ... I like basketball, I love Looney Tunes, and I'm okay with Mike, and I was never compelled to see it.

Knuck if you smuck

This movie will be an instant classic when HDTGM reviews it. A mute girl, a pill popping mom, a bratty teenager, and a sexually molesting dad. I have so many questions after watching this movie for free on Tubi.tv. you can watch it here. https://tubitv.com/movies/484029/the_quiet?utm_campaign=web-sharing please watch it and we can start discussing everything that is wrong with this movie starting with the rotary phone scene.

I was at the live recording of this episode, and found myself surprised by how much of the conversation centered on what exactly this movie was saying, as opposed to how it was saying that. My own interpretation of the movie is a bit different in places from what June and Jason said, but I felt like I needed to come here to provide some counterpoints to what Paul and Casey said. Team "Sanity" seemed to view this purely as a horror story. In doing so, they missed the obviously intended, although less than perfectly executed, message of the movie. I thought it was clear that the movie was, broadly speaking, the story of a person who had a traumatic, repressive childhood, was forced to abandon her inner child, forced to abandon her means of addressing her issues, and then grew into a repressed adult. As an adult, she recovers her means of dealing with her issues, and escapes toxic influences. While doing so, she is able to reintegrate her whimsical and free-spirited personality traits. Fred, and his intervention in her life, is meant to serve as an allegory of sorts for how this might happen. Fred is, like Jason said, basically pure id. He also takes on the traits(e.g. the English accent) of the father Elizabeth wishes was present and supportive. He also has the mindset of the 5-6 year old boys Elizabeth would have known at the age Fred first appeared. Thus, he is in some regards tailored toward what the younger Elizabeth would want or expect from a supportive friend. However, as a consequence of being pure Id with a stereotypical little boy's attitude, Fred's attempts to help aren't as productive, exact, or direct as they could be. In this way, Fred and his actions are a metaphor for how a traumatized, repressed person's mind tries to deal with those issues. People dealing with those issues aren't, at least most of the time, going to address them in the same direct and logical way they would address a physical injury. Their brain will come up with ways of coping, but those methods will be messy and often unsuccessful. To wit, the part of them dealing with the issue will be mostly subconscious and similar to Fred in its approach and effectiveness, albeit in a less over-the-top way. Fred, as Elizabeth's means of helping her resolve these issues and embrace her inner child, is messy and often misguided in his actions. However, he does eventually lead her towards resolving them. One example of him actually helping her do so was with Mickey. Mickey saw her breaking from the norm and liked it. Although he misunderstood the situation and turned out to be a bit crazy himself, his reaction showed Elizabeth that she could find people to accept and embrace her for breaking the repressive norms forced on her. Thus, he helped her move towards being an independent person who embraced her own weirdness. Paul said he thought it was a bit lackluster that Mickey was only "an option" for her at the end, but his being so was entirely the point. The movie shows Elizabeth becoming an independent woman and, as such, she wouldn't need to go from one guy to another. She would need to be able to accept herself and live on her own. Mickey showed her that she could do so without sacrificing the possibility of relationships, even if he wasn't exactly perfect for her. As for the issue of what Fred is, I take something of a middle ground between what we heard on the podcast. I think it is undeniable that Fred is tied to Elizabeth's mind. As such, he has taken on her id, repressed whimsical/childlike traits, subconscious impulses to rebel, and some of her memories. One sign of this is in the letter he writes that is supposedly from Charles. In order to write that letter, he would have to know things about their relationship and how Elizabeth would want Charles to view those parts of their relationship. Those things happened while Fred was trapped. If Fred were some completely independent being, he couldn't have known what to write. Further, at a salient moment late in the move, we see that he does indeed have traits of Elizabeth's hitherto repressed inner child. Elizabeth breaks a window and says "I love those window breaking noises!" Fred did the same earlier in the movie during a flashback. So, we see that as Elizabeth breaks free from her repressed state, she is integrating and expressing those attitudes that could previously be expressed only by a proxy. With that said, I think there is also a Monsters Inc.-esqe thing happening here. I think Fred and the other imaginary friends are meant to be independently existing beings that can move from child to child when their job is done, but they take on the attitudes, memories, etc. that the child is trying to deal with. This ties into how they are metaphors for how people respond to mental illness, trauma, repression, etc. Many people have such issues and may react to them in similar ways, but ultimately each individual is unique. Consequently, their defense mechanisms are tailored to their unique experiences. The imaginary friends similarly tailor themselves to the unique experiences of whichever child they are with. So, ultimately, Fred isn't just some completely independent being, but he isn't just an avatar doing the things Elizabeth was actually doing herself. This movie had its fair share of flaws in how it attempted to execute the plan its filmmakers had. The film didn't do a good enough job at establishing the "rules" of Fred, and Fred's motive was not always obvious enough through his over-the-top, often destructive actions. The movie is very flawed in that regard. With that said, the movie had more laughs than Paul gave it credit for. The restaurant scene, for example, was comedy gold. Ultimately, the ending left me glad I saw this movie, despite large portions that simply weren't as well executed as they could have been. So... #Team Fred