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I've seen people posting photos of the Shadow pinball machine here on the forums and on the HDTGM twitter feed and, as a pinball collector and someone who's interested in the history of pinball, thought I'd offer some insight into this and other relevant games. As I'm sure you know, production companies often sell licensing rights to manufacturers who make toys, video games, clothing and, starting in the late 70's, pinball machines, to tie in to their movies. In order to time the release of these products with the release of the movies, development had to start a year or more ahead of time, so there's often no way to predict if the licensed products will be tied to a hit movie or a dud. We pinball collectors have a joke that the worse the movie, the better the pinball machine. Some of the highest-rated, most sought-after games include The Shadow, Congo and Demolition Man. Others, that aren't quite A-list but are still highly regarded include Barb Wire, and Godzilla (1998). In Michael Shaloub's book The Pinball Compendium, Vol. 3, game designer John Trudeau reveals that his company, Williams, spent a lot of money on the licensing to Congo but none of the designers wanted to work on it. Finally, it got to the point where he was forced to design the game and he really hit it out of the park. The Super Mario Brothers and Street Fighter pinball machines are based on the video games, rather than the movies and the Judge Dredd, TMNT machines are based on the comic books. The Spider-Man game was released between the 2nd and 3rd movies. Pinball machines based on movies HDTGM hasn't gotten around to yet include Flash Gordon, Johnny Mnemonic, Krull, and The Flintstones. Of course, the rule doesn't always hold true. The Addams Family, The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean are all great movies with great pinball machines. the original Star Wars trilogy is great, but the three pinball machines based on them (by Hankin, Data East and Sega) are all pretty dull.

When I was no more than maybe 8-9 years old there was a movie that I dared not see, but all my friends of course saw it. The film was called Congo and my friends bragged about how scary it had been. Over 10 years later I still had not seen the movie and when we had an evening to watch a movie my buddies decided that there we should see Congo because they remembered it to be so scary. None of them had seen it in maybe 8-9 years. During the film my buddies began to feel more and more ashame as they realized what a crap movie Congo was, and I could not help but to agree. Congo is a film full of bad things, however, it is incredibly funny, not scary but fun. Tim Curry as a Romanian scientist takes the price but the little gorilla with a computer voice and the evil gorillas are also worth to be horrified and laughing about. In the middle of it all Delroy Lindo pops up as an African military who dislike that people eats his sesame cakes ... Take a look at the Congo, you will not thank me. Keep up the good work.

Paul mentioned this particular scene in the "Congo" episode and I just had to share this story. It's bit of a story, but if anybody is inclined to read it I can say that it is pretty insane. http://jkylemann.wor...ted-a-religion/ Let me know what y'all think.

(I know I'm late on this, but I figured someone would've pointed that out in time for the mini episode.) At the risk of mass eye-rolling and sounding pretentious, I just wanted to point out that on the podcast, you guys kept calling the gorillas "monkeys," when they're actually considered apes. Main difference between the two is that apes don't have tails. (http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/mammals/monkeys-vs-apes.htm) I know most people wouldn't care, but to me, it's kind of like calling a house cat a "tiger." Both are somewhat similar and evolutionarily closely related, but they're not the same.

So many things wrong with this movie, but I'm surprised you guys didn't comment on the incredibly grating nature of Karen Ross' voice. Her tone is trembling, agitated and angry at all times and it drove me nuts. A perfect sampling of this is when she refers to the CIA as "a bunch of loveless sons of BITCHES". Ugh. The five-star reviewer that commended Congo for not using the f-word, boobs or bottoms must have missed the 3 times it was used. Joey Pants exclaims "fucked if I know" and the Tim Curry/Ernie Hudson exchange of "Shut up, you fucking..." "You fucking what?". Oh and there were tons of gorilla boobs and butts.

Diamonds are not actually mined like other ores. Diamonds were originally only found in alluvial deposits after being pushed to the surface and carried away through erosion. The first diamond found in Africa was found on the banks of a river near Hopetown, South Africa and was just thought to be a pebble. It was a 21.25 carat diamond now known as the Eureka diamond. Finding a diamond on the ground may be the only accurate thing in this movie.