Nerd Lunch

Michael and Jess talk about Bela Lugosi as Dracula in Tod Browning's 1931 classic, but also the famous vampire's children: Gloria Holden as Dracula's Daughter and Lon Chaney Jr as Son of Dracula.  But first, discussion of other horror (or horror-connected) movies: Gretel & Hansel (2020), The Midnight Meat Train (2008), The Sadness (2021), The Belko Experiment (2016), The Mean One (2022), and Poor Things (2023).

Having experienced the extravagance of Moonraker, Michael, Rob, and Karen are not upset at all when the Bond series goes back to basics in For Your Eyes Only. John Glen makes his directorial debut, Roger Moore returns as an age-appropriate Bond, and there are plenty of twists and turns with Carole Bouquet (sigh), Julian Glover, Topol, and... is that Charles Dance?

Michael, Rob, and Pax revisit Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes reboot to see if it's as bad as conventional wisdom and our panel's own memories say that it is.

Michael and Jacob Bean-Watson talk about Fox's final effort to get a Planet of the Apes TV series going, this time with a Saturday morning cartoon on NBC. (Michael probably says CBS in the discussion, but that was the live-action show. Fox partnered with a different network for the cartoon.) Return to the Planet of the Apes featured animation by Jonny Quest creator Doug Wildey and the voices of Austin Stoker (MacDonald in Battle for the Planet of the Apes) and Fred Flintstone himself, Henry Corden. There are plenty of problems with the cartoon, but also lots of fun. Especially when Jacob and Michael spontaneously create their own Planet of the Apes sitcom.

Michael, Rob, Pax, and Evan wrap up this month's Lounge with talk about Red Dead Redemption 2, revisiting Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Gran Turismo, Meg 2, the Scream movies, more Elvis flicks, The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story, Season 2 of Reacher, Lupin, The Gilded Age, retirement plans, old technology, finishing the Philip Marlowe novels, Middlegame by Seanan McGuire, Star Trek: Memory Prime by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Christmas heist movies, Noelle, The Mean One, Poor Things, manufactured backstories in movie series, May December, Knock at the Cabin, Apostle, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and the Legendary MonsterVerse, Echo, Columbo villains, Hercules movies, the DC Cinematic Universe, and adaptations of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Michael, Rob, Pax, and Evan - yes, Evan! - sit around talking about neckties, JFK, the Script Apart podcast on Midnight Mass and Mission: Impossible, the Planet of the Apes, Rob’s new car, ice cream, salad dressing, vampire hairstyles, an oral history of Nickelodeon, Meddling Kids, variations on A Christmas Carol, Godzilla Minus One, Little House on the Prairie, American Nightmare, Mickey7, The Dresden Files, Changing the Way We See Native America, Brambly Hedge, Miss Marple, and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Michael and Jacob Bean-Watson watch the short-lived, but (let's just spoil it) excellent live action Planet of the Apes TV series starring Roddy McDowall, Ron Harper, James Naughton, and Star Trek's Mark Lenard. 

Michael, Rob, Kay, and Robert Zerbe look back at their favorite movies, shows, and books of 2023, check in on their pop culture predictions and resolutions from the year, and make new ones for 2024.

Michael, Rob, and Pax finish their exploration of the classic Planet of the Apes series with the fifth and final entry, Battle for the Planet of the Apes. There are budget issues and a confusing timeline to talk about, but also some great characters and cool dilemmas. 

Michael, Rob, and Karen Flieger kick off the new year with one of the most infamous Bond movies. James Bond goes to space and pigeons do double-takes in the over-the-top, Star Wars-inspired Moonraker. Is it fun? Is it garbage? Or is it both?

Happy New Year! We took a little break from our Apesathon during the holidays, but we're back with the penultimate entry in the original series: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. It's a bold, challenging movie with some things to say about power and the civil rights movement. It also has a couple of endings and some continuity issues. Which all means that there's plenty to talk about.

Michael and Jess talk about the first three movies in Universal's Invisible "Man" series: The Invisible Man (1933), The Invisible Man Returns (1940), and The Invisible Woman (1940). Including that last one turned out to be a controversial decision, so we talked about that, too.

Merry Christmas! On this 25th day of December, we're sharing our 250th episode of After Lunch and it's a jolly one. Michael and Rob are joined by Pop Culture Retrofitters Michael DiGiovanni and Christian Nielsen to nominate and vote on their favorite movie and TV Santas. We've made our lists and checked them twice; it's time to decide who is the best representation of Santa Claus. 

Wrapping up this season's series of Sleigh Bell Cinema reruns, Michael and Rob talk about one of their favorite Christmas movies, Love Actually. The movie's celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, so we're ending these reruns by showing it some love (while also talking about its faults).

We’re down to our last two Sleigh Bell Cinema re-runs for this season and these are biggies. Today it’s one of Michael's family’s absolute favorites: a movie that they cannot safely get through the holiday season without watching. We’re talking about Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen in White Christmas. And since it’s such a tradition with Michael's family, it’s appropriate that he talked about it with his wife Diane.

It's a clinker! This last week before Christmas we have three final Christmas Spirit movies to discuss and they’re all biggies. This first one is the cable classic A Christmas Story from 1983 and talking with Michael about it is the one and only Paxton Holley.

This episode will be the last of our daily releases for the month. From here to Christmas we’ll be going every other day. But we think we’ve saved the best for last. Not the best conversations necessarily. Those have all been great and so will these. But like Home Alone yesterday, these next few movies are some of Michael's favorite holiday films. True classics like While You Were Sleeping, which Michael talked about with his friend Erik Johnson.

Yesterday we shared an episode where Evan Hanson and Michael talked about the movie Krampus, where a kid gets irritated with his family and then has to defend his home from malignant forces. That’s also what happens in today’s movie as Michael and his son David discuss the classic, Home Alone.

Yesterday we shared an episode where Chad Young and I talked about the Christmas slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night in which a young man has a twisted image of Santa as a being who ruthlessly punishes the naughty. Because of that, I mentioned in the episode that it would make a good double-feature with the 2015 movie Krampus, which is also about a vengeful holiday spirit who punishes the naughty. So that’s the movie that Evan Hanson and I talk about in this episode.  It stars Adam Scott and Toni Collette, is occasionally funny, occasionally scary, and as Evan points out, actually pretty important.

Yesterday we got a little dark with Bad Santa, but today we’re getting really dark with our favorite Christmas slasher movie, Silent Night, Deadly Night. Talking with Michael about it is Chad Young (aka HorrorMovieBBQ), who knew a lot more about it and its sequels than Michael did. They had a really fun conversation, so don’t be naughty. Give it a listen.