Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: I Come in Peace

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, we have a
fun one here for you. This is a Christmas episode
from last year in which we discuss the nineteen ninety
sci fi action film I Come In Peace. This is
an explosion filled, muscle filled action fest that yes does

(00:28):
take place at Christmas and has at least some subtle
Christmas themes going on in it, but mostly explosions and muscles.
So let's dive right in.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be
talking about the nineteen ninety sci fi action cop movie
I Come In Peace, starring the one and only Dolph Lundgren.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
That's right, aka Dark Angel. That was I think the
international title for it, and it was released in the States.
Is I Come in Peace? I Come in Piece as
the title that I was exposed to as a kid.
You see it on like the other trailers that would
be on your VHS rental or I think I would
see the poster art and I was always really intimidated

(01:28):
because it had this like really scary looking, like giant
dude with like long white, like white blonde hair, very
serious demeanor, and yeah, he's he's from space and he
is here to deal drugs, and I don't know that
anything can possibly stop him.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
So it's funny. I recall no awareness whatsoever of this
movie when I was a kid, which is strange to
me because it seems like exactly the kind of movie
I have thought was cool would have remembered and would
have sought out when I was, you know, eight or whatever.
But I don't remember this one. The Dolph Lundgren movie

(02:10):
I do really remember, though I never actually saw it.
I just have the cover of the VHS box burned
into my brain. Is a later one from nineteen ninety
six called Silent Trigger, where he's just holding this ridiculous
looking gun with like bullets that are the size of
crossbow bolts.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Silent Trigger, is that a thing getting?

Speaker 3 (02:32):
I don't know. Is it like the trigger doesn't make
a noise. I have no idea what it's about. It's
just Dolph Lundgren looking very grim, and I think he's
got headphones on or maybe ear muffs, because maybe the
trigger is too loud and that's the problem, and the
plot is about how he wants to achieve a silent
trigger so he can take the ear muffs off.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Well, Dolph never had any trouble looking grim, serious like
that's that's pretty much one of his his trademarks. The
interesting thing about the movie we're gonna be discussing today
is that he gets a little more room to flex
his acting muscles. And to understand, that was one of
the things that attracted him to the to the project.
So we're gonna get to see Dolph, you know, do

(03:12):
a little bit of comedy, do a little bit of romance,
be more of a certainly an action hero. He's still gonna,
you know, spinkick the soul out of people, but you
know he's gonna maybe try a few other things as well.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
I'm more used to him in Ivan Drago mode, where
he's just if he dies, he dies, But here he
is he's trying to loosen up. He's trying to be
funny and charming and make the same kind of transition
that Arnold Schwarzenegger did from like originally just kind of
like a grim, humorless muscleman like the Terminator to become

(03:48):
more of a charismatic action hero and no offense to
Dolph Lindergrin. I'm not sure if he quite has the
charisma at the ready to make that shift.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, I'm not sure it was entirely a success, but
it'll be fun to talk about here. But yeah, mean,
he barely takes his shirt off in this movie too.
I should mention that's true.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
I think he's got it on pretty much the whole time.
Does it ever come off? I think maybe there's one
scene where he's getting bandaged up or something by a coroner.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
By the way, it's towards the end though, almost as
if they were like, oh man, Doff's been fully closed
this whole picture. Maybe he should take his shirt off
a little bit. And he's like, okay, I will, but
I'm trying to try new things here.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
I love a scene that has a coroner whose main
experience is doing autopsies. They just start rolling for medicine.
But hey, I know why you picked this movie, Rob.
I think I know because you said it has Christmas themes,
and by god, it's not really advertised in the marketing
materials for the movie, but when I saw it, Yes,

(04:52):
this is a Christmas film, so it's perfect for December.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
That's right. We love to cover legit weird Christmas movies
on weird house cinema, like Santa Claus versus the I mean, sorry,
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. We're gonna be I think
we're gonna be doing another weird Christmas movie straight up
in the week ahead. But we also like to dig
into those Christmas subgenres like Christmas horror. We covered one
of these previously with nineteen eighty three's blood Beat, but

(05:18):
this time we're looking at an even larger holiday subgenre,
the Christmas action movie.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Now, the big one that probably comes to mind for
everyone is die Hard, which I think at least the
first two die Hard movies are both set around Christmas.
From what I recall, I don't know if the trend
continues after that, but I can't really think of another one.
Are there other ones you've got on the list?

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Oh? Yeah, so Lethal Weapon apparently takes place at Christmas
various Shane Black films he loves to go for the
holidays and his action pictures, and so you have plenty
of very mainstream films to consider in this subgenre, and
you know, they're probably influencing each other to some degree.
I wouldn't say these are necessarily weird films. They may

(06:04):
have some weird elements here and there, but you do
get into the weird with films like nineteen ninety twos
Batman Returns, Oh Lord, which definitely employs some Christmas in
its weirdness.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
I always forget that there are Christmas themes in Batman Returns.
But yeah, that's about as weird as a big budget
mainstream movie gets.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, like he kind of pushed it over the line,
and not in a bad way, but in just like
a mainstream way. So we may have to come back
to Batman Returns in the future. I rented this movie
I Come In Peace from Atlanta's own video drome, and
while I was there, I was talking with the owner
and manager, Matt about Christmas action movies. He was talking
about he was he was thinking he was probably going

(06:44):
to put together a selection of Christmas action movies there
in the store, and he pointed out that a fair
number of Hong Kong action films also take place during Christmas,
which I was not aware of. And as for like,
why combine action films in Christmas? He said that he
thinks part of it is just how easy it is
to use the holiday aesthetic to give a picture a

(07:05):
sense of time and place, which I think is pretty valid.
You know, it's like when and where does this take place? Well,
we've got some tensil in the background. Christmas is almost
like artificial depth has been applied to the scene, and
or if you're filming a Christmas you know, roll with it.
But I think another aspect of it is certainly the
juxtaposition between Christmas commercial Christmas that kind of like artificial

(07:27):
souped up sense of joy and happiness with horror sci
fi or just straight up explosions and spin kicks.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
I feel like using Christmas as a time setting for
a movie is almost like using a recognizable location setting
in the world, except it's cheaper to do. You know,
it's easier to just like put up Christmas decorations on
whatever set you'd be using anyway than it is to
shoot a scene in Times Square and have everybody be like,
I know where that is. You know, you have Christmas

(07:56):
decorations in any room and people go, I know what
that is?

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, I can relate. And it's there's also almost a
little bit. You know, you can get some nice subtle
comedy in there a lot easier as well. So okay,
so we have an action film. It is a Christmas
movie and hot on the heels of our RoboCop episode.
This is another Texas movie filmed and this time set
in Houston, Texas. I have to say I always like

(08:22):
it when they just go ahead and set the damn
picture where it's actually filmed, especially if it doesn't really
impact anything, you know, because otherwise they're like, oh, Ironman
can't go to Atlanta. He's got to be someone like,
why can't it Why can't iron Man come to Atlanta? Mm?

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Hm. They actually they go farther than just letting it
actually be Houston. Dulph Lundgren is frequently seen wearing Houston
Astros merchandise, Like when we first see him, he's got
an Astros T shirt on underneath his cutoff denim vest.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah, this the Houston Astros. By the way, it's the
baseball team there. It's like the Astrodome. I had to
look them up though, and I realized, oh, they were
Until nineteen sixty four, they were known as the Colt
forty five. I don't know if their mascot was a
handgun or what have you. But anyway, Oh, I was
thinking malt liquor. Oh yeah, I guess it could go

(09:14):
that way. The Cult forty five is also a gun, right.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
I guess so I've imagined the malt liquor is named
after the gun.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
All right. Maybe it's the malt liquor with the gun.
I don't know. Now. You can also think of I
Come In Piece as a kind of late eighties, you know,
certainly nineteen ninety update of Not of This Earth, the
film we've talked about on the show before, as well
as a predecessor to another film we've talked about in
the show before, nineteen ninety two, Split Second, starring Rutger Howard.
Split Second, especially, I think gave us both We can't

(09:44):
help but compare this to these two films, even though,
to be sure, I Come In Peace arrives in theaters
years ahead of Split Second. But there are so many
things they have in common with each other.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, there is some extremely similar DNA, especially in the
specific buddy cop dynamic of the two movies. Both of
these movies have sci fi elements where ultimately there's like
an alien or monster doing most of the murders. But
then they also have a main cop who is like
a tough, no nonsense butt kicker who doesn't play by

(10:18):
the rules, whose life is shattered by tragedy. The chief
tries to take him off the case he's taken it
too personal, and he gets a new partner who's a
college educated nerd who insists on following the rules, but
then in the third act is converted to the cult
of instinct and breaks all the rules in order to
save the day.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah. To put it in like D and D terms,
it's like, you have your chaotic good and your lawful good,
but by the end, everybody's chaotic good because the message
is chaos gets things done.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
I guess that's right. Your main cop is chaotic good.
I'd say actually, the new partner usually starts off more
as lawful neutral, like they would rather follow the rules
than do the right thing, and then by the end
they are converted to the cult of the chaotic good.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah, so that's the way it tends to play out.
We had a whole offline discussion about well where does
this come from then, like what specific film is being
copied by both Split Second and I come in piece
like some sort of non genre piece. And we were
looking around at different buddy cop movies and the articles

(11:24):
about the evolution of the buddy cop movie, like apparently
it goes all the way back to the forties with Kurosawa,
But I'm not sure, Like where do you where you
find that first really influential example of the he's a
bad cop or not a bad CoP's he plays by
his own rules and he plays by the rules. And
now they're on the same case that kind of odd

(11:44):
couple buddy cop the scenario, Where does that come from?
Exactly what puts that on the map?

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Maybe we'll have to chase down that lead someday, but
I think we don't know the full answer today.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
But also, so this movie, yes, it has every movie
cliche in it. It is it is explosion fest. On
the other hand, there are some elements to it that
I think are kind of clever and do work on
their own terms. I don't want to over sell that
element of it, because this is ultimately a quite dumb movie.
But like the idea of the villains being alien drug dealers,

(12:20):
I don't know, that's just that's just kind of good.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah. The only film I could come across and this
is not this is one. I didn't make it all
the way through it because I thought it was a
little bit rough content wise for my taste at the time.
But nineteen eighty two's Liquid Sky, I believe, also has
some sort of like alien drug dealer kind of scenario.
Are aliens harvesting drugs from human beings? And there are
surely others, so right in with your suggestions, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
You know, I was trying to think of another movie
also that has the dynamic of an alien bounty hunter
or cop chasing an alien criminal on Earth, and I
was like, oh, Critters, Actually, the US Critters has that
dynamic and all. So there is a Jesse Ventura movie
called a Braxis Guardian of the Universe that has the

(13:06):
same dynamic. That movie is quite, i think, unintentionally hilarious,
but nowhere near on the level of like a budget
or filmmaking finesse that I come in pieces.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Yeah, I mean you could even go I think the
Critters example is great. Our aliens in this film also
kind of dressed like the Critters bounty hunters, but you
could even apply it to things like Highlander, where you
have these outsiders powerful outsider beings who are at odds
with each other but in the background of normal life.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
All right. I came up with an elevator pitch for
this one. But Joe, your chris Well is better than mine.
Would you mind reading this?

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Oh? Okay, so I'm doing Criswell predict So, my friend,
can your heart stand the shocking facts about drug pushers
from outer.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yes it is. I come in Peace aka Dark Angel,
and I might suggest you could also call this film
White Christmas.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
Yeah, because of all the heroine Yeah, all right, let's.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Go ahead and listen to the trailer audio. I don't
knowf we'll listen to the whole thing, but we should
at least listen to the first part of it, because
even though most like the posters don't make it look
like a Christmas film, they do push the Christmas button
right here at the top of the trailer. Houston, Texas,
It's Christmas.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
Someone specials come into town. And it's not Santa Claus.
Jack and Jane, a cop who does things his own way.
What are you doing? Shortcut?

Speaker 1 (15:00):
He's sensitive, understanding and kind to strangers.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Very Christmas.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
But all that's about to end.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
Three well armed men have their throats cut before they
can even draw their weapons, and who could possibly move
that fast? Aliens? Hey, what are you crazy? It's true
you need a psychiatrist.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
Jack, your psycho stole a lot of heroin.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
To kill people.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
What are you gonna do?

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Tell them where?

Speaker 3 (15:43):
We're fighting drug dealers from matter space? Uh?

Speaker 1 (15:53):
All right, doesn't that put you in the holiday spirit?
Doesn't that put you in the mood?

Speaker 3 (15:57):
I did listen to the trailer earlier, but I can't
remember what the near is like. Is it the voice?

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yeah, it's well, I don't know if it is the voice.
It might be I didn't check to see if it
was Lafontein on this. But the narration is Houston, Texas.
It's Christmas, someone special that's coming to town. And it's
not Santa Claus.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
This Christmas get drug snaked by a Martian.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
I will put an asterisk by that. We will come
back to this question because I think a case could
be made that it is Santa Claus. Hmmm, okay, all right, Well,
if you want to go see I Come in Piece
aka Dark Angel before proceeding with the rest of the episode. Well,
it's pretty widely available. We watched this on the excellent
twenty thirteen Shout Factory Blu ray release, which we again

(16:42):
ranted from Videodrome. That was pretty solid. It only has
one feature att on it, but it's a good one
and gets a little bit into the making of the film,
and you can also rent it digitally for wherever you
get your movies.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
I think they kind of missed an opportunity with this
disc where, you know, sometimes you have these physical media
releases that mirror plot elements from the movie. So you've
got your you know, your Evil Dead release where the
case is the Book of the Dead bound in flesh.
It's probably not really flesh, but who knows. I think
in this case they should have made the disc razor

(17:14):
sharp on the edges.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah yeah, I think that would have worked, and maybe
the case could have had a little liquid smoke in
it so when you open it and then there you
have some files of alien space drugs in there.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
Oh yeah, yeah, that'd be good.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
All right, let's talk about the people behind this film,
starting with the director. This is someone we've never talked
about on the show before because he is very much
an action guy for the most part. It's Craig R.
Baxley born nineteen forty nine, third generation stuntman and stunt
coordinator turned director. His father, Paul Baxley, worked on such
films as Diamonds Are Forever and the original Star Trek series.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
I think Diamonds Are Forever, the James Bond film that
Sean Connery came back for after he had left the
James Bond franchise for one movie.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
That's the one, yeah now. Craig Craig Garbaxley, the director
of the Sun Here, started out doing stunt work in
the early seventies on films like Diamonds or Forever, but
also The Omega Man that was also from seventy one.
He eventually starts doing stunt coordinator work. By seventy three
or seventy four, he's still doing stunts though he was
Warren Baty stuntman on a few movies, and he worked

(18:31):
steadily in the stunt department for another decade, culminating in
nineteen eighty seven's Predator. This is one where he served
as stunt coordinator and also stunt coordinator second unit. I
can't help.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
But see a few little gizmo's and gadgets in this
movie that may have been inspired by the movie Predator.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, yeah, they're definitely some shared DNA, I think, And
of course both are just bombastic action film sybi action
films of the day. Though I may come back to this.
Predator is a film that had like three times the
budget of this movie.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah. As far as just like straight macho sci fi
action goes, I think Predator is kind of unbeatable.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, yeah, it's right there at the top. So Predator
was let the last film where in which he served
as stunt coordinator. He started directing a few years prior
to Predator with some episodes of TVs. The A Team,
but then directed his first feature film with nineteen eighty
eight's Action Jackson starring Carl Weathers of Predator, Fame and
much more. And now then comes I Come in Peace,

(19:34):
followed up by nineteen ninety one Stone Cold starring Brian Bosworth.
Have you seen this one, Joe.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
No, But I think we talked about it in some
other episode. I don't remember why. It's some kind of
biker connection.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Yep, yep, I've I've watched the Riff Tracks version of
it and it was a lot of fun. Okay, So Baxley,
you know, firmly established himself in the action tough guy
genre of film, but he eventually became a repeat Stephen
King adaptation director with the nineteen ninety nine Storm of
the Century miniseries, two thousand and two's Rose Read, two
thousand and four's Kingdom Hospital. That's King's adaptation of Lars

(20:09):
von Trier's The Kingdom, and he's also apparently directing an
upcoming adaptation of kings The Gingerbread Girl.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
I had a weird experience with Storm of the Century,
which is I remember seeing ads for it before it premiered.
I don't know if it was on TNT or whatever
I think it was. You know, it was made for
TV mini series, and then I didn't actually see it.
But I bought at a used bookstore a copy of
the screenplay that was like published in bound form, so

(20:38):
I like read the teleplay versus Storm at the Century.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
I just never I was never drawn in by because
I couldn't tell what, like, what's the speculative elopment, what's
the gimmick?

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Is it there's like a there's a demon, so a
town that lives on a little island off the coast
of New England. I assume it's said in Maine is
cut off from the main landed by a blizzard, and
in that time a demon comes to the town and
tries to make a get the townspeople to make a
deal with the devil with him. I think he's like,

(21:09):
I will, I will keep killing you until you give
me all your children and then I'll go away.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Okay, that's that's unbranded.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
I don't remember how it ends up.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Well anyway, uh. I guess the important thing to take
home about Backsley at this point with I Come in
Peace is this is a guy who knows stunts, who
knows who knows stunt teams, know what stunts can do,
how to and ultimately how to shoot them, or how
to line up the right people to shoot them. And
so no matter what you say about I Come in Peace,
the explosions are just top notch.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
Everything explodes. If you're done with a location, it's like,
do we need to shoot any more scenes there? I
don't think, so let's blow it up. It's done.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
I'm talking like huge fireballs sometimes filmed like in interior spaces,
where I often get a little wigged out by by
fire effects. And shows these days, you know, have like
a man on fire effect and I'm always like, I
admire it and I'm a little bit afraid for anyone involved.
But like, these are enormous explosions, Like it's just fearsome.

(22:09):
And yeah, a lot of this stuff is they discussed
the extras. I mean, this is the kind of thing
you would today, you would use green screen and or
CGI explosions and a lot of these. They were having
to like shoot the actors in the same shot with
the explosions, and you know, there are all these additional
there's an entire arc to shooting these things, so you
don't like wide out your film while you're also just

(22:30):
making everything explode in an enormous fireball. And I should
add doing all of that safely, I think the most
important thing.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you will not if you watch I
Come in Peace, you will not leave the movie thinking
not enough stuff exploded. That's just not an opinion anybody's
going to have.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, all right, now the screenplay here, there are two
individuals credited. There's Jonathan Tidor, who he hasn't worked on
a lot else. This was his first produce screenplay. I
believe he's directed a little bit as well. But then
the other writer is someone that's credited is Leonard mass Junior.
But this is a moniker for David Cope born nineteen

(23:13):
sixty three. So this is of course one of the
most successful screenwriters of the nineteen nineties, and beyond having
worked on ninety two's Death becomes her ninety three's Jurassic
Park to a lesser extent, ninety four is the Shadow,
ninety six is Mission Impossible. Then you got the Lost World,
Jurassic Park. Other films like Panic Room in twenty two

(23:33):
thousand and two, Spider Man in two thousand and two,
War of the Worlds in two thousand and five, and
also the two most recent Indiana Jones movies. He's also
directed a little bit as well.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
When do we get to Dolf take you a look
at golf?

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Come on, all right, all right? Dolph Lundren plays Detective
Jack Kane. I don't really don't even have to introduce
Dolph all that much here, but you know, born nineteen
fifty seven. I believe he's about six five. Always hard
to tell with people in entertainment, like what's the actual height,
what's the build height? He's pretty tall, and we have
people in this film that look even taller, and of

(24:06):
course there are ways to trick that, but at any rate,
huge guy, tall guy Swedish made his film debut in
nineteen eighty five's View to a Kill, and he immediately
followed that up with his iconic role of Ivan Drago.
As you mentioned in Rocky four.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
I did not remember that Dolph Lindergren was in a
View to a Kill, though that would make sense because
I know he at some point was the boyfriend of
Grace Jones, who was in View to a Kill.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah, if memory serves, they were no longer dating at
that point, but still knew each other, and she recommended
him for the job, saying like, Hey, you want somebody
stern and huge to stand in the background if your movie,
well you should call my friend Dolph. And they did.
But yeah, certainly by by Rocky four is off to
the races. I mean, very iconic role. If he'd done

(24:55):
nothing else after that, we would still be talking about it.
But then in nineteen eighty seven he played he Man
and the Masters of the Universe adaptation. I remember him
as being being very fun and of course very jacked
in that as well.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
Yeah, I think in that movie, don't they like they're
not just hanging out in Eternia or whatever. They come
to modern day la so he gets to have some
you know what is the eighties.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, Masters of the Universe is one of those films
that it had just had some awesome design choices in
There're some great casting. I love all the villains in
that movie. But even and at the time I was,
I was rather disappointed when we leave Attornia and then
we just do a you know, fish out of water
story with all these goofy scenes of these fantastic characters

(25:39):
interacting with modern life before then going back to Attorney
and having like an awesome showdown.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah, let's go to the galley.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Oh yeah, there's a huge male scene. That's awesome. But anyway,
so he was he was already a huge name by
nineteen ninety. He had just played the title role in
an eighty nine adaptation of Marvel's The Punisher. But as
all these titles suggest, yeah, he was playing the stern,
tough guy with maybe a little bit of humor there
and Masters of the Universe. But apparently what attracted him

(26:10):
to the script is it gave him that chance to
try more things, you know, to try a little comedy,
try a little romance, and in the featurette I mentioned earlier,
the director back so he gave him, gave him a
lot of credit for his professionalism and his performance. So
he was trying new things, but for the most part
moving forward, Dolph would end up sticking mostly to action
and it's still active today, often in a lot of

(26:31):
action films. Subsequent movies included the Universal Soldier franchise nineteen
ninety five, Johnny Mnemonic. He pops up in the Coen
Brothers Hail Caesar, and he's also in the Hockerman movies.
I think he's like a Russian submarine pilot. I can't
even remember if he's in the movie or if he
because I think, you know the Coen Brothers film late

(26:51):
Coen Brothers films. Everybody in the world is in those casts.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, yeah, that movie's got a big cast. But yeah,
I did not remember that. That's funny.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
So again Dolf was trying new stuff with this particular spreading.
His wiing was a little bit but one of the
things for me anyway, I don't know if you had
this experience, Joe, It's like, you can't help but compare
this movie to Split Second, which came later, but in
doing so, you can't help but compare Rugger Howard's performance

(27:20):
to Dolph Lungdren's performance. And that's entirely unfair. It's unfair
to compare most actors to Rugger Howard, but yet I
kept doing it.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
Yeah, I mean it's natural for us. I would say
that I wouldn't expect most people who see one of
these two movies to see the other one, and I
wouldn't expect most people who see both to remember both
of them. So the comparison is not like inevitable, but
for weirdos like us, Yeah, yeah, it's kind of hard
to ignore it.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah. This is another thing that comes to mind is
I often remember this film, or at least promotional materials
for it, alongside promotional materials for Eve of Destruction and
have kind of merged them into a single film that
I haven't seen. So I still need to get around
to Eve of Destruction at some point, but I don't
think it's one we could necessarily watch for weird house.

(28:09):
All right, So Dolph is our cop who plays by
his own rules. We have to also have a cop
that plays by the rules, that is Special Agent Rwood
Larry Smith or Agent Smith, played by Brian Benden.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
We do not learn that his name is Urwood until
the very last line of the film.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Yeah, it's a hilarious reveal that they leave until the
very end, but it hits about as well as most
of the comedy in this movie, the intentional comedy.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
So, Brian Benden born nineteen fifty six. You might watch
this movie and say, where have I seen this guy before?

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Well?

Speaker 1 (28:42):
I never watched it, but he was the star of
the HBO sitcom dream On from nineteen ninety through nineteen
ninety six, and he was also in Radio Land Murders
in ninety four. Both of these were things that co
starred Michael McKean.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
That's weird. I haven't seen those things, though he did
somehow seem familiar to me. I must have seen him
in something.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yeah, I think I would just see ads for dream
On or you know, or perhaps if you're trying to
watch the Tales from the Crypt episode, dream On would
be on as the intro and you're like, well, I
guess I got to set through this to get to
the Cryptkeeper. It was not a film that was catering
to me as its audience for sure, but people seem
to quite like it at the time. It's easy to
see looking at this film how this actor went on
to have success and kind of a you know, a

(29:23):
TV sitcom environment.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Yeah, but he's the nerdy new partner. Yes.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Now, of course we also need a love interest, and
that's where we have the coroner, Diane Palone, played by
Betsy Brantley.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
She plays the romantic coroner.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yes, which is fun. I mean, it's a fun idea
and they do it mostly works from a like a
slight comedic standpoint, and she does come off as like
a character who knows her stuff. Like she makes some
vital breakthroughs in the case.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
Credit to Betsy Brantley for delivering some of the most
ludicrous lines in this entire screen, like the scene where
she has to where she asks Dolph Lundergren to promise
her something anything, That was hilarious, and also the scene
where she has to explain how the alien endorphin plot works.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Oh yes, yeah, she's great in that scene as well. Yeah,
the whole idea, we'll come back to the promises aspect
of the plot. That's yes, it doesn't quite work, but anyway,
Brandtle is an American actress, best known for her roles
as the Mother and Princess Bride, So that's John Savage's
mother in that film, as well as supporting roles in

(30:35):
such movies as ninety eight Deep Impact. In nineteen ninety
nine's Double Jeopardy, she was the performance model for Jessica
Rabbit and who framed Roger Rabbit from eighty eight, and
her first big role was opposite Sean Connery in nineteen
eighty two is Five Days One Summer, but her first
credit acting credit is actually for a small part in
Richard O'Brien's Rocky Horror follow up Shock Treatment from nineteen eight.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
I know you've talked about looking at that multiple times.
Of course, I know Rocky Horror, but I've never seen
Shock Treatment.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah. We recently had someone right in suggesting it as well,
so I don't know, I need to give it a shot.
I've never actually watched it. I've seen Rocky Horror so
many times, but I've never watched Shot Treatment. Brandley also
pops up in a nineteen eighty four episode of the
excellent Granada Sherlock Holmes series, and she was previously married
to director Steven Soderberg and later worked with him on

(31:28):
his nineteen ninety six films Schizopolis, and more recently in
his twenty twenty two film Kimmy, which was also written
by Cope. All Right, it's time to get to our
alien drug pusher here.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
What are you gonna do first? Good Alien? Bad Alien?

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Oh we got to go bad alien. Okay, okay, the
reason for the season here, and he's credited as bad
Alien tallic. So Tallick is his name, though I don't
remember them ever calling him that. That's the gig character's name.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
I don't recall that coming up.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Played by Matteus Hughes born nineteen fifty nine. I have
to just say again this is a character that scared
me a bit as a kid, and watching the film
still a bit scary. He's still quite a screen presence.
I've seen his height listed as anywhere between six five
and six eight, and he's wearing lifts in this alongside
you know, various camera trick or to just make him

(32:21):
look like an absolute giant.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Another freaky thing they do to him is they, I
guess it must be contacts or something. They cloud his
eyes over so he can't really see where he's looking.
Like his eyes are kind of foggy, and he speaks
in this this creepy horse whisper, and basically the only
line he says in the movie is repeatedly telling people
I come in peace right before killing them.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
It's great. It's like you get the sense that this
is the only thing he knows how to say in
like Earth language, maybe he can say to multiple Earth languages,
and he doesn't necessarily even know what it means. He
just knows that it's something that you can say to
a hostile human being to moment momentarily give them pause
so you can blow them up or drugs snake them. So.

(33:07):
Hughes is a German born Venice Beach bodybuilder who initially
pops up as an uncredited extra in the nineteen eighty
seven cult themed Dragnet movie, but then he followed this
up with small roles and eighty seven's No Retreat, No
Surrender eighty eights Big Top Peewee. He plays the lion
tamer in that, but then he pops up in another
movie that we've we've talked about the cover art for

(33:29):
this one, because he's the other muscle dude fighting Jorge
Rivero on the cover on the VHS art for nineteen
eighty eight Fist Fighter. Oh.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Jorge Rivero is the star of Conquest, and many listeners
may also know him as the villain from the movie Werewolf.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
He's Yury, Yeah so Matteas Hughes' other credits include ninety
one's Kickboxer, two ninety one Star Trek six The Undiscovered Country.
I believe he's a Klingon in that I'm assuming like
maybe kind of a background us will cling on. And
then he's also in two thousand and eight puppet Master
The Littlest Reich. Again, I love him in this. It's

(34:08):
one of these roles where I guess I haven't seen
him in a lot. So this character feels to me
like very disconnected from the rest of cinema, Like he
is an actual seven foot alien who has just popped
out of a crater to start harvesting human brain juice
for space drucks. Now that's the bad alien. We also
have a good alien by the name of Azak. Again,

(34:31):
I'm not sure we ever hear his name, but this
alien is played by another very tall individual. Jay Bilas
born nineteen sixty three former pro basketball player and coach
who currently works for ESPN as a college basketball analyst.
He had no acting experience for this, but he was
six ' eight. So they said, hey, how would you

(34:51):
like to shave the front part of your head and
put some contacts in and run from some explosions and
he gave it his all. So given all of that,
given how green, he was like, that's a pretty good job.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
So when he's on one of those shows on ESPN
where the guys are yelling at each other, do they
bring this up at him? They're you know, they're like,
oh yeah, yeah, uh huh. The astros are good this year.
How about you go and starring I Come in Peace too?

Speaker 1 (35:18):
I don't know. I hope he's proud of it. I
hope he should be.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
Proud of his haircut in this movie is solid. There
are multiple mullets in I Come in Peace, but this one,
this one is scullet.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
Yeah, it's hair. The hairstyle is apocalypse in the front,
party in.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
The back, yep, yep. He also has cloudy eyes.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
All right, these are the main characters that are in play.
So I'll try and run through some of the other
actors a little a little more speed. But a we
have some criminal elements human criminal elements that pop up.
The first is Victor Manning, played by Sherman Howard born
nineteen forty nine, American actor of stage and screen, perhaps
best known for playing the zombie and headphones bub from

(35:58):
the eighty five Romire movie Day of the Dead. He
also pops up An eighty nine's Lethal Weapon two, as
well as various TV episodes, including shows like Seinfeld and
Deep Space nine.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
He plays an incredibly smug gang boss in this of
a weird gang that we'll discuss more as we go on.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
Yeah. Yeah, we don't see as much of them as
I would have liked. It's good that it's it's pretty
pretty fun and over the top lot.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Last, you know, regarding the bad guys, we've talked about
movies before where unfortunately you have some trouble telling the
different characters apart. I don't have that trouble with the
main characters in this movie, but the villains. There are
like seven villain characters in the yuppie gang slash the
Feds in this movie that all look exactly the same. Fortunately,

(36:42):
you do not need to be able to tell them
apart to follow the plot.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of bad guys in suits in
this film, and ultimately they're not a part of the
final showdown. Another key character is Inspector Switzer. This is
our villainous federal agent who's looking into the whole Alien
murders angle, played by David Ackroyd born nineteen forty, actor
of State, screen and TV. His other credits include eighty

(37:07):
three's Cocaine One Man Seduction, eighty three's Deadly Lessons, and
nineteen eighty six is a Smoky Mountain Christmas starring Dolly Parton.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
Ow Yeah, does he play a hard nosed federal agent
in that?

Speaker 1 (37:20):
I hope? So, I hope So Sorry.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
To Dolly, I'm gonna bust up this whole operation.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Now. On the criminal element side of things, we also
have another guy who I'm uncertain if he's the main
boss or the secondary boss, but he's His name is Warren.
We only encounter him in a skyscraper.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
He's the number two. He's so like the main boss
of the villain of the gang in the movie, leaves
after the first scene. He never comes back in the movie.
He's just we hear about him being in Rio, enjoying
the sun and the beach while all the other characters
are suffering under the alien boot heel, and so he
leaves this other guy, Warren in charge.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah, played by Sam Anderson More nineteen forty seven. And
if you're a movie go over of a certain age,
you probably see this actor and you're like, I've seen
this guy before, but I just can't place him. I
suspect that the reason is that he's the principal in
nineteen ninety four is Forrest Gump.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
Yep, I had I spent several minutes with it pause
to just trying to think without looking it up, who
is this guy? And then I realized, Yep, he's the
He's the creepy principle, and.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
He's done some other TV work as well. I think
he's also in Critters too. Oh okay, cool, but certainly
Forrest Gump. That's a big pop culture footprint to leave there. Now.
We talked about Split Second earlier. We mentioned Split Second.
Interestingly enough, there is one individual. There may be some
more in the deeper in the credits, but there's one
core member of the cast who connects these two pictures,

(38:50):
and that is the wonderful character actor Michael J. Pollard,
who lived nineteen thirty nine through twenty nineteen. He played
the rat Catcher in Split Second, and in this movie
he plays a snarling criminal informant by the name of
Boner who's essentially Gollum. He's essentially Gollum.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
Yeah, who I will add plays no role whatsoever in
the plot. He's just there to like get ruffed up
by Dolph Londegren. And then Dolph Londergren, unrelated to his
interaction with this guy, has an epiphany about the case.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah, it's weird that it goes like that. It's almost
like they're like, like, look, we got Pollard for a day.
We got to use him, find a way slot him
in there somewhere.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
He just happens to be, fortunately, standing next to a
pool table, and then Dolph Londergren looking at the pool
table is like, aha, aliens are throwing murdered discs through
the air.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
But Pollard's always great though, as other films include sixty
sevens Bonnie and Clyde. He's an eighty eight Scrooge for
a Christmas tie in, and he's also in Rob Zombie's
House of a Thousand Corpses from two thousand and three.
All right, now, this is a small role, but I
have to point out that al Leong is in this
playing the luggage salesman. There's like, essentially it's like a
drug drop kind of a situation. Born nineteen fifty two,

(40:10):
small role, but I think film fans will recognize this
guy because he plays the Wingkong hatchet man from nineteen
eighty six is Big Trouble in Little China.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
He's another one of these recognizable character actors from a
bunch of eighties movies. A lot of other people might
remember him from die Hard.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, he popped up and die Hard he's ginghis Khan
and Bill and Ted from eighty nine. He's an lethal weapon,
longtime stump man as well. One of these guys is
kind of kind of a low key action film legend,
I think, because you just see him pop up in
so many things. And he had a signature look and
it had kind of like a receding hairline, but long hair,
so you know, glorious mullet and then a really robust mustache.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
Powerful mustache, really strong.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Yeah. So sometimes he's just standing in the background, other
times he's screaming with a hatchet in his hand. Does
great work.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
You attached a picture of him in the outline where
he's like squatting in the foreground and then you can
see the Hollywood Hills in the background and the Hollywood
sign is under his thigh.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Glorious. I hope he used this as his main promotional
image for many years. I think he's still active too
great now. This we generally don't mention like special effects coordinators,
but I will mention real quick that Bruno ven Zebrowick
is the individual who had the honors on this movie.
Still active and highly cited by Baxley in the feature

(41:30):
atte is a key part of the film's success, you know,
from a stunt and production standpoint, So I'm looking at
him a little bit. He worked on Predator and also
such films as John Carpenter's The Thing, Return of the Jedi,
David Lynch's Dune Action, Jackson Roadhouse, Alien three, and die Hard.
So again, the stunt and and explosive effects pyrotechnics pedigree

(41:52):
of this film is just you know, can't deny it.
And then finally coming to the music, I got kind
of excited when I was previewing the the credits for
this one because we have we have Yon Hammer on
this born nineteen forty eight. This is the Czech American musician, composer,
and record producer best known for two tracks. Really he's

(42:13):
done a lot of work, but there's the theme song
to Miami Vice, the TV show, and there's another track
he did for Miami Vice titled Crocket's Theme. Both of
these from or from the eighties TV series. Crockett's Theme
especially is just an incredible track. It's just oh, it's
just so perfect. It's just this glittering, upbeat synth masterpiece

(42:35):
you know that just just bleeds Eighties directly into your veins.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yeah, it's it's strong, it's moody. It's got a kind
of a surprising and moody chord progression, but also the
bouncing rhythmic synthesizer tone in it. I feel like it's
something that has tried to be copied later by anything
that is evoking the spirit of the eighties. Even like
the Grand Theft Auto games I think have some musical

(43:02):
score in them that is trying to copy this feeling.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
Yeah, absolutely, it's incredible. I highly recommend listening to it.
And even the Miami Vice theme song like that one
earned him I believe two Grammys, So highly successful guy.
Other scores include two episodes of Tales from the Crypt.
I'm not sure exactly which one off off the top
of my head. He did night Rider two thousand. Some

(43:26):
of his music appears on nineteen ninety two is Beyond
the Mind's Eye, which was one of these like early
like CGI psychedelic visionary art kind of things he could
order off an advertisement on television. And he also scored
nineteen ninety six as beast Master three The Eye of Braxis.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
Who is Braxis?

Speaker 1 (43:45):
I don't know, but he's got an eye. I was
trying to be just like what beefy guy plays Praxis
in this, and I couldn't tell that there is a Praxis.
There's a voice of Braxis, So maybe it's some sort
of a special effects god sort of situation.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
I briefly forgotten. Then, just remember that we covered beast
Master two through the Portal of Time on this show.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Oh yeah, that one was great wings Houser.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
And that one speaking of he Man coming to La
that's another one.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
All right. Let's let's get into the plot of I
Come in Peace.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
All right. So the opening sequence we have ringing synth
bells and a lonely city street late at night. They're
trying to establish that moody eighties, you know, Neon signs.
In the background, dark city atmosphere. A car is driving
down the street. It's a luxury car. We see the
driver and he looks like one of Patrick Bateman's friends.

(44:46):
And this will be a recurring theme. Fancy suit, smug face,
looks like a rich, aggressive, mean guy. Driver of the
car activates some blinking futuristic panel on his dashboard.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
What is it?

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Is a CD player and he inserts a gleaming silver
CD into the slot. What's he listening to? Can you guess?
It's a new hit called Hark the Herald Angels sing.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
He had to get that hit of the Christmas music.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
So this guy from the Bateman crew, he's cruising through
the deserted city streets. It's nighttime. He's jamming to his
Christmas carols until the music starts skipping. The song sounds
totally scrambled, like the notes are playing at double speed,
random order, that kind of thing. And the driver is
very angry. He needs his Hark and he complains. He's like,

(45:36):
you pay seventy thousand dollars for a car and then
they give you a broken CD player. Then suddenly the
CD shoots out of the slot at him violently. He startled,
and he nearly collides with a bus at an intersection,
swerves to avoid an impact, and ends up crashing his
car into a lot full of Christmas trees. So they're
hitting you with a lot of Christmas right at the top.

(45:58):
Almost makes you wonder if this whole prologue here was
like added on to it really emphasize the Christmas themes.
But I guess probably not, because we're about to meet
a crucial character. So he gets out of the car,
he complains some more, and then to make things even worse,
suddenly a fireball descends from out of space and obliterates

(46:19):
his car, leaving only a flaming crater in its place.
And the driver looks on as out of the flaming
crater comes a man dressed in black with gloves, a
long dark coat, and some kind of technological gadget strapped
to his arm like the Predator. He's got long blonde hair,
his eyes are foggy, like they're clouded with cataracts.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Yeah, and they shoot him rising up out of this
crater like he's like he's a redwood tree. You know,
it just seems like he's at least eight or nine
feet tall. It's great.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
So the man from the sky approaches the driver and
looms over him. He opens his lips and says, in
a hoarse whisper, I come in peace. Cut to something
else next week, Get an infiltration. There is a dude
sneaking into some kind of building through air ducts, cutting
through metal grating with a torch, climbing around in the

(47:10):
duct work. This is also a favorite theme of eighties
action movies. They love putting a guy climbing through the
ventilation shafts. So what's going on here? Well, it's a heist.
This is some kind of police building. I think they'd
later call it a federal warehouse. An infiltrator sneaks in.
He sneaks into an evidence room and then in there

(47:31):
he runs into a police officer and kills him with
a throwing knife. He steals the officers. I was thinking
at first he stole his clothes and his badge, but
I think maybe he just takes his badge or his
name tag, because you know, this police officer's clothes would
have a big knife hole in the front and a
bunch of blood on it.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Yeah, this whole sequence is ridiculous. You know, their standards
sort of nineties Batman s chaos criminals because there's not
ultimately nothing smooth about them. They immediately follow up the
stealth portion of their mission with a seemingly unnecessary murder.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
Right, And so he's disguised as a cop. Now he's
got this other guy's badge and name tag on. He
loads up a briefcase full of these little plastic baggies
of white powder. It looks like he's stealing about thirty
pounds of heroin. And then the killer meets up with
a co conspirator who's been like walking him through the
heist on a on a walkie talkie. Together they go

(48:26):
to the front desk and they sign out to this
suitcase full of drugs, and the guy at the desk
has a righteous mullet. He's like, some must be some party,
ha hahu.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
According to I was looking at a two thousand and
nine DEA press release, and according to that press release,
thirty pounds of heroin might be worth somewhere in the
neighborhood of for like thirty million dollars. So just go
ahead and sign that out. To officers shifty and sauce here.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yes, So on the way out these guys, one of
these guys drops a bag on the staircase in the
lobby of this police building. Somebody is just black joy
to the world, and they leave the building. They pile
into a waiting getaway car. The driver also has a
mullet and is wearing you know, he's dressed like a
Bateman bro. They're driving a luxury sedan, so the themes yet again.

(49:15):
They drive away and then the police building explodes, and
as we said in this movie, everything explodes.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Yeah, just fireballs of unreal proportion. It's amazing.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
But the other guys in the car are like, what
was that, and the infiltrator dude says a little insurance
policy and the guy goes, what the hell for and
he's like, no witnesses experienced criminals here, and then they're
all like, oh, yeah, okay. So next we move on

(49:49):
to a stakeout where we meet Dolph Lindegren's character. This
is Detective Jack Caine. He's sitting in a car with
an earpiece listening to a drug deal unfold at what
looks like an empty nearby nightclub and he's got a
man on the inside wearing a wire. This guy on
the inside is Turner his partner, who is undercover as

(50:11):
a drug buyer. And the gang Turner is doing this
deal with is called for some reason, the White Boys.
Their thing is that they are yuppies, So this is
like a criminal street gang that distributes heroin throughout Houston.
But they all have Ivy League degrees and they drive
sports cars and they look like a Brooks Brothers catalog.

(50:34):
So it's like, is this one of the concepts of
the gangs from the Warriors, along with like the baseball guys.
If not, it should have been, Yeah, I agree. And
Victor Manning, the leader of the gang, is giving a
speech to Turner about how he once thought his education
would be his saving grace, but then he got out
of Princeton and he realized nbas were quickly becoming a

(50:56):
devalued commodity. So he says he went back to school
and got another master's in international banking, and then he's
like quizzing Turner, and in character he's like, what university
did you attend? And Turner says a funny but sort
of unrepeatable line, and then before the gang boss here

(51:17):
gets to the point of his story. His preppagoons arrive
with the heroine they stole from the police warehouse. By
the way, this is one of these scenes taking place
on a street where the storefronts are just all apparently
liquor stores and adult movie theaters, and they all have
neon signs.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
He's very convincing. I don't know if they had to
build this or they just found this in Houston.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
So they let Turner see the merchandise. Yep, that's a
bunch of drugs. And then he opens up a briefcase
full of money, and Victor Manning goes on with his speech.
He's like, you know, if you don't have at least
a master's degree these days, you could find yourself really desperate.
You might have to turn to a life of crime,
or even worse, become a cop. And meanwhile, right next door,

(52:00):
two guys in duster coats run into an unrelated liquor
store and start robbing it. They're roughing up customers, they're
pointing a shotgun at the shop owner, and Dolph Londegren
sitting in his car he sees this happening. Uh oh,
Jack Kaine is supposed to be listening in on the
wire for Turner to make the deal so they can
make the arrests. But now there are people in peril.

(52:23):
What's a dolf gonna do. Of course, he's gonna go
administer some roundhouse kicks, So he drops his earpiece. He says,
keep talking, guys, and he goes and he roundhouse kicks
one of the guys in the in the store and
then shoots the other one. And unfortunately, while Kanine is
busy doing that, not listening, the gang boss reveals that
they know Turner's real identity. They've been playing him this

(52:45):
whole time. They shoot Turner, they take the money he brought,
and then Victor Manning leaves the scene, telling his goons
to make sure they get quote every grain of that heroin.
But after the boss leaves, while the preppy henchmen are
finishing up with the scene, a new player arrives and hey,

(53:06):
it's the alien from that flaming crater. He comes up
to the henchman, he says, I come in peace. Then
he attacks them with an alien murder disc that shoots
out of his wrist. Rob do you want to describe
the death disk attack?

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Yeah? I really love the idea of the death discs,
and ultimately it's a lot of fun in the movie.
I enjoyed the sci fi explanation that they get into
about how they work. More on that in a bit,
but let's face it, the execution of the effect is adequate.
You know, it doesn't take you out of the movie,
but it's very clearly just a CD spinning that they shot.

(53:45):
Watching the movie, you really want this thing to be
something more like a cross between the tall Man's spheres
from Phantasm and the Predators killer Frisbee. I don't remember
if he had the frisbee in Predator one or if
that's just a Predator two thing, but that's Predator two. Yeah, Okay,
so you want it to be like that INSTEADY weirdly
seems to hit with more blunt force impact than slicing terror, So,

(54:08):
you know, maybe a little disappointing in that regard, but
otherwise still effective. You still buy it.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Yes, On the other hand, I mean it is quite
clearly just a CD.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Yeah, and it kind of deflates it a bit too
when we had that opening scene with the CD player
and the CD flying out. That's not doing that. It's
not doing the effect any favors.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
Yeah, it's a strange. It's strange to offer that visual comparison.
It's almost like the alien got the idea of using
a CD from that scene. Yeah, So after defeating the henchman,
the alien steals the heroine and leaves the alien one
of those drugs, and then Dolph Lundgren comes in to
find his partner dead. So in the next scene, police

(54:50):
are all over the place, so we kind of get
a walk through. Somebody says, looks like somebody put the
White Boys through the Queason art, I guess, referring to
the cuts from the fly disc and Jack Kaine's boss
arrives to give the classic reprimand of the rogue cop
by the chief monologue. So we get eye out to
break your neck. You're taking it to personal. You're a

(55:12):
loose cannon. You're off the case, go on vacation. That's
in order. We're not yet to meet your new partner,
but that will come in the next scene.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Yeah, absolutely, by the books.

Speaker 3 (55:23):
Now, in the opening scene, we don't necessarily get a
great look at the character of Jack Kane because he
is sitting in a car. And then the later action
scene'es in like a dark store where they've shot out
the light. So let's take in Kane in his full
glory here.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
Yeah, I'd say he's essentially a walking big and tall
store rack in this film. Like I just kept being
shocked by just like how much clothing he's wearing, and
you know, not just that he's not shirtless, but like
it's like, wow, that's a lot of clothes. He had
to go to the big and tal shot for that.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
That's specially in this movie. He does not have his
Ivan Drago blonde Frankenstein haircut. He's got brown hair and
I don't know what you call this hairdoo, but it's
more normal looking. It's sort of done up a little
bit elvisy, but with a I don't know, later more
eighties kind of style. His outfit includes what looks to
me like a black denim cutoff of vest. I think

(56:14):
it used to be a jacket or long sleeve shirt,
but with the sleeves removed, the badge mounted on the vest.
And then this is over a black Houston Astro's T shirt.
So it's a I thought, an amusing look. But another
thing I want to get to is that a lot
of movies of this kind will introduce some sort of

(56:35):
little personality quirk to their main cop character to distinguish
them ever so slightly from the other butt kicking, loose
cannon cops who get results that we may have encountered
in our movie Going Lives. For example, with Rutger Howard's
character Harley Stone in Split Second, the quirk was do
you remember what it.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Was, Rob? Oh, he loved coffee and he loves sweets.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Yeah, it's a sweet tooth candy and he put tons
of sugar in his coffee. Yeah. So that was an
interesting pick. And honestly, I think the quirk they pick
for Dolph Lindegren's character here is kind of weak. The
quirk is that he never breaks a promise. It is
something that is universally true of his personality and everybody

(57:20):
knows this about him. Odd choice, Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
I mean it feels kind of mythic or folkloric in
its own way, but it also never feels real either.
There's like the scene with his on again, off again
girlfriend which he's like, I wish you would make a
promise to me one day, like you make promises to
other people, and he's like, I don't know I'm not
ready to do that yet.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
Yeah, he doesn't do it in the scene. But also
what promises is she aware of him making to other people?
And also isn't keeping promises just a normal thing that
is expected of most honest people, Like I feel like
it would be more notable if a person was known
for breaking a promise every promise they made.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
Yeah, yeah, it seems like the get to come up
with something else with this character, and I mean they
kind of they kind of weave it into the plot
a little bit, but it never really sticks.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
The way it's first introduced is in this scene where
the chief is you know, Chiefs is chewing him out.
He's saying, you're off the case. I command you to
take vacation, and then he says, actually, no, I don't
order you to take vacation. I order you to promise
me you will take all your vacation days because I
know you never break a promise. Jack Caine, Oh, he

(58:28):
got him, He got him. Can't get out of this.
There's no way out unless there is intervention by a
higher power. And then here we introduce the FEDS. The
FBI comes in and Dolph meets the character of Agent Switzer.
An arrogant, domineering FBI agent of the shut up and
do what you're told style. He explains that his job

(58:49):
is to know things, and he's smarter than everybody else
and that regular cops like Dolf are just stupid and
beneath him, and they need to obey what he says.
So Switzer takes Dolph in the bathroom to discuss the
strangeness of the murder scene. It's like, what could have
left these incisions on the victims? And Dolph says, I've
seen a lot of knife wounds, but these were done

(59:10):
by something else. Okay, I mean to be clear, Like
we see the wounds in the movie and that nothing
seems all that remarkable about them.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
Yeah, but also we don't have a weapon.

Speaker 3 (59:23):
Yeah that's right.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
They're like, what could have done?

Speaker 3 (59:26):
Whatever this weapon is, it's the key to understanding what
happened here. So Switzer decides that Cain should be back
on the case. He comes and he tells the chief, Hey,
you know, you've got to put him back on the case,
and the chief complies. But the condition here is that
Cain has to be paired with a new partner, and
Dolph might as well look directly into the camera and

(59:47):
shrug while a zoink sound effect plays. It's like new Partner. Okay,
so it's a classic cop movie pair up. The new
partner is a sharply dressed f BI agent named Larry Smith,
and it's cop oil versus FBI water. Cain is tall,
Smith is short, Cain is buff, Smith is skinny. Smith

(01:00:12):
is by the book. Cain plays by his own rules.
Smith is snooty and stuck up, while Cain is down
to earth. You could have a beer with him. Smith
operates on reason and logic, which the movie implies are
stupid and doomed to fail, while Cain relies on instinct,
which is smart and gets results.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Yeah, there's a whole sequence where they discuss the difference
between relying on your gut and relying on logic and
learning without ever drawing the obvious. I mean, I would
think to everyone, connection between learning and repetition and instinct. Yeah,
like you like, these things go hand in hand. Why
these things like these are falsely separate categories here?

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
Yeah, of course, to the to the extent that instinct
would actually be useful. It's like because of experience. Yeah,
but essentially they're setting it up where like Cain is
a jock and Smith is a nerd, and this movie
hates nerds. Well, actually there are some nerds later on
that we find out are okay, but certain nerds are
not so good. And in the scene where they very

(01:01:15):
first meet in the chief's office, they are immediately clashing
because Smith condescends to Cain. He's like trying to explain
the definition of the word parameters, and Cain is getting mad,
and then they get interrupted when the coroner comes in.
The coroner is Diane Palone, as we mentioned earlier. She
also happens to be Cain's girlfriend or something like that.

(01:01:37):
They are in some kind of ambiguous romantic relationship. Oh
and something I didn't mention before. Apparently Jack Caine went
off the grid for eight days before the nightclubs stakeout,
and nobody knew where he was or if he was
even alive, including his boss and including Diane. Though it's
I don't think it's ever explained why he went dark

(01:01:59):
old this do they ever say.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
We never get an explanation, He never has to explain
what was yeah, and we just kind of forget about
it after a while.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Maybe his reason was just instinct.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Yeah, or maybe he had a really good reason he
made a promise about it. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
Anyway. So Jack and Smith are in the room and
the coroner comes into the scene to explain that the
forensics work is done. The murder weapon was quote razor
thin and razor sharp. It made a deep, straight incision.
I'd have trouble making with the scalpel. And the chief says,
how do you explain it? And the coroner says, I can't,
music sting. Everyone in the room makes ominous eyes at

(01:02:44):
each other. I was laughing out loud here. I'm reminded
of our episode on the cattle mutilation Panic, where it's like,
it's impossible to explain these cuts in the skin being
so straight and precise with earthly technology. Oh and also
the Jack tries to patch things up with Diane after this,
but it doesn't go well. She's mad at him because

(01:03:05):
you know, he disappeared for eight days without talking to her,
and Smith mocks Jack's relationship troubles.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Smith is not likable at first. He thankfully he does
grow on you. But they really come out strong with
the idea that this guy's just unlikable, that we're totally
un team Dolph at this point and can't wait to
lose this guy.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
That's right, So we get to see them clashing again
because they get immediately into some police work. Smith wants
to start off their investigation by reading the coroner's report
and Kine wants to ignore the report and go straight
to the scene of the crime. Smith explains how he
solves crimes according to the quote Switzer Manual. It is

(01:03:45):
a handbook created by his boss, Agent Switzer. And to
be fair, yet that does sound really lame. But the
handbook includes advice such as exploit the knowledge of experts.
Their expertise is essential. And Jack Caine is dismissive of this,
and rightly so. It would be foolish to clutter your
mind with facts about the case. You know, He's you're

(01:04:06):
supposed to go to the crime scene and like get
a vibe, feel it out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
Yeah, just just feel it out. And we see this
all the time in cop shows, right, I Mean, there's
like a cop and he just has to inhabit the scene,
you know, he has to get in the mind of
the killer, put in some headphones and listen to some
music and kind of like have a have a jazz session.
With the crime scene.

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
Yeah, yeah, he has to really feel it. But then, oh,
and then there's some more clashing because the Switzer manual
says that you're supposed to dress professionally. Smith says external
things are very important. They tell people who you are.
And Jack Kane is apparently just not dressed up to standards.

(01:04:48):
But once they get to the crime scene, this dynamic continues.
Jack mark Smith for taking measurements and notes at the
crime scene. What a nerd? Jack says, So it's all clinical. Huh,
what about in stinct? And Smith thinks instinct is no good.
Jack says it works for him. Meanwhile, we're going to
see the arrival of a second man from space. There's

(01:05:10):
like a derelict building where there's a woman sorting through
aluminum cans. Suddenly a fireball hits from above, plows through
a bunch of walls, and a guy dressed like the
first alien emerges, except he has dark hair instead of
blonde hair. And this is the one with the scullet.
This is going to be our good alien.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Yes, who spoiler is hunting the bad alien.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
Right, but we also see the bad alien at work.
We're going to get our first alien heroin attack scene
in a scene structure that will be recreated several more
times in the film The Blonde Alien like he attacks
a bail bondsman in his office late at night, and
he does some kind of weird stuff to his body

(01:05:52):
before murdering him. Rob, do you want to explain the
breakdown of one of these attacks?

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Sure? Sure, this is how it goes down. So first,
our evil alien drug pusher is going to rip the
shirt open a little bit, and then he's going to
use sort of like a it's kind of like a tentacle,
but also kind of like a kind of like the
thing Scorpion shoots out of his wrist in Mortal Kombat.
You know, yeah, it's I think of it as a
heroin injector tentacle. So this embeds in your chest and

(01:06:21):
just fills you with like a lethal dose or a
near lethal dose of heroin, just all the heroin in
the world pumped directly into you. And then while this
is going through your system, he has this big spike
that he loads out of his like wrist gauntlet thing,
and he drives that into your brain to then we
get a lot of sci fi explanations about this later,

(01:06:43):
but Essentially, he's draining the brain juice out of your
heroin addled brain and then using that later to manufacture
his own special space drug.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
That's right, So that what you were calling the heroin
injector tentacle. I was thinking of as the drug snake.
But yeah, it's like a it's like a prehensile winding
kind of thing. It stabs into the people, it injects them,
and then he gets the brain juice.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Oh and then the spike. Yeah is really really they
did a great job with the effects on this, because
the spike really looks brutal when he drives this into.
One of the victims says, they don't show it at first.
They kind of successfully build up the mystique regarding like
what exactly is he doing to these people, But then
we see it. Yeah, he's draining something out of their
brains after he gets them high with the heroin.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
Oh and every time he says, I come in peace.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
There are also later scenes where he does the same
attack on different people. He attacks a guy driving a forklift,
a woman repairing a car, and in these later scenes
we see the scullet alien chasing after the blonde alien
blowing up nearly every car and building in Houston in
the process, so many explosions. There's one scene where that
the fugitive alien is just running away by like jumping

(01:07:55):
from car hood to car hood. He's like running in
every step lands on a different cars as they're parked
in a row, and all of the cars explode as
soon as he jumps off of them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
Because the aliens, in addition to these gadgets that we've
already mentioned with the bad Alien, they also have these
crazy guns that I believe are also based on like
the same underlying technology that he used to create the
RoboCop gun. They have this like crazy space gun that
just explodes everything in its line of fire.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
Yeah, it shoots explosives at a buzzing rate of fire.
But the blonde alien just keeps getting away. So we
come back to our cops. Jack Caine apparently is going
to show Agent Smith how to work by instinct, and
so he takes him to some kind of combination nightclub
bar slash strip club and he says, I can think here,

(01:08:46):
and Smith is not happy with this. He's like, I
don't drink on duty. And then Jack Caine goes and
harasses and sort of beats up a guy, some regular
informant of his. This is owner, Yeah, this is the
ratcatcher from Split Second. But this apparently gets them nowhere.
The guy has no information to report except to say
that like, oh, there's no drugs on the streets. Everything

(01:09:08):
dried up. What happened? Smith promises to file a report
about this, but Jack Caine does get insight in this
scene unrelated to his harassment of this poor guy here
by looking at a nearby pool table in the bar.
And I didn't understand what his revelation was at first,
but then going back on it, I realized, Oh, he's

(01:09:30):
watching the ball bouncing off the walls of the pool
table to make a bank shot. And then he realizes
that the weapon at the murder scene was a projectile
that bounced off the walls.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
Yeah. I don't understand the connection either, but hey, I
mean that's the thing. We're too logical. He is an
investigator that is based entirely an instinct.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
That's true. We are nerds and losers who rely on reason,
and that's not getting us anywhere, so we would never
solve this case. He goes back to the crime scene,
digging Smith with him, and they find the weapon. They
see Jack Kane sort of like models how it flew
around the room and realizes it ended up lodging itself
in a speaker cabinet, and it's still there in the

(01:10:13):
speaker cabinet. It's like jammed into the speaker cone and
like vibrating, and it looks again like a metal CD.
It looks it's a disc and if removed from the speaker,
it cuts them and flies around the room until lodging
itself back in the speaker. So they have found the
secret alien weapon. Jack Kane takes the weapon home to
his apartment, against the protestation of Smith, who quotes the

(01:10:37):
Switzer Manual saying that evidence must be turned over in
a timely manner. And again, I'm sorry I get a
side with him here. He's right, like, can cops just
take evidence home with them overnight? What about chain of custody?

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
Yeah, and that's just normal evidence, not even getting into
the realm of strange alien weapons that nobody understands.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
But in this scene we get a little bit of
the thawing of the reallyationship between them, because Smith follows
Jack Kine into his apartment and he is immediately impressed
Jack Kane, but why he's impressed was funny. He's impressed
that Jack Kane has like high end wine and fine
art on his walls. So Smith is like, wow, I
thought you were a low life, but actually you are

(01:11:19):
secretly very classy and I didn't realize.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Yeah, and I love that. Like this kind of reveals
more about Kane's character, but also doesn't. It's just kind
of like, oh, he likes paintings and he likes wine,
all right, very well, yeah, he's a wine guy instead
of a beer guy. I guess that's some level of depth.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
It seems like he's a beer guy in public but
a wine guy in private. What does that mean? Well, anyway,
Jack threatened Smith. He's like, if you try to take
this evidence from me, I'm gonna I'm gonna hit you
very very hard. So Smith leaves, and then Jack later
goes to Diane's apartment to be like, I love you.
You know I'm sorry that I didn't tell you where
I was for eight days. She's she's very mad. But

(01:11:58):
here's where we get to that that bizarrely written line
where she's like, Jack promised me something. She says, promise
to remember my birthday promise you'll come meet my mother,
promise me anything. I just want you to promise me
something like you promise everybody else.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Yeah, it seems like a very low bar for him
to meet in this relationship. So it's really hard to
figure this one out. What they were trying to try
trying to reveal about this character.

Speaker 3 (01:12:29):
I feel like he could have workshopped that. Yeah, I
don't know. Yeah, but he doesn't promise her anything. They
just start smooching, you know. And Dolf comes back to
his apartment the next morning to find it ransacked and
Smith is hiding inside. Smith says he just got there.
He found it like this. Somebody tried to steal the
evidence the alien weapon, but fortunately Jack dropped it off

(01:12:52):
the night before with somebody else who Well, here we're
going to meet another character, the scientist who works at
the university. And what's this is Jack Kane actually associating
with a nerd. I guess there really is more to
him than meets the eye. And in this scene they
go talk to the nerd and it is explained that
the murder disc works by electro magnetism, being attracted to

(01:13:15):
the electric charge of the human body or to any
or to any magnetic charge. So they say, the reason
it's lodged in the speaker is because the speaker cone
has a magnet in it. That's the driver, and it
was attracted to that. But you can tune it to
attack the charge of a human body. And the scientist says,

(01:13:37):
it's like turning your radio dial to K I L L.

Speaker 1 (01:13:42):
This whole scene with what is his name, Bruce, I
think the scientists vary over the top. This is some
of the other like intentional humor humorous parts of the
film are a little more subtle, but this is one
of the moments where it's really ratcheted up, like a
like some sort of an explosion that's been triggered for
a string of cars.

Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
And I would say with mixed success. Some of the
gags in the scene really fall flat. Others are kind
of funny, Like it is funny the way the scientist
is frantically trying to hide pills from the FBI guy, Well,
that was.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
Good, Yeah, it's like these are vital to my research.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
So they leave the disc with the scientist and then
later Jack and Smith meet with Diane at the coroner's
office to review new evidence from the alien murder suspects
the people who have gotten you know, drug snaked, and
she explains what's going on. People are being injected with
massive heroin overdoses. They don't know why yet, but she's like,
you know, people do all kinds of weird stuff to

(01:14:40):
each other. And then she looks at Jack. But on
the way out, Jack, oh, this is the scene where
he gets a postcard from the villain from Victor Manning
and Rio that's just like it's just like, Jack, wish
you were dead. I hate you. I'm sending people to
kill you right now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:59):
Yeah, we'll never see this guy again. There's no follow
up to this part of the plot. At the end.

Speaker 3 (01:15:05):
You get a sense that the ending is kind of
like the ending of Silence of the Lambs, where it's like,
you know, they're going after Chilton and wherever he is.
But okay, so Victor Mannings gang is coming after Jack
Jack for some reason. So there's like a car chase
where his goons chase Jack and Smith around in traffic.
So they're like, okay, we got to go confront these guys.

(01:15:27):
So they go to the White Boy's headquarters, which just
seems to be like a big law firm Jack like.
He gets inside by setting off a bunch of car
alarms on the sports cars outside. People open the door
and he sneaks in. He beats up the guards outside
the board meeting and then goes into the board meeting

(01:15:48):
confronts Warren, the second in command, and Warren thinks that
it is the cops who killed their guys and stole
all the heroin. Jack doesn't know what he's talking about,
so they're like, well, then, who actually took all the heroin?
They don't know, but the gang has no drugs to deal,
so their business is suffering. So Warren makes a deal.
He says, all right, we have captured your your FBI

(01:16:09):
buddy Smith here and we're going to kill him unless
Jack goes and buys them a bunch of heroin for
them to sell. This is the scene where we meet
al Leong because he's the guy who's supposed to be
like selling the heroin to Jack, but it's a double cross.
He gives Jack an empty suitcase with nothing in it

(01:16:30):
after Jack gives him the money, and then he runs
out of the building. Jack chases after him, but on
pursuit he encounters Aliens. The blonde Ali and meets him,
I think, like grabs him by the neck. But then
the cop alien shows up and they start shooting at
each other and they make the whole alley way explode
and Jack witnesses the entire thing.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
So at this point things are finally like getting back
on track. I feel like the investigation portion of the
movie feels like he goes on a bit too long.
There aren't any explosions, you know. Luckily we do have
those random scenes with the aliens to keep things moving.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
Oh meanwhile, in this whole scene, Smith beats up his
captors and escapes, so maybe hey, he's maybe he's part
jock after all. But after this, we we sort of
followed the blonde alien back to his lair like he's
you know, he has this big fight and he gets
away and we see him go back to It's kind
of in fact, it's kind of like when we see

(01:17:28):
the Predator, like, you know, cleaning his trophies in the
first movie.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
Yeah, yeah, we find that he's he's just basically camped
out in the ruins there, the industrial ruins there in Houston.
When I would see the trailer for this movie and
the promotional materials back in the day. I always assumed
that that this guy was going to like take over
or insert himself into the local drug world using his technology.
You know those maybe those crazy discs that fly around

(01:17:54):
attracted to people's electromagnetic fields. I assumed he was going
to maybe be using some sort of of a crazy
space drug that the world wasn't ready for. He's going
to dominate the market, destroy the competition. But no, instead
he's operating like a lone wolf out here, you know,
living amidst the ruins, just harvesting what he needs to
fill up is this small supply of drugs that he's

(01:18:15):
going to bring back I guess to his home planet
or his home system.

Speaker 3 (01:18:19):
Is he also using the drugs he's harvesting for his
own pleasure? I think we see him do that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
I believe so. Yeah. I mean in general, he does
a lot of snarling, and you know, he has again
just a terrific performance here. Just he's a beast. But yeah,
I think he is also using this special brain drug.
What do they call it? It's called like barci, Is
that right, Barsie? I think, yeah, we find out eventually

(01:18:45):
it's called BARSI.

Speaker 3 (01:18:47):
That's human brain juice. That's what it's called barsie.

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
Yeah, but at least that's what the good cop tells
us when he dies in the backseat.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
Yeah, but we'll get there in just a second. Okay,
But first there is a scene between Jack and Diane
where she explains, how you know all the murder victims
have a hole jammed in their heads all the way
down to their pituitary glands. Ah, there it is m
which she says, this is where endorphins are created. She
explains that endorphins aren't nature's ecstasy. So if you shot

(01:19:15):
somebody full of heroin then extracted the endorphins from their
pituitary gland, you would have on your hands the perfect drug.
The only problem is nobody on Earth has the technology
to extract, preserve, or administer endorphins. Not yet. But Jack
puts it all together. He's like, Aha, nobody on Earth.
So now I know for sure we're dealing with aliens,

(01:19:39):
he tells Smith. They go back to their scientist's friend
to try to get the disc back because they got
some physical evidence to back up the drug dealer theory,
the alien drug dealer theory. Sorry, but when they get there,
the disc has been stolen. The scientist says that the
disc was stolen by guys who looked like Smith. So
you assume at this point that means more of these

(01:19:59):
prep be gang members. You know, they're dressed in their
suits and they're back to square one. But then the
alien drug dealer attacks more people in a convenience store
and gets into a fight with the alien cop, and
the alien cop is injured in the fight, like he's
got sort of ian home from alien guts hanging out
of his belly, and eventually Jack well, first they get

(01:20:23):
to the cops get to the location, and Jack is
ordered off the case once again. The Feds take over everything.
They're like, Jack, now you really have to go on vacation,
and he convinces Diane to quit her job and go
on vacation with him. But before they can do that,
Jack gets into his car and he is confronted by
the cop alien who's like hiding in his back seat.

(01:20:45):
I guess somehow he knows Jack can be trusted unlike
anybody else here.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
He can tell, he can tell that this is a
true police officer, you know, a man who solves crimes
with his gut as opposed to his logic. This is
the guy I need to bring the details of the
case to instinct.

Speaker 3 (01:21:01):
Can recognize instinct. Yes, So the alien explains, I am
a law enforcement officer from space. The other alien is
a drug pusher from space. And he explains if he escapes,
he will bring more like him to Earth because they'll
realize this is a good place to harvest endorphins and
they will kill millions to steal their brain juice. Oh,

(01:21:23):
and then Smith is in the car with him at
this point. So Smith witnesses all of this. He knows
about the alien at this point. And then the alien
self destructs. They're like, we've we've got his body to
show people, so they'll have to believe us. And then
like light starts coming out of his mouth and his
eyes and he explodes.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
It does like a mini quickening and then explodes.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
Yeah, but he leaves behind his alien gun as evidence.
Smith insists on turning in this piece of evidence, and
he holds Jack at gunpoint to be like, you're not
taking this one. I'm taking this to the boss. You know,
this is we got to go by the book. But
there's a double cross. He takes the gun to Switzer,
and Switzer instead of you know, using it to expose

(01:22:05):
the whole plot. He like hides the gun in a
bag and he's like, Okay, this will be of great
use to the US military for our you know, for
our global domination. Now we're going to have to kill
Jack Cain. And then he does another double cross and
he's about to kill Smith, I guess to eliminate witnesses
once again, but Jack Caine shows back up and saves

(01:22:25):
Smith's life by shooting Switzer. After this, Smith just fully
converts to Harley Stone. You know. He's like, I'm kind
of used to following procedure, but now I think we
should just and he holds up the alien gun and
he's like kicks some ass.

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):
And so it's it's definitely going to be just all
explosions in action from here on out, and that's ultimately
what this film does best.

Speaker 3 (01:22:49):
Right, So there's a bunch of the rest of the
movie is really just fight scenes. There's like a fight
scene where they go and try to confront the alien
and shoot him with the alien gun, but it gets away.
They're injured in the process. They have to retreat the
two cops. Finally, they eventually meet up with Diane. She's like, hey,
I quit my job, ready to go on vacation, and
they're like, no, we have to kill an alien drug dealer.

(01:23:12):
So then all three of them are again can they
confront the alien. There is a final showdown inside an
abandoned factory, of course, where Dolph ends up taunting the
alien drug dealer by like smashing the endorphin vials. He's like, oh,
you're precious, Barsie, I've got it now, and he's smashing
it on the floor and there's a big you think

(01:23:36):
at the end that the alien is going to defeat
Dolph by like piercing him with the drug snake, but
in the end, Dolf is able to out you know,
outdrawn the alien and twist the drug snake back on him,
and then he injects him. He like kicks him into
a pipe where the pipe stabs through him, much like

(01:23:57):
the defeat of the villain at the end of the
movie Come and with Arnold Schwarzenegger, by the way, where
the villains, yeah, gets shoved into a pipe. And then
in the end, the alien just says, once again, I
come in peace, and Dolph Lindgren says, you go in pieces.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
It's a great exchange, it's a great exchange. I think
they give it away in the trailer, but it's great
when you finally reach it organically at the end of
this journey.

Speaker 3 (01:24:24):
And then at the end of the movie, the three
friends are like, hey, we did it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Yeah. Yeah, And I think they're all going to go
on vacation together. They're talking about this vacation, but Smith's
there too, and so yeah, I'm assuming that they just
all go on vacation together. And I'm fine with it.
I think it's great.

Speaker 3 (01:24:40):
They're three way buried now and they're going to go
to Rio and get revenge on Victor what's his name. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:47):
I love how this film sets up a future adventure
that does not involve all of the cool stuff that
made this film watchable. You know, they're like, up next,
just just struct dealers. All right. Well, at this point,
I do want to come back to a question we
raised earlier. Is Tallic the drug pushing alien Santa Claus?

Speaker 3 (01:25:06):
So that's credibly good question.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
Yeah, and you may have a gut answer for this,
your instincts may tell you one way or another, but
I thought we might apply a little logic here. So
first of all, kind of in the pro category, Tallic
has white hair. Like Santa he is coming to town.
We already established that. Yes, he is giving people something
that evidence suggests they like. Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean biometrically,

(01:25:31):
you can't argue with that. I guess. He arrives from
on high. Okay, Like Santa Claus in a number of movies,
he has to contend with a supernatural adversary that is
trying to stop him.

Speaker 3 (01:25:43):
Oh, this would make the alien good cop kind of
the pitch of this film.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
Yeah. Yeah. He makes use of various special tools, much
like the Santa Claus in that film. Uh huh. He
prefers to operate in the shadows. Obviously, his blood or
may not be eggnog, which you know is very Christmas y.
I also have to add he may use a sleigh
in Reindeer. We never see what made the crater. We

(01:26:11):
don't know if talk and the other alien just fell
from the sky, We don't know. You know, if they
were encapsuled in anything, If there's a spaceship, but disposable
spaceship they travel in, well, it's just left to the imagination,
and you may use your imagination to insert a sleigh
with Reindeer.

Speaker 3 (01:26:28):
Therefore, he did use a sleigh in reindeer, disprove or
accept exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:26:34):
However, he has no beard. That's just undeniable. Taalik has
no beard, therefore maybe he's not Santa. Also, he does
not reward and punish with his gift giving. Instead, it's
heroin and brain drains for everybody, unless he blows you
up with his space gun instead. And then finally, there

(01:26:54):
are no rules of correspondence with talent clause, like nobody's
riding to Tallic and saying, hey, I've been a good
boy this year. I would really like a whole lot
of heroin shot into my neck with a space snake. Now,
you don't communicate with him, he just comes regardless.

Speaker 3 (01:27:09):
I would also say that no one leaves out milk
and cookies for Tallic.

Speaker 1 (01:27:13):
No, no, I mean he doesn't want milking cookies. He
wants that sweet brain juice, so he knows where to
get it. You don't need to leave it out for him.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):
Does he know who's been naughty and who's been nice? Unclear?

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
Unclear? Yeah, I might push that into the con category
as well. But hey, maybe you listeners have some thoughts
on this. We'd love to hear from you. Also, just
in general on the topic of Christmas action films. Are
there some other key examples that we didn't mention? Do
you have some favorites? I don't know. I'll even entertain
the old sort of false or sort of trumped up

(01:27:48):
argument of is Diehard a Christmas movie or not? I mean,
it's a Christmas movie if you want it to be.
Why not?

Speaker 3 (01:27:56):
Okay? I think that is all I can do on
the icome in piece.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
Yeah, yeah, right in. We'd love to hear from anyone
else's thoughts on this film. In the meantime, we'll go
ahead and remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
is primarily a science podcast, you know, that employs reason
and logic. But on on Fridays we set aside all
of that. We just go with our gut and we
talk about a weird movie here on Weird House Cinema.
If you want to see a complete list of all
the movies we've covered thus far on the show, head

(01:28:22):
on over to letterbox dot com. It's L E T
T E R B O x D dot com. Our
user name there is weird House, and you'll find a
list there of everything we've covered. Follow us on social
media if you if you're on there on Instagram, we
are STBYM podcast. That is our handle on Instagram.

Speaker 3 (01:28:39):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
tor topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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