Podcast: Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998)

Your Stupid Minds covers FOX's backdoor pilot for a show all about Marvel's 92nd favorite character. The problem being that it came in fourth in the ratings and was never picked up as a series. It's 1998's Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Starring David Hasselhoff, Lisa Rinna, Sandra Hess, and Ron Canada.

After HYDRA kills Clay Quartermain in a raid on a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, Nick Fury (Hasselhoff) is brought back on after being unceremoniously kicked out five years earlier for being too cool. He abandons the gold mine he's hiding out in for the last half decade and gets back to work.

Fury reunites with his former lover and future series love interest that never was Contessa Valentina 'Val' de Allegro Fontaine (Rinna), some nerd Alexander Pierce (Neil Roberts, and yes that Alexander Pierce from Winter Soldier, but British for some reason), and a psychic and get to work stopping HYDRA.

Andrea Von Strucker (Hess) has reignited her frozen father's dream of HYDRA world domination and Nazi-style terrorism, and is also Viper. She gets the drop on Fury, and drops some tree frog poison onto his lips via her lips. He has 48 hours to live, but Fury ignores tech genius Gabriel Jones's (Canada) advice of hanging out in the infirmary until he dies, and goes on a quest to save his own life instead by extracting Andrea's blood for an antidote.

HYDRA is also planning to shoot deadly virus missiles in the general direction of the World Trade Center (collar tug) so they have to stop that too. Screenwriter David S. Goyer borrows a story idea he'll have 14 years later in The Dark Knight Rises and Val tracks a series of dummy trucks in the hopes of finding the one with the real virus bomb.

Fury invades the HYDRA compound in New Jersey and is immediately captured, but not before stashing his robot doppelgänger somewhere in an unfilmed scene. He uses said doppelgänger to fake his own death long enough to capture Andrea and extract her blood (they also thwart the missile launch), but she escapes with her dad's frozen corpse pod that she apparently strapped rockets to.

Luckily, all these loose ends are ready to tie up in FOX's new Nick Fury series that everyone will love and definitely wouldn't have moved around the schedule three times before being unceremoniously canceled after six episodes.

Podcast: George of the Jungle 2 (2003)

We cover direct to video sequel to moderate Disney hit. Brendan Fraser say no to come back. No Leslie Mann either. Thomas Haden Church say yes. Career in toilet after Wings before Sideways. It George of the Jungle 2. From 2003.

Six years after the first film, George (now played by Christopher Showerman, which sounds like an alias someone came up with extemporaneously while in a locker room) and Ursula (now played by Julie Benz) have a five-year-old son George Jr. (played by an obviously way older than five Angus T. Jones). George balances home life with his duties as King of the Jungle. His role at the top spot is challenged by Mean Lion (Michael Clarke Duncan).

Meanwhile George's evil mother-in-law Beatrice (Christina Pickles) and Ursula's evil ex Lyle Van de Groot (Church) are plotting to seize Ape Island by stealing the deed from George's underwear. Ape (John Cleese) is working off gambling debts as a lounge singer. Also, Beatrice uses a Vegas hypnotist to mind control Ursula into getting back together with Van de Groot.

Will George save his family? Will be still be King of the Jungle? Will George Jr. ever enjoy swinging (a plot element we mostly missed)? Will Thomas Haden Church get an atomic wedgie from the hand of God? What abacus was used to generate the CGI effects? You'll just have to listen to find out!

Also, a warning to parents: George gets hurt into crashes tree, George's mouth wood tree then falls into ground. (no blood and injuries appearances)

Podcast: The Octagon (1980)

Your Stupid Minds is back! Chuck Norris uses his iron leg to battle ninjas, mercenaries, and deceptive women in the low budget classic The Octagon!

Strap yourself in for the best approximation of the plot we could put together. Scott James (Chuck Norris) is a famous martial artist who has a secret past as a ninja. Or just trained as a ninja. He has an evil Japanese brother Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita) who got kicked out of ninja school and is now training terrorists against their will in the art of ninja. Scott goes on a date with a woman and she’s killed by ninjas. He goes on a quest to find the ninjas and his evil brother.

Meanwhile his misogynist friend A.J. (Art Hindle) is desperately searching for a reason for his character to be in this movie. He’s horning in on Scott’s dates and swearing revenge on ninjas for the flimsiest of reasons.

Scott visits McCarn (Lee Van Cleef) a murderous mercenary, but a good one. Scott uses him to try to find Doggo (Kurt Grayson) who has some connection to the ninjas. Scott tries to become a mercenary but fails. Luckily that dangling plotline is recovered when Doggo tries to kill him. Scott finds another beautiful woman on the side of the road, Justine Wentworth (Karen Carlson). Scott has a structured settlement and he needs cash now, so this is the perfect woman for him.

He helps Justine with her car and she tries to seduce him but he's too cool. She's also trying to betray him, or trick him, or something? Anyway, A.J. dates her for a while and then she's killed by ninjas. A.J. swears revenge on the ninjas but then is kidnapped by the ninjas.

Scott finds a third woman who is ninja proof and they're off to kill the ninjas. He does so and saves A.J. By the way, the Octagon is some sort of obstacle course with ninjas in it. There's also some guy named Tibor but I forget what he does aside from sell furs.

Podcast: 3 Ninjas (1992)

It's our fourth and final foray into the 3 Ninjas franchise! We have finally completed the series in reverse chronological order by covering the original film. It's 1992's 3 Ninjas, starring Michael Treanor, Max Elliott Slade, Chad Power, and Victor Wong.

Rocky (Treanor), Colt (Slade), and Tum Tum (Power) are three normal Southern Californian kids except for one small difference: they spend their summers learning the deadly art of ninjutsu with their Grandpa Mori (Wong). Their training looks suspiciously like karate, and Grandpa's lessons seems slightly contradictory ("Ninjas never fight those weaker than them," "Don't fight an opponent you can't beat.") but that's neither here nor there.

Meanwhile, the boys' father (Alan McRae) is an FBI agent trying to catch all around bad guy Snyder (Rand Kingsley). Their lives intersect through Snyder's connection to Grandpa Mori, who trained Snyder in the ninja arts, which he now uses for evil.

The 3 ninjas return to their wildfire kindling home so Rocky can awkwardly flirt with his girlfriend/next door neighbor Emily (Kate Sargeant) and battle it out with a cadre of stereotypical bullies on the basketball court. A trio of bumbling surfer stereotypes break into their house for some Home Alone style hijinks and then the kids are kidnapped.

Can the boys escape the vast ship that is their prison? Will Grandpa save them in time? Does a goon get explosive diarrhea? You'll have to listen to find out!

Podcast: Guns (1990)

Your Stupid Minds returns to the world of Andy Sidaris in 1990's Guns, with all your favorite Sidaris tropes: babes, hunks, Hawaii, remote control boats, regular sized boats, backwards planes, rocket launchers, motorcycles inside vans, poor marksmanship, helicopters, and so on. Starring Dona Speir, Erik Estrada, Phyllis Davis, Danny Trejo, Amon-Ra St. Brown's dad, and about 14,000 other people. With the return of special guest Nico Mesa!

International criminal the Jack of Diamonds (Estrada) concocts a convoluted plan to kill off secret agent Donna Hamilton's (Speir) friends to distract her from noticing a Chinese gun smuggling operation he's at the center of (you know they're Chinese guns because each one has a red star sticker printed off of their home inkjet printer).

Despite his cross-dressing hitmen killing the wrong person, the plan works and Donna and her team of bodacious 80s agents descend on Las Vegas (and, when they feel like it, Lake Havasu City, Arizona) to shoot guys with bazookas, copulate on top of motorcycles, and rotate through a menagerie of exotic vehicles to catch this bad guy who they haven't even identified. Also, Jack kidnaps ADA Kathryn Hamilton (Davis), who happens to be... Donna's mom?

Will Donna stop the bad guy? Will she save her mom? Will she blow up Erik Estrada with four bazooka blasts? Is there any of Danny Trejo's famous dummy work? You'll have to listen to find out!

Notent Notables: 

• The best kill is easily the remote control boat murder, available here.
• Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton) is replaced as Donna (Dona Speir)'s partner without explanation. Her comic relief duties are delegated to two clownish hitmen and a magician.
• We joke about the character Donna being someone who would go insane in the social media age, particularly as she survived in the world of master criminals that is Molokai, Hawaii. The real Dona Speir is much more normal, as she is now a recovery coach who is three decades sober and wrote an autobiography about her addictions and recovery in 2019.
• Rodrigo Obregon, one of the few returning actors from Hard Ticket, is back for the third time in our series, playing a third different character. He is not done being in these movies by a long shot.

Podcast: A Line of Fire (2025)

In his attempt to distance himself from the increasingly tedious God's Not Dead franchise, David A.R. White tries out a standard action thriller with the finest washed up actors Hollywood has to offer. It's 2025's A Line of Fire, starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Jason Patric, Katrina Bowden, and Scott Baio.

Cash (White) is a retired FBI agent, widower, great dad, fantastic cook, and patriot with amazing hair who everyone likes and is cool. When his former partner is gunned down at a yacht party by GTA Online maniacs on WaveRunners, her niece Jamie (Bowden) retreats to a safe house and calls Cash for help. He takes time out of being the greatest dad and man who's ever lived to save her, gunning down meaty goons with CGI muzzle flashes and computer squibs.

Despite being the greatest FBI agent to ever live and smartest man alive, he seems unconcerned that every time he calls his former FBI buddies for help, his plans are thwarted by the homicidal drug cartel. Josef (Patric) knows his every move: casting his chess piece acolytes across the board via Facetime from his Southern California McMansion. Meanwhile, Javier (Gooding Jr.) traipses around his chaste Miami fully-clothed strip club, fielding Zoom calls for his drug empire over the sound of quiet club music.

Can Cash save Jamie and his daughters (who are of course kidnapped) in time? Can he trust his former FBI colleagues, such as the Nick Offerman-y Rocco (Tommy Snider) or the fashion homunculus Joan Rycker (Eve Richards, whose acting is so bad it makes me question the order of the universe)? You'll have to listen to find out!

Podcast: Red Sonja (2025)

Did you know they made a Red Sonja remake in 2025? You didn’t? Well they did. Here it is. It’s 2025's Red Sonja, starring Matilda Lutz, Robert Sheehan, and Wallis Day.

Red Sonja (Lutz) is a young Hyrkanian girl whose village is destroyed by some evil emperor. She spends the next 20 years or so wandering around in the woods with her horse, completely incurious of the apparently vast diaspora of her people across the land. Eventually the new emperor Draygan (Sheehan) sends some guys to kill fantasy forest rhinos. Red Sonja gets mad and starts a fight with his Mercy Graves style henchwoman (slash lover? Unclear) Annisia (Day). Red Sonja loses and is imprisoned inside a little mini-Gladiator ripoff movie in the middle of this movie.

When he was young, Draygan stole half of the holy book of the Hyrkanian people, using its knowledge of power orbs, flamethrowers, and RobCo brain-computer interface chips to escape slavery and ascend to emperor.

Red Sonja fights her way out of gladiatorial bondage, still keeping her signature chainmail bikini so online weirdos don't get mad at the movie. Can she save the land and avenge her people? Is Draygan really so bad? And what’s in the second half of the holy book? Maybe like a nine-bolted crossbow or a Super Soaker that shoots acid? Who knows! You’ll have to listen to find out.