Podcast: Congo (1995)

 

In honor of the late, great Tim Curry, Your Stupid Minds covers 1995's Congo, also starring Laura Linney, Dylan Walsh, Ernie Hudson, and Joe Don Baker.

Charlie Travis (Bruce Campbell) discovers some magic diamonds in Zaire that they can use for satellite space lasers, but he's attacked by what may or may not be killer apes. His evil dad and TraviCom CEO R.B. Travis (Baker), who's a jerk and only cares about money, sends his ex-fiancee Karen (Linney) to go save him, but mostly to get those precious diamonds.

Karen hitches a ride with primatologist Peter Elliott (Walsh), who's traveling to Africa to release Amy (Lola Noh), his gorilla research subject, back into the wild. Dylan taught Amy sign language, which allows her to speak with the use of a talking robot glove thing. His expedition is funded by Romanian philanthropist Herkermer Homolka (Curry), who's using the ape to find the lost mine of King Solomon.

Upon arriving in Africa, an active coup causes the team to go on the run, led by mercenary Monroe Kelly (Hudson). The movie tries to figure out which plotline to pursue first, but luckily they all end up in the same place: the mines. It turns out Charlie WAS killed by apes. Not nice apes like Amy, but mean apes that the mine workers trained to guard the diamonds. Can the team survive? Does this magic laser have ape-cutting abilities? You'll have to listen to find out!

Podcast: Molly (1999)

Your Stupid Minds returns from a brief summer sojourn to cover a movie that MGM had so little faith in, it premiered as an in-flight movie a month before theaters. It's 1999's Molly, starring Elisabeth Shue, Aaron Eckhart, Jill Hennessy, and Thomas Jane.

Molly (Shue) is a woman with what seems to be autism, but kind of presents as whatever the movie needs it to do. The institution where she's lived for decades is closing down, so her brother Buck (Eckhart) must take her home to his trendy '90s Venice Beach loft. He considers this a huge imposition, and after she ruins his big advertising presentation, he's determined to "fix" her.

A new institution has developed an experimental surgery. They can't diagnose her exact condition, but they sure can try to fix it! The cause of autism, as this movie would assume, is a red blob in her brain. If they can make the blob smaller, then her brain can work better, or something.

With the help of another intellectually disabled orderly from her old institution Sam (Jane), as well as Drs. Brookes (Hennessy) and Trehare (Elizabeth Mitchell), the procedure is a success and Molly begins speaking and performing new tasks. She embraces her manic pixie dream girl status to start dating Sam, go to a Dodgers game, crash a cool vampire production of Romeo and Juliet, and generally start enjoying life.

But, since we are pulling a lot of the plot from Flowers for Algernon, something is wrong and she begins regressing. Are they able to reverse the regression? Can Buck stop being such a jerk? Will we all learn valuable lessons about ability and disability, family, and accepting yourself? You'll have to listen to find out!

Podcast: Cop & ½ (1993)

Your Stupid Minds fulfills the Siskel and Ebert prophecy and reviews 1993's Cop & ½ (or Cop and a Half, if you prefer English). Starring Burt Reynolds, Norman D. Holden II, Ruby Dee, and Ray Sharkey. Directed by Henry Winkler.

Devon Butler (Golden) is an 8-year-old kid who's obsessed with being a cop. When he witnesses a mob execution, he negotiates the exchange of evidence for being a police officer for one day. The stupid chief assigns the babysitting role to the oldest and crankiest guy on the force: Nick McKenna (Reynolds).

The second act devotes its time mostly in search of a plot. Mob leader Vinnie Fountain (Sharkey) comes to Devon's home and forces the child into witness protection (i.e. Nick's disgusting apartment). Devon pulls over his jerk principal for speeding. A pair of homicidal teenage bullies menace an elementary school hoping to give Devon a swirly at a moment's notice. Nick has a bar fight with a street tough named Bobo. All standard stuff.

Eventually the movie settles on a child endangerment angle and Nick must rescue Devon from the mob. Is Nick up to the task? Will there be a boat chase? Was this worse than Carnosaur? You'll have to listen to find out!

Podcast: Carnosaur (1993)

Your Stupid Minds transitions seamlessly from Tammy and the T-Rex to the Roger Corman quickie dino picture Carnosaur, released mere weeks before Jurassic Park. This is the first in a double feature to answer the eternal question posed by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert: Carnosaur or Cop and a Half. Which is better?

Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd, yes, Laura Dern's mom) is an evil scientist who attempts to achieve the impossible dream we've all pondered from time to time: can a viral bioweapon developed from genetically modified chickens impregnate all women on the planet with dinosaur embryos in order to replace the human race?

She puts her plan into action in the small town of Climax, Nevada. Everyone starts getting sick with a high fever, but it's only the women who give birth to dinosaurs (and die in the process). The dino puppets emerge and immediately begin murdering everyone, mostly local yokels such as "Slim" Friar (Clint Howard, yes, Bryce Dallas Howard's uncle) and a group of tree-hugging hippies protesting environmental destruction. Sheriff Fowler (Harrison Page) and "Doc" Smith (Raphael Sbarge) all try to solve the mystery. Meanwhile, the government swoops in hell-bent on containing the damage, so guys in haz-mat suits blast every infected person with M-16s.

Can they find a cure? No. Even Tiptree puts her money where her mouth is and fatally delivers her own dino baby. Can they contain the virus? Also unclear, but I'm going to say no. But at least we get to see some fun dino puppets roaming around. And some locals kill a T-Rex with a forklift. So that's cool.

As mentioned above, Siskel and Ebert had a passionate disagreement over Carnosaur. Siskel gave it a thumbs up while Ebert called it one of the worst of the year. Inversely, the next episode's movie, Cop and a Half, had the opposite result. This disagreement comes up repeatedly throughout their 1993 season.

Podcast: Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)

It's a tale as old as time. Boy meets girl. Girl’s jealous ex-boyfriend beats up boy. Ex-boyfriend leaves boy in animal sanctuary. Boy is mauled by lion. Mad scientist puts boy's brain into robotic Tyrannosaurus rex. It's 1994's Tammy and the T-Rex, starring Denise Richards, Paul Walker, and George Pilgrim.

As mentioned above, Tammy (Richards) and Michael (Walker) and are love. But Tammy's much older dirtbag boyfriend Billy (Pilgrim) (so it goes) and his gang of loyal hoodlums won't stop terrorizing them. After a terrifying standoff where the teenager and adult man refuse to let go of each others' genitals, Billy eventually gets the drop on Michael and causes him a vicious mauling.

Meanwhile, evil doctor Dr. Wachenstein (Terry Kiser) and his super team of a weird German woman, tiny nerd, and muscle man have built a robot dinosaur. But the doctor doesn't want it to have a computer brain. He wants a real brain in this thing. So he kidnaps Michael's comatose body, and through a brain extraction that is eerily reminiscent of a Treehouse of Horror segment, the T-rex comes to life.

After smushing the nerd and the muscle man, T-Rex Michael seeks revenge on Billy and his minions. He makes quick work of them and then the rest of the movie tries to figure out what it's about. Mostly car chases and shoot-outs with cops.

Podcast: Dream a Little Dream 2 (1995)

We've done Corey Feldman. We've done Corey Haim. But we've never done one with both. We end that drought today with 1995's Dream a Little Dream 2, also starring Robyn Lively, Stacie Randall, and Robert Costanzo.

After the events of the first film, which is I guess a body swap picture involving transcendental meditation in Cleveland, Bobby Keller (Feldman) and Dinger Holfield (Haim) are living in Los Angeles with Dinger's previously unseen sister Rachel (Lively). The two are mailed two pairs of sunglasses, and after a surprisingly short investigation, Rachel determines these are magic sunglasses wherein the wearer of one does whatever the other wearer desires.

Instead of an extended second act of shenanigans involving the sunglasses, we are instead treated to a smattering of Lynchian dream sequences and noir-like intrigue involving femme fatale Lena Drago (Randall), who somehow is aware of the existence of the magic sunglasses and is doing everything in her power to get her hands on them. There is also a greasy hitman type guy also trying to get them.

Coleman Ettinger (not in this movie, but played by Jason Robards in the last one) is trying to warn the Coreys about the dangers ahead through their weird dreams. Dinger is arrested in the sunglasses shop, so it's up to Bobby and Rachel to unravel this plot. They run up and down the same hotel hallway for half an hour, and then attempt to break up the sale of the sunglasses to stereotypical mobster Mr. McVie (Costanzo, who played Harvey Bullock in Batman: TAS).

Can they stop the sale? Can Bobby overcome the power of the sunglasses and avoid shooting Rachel? Why was Haim mostly banished from the second half? Why is Corey Feldman a blues singer? You'll have to listen to find out!

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.