Podcast: Link (1986)

After going months without reviewing a Cannon/Golan-Globus film, we finally snapped and watched Link, the story of an ape that doesn't seem to understand when a young Elizabeth Shue isn't interested in him that way.


Shue plays Jane (of course), a chimp apologist and student who volunteers to work with Professor Steven Phillip (Terrence Stamp)'s chimps at his remote country estate. She's greeted at the door by Link, an orangutan in chimp-makeup, and quickly befriends the various chimps, disapproving of Stamp's negativity and casual attitude towards Link smoking cigars at the dinner table. When the Professor disappears, Jane is left alone with the chimps, and eventually starts to realize that something ain't quite right. It's almost like Link won't let her leave. And what's he doing outside her bathroom while she's showering? Try closing the door, dummy.

Notes and Observations:

• Including text reviews, I count 11 Golan-Globus films that we've reviewed. And buddy, you better believe we're not finished.
• We take issue with the Professor's claim that his chimps are "ten times" the strength of a human. Two? Sure. Three? Maybe? But ten? No way.
• On a related note, if any university wants to fund out research into just how strong we could make chimps, possibly by injecting them with Chimp Growth Hormone (CGH), please e-mail us and we'll work something out. We don't see the downside to this research.
• We didn't even mention it, but the film opens with a chimp killing a cat that distracts some parents in the middle of watching a public domain film, as Marlene Dietrich wears a gorilla suit during a performance of "Hot Voodoo" in 1932's Blonde Venus. Here she is taking off the gorilla outfit.
• We make reference to our conversation in episode 8, Cool Dog, where we first pointed out the problem with complimenting dog acting.
• At the moment, Link is available in full on YouTube.

Direct download.

Podcast: .com for Murder (2002)

We continue our October scary-movie-a-thon-thing with the terrifying and impossible to alphabetize cyber thriller .com for Murder. Directed by schlock semi-master Nico Mastorakis, this ripoff of Halloween, Psycho, Rear Window, etc. stars Nastassja Kinski (Cat People), Nicollette Sheridan (former Michael Bolton paramour), Roger Daltrey (Vampirella, The Who), and Huey Lewis (of the News).

When hotshot architect Ben (Daltrey) leaves his temporarily handicapped wive Sondra (Kinski) in the care of her sister and a completely computerized mansion named Hal, she uses the opportunity to antagonize murderers in an online sex chatroom. When she annoys the wrong murderer—a hacker who goes by Werther—he uses the opportunity to send her video footage of a murder (encrypted as a racist public domain cartoon) and then go after her as well! Meanwhile FBI Agent Matheson (Lewis) takes the case despite lacking a basic understanding of computers and technology.

Join Nick, Chris, and returning special guest Sarah Long (from Episode 42: American Strays) as we try and figure out how to add blood effects to chatoom text, why the director thought the delete key could possibly execute any sort of command, and the murderer’s extremely dubious time estimate for death by wrist knick.

Some Notes:

• The public domain cartoon that Werther encrypts over the murder video is the Looney Tunes classic Have You Got Any Castles? It usually doesn't end up on any Warner Brothers DVD collections because of its extremely racist portrayals and esoteric references to 1930s pop culture.
• .com for Murder's early 2000s era website (some sections NSFW). 
• The law is 100% clear on this: It's okay to electrocute an intruder to death if you or your talking house gives a verbal warning beforehand.
• Despite the technology motifs, .cfM is impossible to stream online. Third party sellers offer it on Amazon and Netflix has an old DVD of it.
• Howdy pilgrim! I am a chair. John Wayne.

Direct download.

Podcast: The Fog (2005)

Your Stupid Minds reviews SCARY MOVIES throughout October, so cover your eyes and prepare yourself for the spookiest jump scares and bloodless murders that the MPAA will allow at this particular rating threshhold. It’s Rupert Wainwright’s dull remake of John Carpenter’s somewhat flawed The Fog, but instead of early 1980s suspense it’s a mid-2000s Trajan-fonted teen slasher!


Nick Castle (Smallville’s Tom Welling) is a boat guy on the small Antonio Island, off the coast of Oregon. He takes tourists on his boat with his first mate Spooner (DeRay Davis) when the anchor snags on something… something GHOSTLY! Meanwhile Nick’s girlfriend Elizabeth (a non-kidnapped Maggie Grace) returns to the island, unaware of Nick’s affair with the sultry local DJ Stevie (Selma Blair). But all of this relationship drama is largely moot because ghost pirates show up.

Sadly not a ghost pirate in this movie.

2005’s The Fog splits the difference between Carpenter’s supernatural giallo influences and adds high-tension gore-less slasher suspense throughout. As a result the original plot makes little sense, such as when Elizabeth breezes through an entire 19th century journal as they outpace the fog in Nick’s truck. And based on the intentions of the ghostly beings inside the fog, many of the murders leading up to the denouement make little sense.

Some Notes:

• Some things that would have improved this movie: ghost leprosy deaths, blood, something interesting, the ghost pirates trying to frame Spooner.
• There is no name for a 135th anniversary, but 125th is a "Quasquicentennial."
• Available streaming on Netflix.

Direct download.