B (1:45)

Drumroll. All right. This week we're talking about scary space movies, from the worst to the most sublime. Wrapping. Yeah. Before we start, though, don't forget to do us a solid. Make sure to, like, subscribe and all the other cool podcast things because we're counting on you to make it to next Halloween. Yeah. And now a space joke, which might be a repeat. It's getting harder and harder to remember, but I don't think so. From Joshua Dornbush.

A (2:12)

Joshua. I like that name.

B (2:13)

Apollo 18. The movie Apollo 18. Hey, Tarek.

A (2:17)

Yes, Rod?

B (2:18)

What do you call a crazy, blood sucking bug on the moon?

A (2:22)

I don't know. I don't know. What do you call that?

B (2:24)

A lunatic.

A (2:26)

Oh, no, I don't think We've had that one before. No, that's good. That's good. Yeah.

B (2:31)

Thank you for the theremin, John. You know, the scary thing is when I hear or see movies that sound like that, I realize I was kind of there the first time around.

A (2:44)

Yeah.

B (2:45)

It's a little shocking to me that I'm that old.

A (2:47)

I just think about Neil Armstrong. Right. Because didn't he like to play the Thurman?

B (2:50)

Right. Did he?

A (2:52)

Yeah. That's what. I never saw that. Yeah. At least that's what they put in his biopic with that. That one actor guy that was in that LA dancing movie. Wow, I'm really bad.

B (3:03)

Are you talking about First Man? Yeah, I don't remember him playing a. There First Man.

A (3:08)

That's why that theremin music was all through that film. So they showed him playing at one time.

B (3:13)

Well, that might be the one accurate thing about Neil Armstrong in that horrible film. Now, I've heard that some people want to bleed us into dry, desiccated husks when it's joke time in the show. You can help. That was supposed to hinge off the tick comment by sending your best, worst, or most different space joke to us.

A (3:33)

Ah, bring out the torches of the.

B (3:35)

Pitchforks at TwistWit TV. And thanks to Joshua for sending in that joke now. Good grief. Let's get to headline news.

A (3:44)

Headlines. Headline news. Nope. No. Oh, John says I got it wrong.

B (3:51)

No. You know, last week you were early, but when I listened to the playback online, it was perfect.

A (3:58)

Yeah.

B (3:58)

So you do have to jump it by half a second or something.

A (4:01)

That's what the say. That's. Judy says I was spot on. Spot on. Spot on. Right. Spot on. Nobody saw anything. Pay no mind to the man.

B (4:11)

Judy also told us to cue the Electric Light Orchestra. So what are you going to do? All right, let's talk. Let's do headline news.

A (4:18)

Yeah.

B (4:19)

NASA is sinking its flagship science center during the government shutdown. Good Lord. Breaking laws. What's going on?

A (4:26)

Well, this is actually a huge story. This is actually from Space.com's own Josh Dinner. He's a friend of the show. He's been on the show for a while and. And Josh has. That's my thing, Rod.

B (4:38)

I know, but I'm trying to catch.

A (4:40)

I dig it. I dig it. But he. He actually has had about the last six months he's been working on this story, talking with people that are at Goddard now that have been let go from Goddard, that have taken the retirement from God, just to try to find out what's going on there, the closure of the GISs, like the climate Earth Science center in New York and, and how like the President's budget proposal actually has that going away with some of the, some of the functions being, you know, funded in. There's just a lot to this story and it's really hard to like parse it down. So the TLDR is that there are, is there is a Senate report and a lot of people working and, and no longer working for, for Goddard who feel that what's going on there, all of the cuts and stuff, while we still don't even have a budget and we're in the middle of a government lockdown, aren't fully on the level. In fact, the Senate report that came out recently says that they think that there's a lot of illegal stuff going down. And we did hear from NASA saying no, they, they, you know, dispute all of those claims point by point. And it took a lot of doing to kind of put all of the different parts of the story together. So hats off to Josh for, for doing it. It's one of our longest stories, if not the longest story we've ever written for the site. And, and it's coming out at a really important time right now. So, you know, if you're worried about NASA, this is not going to, I think, make you any happier. But if you're, if you're trying to understand what's been happening behind the scenes, this story has like a lot of, of stuff that really puts things in perspective. It's a long read. Very long.

B (6:17)

How many words this time?

A (6:18)

It's like 9,000 words long.

B (6:20)

What?

A (6:21)

Yeah, it's long.

B (6:22)

It's writing for you guys. You said, okay, keep it under 1100 words.

A (6:25)

Yeah, things are different now, Rod. Things are different now.

B (6:30)

I mean like 10 years.

A (6:31)

Josh is, Josh is, you know, he, he, he attended protests where Goddard workers were protesting NASA headquarters. He has emails. He has.

B (6:41)

Emails. Yeah, yeah, that's getting in deep.

A (6:44)

He has anonymous sources that he's vetted. He has NASA sources, he has outside scientists, you know, Casey Dreyer, friend of the show, talking about the value and the impact of planetary science and this one, climate science, etc. One of the, the most telling comments is from a, an engineer that, that we called Claire, you know, because we're, these are anonymous source who said that, that the word climate, they see it as like the C word. They can't say it like outright. They have to like dance around it if they're going to try to get any kind of work done. You know about understanding that, that part of Earth science right now. And it's a really saying this is.

B (7:27)

Because the administration's sensitivities. Right.

A (7:29)

Because of the admin. Yeah. About the, the kind of denial. Not denial outright, but just they don't make it a priority anymore, at least in the funding that's going on. But I will stress that we did talk to NASA, we did present all of the findings and have some, some, some back and forth. And then of course NASA has seen the, the actual article today and has responded even more so. So we've been incorporating all of those responses into the story as well. And I'll point out, you know, they do dispute that, that all of the claims from the Senate and from these workers that it's illegal. They dispute that pretty strongly saying that everything is in line with appropriate actions.

B (8:14)

So other than pushing back on that, which feels a little disingenuous but. Okay, what about the whole, these massive layoffs during a shutdown when people are already furloughed. Aren't there some rules about that somewhere?

A (8:29)

Well, I think that's like the open question. NASA says that, you know, it's, it's, it's fine because they're following the Trump administration's directives for all of this and that. And meanwhile the unions, you know, are saying it's not fine and that these, these layoffs and these reductions, these budget reductions are going through improperly. Now remember, the unions are in their own kind of a bit of a, of a pickle because NASA's federal union was in the executive order that the Trump administration signed saying that they don't really have a right to collectively organize. And you know, I think it was NASA and NOAA and a couple of other agencies that were on that list. So we don't know where that stuff kind of lies right now and what the bargaining capabilities are versus what's allowed versus all of that stuff.

B (9:19)

So we know just as much as we want us to now isn't Goddard where the Planetary Data System and the. There is a five letter acronym for.

A (9:27)

That, the nd Something something, something, nsaac. I mean it may be, I have to admit like that was one of the older databases, you know, that it had and the national something space, like it's like it's got all the.

B (9:43)

So embarrassing because I quoted this to somebody yesterday and I'm GSSDC or something. But it was, I mean it was great. You just had to, you're right, it was older and you had to have your own client software to actually Decode the stuff. But if you.

A (9:57)

A lot of that stuff is still there.

B (9:58)

Yeah, if you wanted to see a specific set of map coordinates on Sunny Mercury, you could type it in gssdc and there it was. Anyway, speaking of coordinates, not stuff like.

A (10:10)

That that's being affected. It's like, you know they ran the climate.NASA.gov.

B (10:14)

Yeah, I know.

A (10:15)

They shut that down. It's like that kind of stuff.

B (10:16)

There are things that Goddard that we would miss if it wasn't Goddard anymore. Speaking of missing things, you're going to miss us for about 30 seconds while we go to a break, so stand by. Hey everybody, Leo Laporte here and I'm gonna bug you one more time to join Club twit. If you're not already a member. I wanna encourage you to support what we do here at Twit. You know, 25% of our operating costs comes from membership in the club. That's a huge portion and it's growing all the time. That means we can do more, we can have more fun. You get a lot of benefits, ad free versions of all the shows. You get access to the Club Twit discord and special programming like the keynotes from Apple and Google and Microsoft and others that we don't stream otherwise in public. Please join the club. If you haven't done it yet, we'd love to have you find out more at TWiT TV Club TWiT. And thank you so much. Morning, Zoe. Got donuts.

A (11:17)

Jeff Bridges. Why are you still living above our garage?

B (11:20)

Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you. Teach me, Saldana.

A (11:27)

Oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at T Mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.

B (11:39)

Wow, impressive. Let me try. T mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network. Nice.

A (11:47)

Jeffrey, you heard them.

B (11:48)

T mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible traded in any condition. So what are we having for lunch?

A (11:57)

Dude, my work here is done. The 24 month bill credit is on.

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Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oklahoma Speed Test Intelligence.

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Data 1H 2025 visit t mobile.com we're back.

A (12:19)

I wasn't expecting it change you forever. Wait, the snakes move?

B (12:29)

Yeah, they got little.

A (12:30)

I didn't see that before. I didn't see that before. How come it's not a space one? Like a, like a astronaut?

B (12:36)

Because I wasn't doing this back then. My kid was 4 years old, so I could hold it up to him when he wakes up at night and go, that's classic. So this, this really caught my eye. SpaceX puts out a statement saying, hey, we're gonna streamline starship's human landing system, and then said absolutely nothing about what they're gonna streamline. Yeah, so for instance, so they said, okay, we're gonna make it easier and faster, better, cheaper, blah blah, blah. They didn't actually say cheaper and faster and better. But then why make it cheaper?

A (13:08)

NASA's already signed the bill.

B (13:09)

So let's see. Orbital refueling. They didn't mention that or life support systems, but they did release really cool rendering of a highly imaginative interior that was about 10 times bigger than you need to land three astronauts on the moon, which is ridiculous. Did I miss something there?

A (13:26)

No, this was interesting. I think that this is the official response to Acting Administrator Sean Duffy's comments about how SpaceX is going too slow and, and that they, you know, they need, they need to get there by any means necessary, opening up the Artemis 3 landing contract to Blue Origin, etc. And so this is like, kind of like a point for point. This is what we've been doing. And the reason that you all think that we're slow is because you're only seeing the starship tests. But they, they, they laid out how they've already like achieved 49 of their milestones for the Artemis 3 contract and, and their Artemis work in general, except.

B (14:05)

For reaching orbit and refueling, except for those two little things.

A (14:08)

But they do say in, in, in this, in the, in the, in the update. And this is, by the way, this is through, if you, if you want to read it for yourself, you go to website and they have like an updates tab and that's where you're going to see all of this stuff in there. But Mike Wall, our writer, kind of distilled it to kind of talk, talk about the, the, the really finer points that, that came out of it. And one of them was this, this acceptance that, yes, we need to make it simpler and more straightforward and therefore faster, and that they have ideas on how to do that, but they, as you mentioned Rod, they don't actually say exactly what those ideas are. Maybe it's, it's really trying to refine the number of refueling flights because you know, like, like you said it was 8 and then it was like 24 and then it was 18 or 15.

B (14:54)

To 1812 in there too somewhere.

A (14:57)

Yeah. And, and you know there was a press conference prior to the start of this administration last December or so where in the update SpaceX was asked how many flights it was going to take. And, and they, they didn't have an answer. And the NASA rep that dealt with them for the exploration system didn't have an answer. And, and the NASA administrator straight up said no, you didn't answer the question.

B (15:20)

I believe what the young lady asked was exactly how many flats it will take to refuel this thing to go to the moon. Exactly have an answer for that.

A (15:32)

They said, and they said 15 to 18. I think they said 15. They said 15 to 18.

B (15:37)

She got very squeaky.

A (15:38)

Yeah.

B (15:38)

And it's funny, you know, if you're going to do, if you're going to do this kind of press conferences, I recall it was another one of those PR death Friday afternoon press conferences. I think you send your, your best troops forward, you know, you don't spend 10. No offense to the person in question, but the kind of squeaky nervous young, you know, freshly post intern or something, I mean maybe she wasn't, but she just did not sound at all prepared for this kind of.

A (16:09)

I think it was, she was actually a pretty high ranking, she was really. Yeah, yeah. Up in the, in the, in the human space flight and crew operations. So I got. No, I, I think, I think what this, what this says is, is it's, it's a, it's a show that, that SpaceX does, has to show their work. Right. They can't just ride on the acceptance that of the performance of the Falcon Nines and the Falcon Heavies, you know, that people know that, that, that works and that, that, that's, that's, you know, filling, filling what they need. They have to show that they're actually doing this other stuff as well and not just building starship to launch a bajillion Starlink satellites, which is all they've been talking about in these, in these launches and testing all of that stuff. You know, testing the deployment of Starlink satellites for these early self serving. Yeah, right. I mean as opposed to you know, doing, I think they did like some fuel transfer experiments on the, on some of the earlier flights to show that they could do it. But they.

B (17:07)

Not with multiple spacecraft. Just.

A (17:09)

No, just. Just inside. It was like pumping inside the main one.

B (17:12)

Yeah.

A (17:13)

So I think that's what NASA has the problem with, is that they're seeing these launches for Starlink and not these launches for Artemis overall or these. And so they want to know what they're doing. And SpaceX has said in this post, you know, we have a rendering of what our flight deck is going to look like. Like you said, it's a very cavernous space, which is very different than what we've seen before. They showed images of their landing engines and test fires for that, images of rehearsals for getting in and out of the spacecraft on their elevator and their elevator technology testing and whatnot. So they kind of really did run down a lot of the stuff that's been going on in the background. Other work that will come together. But that's the question. When is it all going to come together? You know, so that it's one vehicle and not a bunch of different programs that you'll just try to throw together at the last minute to reach a goal. 2028 is not far away.

B (18:09)

If cool computer renderings would get us to other planets, NASA certainly would have had us to Mars in the 2010s.

A (18:16)

Yeah, that would be nice. Would.

B (18:17)

Enough of that. OK, pick, pick our third story here.

A (18:20)

Yeah. I would just point out that it is Halloween and we can, we can talk about x59 next week because that's really, really cool. But I, I just wanted to let everyone know that it's. It is Halloween, which means that there's a Halloween night sky. If you've got clear skies, go out, go look around. There's two comets that you can go and, and look for. One is you can't see with the unaided eye. That's Comet 3. I, Alice, the interstellar visitor. Is it an alien ship? Rod, what do you think?

B (18:46)

Please, please.

A (18:48)

So, and the other one is the, the other one is Comment Lemon, which you can see, and it's being billed as one of the comments of the year for, for, for 2025.

B (18:58)

I hear it's a bit of a lemon.

A (19:03)

Now. That joke was the apple of my eye, Rod. You know, I just.

B (19:07)

You're just a fruit.

A (19:11)

Hey, you're not allowed to say that now, Rod. Sheesh. Okay.

B (19:15)

You're just a cantaloupe.

A (19:17)

Yeah. Anyway, I don't think that Comet Lemon is going to be back for like another thousand years, so.

B (19:22)

Well, so where is it in the sky? When can you See it. And what will you need to see it?

A (19:27)

Well, it's really good to have a, A telescope to see it, but it is. It's visible in binoculars in the Northern hemisphere. You can.

B (19:36)

Oh, this is the one that's circumpolar, right? It's circumpolar. It's up near Polaris.

A (19:43)

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. It's, it's. It's been in, according to Forbes, which is. Why did you choose Forbes for this man?

B (19:53)

Because somebody had to go source the story.

A (19:56)

Space.com has a definitive Comet Lemon. It wasn't. Everyone go there. Everyone go there.

B (20:02)

I didn't see it there because your search engine's a little funky, but anyway.

A (20:08)

But no, it's, it's, it's, it's. It. It's far from the sun, so it's not as visible, but it is. Oh, my gosh. I'm like. I'm like. I lost it. See, now you got me all off my game.

B (20:22)

You have a game?

A (20:25)

No, but it's in the. It's near the constellation Keynes Venet Vanette.

B (20:32)

You really need to study up the pronunciation.

A (20:35)

Go to space.com. go to space.com and look up how to see Comet Lemon. You're going to see exactly how to do.

B (20:41)

Mayor Tranquil taught us. He says. Okay, and our last little bit here, we want to send our most sincere condolences to Buzz Aldrin. Yeah, Buzz got married two years ago to his partner Anka Ferrer, I think her last name is pronounced. Who was a PhD level chemistry. Chemistry. Physicist, I think. Chemist. And they had been together for a long time. And she was just a really superb woman and a great partner for Buzz. Lovely family. She's got a son and a couple of grandkids. And she was 66 and cancer caught up with her and she passed this week. So. Yeah, well, sorry, Sincerest condolences going out to Buzz because that's hard anytime. But, you know, when you're kind of in your twilight years, it's just got to be the absolute worst. So with that, let's sashay out to another break, and we're going to come back with scary space movies.

A (21:46)

Hi there. Leo Laporte here.

B (21:47)

I just wanted to let you know about some of the other shows we do on this network you probably already know about. This week on Tech. Every Sunday, I bring together some of the top journalists in the tech field to talk about the tech stories. It's a wonderful chance for you to keep up on what's going on with tech, plus be entertained by Some very bright and fun minds. I hope you'll tune in every Sunday for this Week in Tech. Just go to your favorite podcast client and subscribe. This Week in Tech from the Twit Network. Thank you.

A (22:18)

Go on, sneak a peek. It won't hurt for long. Wait, she said that last time.

B (22:29)

Okay, well, the rain randomizer is 30 years old. What do you want? Okay, it's almost Halloween. As we belabored into the ground, the question is, is space scary? It can be almost as scary as internal alarms when they go off. So I thought we'd kind of go through a parade of some of the best or worst movies of various decades. I probably have seen more than 1950s movies than you have, Tarek, because I was alive in the 1950s.

A (22:59)

You're gonna have to hold my hand for some of this stuff. But some of it I've seen, so.

B (23:02)

You know, always the tease with you.

A (23:07)

And so the first one I dug up, that's. That's. That's. That's our limit.

B (23:11)

So the first one I dug up was. Sorry, I was looking at discord for a second. They're trying to understand something.

A (23:18)

It.

B (23:19)

The terror from beyond space.

A (23:21)

Beyond space. So, like, not even. So should we even talk about it? Because it's from beyond space. It's not from space.

B (23:29)

Well, but $50,000 is guaranteed. So this is. This is a Marshall Thompson spectacular from early 1950s.

A (23:38)

I love this poster. Yeah.

B (23:40)

So, and the poster is a depiction, and we'd show movie clips, but YouTube, you know. So this is a movie. Marshall Thompson. There was a mission to Mars. The spacecraft landed. Earth lost contact with it. They. So they sent another mission, all very Ray Bradbury, which landed and discovered only. Only Marshall Thompson left. And they conclude that he murdered his crew. And he says, no, no, it was a guy in a big rubber suit. And so they take off and head back to Earth. And sure enough, there is a guy in a big rubber suit in the bowels of the ship, and he starts murdering people and smashing his way through hatch after hatch. And they finally have to figure out how to do him in, because gunfire doesn't work. Because if you're flying to Mars or the moon in the 1950s, you're a white male with a.45 caliber handgun at your right side. Because what could be smarter in a spacecraft than firing.45 caliber slugs around?

A (24:37)

I think I remember watching that. I mean, is this the one where the ship is in different levels? It's like. Yeah, levels, Right.

B (24:43)

So he keeps smashing through hatch after hatch after hatch. To get to Marshall Thompson, which, of course, if you've ever seen Marshall Thompson act, you. You would be going the other way, trying to get off the back of the rocket. But what are you going to do? Black and white, kind of forgettable. What is not forgettable, however, is the 1951 original version of the Thing from Another World. And, John, I think I have links for all these, although I'm not sure if this one's for it or the Thing. The Thing was a delightful Howard Hawks movie. And, you know, when you got Howard Hawks at the helm, it's going to be fun. Black and white. And you all know the story. If you saw the. The newer version of the Thing, there. There is the Thing himself.

A (25:30)

Yeah.

B (25:31)

Also known by the protagonist as. Oh, look at Giant carrot. That, my friends, is James Arness of Gunsmoke fame in his first movie role, where he was so ashamed of what he was wearing, he refused to eat with the rest of the actors.

A (25:44)

Yeah, he was a carrot man. Grown carrot people.

B (25:47)

Carrot man, yeah. So there's an Antarctic. Antarctic or Arctic base. I think it's an Arctic base in the first movie. Small deployment of people there, of course. Military, you know, Lantern John. Men and one or two women who are playing secretaries and things of that nature, because it was the 1950s. But they discover something buried out in the ice. And so the. The team that goes out to investigate sees this dark thing under the ice and. And they get in a big circle and join hands to try and figure out how big it is. And it's round, so we know it's a flying saucer. Cue the sound effects. It's a flying saucer. Wake up the board up. It's a flying saucer.

A (26:34)

There we go. There we go. I was trying to find the right one.

B (26:39)

It doesn't really matter. Trust me. So they. Okay, that's good. So they put a bunch of thermite there and they melt it out. And while they do get down the spaceship, they also realize that a creature has been thrown from it when it crashed. And they stick that stupidly in a storage room. And there's a guy, you know, one of the dumb corporals, because you always have the dumb corporal chewing gum and talking like he's from Brooklyn, can't stand the thing staring at him through the ice while he's guarding it overnight. So he puts a blanket over it. Ooh. But it's an electric blanket, and it melts the creature, so it attacks people and stuff like that. And it's great fun.

A (27:23)

Yeah, I like how The.

B (27:24)

It's tongue in cheek. Which is enjoyable.

A (27:26)

They do. Is it a spoiler? Can I say how it ends? This is right. This is the one where they shock him right at the end. But they also killed the babies, the little baby plants. The plant carrot people.

B (27:39)

Because it turns out he's. He is a plant, right?

A (27:41)

Yeah, yeah. And so he had planted other little babies.

B (27:44)

So. Well, the, the, the sc. The, the cold hearted scientist decides he wants to. I think they. What did they do? They had little pieces of them and they fed. Oh. And they, they, they planted little bits of them in a garden to see if they grow and fed them human blood. The scientists did that without permission. And then they take a stethoscope and lean over and they say, I can hear it. It's mewing like a baby. And then. Yeah, they burn that. And then the scientist, of course runs out for everybody says, no, we can learn so much from each other. Let's talk. James Arnis tears his arm off.

A (28:21)

That's.

B (28:22)

That's the end of the science. But wait, there's more. Huh?

A (28:28)

I was gonna say this. When you, you referenced the, the, the later one. You mean John Carpenter's the Thing, right?

B (28:35)

Yeah, yeah, 1982. Which honestly I didn't enjoy as much.

A (28:39)

But it's still spirit. No, the spirit is great. I, I have a story about that. I don't know when we want to talk about that, if you want to talk about it now or not, but we can.

B (28:47)

I will tell you that I found that version of the thing to be much more effective when viewed by me and seven other people in Pascal Lee's arctic base.

A (29:00)

I could get that. No, so like I, I had this weird thing where, like when I grew up watching some of the, the older horror movies, you know, in my quote, unquote, formative years.

B (29:12)

You had formative years.

A (29:13)

I, I know, right? So. But like, like things like the thing I watched like this original thing, I remember watching it from like the library at the. On, on cassette, but I watched like the remake too with John Carpenter's. And I watched the Fly and I watched a lot of that stuff and a lot of it I watched either like when it was being broadcast on TV or not, and I did not know until college that they cut a lot of stuff out because commercials for commercials and because it's on TV and, and in John Carpenter's the Thing, when they're like trying to save one of the infected guys and they use the defibrillators to shock him away and like his chest opens up and bites the guy's arms off. And then his. Oh, it's so awful. And I'd never seen any of that before until we were studying it in my science fiction class in college. I'm sorry, mom, that I took a science fiction class in college.

B (30:13)

And not just a science fiction class, but a science fiction class at the University of Southern California, which means it's about $10,000 an hour.

A (30:21)

But when I was absolutely horrified, it was as if I was watching that. That. That alien horror movie for, like, the first time. So it scared the bejesus out of me. That and the fly so brumble fight, like, eats a guy's hand. Oh, I'd never seen it before.

B (30:38)

Okay, in the thing, I have to say, my favorite shot in the whole movie is the infected husky staring at the. At the north. At the. The Southern Cross out the window. It's just sitting there staring at that star. And then the next thing you know, it's turned to this pillar of eyeballs and faces and.

A (30:55)

Yeah, gristle.

B (30:56)

And I just thought that was a.

A (30:57)

Mixture of, like, three or eight different dogs. It was absolutely horrifying.

B (31:00)

Yeah, it was great. And I still love huskies. Next up, and actually, better a movie than you might think called Invaders from Mars.

A (31:11)

Invaders. I like it. I like it already.

B (31:14)

That's the one where the meteor crashes beyond the fence in the backyard of this kid's farmhouse. And they cut to the same freaking shot of this fence going up over a hill about a hundred times. But the. The tldr on this one is the critters in the. In the spacecraft can take over people and make them seem like they're still who they are, but they're not. They're all intent on invading Earth. And so the little boy who is the star of the film is the only one that knows what's going on. He's trying to find somebody. But, you know, when you see this as a kid, it was really creepy because the military guys who you have the most faith in get taken over. His parents get taken over. And you could tell they're taking over because they have a little. Little pollywog out the back of their neck. You say, mom, mom, there's aliens up on the hill. You only think that. Billy, step inside the oven now. It's preheated, so it was pretty spooky. And Jammer B says, discord, Invaders from Mars, the first movie I remember freaking out over, I have to agree. Although it was followed very closely by the 1953 version of the War of the Worlds. Which George Powell all night because I was certain they were out there. We're going to land any second. And speaking of landing every. Any second. Let's go to a break and we'll be coming in for a landing in just a few moments. Standby.

A (32:40)

Nice segue.

B (32:41)

Morning, Zoe. Got donuts.

A (32:43)

Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?

B (32:46)

Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you teach me. So, Dana.

A (32:53)

Oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at T Mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.

B (33:05)

Wow, impressive. Let me try. T mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network. Nice.

A (33:12)

Jeffrey, you heard them.

B (33:14)

T mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible trade in in any condition. So what are we having for launch?

A (33:23)

Dude, my work here is done. With 24 month bill credit is on.

B (33:26)

Experience beyond for well qualified customers.

A (33:27)

Plus tax and $35 device connection charge credit same and balance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel Finance agreement. IPhone 17 Pro 200 FE 56 gigs, $1,099.99 a new line, minimum 100 plus.

B (33:35)

A month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required.

A (33:36)

Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oaklove speed test intelligence.

B (33:39)

Data 1H 2025 is@t mobile.com okay. War of the Worlds 1953, line 38.

A (33:47)

Did you read. Did you read the book before you saw this movie or did you see this movie? And then I think I saw the.

B (33:53)

Movie when I was like six. So I wasn't reading novels by then. Graphic on line 38. He said there it is. And I have that poster hanging in the other room. It's the original lobby art. And last I checked it's. I think I bought it for 15 in Hollywood in the 70s. It's like $11,000 for that thing.

A (34:14)

Wow, look at that.

B (34:15)

It's insane. Great artwork.

A (34:18)

But tell my mom that about the old black hole Disney horizontal key art that I used to have.

B (34:23)

Well, no, wait a minute. So people have to actually have enjoyed the movie for it to be worth something.

A (34:29)

Hey, hey, hey.

B (34:30)

And Black hole.

A (34:33)

We should have the black hole on this list. That's a horror movie.

B (34:36)

So the only horror was having to sit through it in. In Thailand when I was looking for anything to watch that wasn't in Thai. So War of the Worlds 1953 lift from the book. Modernized up to the 1950s. It all takes place in Los Angeles. And George Powell was the guy for science fiction back then because very few people were doing it. This was the most expensive science fiction movie of its time.

A (35:03)

Yeah.

B (35:04)

Almost $2 million. Count them, 2 million million. With over half of that devoted to special effects. And here you see the Martian War Machines. Very changed from the book, but just spectacularly spooky. These kind of matter things. I mean, if you're going to put together two animals to freak people out, a manta ray and a cobra is a pretty good combination.

A (35:26)

Yeah. Watching the ray, the heat ray come up like an antenna out of the. The pit was very, very creepy.

B (35:33)

Oh, and they destroyed downtown Los Angeles, which I enjoy greatly. There's a very famous shot where the heat ray hits LA City hall and it explodes. And these miniatures were like 15ft tall. These weren't really tiny.

A (35:44)

Yeah.

B (35:44)

So it was quite a tour de force. If you've never seen it, you owe it to yourself.

A (35:50)

Can I. Can I tell you a story about. About this film? And then we should. I want to talk a little bit about the other War of the Worlds films too, because very of a time this one was. And when we studied this one in class, there's a scene.

B (36:02)

Wait. Where you wasted money studying the War of the World in class?

A (36:06)

It was a science fiction university of soaring film class.

B (36:10)

Yes, well, because why wouldn't one take one of those when they could be skipping out.

A (36:14)

Hey, I have. You have to fill electives somehow now. You know, like you've got spots. You could have. You've already paid for them. So you could have taken basket weaving.

B (36:22)

Retake differential equations, but. Go ahead.

A (36:24)

I did. I did. You know it, dude.

B (36:26)

It's a hard one.

A (36:28)

No, so. So there's this scene right in this film where there's a. A pastor character, you know, like the voice.

B (36:39)

You're talking about the original movie.

A (36:41)

Yeah.

B (36:41)

Uncle Matthew.

A (36:43)

Yeah.

B (36:43)

Walks with his Bible up to the war machines.

A (36:46)

Yeah. To. To with his faith, you know, because he believes that the faith will protect them. And of course, the aliens have no truck with. With. With faith. And they. They zap him.

B (36:56)

And he seems to be a little religion light. Yeah.

A (36:58)

Yeah. So. So when that happened. When that happened in my class, this is Los Angeles. It was stunning because everyone cheers. They're like, happy that the priest got it right. Wow. And it was.

B (37:14)

That's a cynical bunch.

A (37:16)

It was really weird. And apparently it made a lot of people in the class uncomfortable and they complained to the instructor who was a former Jesuit priest. And we all got a lecture the next week about, you have to be sensible to other people's beliefs, man. And, and just, just, you know, keep that in mind when you're in public.

B (37:39)

But to be fair, that movie is pretty ham. The 53 version is pretty ham handed when it comes to religion. I mean, towards the end they're hiding in a church and right as the church is collapsing around the two of them hugging, the war machines fall to the ground. And then they all run out and see the last Martian die. And then they look up and I forget the line, but it's like a greater power got them than us.

A (38:06)

Placed on the earth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's in the.

B (38:08)

That's said amen.

A (38:10)

Yeah, yeah.

B (38:12)

That is not in the book. Not like that. They have the curate who is a real creep.

A (38:17)

Yeah, yeah.

B (38:19)

So they actually is a vicar or something, but that kind of a jerk.

A (38:23)

I think the, the God in his infinite wisdom part is in there at the end of the book. So I think so what's interesting though is like you talk about how, you talk about how kind of heavy handed that is and then in, in what, 2015 or 2005. When did they remake it? 2005. Yeah, in 2005, when they remade it with Tom Cruise. And it's all about like terrorism, domestic terrorism and all of that because the aliens were already here. They were underground the whole time and we didn't know it.

B (38:52)

That was so convoluted.

A (38:54)

Yeah.

B (38:57)

You know, to wake them up you have to smack them on the head with a meteorite. It's like what?

A (39:01)

Well, I think it was that the machines were there already and then the pilots went into the machine from the, from the meteorite. Is what, what the plan was. I thought that that remake was a bit closer to the actual book because you had the tripods and you had, you had the, the night in the, in the, you know, hiding out in the basement of the house with the, the astronomer guy, you know, that, that, that freaks out and tries to kill them all. And, and then you had the seeding of the land with the, the red weed. You know, that was creepy. That was really. But you don't have. They still haven't seen the, the black smoke. Like there have been other remakes where there was like a BBC miniseries where they have the black smoke and that was.

B (39:43)

Okay. There were a couple of other movies. I actually did a really awful War of the Worlds. Well, I did a fairly good War of the Worlds retrospective show that same Year for History Channel. And we also did this really awful direct to video thing that.

A (40:00)

Did you ever watch the TV show turn up? Did you watch the TV show in the 80s and 90s?

B (40:04)

Yes, it was God awful.

A (40:05)

Yeah. And then they rebooted it too, for like a season.

B (40:08)

So, you know, just. But the one thing we haven't seen, with the slight exception of that BBC1, is a really excellent one staged in Victorian times when it was originally done. Because we all want to see Thunder Child, you know, the. The little frigate go to battle with the tripod and.

A (40:27)

Yeah.

B (40:27)

Blow its legs apart.

A (40:28)

Have you ever listened to the rock opera the War? The world's rock.

B (40:31)

Oh, good God. There's a long story there. But we were interfacing with those people for that. For that History Channel show I was doing. And they. This is the. What's the guy's name that did it.

A (40:43)

I. I actually own it, but I don't remember offhand. I'm gonna look it up because I forgot.

B (40:47)

Yeah, we could do a whole. Done in.

A (40:50)

We could do a whole episode on.

B (40:51)

War of the World in the late 60s, early 70s. It was a rock opera. And you know, as Jeff N told us years ago on the show, if you were a kid.

A (41:00)

Jeff Wayne. Jeff Wayne.

B (41:01)

Jeff Wayne. Yeah. If you were a kid back then, this was a seminal part of your upbringing. But it certainly wasn't for anybody in the US who had taste.

A (41:09)

I was obsessed with it. I was obsessed with it. When I learned that this was like an actual thing, I found it. I don't know how.

B (41:17)

I don't think I. Oh, God.

A (41:18)

But I. John, if we want to.

B (41:21)

Talk about War of the Worlds.

A (41:23)

Oh, yeah, that's the new one. Did you guys. I did. I did. I watched it. I watched it. It was like awful.

B (41:30)

Two hours of liquor store security camera video of Ice Cube looking at the screen. Daughter, you gotta get out of here. It was God awful. It was almost as bad as House of Dynamite.

A (41:43)

I. I did not. I did not finish it. I. I watched about half of it and I just could not. I finished it.

B (41:49)

And he's acting as. As in this GIF loop. If you're on the discord, he's like, oh, my God. Oh. Oh.

A (41:54)

You wanna. You wanna know why he's acting so bad?

B (41:57)

Because he's a bad actor.

A (41:59)

No, it's because this is done during pandemic times and no one was in the same room and the director was not really like, there.

B (42:06)

You know what? I have directed actors who are looking off at a C stand with a paper plate taped to the arm in front of a green screen. And they did better than that every time.

A (42:16)

I mean, that's true. I mean, this is Ice Cube we're talking about.

B (42:19)

Yeah, it was.

A (42:19)

I mean, it's just the whole. The movie. It's not just. It's not Ice Cube.

B (42:23)

Right. It was a bad. Ice Cube is a good actor. How cheap can we. Well, let's not stretch the point. How cheap can we make this movie by never leaving the one location that he's sitting in? I have a small story. I wrote a World War II submarine science fiction drama years ago, terrible script. Sent it to Roger Corman's company, Concord, in the 80s, and they loved it. But being Roger Corman, they then came back and said, by the way, can you move the location into a radio station? I said, how am I supposed to stage a World War II submarine battle drama in a radio station? Well, we got a standing set. We got to use it. Why don't we get this. Is this our last break coming up? No, we got one more. Okay, let's get this next to last break sunk along with my submarine script, and we'll be right back. Standby.

A (43:26)

Space is scary.

B (43:29)

You're supposed to do that at the head of the show. But this is a good place.

A (43:32)

Rod spent so much time on that, and we never got to use it until just now. So did you make it, Rod?

B (43:37)

Of course.

A (43:38)

Did you use AI?

B (43:40)

No, but I did use the stock shot for the rocket ship.

A (43:43)

Rob was having way too much fun with the Medusa.

B (43:45)

Anyway, actually, in the early 2000s, I think it was, twit had a thing in an episode of your Sunday show, I think it was, of the Twit satellite. And it was like sugar cubes and Styrofoam balls and toothpicks and tinfoil and stuff.

A (44:02)

The classic launching the TWIT satellite to reach millions of viewers. And it was essentially just a VHS tape. Yeah, no, yeah, it was great.

B (44:13)

It was really something. Okay, so before we leave the decade of the 50s or 60s, this might be in the 60s. One film I would really like to highlight was called 5 million years to Earth, also known in the UK as Quatermass in the pit. Strange name, huh?

A (44:33)

1967.

B (44:34)

Oh, thank you, Professor. Quatermass is. Is. It was a series of books and movies. This was the second movie in the franchise. The first one's kind of an utter bore, in my opinion. This one was spectacular. In there.

A (44:50)

You will come.

B (44:53)

There we go. Yeah, just show it without. Without mint out sound. And of course, the trailers of the time never actually show you the things, right. It's like, oh, let's show you all the reactions. But basically, they're digging a new subway tunnel, and they come across this really cool looking spaceship which looks kind of like a chrysalis. And suddenly it starts affecting everybody around them. And there are these little aliens in them that look like cross between a grasshopper and a cockroach. And the effects are nothing to write home about, but the script is really, really thoughtful and good science fiction. So the essence of it is, these are Martians. They are the reason that part of the city was called Hob's End, because they were what people originally thought were the devil. And basically we realized that we are descended from the Martians. And there were two classes of society, the Overlords and the Underlings. And the Overlords used to hunt the underlings. So as this thing begins to spread and take people over, they start hunting down the ones that are descended from the other side. So it's a really creepy.

A (46:00)

I think this is the movie that I was telling you about about, like, the people being taken over and it's all in their mind.

B (46:07)

Oh, maybe.

A (46:08)

Yeah. I think that this is the one that I was. That I found to be very confusing. So, like, I didn't get.

B (46:13)

I guess it is the first time, but I just remember thinking, this is some of the smartest science fiction writing I've seen in a movie ever. Wow.

A (46:21)

Wow.

B (46:22)

It was really something. All right. You need to take a turn, my friend.

A (46:25)

Well, yeah, yeah. I think that we're. It's like. We're like, almost like, to the end of the episode, and we haven't talked about something. I'm gonna grab some actual, like, horror movies.

B (46:35)

Okay.

A (46:36)

Since we've been talking a lot about science fiction movies that are just scary, and I want to start. I'm gonna skip all the way because we could talk about the Blob, we could talk about Andromeda Strain, but we.

B (46:46)

Could talk about green slime.

A (46:48)

I want to talk about Alien.

B (46:49)

Right.

A (46:49)

Let's talk about. Yes, Alien. What was that, 79, right?

B (46:54)

I think so. And then Aliens. The good one was 82 or 80.

A (46:58)

Yeah. And. And the reason that Alien exists, and I saw that a lot of folks nod to the Terror from Beyond Space as like, a precursor to that, is because Ridley Scott wanted to make a horror movie, but he didn't really want to make, like, a monster movie, like a. Like a earthly monster one. So he was trying to figure out A way to build that. And, and so he reached out to HR Geiger to come up with ideas and whatnot. And then at the end result is Alien a, a movie which, taken with its immediate successor, Aliens are some of the greatest, you know, action slash horror slash space movies ever. And then it spawned like a 30 year, I guess, 40 plus year franchise. That, that is still going surprisingly bad. Yeah.

B (47:49)

If I may.

A (47:50)

Yeah. But you could say that we're in the middle of like a renaissance of it all. And, and so alien is online 49. I don't know if we've showed the, the stuff yet. Do we have anything for it? I don't know. Do we? Yeah, I think we do, of course.

B (48:03)

And, and although I think it might be Aliens, I think, I think it'll still work.

A (48:08)

I think the, the, the issue with Alien and why it's so scary is because of how they, they marketed it. Because you only have one Alien, Alien in, in that, in that movie.

B (48:17)

And you know, which basically plays the role of the black cat in a haunted house film. Yeah.

A (48:22)

Like it's, it's out there trying to get you. There's jump scares. You've got, you've got the Enemy within in ash, the, the, the, the robot, the synth. What do they call them? I prefer synthetic.

B (48:36)

We prefer to be called artificial persons.

A (48:38)

Artificial persons. There you go. So, and then, and then they turn that up to 11 with James Cameron in Aliens and take it from a horror movie into like an action sci fi phenomena. And I don't know, it's just, there's just like, there's like something of it because obviously Alien is that. What are you laughing at?

B (49:02)

Look at the discord somebody put up.

A (49:08)

It's a staple.

B (49:09)

That was brilliant. It's a picture of Ripley with her head like this and somebody's got a stapler and then they eject the, the staple carrot, which by the way is.

A (49:19)

From, it's from Alien 3. The, the one that comes out of.

B (49:22)

A cat, but we get a dog. So that was very inspired. I'm sorry.

A (49:26)

No, that's good, that's good, Judy. Very, very nice. I hope you created that because that's pretty slick. So, but, but the tone of, of Alien is very much the tone of like every horror movie. You have your crew or like your group of kids or you're, you're in the cabin. They're in the cab. Yeah. And their cabin is the ship, you know, or, and they have to go down and they discover aliens. You never know why. The aliens, you know, had Crash landed there with these eggs. You never find any of that stuff out. They've gone and on to try to explain it all at length in all of the sequels. And I think that that's done a disservice to like the. The lore of just what made it so creepy because this stuff was just there and they found it and, and then it's just like, you know, it's out there. It's just like death. It's out there and it's going to get you eventually and you don't want it to. And it's always, always looking, you know, so it's very scary.

B (50:27)

Internal Revenue Service. Well, and moving on to a really good Aliens movie. So I. Alien for the first time in decades a while back on a.

A (50:39)

Are you gonna tell me that you like Aliens more than the original Alien? Is that what you're about to tell me right now?

B (50:44)

I don't just like it more. I would claim that it's the only movie in that franchise that, that comes close to reaching its full potential.

A (50:51)

But it's not a horror movie, though. It's not a scary movie. It's an action movie.

B (50:55)

Exactly. As James Cameron said, it's like 10 miles of bad road. A little bit of an attitude there. He. He can be kind of a tough customer, but the guy is a visual genius. And, and I think you look at just about any scene in Aliens and Aliens great. Don't get me wrong, it's slow. I mean, you have to be down for that long, slow grow, which is fine. Aliens just starts bashing you in the head with a sledgehammer within 10 minutes and doesn't stop until the film's finished its third fake ending. And I felt, I saw it in the theater originally, United Artists Theater in Pasadena, California. And I felt like I had been grabbed, smashed against the ceiling, squeezed there for about two hours, and then dropped, wrung out and wet on the floor. I mean, there isn't a moment in that film. Sorry I'm gushing here, but that doesn't to me, just work brilliantly.

A (51:53)

Yeah.

B (51:54)

And a lot of it was kind of serendipity, you know, and the girl never acted before. Never acted.

A (52:00)

Never acted again.

B (52:01)

The girl that played Newtown.

A (52:02)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have a graphic for it.

B (52:06)

That John's not gonna let me use.

A (52:08)

Yeah, no, the, that, that Bill Paxton as Hudson saying Game over is like an icon. Like, it's like people that is in the lexicon now and people probably don't even know where it came from. And it came from him freaking out the first time they.

B (52:22)

Why don't you put her in charge?

A (52:24)

There's a bad call. Bad call. Ripley, it's another one with Paul Reiser. Paul Reiser of. Of a TV sitcom fame, you know? No, he was like a big baddie for the company.

B (52:33)

Yeah.

A (52:34)

In Aliens, you know, that was the first time I ever saw him in anything. And then I saw him in. He was in that. That, that. That rom com.

B (52:44)

Mad about you.

A (52:45)

Yeah, mad about you. And I was like, this is the same guy, you know? Don't they know the call that he made about Ripley, you know?

B (52:51)

Now I want to watch Aliens again. Okay, we got to move on because.

A (52:54)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

B (52:56)

You should go on Day of the Triffids because you actually read the book.

A (52:59)

Yeah, Day of the Triffids.

B (53:01)

We have a picture of that on line 47.

A (53:03)

Day of the Triffids was a John. A Jonathan Windham book about basically this. This meteor shower that brings alien plants to the Earth. And they grow, and everyone's like, oh, look at these great alien plants. And then the next day everyone's blind and they're like, eating everybody, and it's like a whole big thing. And. And then they made a movie about that. And I remember seeing the movie, and it's like, the movie is not as scary as the book is because the book really freaked me out because you've got these alien plants. And I did not think that alien plants could be scary despite it. The thing from Whatever. But the way that Wyndham had wrote them, like, it was just like it was a written.

B (53:50)

Wrote journalist. Yeah.

A (53:52)

Yeah. I don't know, you know, what's. What's words are.

B (53:54)

Are hard conjuga. Jason.

A (53:59)

It's because it's. It's. They were out there doing their own thing. They were off, you know, just taking over everything because they can. And they're not trying to reason with anybody. You know, I think that's what makes Alien so scary is because the alien, like, there's no reasoning with it. It at all. It's just got its own thing to do and it's gonna do it. And that was the same in. In Day of the Triffids. And I. I really cannot for the life of me remember how they beat them at the end. If they just died or if they found, like, a way to. To live with them. I can't recall, man.

B (54:34)

Maybe they ground them up and smoke them.

A (54:36)

Yeah, something, something. But it was weird.

B (54:39)

You know, There's a certain. There's a certain metaphorical overlay Between Day of the Triffids and what we're seeing going on around the country right now, I don't want to go any details because we are never political on this show. You know, mindless things coming after you. I don't know, there's, there's something touching me there. I would like to give an honor, honorable mention to first spaceship on Venus. It was an international production with lots of very bad lips. Lip syncing because they were, it appeared they were dubbing multiple foreign languages. But again, love that poster.

A (55:14)

Wow, look at that.

B (55:14)

Yeah, isn't it cool? It's a cheaply made movie. Not a lot of big names in it, but a very intelligent script. Now let's see if I can remember. There's an artifact found on Earth that, you know, buried deep and they, they look at it and they go, oh my God, look, we're decoding something here and it's somehow ends up triggering transmissions from Venus or something. So they go to Venus to see what's going on. Early shades of 2001, by the way, in the late 1950s, early 60s. And so they're wandering on Venus, which of course, you know, oh, it's windy here. No, it's 900 degrees Fahrenheit and 1000 psi. Get out of there. But they're wandering around and there are these critters that start coming after them. And it turns out that the Venusians, in trying to take over Earth, ended up creating things that destroyed them that are still dangerous. So a couple people have to sacrifice themselves for the spaceship to come home and so on and so forth. And there's a lot of pontificating by seeing. Because science was still trusted then by the American movie going public. So science of the capitalists. There's a lot of time of the scientists pontificating about the fate of man and all that kind of stuff. But it's again, it's just a very thoughtful movie. It's a bit of a chore to watch, but it's a very thoughtful movie and I think it's kind of interesting.

A (56:37)

What year again for that?

B (56:39)

I think it was like 1962 or something. Yeah, you can kind of tell there's a breakover point in very broad terms between the 50s and 60s because they actually went to color. Yeah, because 1950s, if you were going to film a horror film or a science fiction film, you did it black and white. Do we have another break, John?

A (56:59)

No.

B (56:59)

Oh boy. We can continue.

A (57:01)

Yeah, look, can I pick another one? Yeah, because I was really happy that you had Picked Event Horizon. And I think it's really the precursor to some of the other ones that are. That came later, like Sunshine and Pandorum and Apollo 18. I wouldn't put Pitch Black on a horror list because it's a. It's a. It's more of an action type movie, but it's a survival. But I get it. No, no, no, no, no. We can, we can talk about it because it is. It is survival.

B (57:24)

Yeah, but I'd rather talk more about Apollo 18. So anyway, go forward with your.

A (57:28)

No, we can mention it. We can mention it too. That's another franchise one too. But I want to talk about Event Horizon as kind of like a spiritual crystallization. That's what we used to say in film class, Rod. Crystallization of the genre. Right, of course. Because like, you know, some of these things we talked about, they could be just in it. If you, if you change. If you take it out of space, like Star Wars. You take Star wars out of space and you put it like on the ocean, it still works. Right. So some people say that because you can do that or Star Trek, you can do the same thing. You put it on the ocean, it's like a swashbuckling adventure. So it's not really science fiction because, yeah, it can't really happen on its own in the setting that set up. But Event Horizon is one. You were talking about trusting science where. And this was in the 90s, I think it was 90. I was in college when that came out. Oh, my gosh. This is going to drive me nuts. But you got Sam Neill as a scientist who designed a ship that went out to. I think. Did they go to Neptune? They did. It. Went out to Neptune to try to.

B (58:37)

Test like sounds so happy with this.

A (58:38)

Like a faster than light drive, like a new type of engine. And it had gone missing and then all of a sudden it comes back and I think. I think Laurence Fishburne is in that movie too. Laura Fishburne, I remember, is a Kathleen Quinlan. I can't remember. It was Laurence Fishburne with the big ones. Yeah. Was it? Oh, Jason Isaacs. Yeah, Jason Isaacs.

B (59:02)

I remember watching.

A (59:02)

This was actually free on YouTube for like a couple. For the past couple weeks. So I rewatch it.

B (59:08)

It's good.

A (59:09)

I like it. Yeah. So basically they sent the Event Horizon out to Proxima Centauri, the closest star, which is like, ooh, scientific accuracy. Right. That's really exciting. No, but it shows up, it just repair. It comes back, it goes missing. It goes missing and they Never hear from it again. And then the ghost ship, I guess you could be like on the ocean. Anyway, the ghost ship comes back at Neptune and they have to go figure out like what went wrong. And it's this whole big, just like kind of. Is it a haunted ship ship? What happened? There's like hints about like everyone going crazy because they crossed like the threshold when they turned on the engine. And then is the ship alive? I don't know, like all this really weird stuff. And it was so scary to me. And it was the first sci fi film that after and horror movie that I'd seen that I wanted to know, like, what happened, like in all the things that they hinted at, you know, like the, the, the stuff that happened to that first ship, that first mission, like that drove everyone crazy and, and, and let everyone to just disappear or, you know, kill each other. Who knows what happens? No one knows, you know, and, and I just thought it was really, really scary.

B (60:21)

And it's a little bit of a monster movie, isn't it? Because the people end up getting turned.

A (60:27)

There's like a whole undercurrent of dread that goes throughout. You know, like we talked about. There's like Sunshine is on. On this list about a mission to restart the sun. And that's all like creepy, creepy, creepy. And then it turns into a monster movie, which I think makes it less scary.

B (60:47)

Pivot. I remember. I don't remember much about it, except that shift, it was like, oh, come on, you're onto something good here. Although the premise is pretty flabby, but okay. But then to turn, it's a little bit like, was that John Carpenter movie? Oh, it's the one. It's at the church in la and Satan's taken over the church and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's a very interesting setup. And then it just turns into a cheap horror film. People running around with knives and that kind of thing. And it's like, you know, you had.

A (61:17)

Something good going here, but Event Horizon doesn't have that. It has this build where it just keeps getting scarier and creepier and like this is going on and this is going on. And meanwhile, why won't they just leave? Just leave the ship, you know?

B (61:33)

Well, and go where?

A (61:34)

I know, just blow it up, go home, you know, because they have like, they docked, they came there on the ship, so.

B (61:40)

Oh, I see.

A (61:41)

Because they're the recovery team. They're like the rescue team to kind of go and see like the salvage team. So. But anyway, so that's Event Horizon, you Know, it kind of led to some of these other ones. I think Pandorum is a, is a, is a, is a, a successor to I think Event Horizon, which by the way, pandorum on its own, that's a different one about, about a generation ship that goes out and Earth gets destroyed as they're leaving and like weird stuff happens, you know, when they have to wake it, wake up out of. What is it? Because suspension, suspended animation. That's a, that's a movie that has some really sick like good twists. I think some of them are forecast. But it's pretty good too here, so.

B (62:27)

Well, for the 2000s I had a few candidates, but I think I got to pick Apollo 18.

A (62:33)

Yeah.

B (62:34)

Hadn't seen it in years, but our friend of the show, Jerry Griffin was the technical advisor on that film. So it's a found footage docu, horror action film, I guess you'd call it. Apollo 18 is a DOD secret mission to the moon. And they go there and the two astronauts climb a lunar module and land and only to find out that there's a mystery. Hey, wait a minute, the Russians got here. What? The Russians actually landed a crater over from where they were. Of course we know the Russians never did succeed in sending people to the moon, but in this case there's. They find a dead cosmonaut and there's the mystery as to who killed them and how and all that. And it turns out the moon is infested with giant rock sized ticks.

A (63:23)

I thought they were spiders.

B (63:25)

Spidery ticks that crawl inside your spacesuit and eat you.

A (63:27)

And that's like the big reveal, you know, I think that's, but you know.

B (63:31)

What I mean, that's, that's fine. But the, the if as long as you don't know that the found footage they found couldn't actually happen. And you told me when we were talking about this earlier in the week, they tried to sort of pass this off as, oh, it's a documentary with secret NASA footage. We even have a website for the film that'll tell all this was. And the problem is, you know, they didn't have TV cameras in the lunar module. They had a 16 millimeter movie camera. Hey, you can't see that film unless somebody brings it back to Earth that it gets processed. So you know, there's a pretty high BS factor. But the hardware, the size of the sets. Yeah, astronauts, the something movies always get wrong. The ground, the transmissions to. To Mish control and back. That's easy to screw up if you're just a Film writer don't have experience, but you get somebody like Jerry Griffin involved and it, they nailed it across the board, I thought. And it was pretty spooky.

A (64:32)

Yeah, yeah. Is there a chapter on Apollo 18 in your book coming out at all?

B (64:36)

No, it's mentioned, but it wasn't his favorite movie experience because he also consulted on and had a, a vignette moment on film in Contact. And I think what's the other one wasn't Fly Me to the Moon. Deep Impact.

A (64:56)

Yeah. Deepest Impact. That's a good. We didn't talk about. Those are, those are just sci fi movies though. Those are.

B (65:00)

Yeah. They're not spooky creepy.

A (65:03)

But, but one, one more point about Apollo 18 is I, I agree. I think that the visual accuracy of the hardware, like the landers and the insides and like, like the suits that they wore, very, very fun. Whether or not, you know, you, you believe we landed on the moon, the last real mission was Apollo 17. And so that was like my, that was my big pushback on when this movie came out is that the folks that were promoting it kept wanting to have us do interviews with like the talent as if it was a fact, as if it was like a real. That is such amateur by the prp, you know. And I was like, no, we can't treat it like that because that's not true. You know, we can't write a story as if it was true. You know, when we, when, you know, this is just a sci fi movie, a horror movie, etc. And I think that because we wouldn't go along with that, like it was, it kind of colored the what, what we were able to do with it. But I really like the premise of that because there's other found footage films from like that era that I think are really, really fun. First on the Moon, which is a Russian film about the, the race to the moon and did the Russians get there first. And what really happened, you know, was really, really cool. And that was one that was creepy in its own right because it's really shot as if, as if it was, it was fact. But you know, you just never know what happened weapons at all. And that's very similar to Apollo 18 is because you, you really don't get an idea of what was actually going on. You just kind of see what these guys saw at the very end and have to assume for yourself like what was it? Was it these things? Was it something else? I don't know. I don't know. But I love, I love. I didn't know we had a still of the space spiders, you know, So.

B (66:49)

I, I would like to mention that first on the Moon is also the name of my best selling 2019 book.

A (66:55)

There you go.

B (66:56)

That I think by casual calculation made the publisher something like, at least in gross revenue, a million three or something. But nice, nice. Well, nice for them, not so much for me.

A (67:07)

By the way. I know, I know that we're gonna wrap up soon, but you mentioned Life earlier.

B (67:10)

Yeah.

A (67:10)

And when we're talking about fidelity of these horse like space movies, Life is another one where they actually nailed what the inside of the ISS looks like. They're the. And, and I really enjoy that one. And that is another one that has another really solid twist in it. And I'm not gonna say what the twist is or where it is, because if you watch Life, I want you to out there listening to, to experience that for yourself, because it is.

B (67:38)

So how many golden pomegranates out of 10 would you give Life?

A (67:42)

Oh, I mean, I think that Life is like a fun movie, right? I don't think it's. It's great. Like Apollo 18. I think it's a fun movie. I think also Terminator 3 is a fun movie. Like, I know, I know what I'm gonna get. Rise of the Machines. Come on. Like, you know what you're gonna get, right? I know what I'm gonna get when, when I'm. When I'm going there. And as long as I get that, I'm not disappointed. I wanted for Life, I wanted for Apollo 18, high fidelity depictions of the actual vehicles and the life and stuff. I got that. And then of course, you get the horror element mixed in there. And then how do you deal with that? I thought that they asked some really fun questions there.

B (68:20)

I have to say, I think Apollo 18 nailed the hardware and the interaction with the hardware better than first man did.

A (68:27)

Yeah, you think so?

B (68:28)

Less money.

A (68:29)

I like the sound, though. The sound of the ship.

B (68:31)

Well, I was going to say the sound design in Apollo 18, that should have been an Oscar contender. I mean, the mix is so good. The effects are so good. Things like hatches closing, moving around inside the thing, the master alarm, they're all spot on. They sound like that hardware was sound again because they had an advisor there who had intimate knowledge of that. And I thought the sound design was just brilliant. I mean, it's almost worth watching again just for that. And the rock spiders.

A (68:59)

Yeah.

B (69:00)

But. Well, I have to say, so good on you for life. I haven't seen Sputnik. I put it in here because I.

A (69:08)

Haven'T seen it either.

B (69:08)

Made notes about it. Okay.

A (69:10)

It's on Netlist, Netflix for a while, I think.

B (69:12)

Is it?

A (69:12)

Yeah.

B (69:13)

I would say as a runner up, just as a space is scary movie, Apollo 13.

A (69:18)

Yeah. It's not a horror film because it really happened. Yeah, really happened.

B (69:23)

Yeah. That's another one Jerry was an advisor on. And talk about, you know, nailing the hardware and the interaction with the hardware and the sense of claustrophobia being jammed in at lunar module. I mean, you can't. There's no way in a film, unless you're going to show people in a phone booth, you can really get a sense of how small the limb is. So in the movie it's a little expanded, but they actually. What a great film.

A (69:50)

They actually filmed in weightlessness on the zero g. The vomit comet for that parabolic flight. Yeah. And. And I think they were nominated, if not won best editing for that. So to keep the sense of it going. So very, very cool. And I think, I think it's right to put it in here because it's real terror like that those, those astronauts had. And we lost Jim Lovell this year. Right. And. Yeah, and so that's. That's timely as well. And. And then I guess we'll have to, you know, hopefully we won't have a real life horror story like that in the. In the future going back to the moon, so.

B (70:27)

Well, if we do have a real life horror story like that, I think the scariest yet to come would be an extended voyage with you and me heading off to Mars in a small spacecraft that would look something like this.

A (70:42)

I don't know. I don't know. I am a delight, Rod. I am a delight to be with you. Would be. You would have a.

B (70:49)

Says your mom. Says your mom. Yeah, she.

A (70:53)

She does say I'm the smartest in the best.

B (70:54)

Well, I would say, you know, if I had to pick somebody to spend that much time with. You would you would be on the short list. The question is, what would we talk about after you were done complaining about work?

A (71:05)

Well, I know the only other thing to complain about is you, Rod, is you.

B (71:09)

Well, that could take up the rest of the time.

A (71:11)

Or maybe it's the alien hiding in the bottom hatches. Right.

B (71:16)

Could it be? Would it be. Let's see. Let's ask. I'm beautiful.

A (71:21)

It's okay to stare. I won't bite.

B (71:26)

She doesn't have much of a repertoire, does she? Well, did we. Did we finish it? Did we get. Did we Hit everything we wanted.

A (71:35)

We got through most of them. We didn't talk about the green slime or the Blob.

B (71:39)

Well, we've talked about the green slime a number of times before. And to make short, it's a international. I think it was Japanese, Italian and American co production of things. Living on an asteroid that get transported to a space station that is literally about an 8 inch model spinning on a thread that you can see little lights in the background of stars that would actually make them like 10 times the size of the galaxy if they were really that big. And the green slime look like people in large green plastic bags with car flares on the end of their tentacles and big red eyes. It was probably the most pathetic space movie I ever saw as a young man.

A (72:21)

Yeah, well, the Blob, you know, in Pennsylvania, the town that, that they shot in the theater where everyone runs out of the theater when the Blob attacks, they actually have a Blob fest every year when they show the movie and then when everyone runs out of the theater in the movie, they all run out of the theater, you know, in the. In real life to start the festivities. But that was, that was a 1958 movie that they made again 30 years later in 1988. And I would say that we're probably due for another remake of that film to see how it would. Good, because I, you know that's a.

B (72:50)

You know, I think they're, they're doing a limited episode remake right now.

A (72:57)

Yeah, I watch it. I made. There's. There's a fantastic 1994 homemade film made in my house in Stockton, California called the Slob or no for it was called El Blobo Esta Aqui. For my Spanish class we made, we made on all. All on vhs. And the Blob in high tech sci fi effects was my bright blue beanbag that we would throw at people when it attacked them. It was wonderful. That exists somewhere in my house in California that reminds me on a vhs.

B (73:39)

The Fish man from Mars, which is a film I made in seventh grade. No more need be said about that. Well, I want to thank everybody for joining us today for episode number 184 that we like to call Space is Scary. Tarik, where can we find you haunting the binary highway these days?

A (73:57)

Well, you can find me@space.com as always, you can find me on the Twitter and Instagram, all those fun things at Tarek J. Malik this weekend? Well, it's Halloween so I'll be giving out candy, you know, to Kids, maybe some space facts as well. And then playing my video games. A lot of Halloween events In Fallout 76, in Marvel, rivals in Fortnite. New Simpsons season starts tomorrow. That'd be really exciting. Also, Election day on next Tuesday, before our next thing. So if you guys have to vote, go out and vote, because we're voting for governor in New Jersey. It's gonna be exciting.

B (74:31)

You have a full and exciting life, my friend. I. For Thanksgiving. For Halloween.

A (74:37)

You skipped Halloween.

B (74:38)

We'll be packing to go to a conference next week and keeping my door locked and lights out. But because we live in a townhouse complex. I've been here seven years and never once has anybody knocked on a door asking for candy. And of course, you can find me at pylebooks.com or@astromagazine.com or you can learn more about the national space society@nss.org Sign up. Join up. It's a good bunch. We do good things. Mainly an excellent magazine that I do all by my lonesome. Remember, you could drop us a line at Twisted Twit tv. We welcome your comments, suggestions, ideas, or perhaps in the, in the case of today, your critique. You guys talk too long. New episodes of this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcaster show. Make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, and give us reviews. Lots of good, fat, juicy reviews. You can also head to our website at Twit TV Twists. And you can follow the Twittech podcast network at Twit on Twitter and on Facebook @Twit TV, on Instagram. Tarek, do you have any parting words, my dear friend?

A (75:47)

You know, I just. I just realized that we skipped two of the most seminal space horror movies of all time. And that is Leprechaun 4, Leprechaun in Space, and Jason X, the Friday the 13th where they go into space. Can you believe that? I completely forgot.

B (76:03)

Thank God we skipped.

A (76:05)

But I want everyone to tell us. What's your favorite scary space movie like? Send. Send a note to Rod and I like. What do you think? You know, Jason X? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

B (76:16)

I can't believe nobody commented on my windows.

A (76:20)

I. I think they're nice and creepy.

B (76:22)

Aren't they?

A (76:23)

You have lovely windows.

B (76:25)

Thank you. There are bloody smears all over them by the time we're done. But no harm.

A (76:30)

I thought those were your tears.

B (76:36)

But enough about marriage, okay? Let's. Let's say goodbye, Tarek. Goodbye, everybody. Thank you.

A (76:42)

Goodbye, Tarek.

B (76:54)

Morning, Zoe. Got donuts.

A (76:56)

Jeff Bridges, Why are you still living above our garage?

B (76:59)

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A (77:05)

Dana oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at T Mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.

B (77:18)

Wow, impressive. Let me try. T Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network. Nice.

A (77:26)

Jeffrey, you heard them.

B (77:27)

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A (77:36)

Dude, my work here is done. The 24 month credit is on experience.

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A (77:40)

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B (77:48)

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A (77:49)

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