Dallas, when a person doesn't have less on, they have more on, exactly.

Wow, it's like a Noel Coward play, isn't it?

I don't think the human body is physically capable of the quantity of groans sufficient to reflect the depths of inanity that we're about to dive into.

Wow, you know, it's funny, because when we talked about Blade Runner last week, we thought, you know, if we went to the other release of this week, which was The Thing, we would be too depressed, and yet here we are, just having emotions that I don't think we thought we were going to have watching a movie called Megaforce.

Well, you know, depression is a spectrum that manifests in many forms. You know, sometimes life gives you experiences that allows you to experience new ones that you had not quite contemplated.

No, I think Megaforce made me have new emotions that I never understood, that never knew before, and I'm just struggling to understand now. I also want to say, like, wow, from the producer of The Godfather. Which is, like, clearly Coppola had a little bit to do with the execution of Godfather, right? Not the producer.

It seems apparent.

I get the feeling that Albert Ruddy was only as good a producer as the director he had. I'm beginning to suspect that.

Yeah, yeah, well, when you think about it on paper, you have him and you have Raymond Chao and Golden Harvest. You have Hal Needham. And you're like, this is a titanic triumvirate of just awesomeness. What amazing movie is this going to yield?

I don't know, because, I mean, Hal Needham is the director of Stroker Ace, Cannonball Run 1 and 2.

Cannonball Run and Hooper, which is a masterpiece.

But Hooper is literally just his life story, because it's basically he's not a stuntman, which Hal Needham... By the way, Shock, he's a recovering stuntman, Shock from watching this film, because he directs like a guy who's fallen on his head a lot. And on that note, I'd like to say, I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And I think I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, maybe?

And we both believe that this is...

Multiplex Overthruster! Summer of 82.

Paul, this weekend, we got in the Family Econoline, right? Mom and dad drove us to the multiplex, and we watched Megaforce. I'm genuinely curious, can you even summarize the Proustian greatness of this film?

I mean, I clearly drew the short straw this week by having to attempt to recap this high dosage mental contamination of a movie that is Megaforce, which I believe only exists as an excuse for stunts and explosions.

And unchained, unleashed homoeroticism of a potency that I have seldom experienced outside of places like the Abbey in Los Angeles.

Coupled with just sweeping male chauvinism.

Oh, my God, sweeping and racism.

Well, a little racism peppered in for good measure. But as we mentioned, some of the producer-director collaboration, which yielded a showcase for Barry Bostwick, Pursus Combata and Henry Silva in some unknown deserts on strange vehicles and strange garb in an indecipherable plot where things go boom a lot.

Paul, it is very clear to me that this movie has scrambled your mind. I mean, I've never seen you like this.

I am in a dimension of psychic pain that I have not experienced before. Wow, and we watched Grease 2 together. I thought that Grease 2 was going to be the deepest, darkest existential challenge of our journey together, but boy, howdy.

So let's just say for the sake of our audience that Megaforce is the story of how the innocent country of Sardun is being menaced by their neighboring country of Gamibia and the daughter of the president of Sardun engages the services of Megaforce, which is a... Yes.

Well, and let me pick it up from there because I had the presence of mind before my mind was destroyed. I took a screen capture. This movie starts with an explanatory title card, which I shall read.

Please, please. I'm begging you because I have this in my notes. Go ahead.

I'll try to give it the appropriate intonation. Despite official denials by leaders of the free world, free world, sources now confirm the existence of Megaforce, a phantom army of super elite fighting men whose weapons are the most powerful science can devise their mission, dot, dot, dot, dot, to preserve freedom and justice, battling the forces of tyranny and evil in every corner of the globe. Globes, of course, known for their corners. That may be all I have to say about the movie.

I mean, but yeah, basically, I think the most important thing we can talk about in terms of recapping the movie is that there's two things. One of them, it is coded as a romance between the leader of Megaforce, Captain Commander Ace Dallas, who I'm sorry. That's right. Ace Hunter Dallas is Michael Beck character.

Yes, I would say, Lieutenant. But as we learn in Megaforce, no one has rank. No, except Commander Ace Hunter.

Well, he doesn't have a rank. He's a commander and an ace. So Megaforce. So they have they basically travel around in skin tight spangly spandex. It's actually shiny spandex.

Shiny jumpsuits.

Everything they every all of their vehicles and their jumpsuits are beige or sort of like a kind of brownish, right? They're really shiny. Then they're very tight. If we learn nothing from this film, Paul, if we learn nothing, it is this dance belts, please, please wear a dance belt. If you're wearing lycra, please, for the love of Jehovah, I have been to spas and seen less dicks than in this movie.

Like, I mean, holy crap, there's a lot going on and I should point out, it is not available on any streaming service. It is available for rental in glorious SD standard definition. I don't know that I want to see this in HD because of the very detail you, you just alluded to.

And for this reason, and this reason alone, I'm going to refer to Ace Dallas, Ace Hunter, sorry, Hunter, solely as Commander Wedgie from this moment on, because he literally has a wedgie the entire movie.

You know, you mentioned that as I was still watching the movie, and there are there are fleeting glimpses of wedgie-less Ace Hunter ads.

Oh, really?

But there are very few and very far between. And there is a spectacular wedgie shot.

Walking toward Purses Combata with the helmet flashed to the side of his, and he's literally walking.

Yeah. Yes, that's one. It is surely something. So we've mentioned Barry Boswick is our action hero lead, as sort of unexpected as that may be. Clearly was not maybe the first choice.

He was Brad in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, for those of you who don't know.

Of course. And later came to Comedic Bloom in Spin City.

He's a wonderful actor, yeah.

Big Barry Boswick fan. He has found himself in this movie where it's sort of asking him to be both an action hero, a romantic lead, and a gay icon.

Gentlemen, if we move past recap and straight into discussion, do we miss the bell?

Oh my God.

Oh my God. Oh my God, please. Okay, wait, wait, hang on, hang on. So the Megaforce goes into Sardun, accidentally crosses the border into Gamibia. They seem to be stranded in Gamibia, and then they have to escape daringly. Which, shocker, they do. That's the plot of the movie. Let's begin the discussion. Okay, now Paul, I started watching this movie because you're talking about how Barry Bostwick is like a combination of sort of matinee idol, romantic object, and my addition to that is gay icon because this movie is incredibly homoerotic.

And I will note in a pivotal scene, his parachute opens and it is a rainbow.

Phenomenal.

It's a moment of glory.

What I was going to say about Bostwick is watching his performance, the first thing that came to mind is this guy is acting like Kevin Kline in the movie version of Joe Papp's Broadway production of Pirates of Penzance, which was a movie I loved as a kid, right? Now here's the thing, and then I'm looking at producer Brad's briefing on the movie and literally they cast him because Hal Needham saw him in the touring production of Joe Papp's Broadway version of Pirates of Penzance. So literally, he is playing this character of Ace Hunter, aka Commander Wedgie, as the pirate king. And the whole movie, I'm like, this guy's sort of playing like a kind of weird gay buccaneer in this film. The other thing is, I'm going to say that this movie is very gay, I'm going to say it's very homoerotic, and what is so interesting to me about that is that it is, and of course I don't say that as a pejorative in any way, but the thing that makes it so striking to me is that it is so wholly unintended. There is nothing in the DNA and the makeup of this film that implies that anyone in this film is even close to West Hollywood. And I think part of what I want to talk to you about, Paul, if you want to discuss it with me, because you really seem to be, I mean, you're not yourself, Paul. You really aren't. Whose peculiar vision of masculinity is this film? Because this film was literally made by a bunch of stuntmen, a bunch of like tough hombres who made Burt Reynolds movies in the 70s and stuff like that. And here you have this version of masculinity that is in a completely unintended way so flamboyant. And also the amount of bromance between the men in this movie and all of that, it's kind of crazy.

It is. And I want to add one other footnote. Barry Bostwick originated the role of Danny Zuko in Grease. And earned a Tony nomination.

Wow. The great Italian-American Barry Bostwick.

Exactly. Another thing, Barry Bostwick arrives on the firmament of film with a spectacular amount of hair all over his head. Head, face, like everywhere. It's just like he's a very hairy man. And he has this joie de vivre, this lightness to him that does not immediately convey traditional action hero masculinity.

Yes.

He has this sort of nimbleness of a theatrical...

No, he moves like a ballet dancer. He's like prancing between the motorcycles, and when he jumps on the plane and he jumps on the ramp, I mean, he's literally like doing pirouettes and stuff.

And they're more dressed for ballet than they are for desert action sequences.

Because their costumes are literally beige lycra that is skin tight.

And given the minimalist plot and story... And quality. And the fact that it all just seems to be an elaborate construction purely to give us this phantasmagoria of stunts and explosions, I can't help but think now as we're talking, the ideal medium for Megaforce is a ballet.

Yeah, absolutely. I think you're totally right. I'm right there with you.

That someone needs to commission a ballet of Megaforce.

I think Mark Morris should do it. I'm totally there with you. In addition to the skin tight, skin colored spandex that they're wearing, Barry Boswick's hair, which literally rivals George Lucas's hair for the greatest hair of all time.

It's magnificent, yes.

It literally should get its own screen credit.

I spent the film trying to figure out if it's a wig.

Well, I don't think it, no, because if you look, no, it's no.

His real hair is kind of like that, but this is pretty amazing hair.

I think that Barry Boswick is a genetic miracle. And we were just blessed to get to behold.

And the hair is set off by a turquoise bandana that he wears throughout the entire film.

To hold the wig on.

I will not accept this. Barry Boswick blasphemed me.

No, no.

It is a powder baby blue headband.

Yes, yes. It's turquoise. And his hair is sort of like bleached blonde. And his beard is so beautifully trimmed. I mean, it's like, yeah. I mean, it's just, I mean, wow. I want to harken back to one of the greatest films of all time.

Please.

We need to kind of talk about the movie sequentially. Just kind of get our audience to understand the grandeur of this. When we talked about ET, okay, we talked about how ET has this quality of meaning it. You know, the movie is completely earnest. It doesn't have any cynicism to it whatsoever, right? Now, I've seen a lot of really cynical action movies. And like, I would say like The Last Action Hero, you know, movies that are just clearly out there because Schwarzenegger was going to get 30 million to do it. Shane Black sort of pissed out a script in his free time. And it's one of those movies like where you watch The Last Action Hero, it's the most cynical. No one meant it in that movie. This movie, as horrendous as it is, and part of what makes it so awful and so befuddling, is that clearly these people mean it. This is their vision of action hero masculinity. Every frame of this film is earnest. Am I right in that? Or, I mean, do you see any cynicism in this film at all?

Very little. And really, the only cynicism is manifested in our villain in Henry Silva's character. And Henry Silva, who is a delight.

Oh, my God.

And having a lot of fun playing someone who is persistently very annoyed with everybody around him.

He's second, by the way, this villain performance is second only to Ron Liebman in Zorro the Gay Blade for just over the topness, you know?

Yes, that just gave me flashbacks. Another glorious film. But yeah, Henry Selva plays Guerrera again, so our villains are, of course, Latino.

Latino, but also with a female variant of a Latino name.

Yes, which is an interesting choice.

And also because he's so clearly in love with Barry Bostwick as we find out in the movie, you know?

Right, yes, well, and we'll get to that. That's a whole thing. It's insane. It does evoke also that decades later, Star Wars will do this with Saw Guerrera.

That's true.

Yeah, anyway.

I think it's pronounced soar. That's how Dan Urso pronounced it, soar. Anyway, go on.

Even the title sequence of this film is disorienting in this weird kind of negative image.

It's like you're just seeing sort of shapes of things. You don't know what they are. They could be motorcycles or they could be testicles. I don't know.

It's almost like abstract art. And then we get some very...

What wishes it would be.

Yes, we get some very confounding and almost threatening announcements in the title, such as filmed with introvision.

Introvision, right?

I don't know what that is, but you're watching this title sequence and thinking is this introvision? Is the whole movie gonna look like this?

Do you want to know what it is?

Yes, producer Brad, please.

Please, producer Brad.

Because I thought it was a modality of psychotherapy unique to California.

It could be.

Introvision is the in-camera composite system the production used to create the Megaforce headquarters.

Oh.

Not sure why introvision got such prominent placement in the credits, though.

Well, what's interesting about that is that then there's two things they did that were like BFX stuff, because it's introvision and also Zoptic.

Yes.

Now Zoptic actually is very dear to my heart because Zoptic was a front projection process created by Zoran Perisic. Yes. And that was used in Superman the movie.

Masterfully used.

But I think it's interesting because when you look at the, quote, flying, unquote, sequences in this film that were done with Zoptic, you see the kind of the visual signature of it, but clearly things like matching the light, the director of photography and all of that were so much inferior to say Jeffrey Unsworth and Richard Donner that the sequences look horrific and in Superman the movie, they look amazing.

Let's just jump to this. We're going to go out of order, but let's jump to this because I have very strong opinions about this. So yes, Zoptic is a breakthrough technically in filmmaking that is showcased magnificently in Superman the movie. Just still amazing and holds up. But in this movie, they make a supremely stupid mistake.

Which is? Just one? They make a supreme mistake?

Well, it's one of many, but it is indicative of how earnest the film and filmmakers are, and yet they don't really know what they're doing.

Nope.

But they're really excited to do everything.

Everything.

And they're just like, oh, wait, someone should have maybe thought this through a little bit more. So there are some aerial sequences that are teased in the main titles. It's like, oh, we're going to get some skydiving aerial sequences using Zoptic. That's cool. But when we get to them, it is intercutting this rear-projection, stage-filmed, fake skydiving with real and impressive actual aerial skydiving footage. And it is incredibly jarring because you can't do that. It's not chocolate and peanut butter. It just accentuates the artificiality. And the way those optic shots are staged are just really horrible. We needed a ballet choreographer, and they don't match or really sync or fit with the live-action plates. This is decades before Mission Impossible Fallout would show how to do this right with boundless budget. It is so painful because you just want to say, you could have saved so much money if you had not done any of this optic, if you had not done any of that and purely just shot the practical skydiving shots that are kind of awesome. And you didn't need to intercut these incredibly cheesy moments of basically the courtship of Commander Wedge.

You look at the flying courtship between Superman and Lois Lane in Superman the Movie shot with Zoptic. And you look at this courtship, you literally wish that they put Can You Read My Mind in Megaforce? Because it would have actually proved the film.

Yes, it is the bizarro world version of that scene. And it's so painful because it's just like, Oh my God, this could have been and should have been avoided.

No, it's insanity. It's all part of this idea that this was genuinely someone's made this film. And per producer Brad's notes, they were literally planning the sequel to start shooting the next year after the summer release of Megaforce. And the script was written.

Bostwick had a three picture deal for a trilogy.

So the people making this film genuinely, genuinely believe that this was going to be the next James Bond superhero franchise.

And I also want to say, I'm guessing you shared this experience maybe if you were a comic book reader at the time. Megaforce loomed so large in our generation's consciousness through full page four color ads that were everywhere that everywhere in every comic book all over the place. It's like, oh my God. And again, this is in the era where before the explosion of comic book movies where they were rare, far, few and far between. And the one sheet, the poster, the art, this majestic grandeur of Barry Bostwick and these crazy cool vehicles and the logo and the Deeds Not Words.

Deeds Not Words, which by the way, was going to be the title of the sequel.

Yes. And it just captured our imagination of, oh my God, this looks awesome. This is like everything we've been wanting to see in a movie. Wow. We can't wait.

And then turned out we could wait.

The movie starts. And I just have to say immediately, this movie makes no goddamn sense. No. So there's a scene in the desert and the terrorist boss or someone is giving this speech that's sort of a Marxist diatribe to these soldiers in a dark desert. We don't know where we are. We don't know what's going on, who they are. And Henry Silva is as bored as we are, which is funny. And then he interrupts them to get to blowing shit up. And then there's like tanks that are shooting and blowing things up. We have no idea why.

Nope.

We have no idea who or what is going on at all. It's confounding and completely disorienting. So we have tanks shooting each other across the desert. Then we cut to the stunningly gorgeous Pursus Combata.

Former Miss Universe.

Former Miss Universe and most notably, the iconic Ilea from Star Trek The Motion Pictures. One of the most beautiful people ever committed to film. And she is with...

Edward Moher.

Edward Moher.

That's right. Michael Knight's boss.

Michael Knight's boss.

That's right.

And that's all I can think of when I'm watching him here.

Edward Moher is kind of like the poor man's Edward Fox. You know, he just sort of like when they couldn't get Edward Fox to come in and give the exposition at a fancy British accent, they got this guy, you know?

And so he's playing a good guy general and she's a major, but she's also sort of like a princess.

The daughter of the president of Sardoon. He's also a major in the Sardunian army.

Yes. And she's telling him something about how he can't cross the border, but it's not explained. We don't have context for it. Then there's a cut to, oh, product placement for Continental Airlines. And there's this airliner landing somewhere.

Did you notice how the montage of Edward Mulhair and Precious Combata arriving at the airport? It's literally the beauty shot of the plane, beauty shots of the plane landing, then literally them carrying their own bags down a tarmac, and then they carry their bags a little longer, and then a car comes in. Yeah, there's this big black boxy limo, but it goes on for like three minutes.

And we have no idea what's going on. We've seen them in some desert. Somehow they've gotten, taken Continental Airlines to another desert. They get in this black limo. We don't even really know who they are, what's going on, what they're dealing with, where they're going. They then get stranded in the desert by this black limo.

The black limo scene just literally, the black limo scene just tosses their luggage on the desert corn leaves.

Persia's Kambata is remarkably chill in this situation. Edward Moher, of course, being the stereotypical stuffy English...

I can't believe they've left us out here. We're civilized.

Blah, blah, blah. He is losing his shit. We are given a very badly constructed suspense element of a rattlesnake.

Yes, they're almost attacked by a rattlesnake, yeah.

That is a stealth rattlesnake that doesn't rattle. And then it is shot by Dallas who arrives.

Dallas played by Michael Beck, the star of Xanadu, and who shows up in jeans, a tight t-shirt, and a cowboy hat, and a shotgun.

Not just any tight t-shirt, but our second big product placement for Skull. Yes, Skull, yes. Emblazoned gloriously. So he then shoots the rattlesnake, introduces himself, and he is immediately annoying. He is this caricature of a southerner.

Like a good old boy. He's like one of the Dukes of Hazzard. What if we get Bo Duke to be in this movie, right?

Yeah. And then he then takes them to his vehicle that apparently has been sitting there, but they haven't noticed.

And it's a giant Ford Bronco with a radar dish on top. And they're basically doing the Yoda gag. They're seeking out Megaforce, the most sophisticated fighting force on Earth.

We don't know that yet, though.

We kind of do. But they're greeted by, how are you? And of course, he sexually harasses her immediately. He says, you're Major Search and such. Well, you're the kind of Major who makes bivvocking in the jungle seem attractive. And you're like, dude, she outranks you. Fuck you. Not to mention you're a sexist pig.

And she's a foreign dignitary, but yes.

And then, and by the way, when they're driving toward Megaforce headquarters in the Bronco, they meet, I forget, I'm just going to call him the black guy because he's just the black guy, right?

He is Zachary Taylor.

Zachary Taylor, that's right.

As in a former president. He's also initially referred to, I believe, as Beethoven, but then that doesn't come back. But he's listening to music on Sony Walkman.

And of course, the stuffy Englishman looks at his Walkman and goes, are you listening to Gladys Knight and the Pips? And he goes, Vivaldi. And then, of course, he becomes the Shakespeare quoting minority, just to make sure that they're not racist, you know? They are racist. Megaforce is an international force, so they all wear patches from whatever country they were recruited from. And Dallas always wears the Rebel flag.

The Confederate flag. Yes, Dallas is a time traveler representing the Confederacy from, you know, 120 years prior. Yeah, it's incredibly disturbing. Later in the movie, he at the climactic action sequence, he then, because that's not enough to have it on his shoulder, on his uniform, he unfurls the Confederate flag, he just keeps with them and puts it on the antenna of his attack motorcycle.

And you think Zachary Taylor would just open up and kind of whoop ass on this guy, but what else?

I just can't even imagine what Zachary Taylor puts up with in his day to day life.

Or Evan Kim, or the Russian guy.

Yes, and there's a Mexican guy too with the Mexican flag. And I'm like, let me see that movie. He, at some point, we're told that he and the token Asian member had saved the day where the heroes of the last three battle sequences during the refueling scene later. But of course, like, oh, well, we aren't getting to see that. We were just being told that, oh, they got to be heroes in these other non-existent movies. But in our movie, the heroes are the white guys, including the Confederate, including Hunter and Dallas.

Yeah. So yeah. So here's the thing. This entire opening sequence is basically Pursus, Kimbada and Mulhair are just complaining about the reception. The entire, how dare you? We came here from another country and you leave us stranded. And they talk about it endlessly. Like they just, they won't let it go.

Yes. And they're driven to the base, but it's just an excuse for the Megaforce stunt show.

Yes.

The Megaforce motorcycle stunt spectacular.

That's how we dropped the dime that Michael Beck, the redneck, is actually a member of Megaforce because about four Shemptson motorcycles show up and they sort of shoot at these balloons in the sky while popping wheelies, right? Yes.

Well, Ace Hunter seems to have a particular predilection for pulling wheelies.

Yes.

It seems to be his favorite thing to do. But it also seems to be a practical solution to a fundamental design flaw.

Total design flaw, right? Motorcycles, please.

Because the only way you can aim the rockets from facing firework rockets are to pull a wheelie so you can fire them upward.

And literally you can't aim your gun unless you're going directly toward your target, which is not a great thing. It's a fundamental design flaw.

I will admit, in the innocent delusion of my youth, I briefly obsessed over these attack motorcycles that could launch firework rockets and shoot lasers. And then the dune buggy vehicles, too, that looked super cool.

They also have pew pew lasers in this movie.

Yes, they do have pew pew lasers. But they clearly spent so much money on this fleet of vehicles. There are a lot of them. We see three in this opening sequence.

There's the motorcycle, there's the dune buggy, there's the tank slash command vehicle. Hal Needham, by the way, where the director of the film cast himself as the guy behind the control panel going, oh, I see this happening over there on the radar. Yeah, that guy.

The guy in the chair in the van. But these vehicles are garbage.

They look like they're made of cardboard. And they're all, again, the same kind of skin tone beige. It's not bad enough that the Lycra uniforms are nude color. The bikes and the dune buggies are all nude color, but they'll have lightning bolts painted on them.

They get points for branding consistency, because they really do have a very clear cohesive brand identity for Megaforce. But it flies in the face of the concept of this being a secret army.

A stealth army, dare we say.

A stealth army that is emblazoned with very loud branding. That could not be mistaken for anything else in the world.

This movie makes Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin look like Force 10 from Navarone. I mean, it is literally the most...

I don't know if I can go that far. Oh, man. That is a double feature from hell right there.

Every person in this film belongs in RuPaul's Drag Race. That's all I got to say about that. And it's just sort of nuts. So after this... And literally, we're about a half hour into the movie now. Literally, at this point, I have gone to the bathroom twice now. So now, after the Megaforce stunt show, also the Megaforce holographic imagery show, which consists of a big woman in a Hawaiian beach that they project on the rock.

I totally forgot about that.

Yeah. Oh, because they got holograms. They can fool anybody into thinking anything, right? We went to the Megaforce headquarters, which is built into a mountain. It has 10 million square feet.

Yeah.

And it is built on gimbals so that it can... Apparently, these gimbals allow it to withstand a... Direct hit from a 25-megaton bomb.

Yes.

And there's all sorts of people running around with clipboards and weapons and shit. And you realize, these guys are Bond villains, is what they actually are. Like, they're literally... Like, their lair is a Blofeld lair from a Bond movie, right?

But without the benefit of being designed by Ken Adam. It is a tackier, cheaper version of that. I want to mention one other thing, though, because we... You know, this... After the motorcycle stunt spectacular... intro, we then meet and... Priscilla Scambada and Edward Moher meet Ace Hunter, who is, like, that's just their normal... .I don't know, rehearsal routine or practice that they're conveniently doing.

Whatever...

Not in any way to show off for their arrival, but immediately out of the gate, there is a startling, like, almost shocking lack of chemistry between Barry Bostwick and Priscilla Scambada.

Oh, my God, because there is so much more chemistry between Michael Beck and Barry Bostwick, and there's no way that even a woman as beautiful as Priscilla Scambada can distract them from their totally-requited love for each other. I suppose the lack of chemistry is almost heroic for these two characters, right?

It's almost implausible how there could be such a black hole of negative chemistry between the two leads right out of the gate, like in the opening scene. And then we get to this lair, and we're told everything that you just said, it's like, oh, this is like this. And then we are given the most boring tour of anything, anywhere, ever. It is death on the screen, because of how lifeless and boring it is.

I literally think the script for this movie was about 20 pages long. Every set piece in this movie sort of expanded beyond, I mean, things just keep going on and on, and like, is this still happening? The one thing you learn in this is that the vehicles have some sort of adaptive coating, that if it's dark, they do go dark, they do turn black. And they show this by putting a hat on, one of the major's cap on it, and then when he removes it, it's black. The paint has turned black. That's it.

Now, I have a theory about this, and this may be just false memory in my mind. Was that only there as a feature of the toy? Because I remember certain toys of the time having this sort of thermal sensitive thing where if you put your fingerprint on or whatever, then it would change color. There were some GI. Joe things later that did this, and this maybe predated that. But it had the feeling that, oh, they were... Because this feature in movie is never used. It has no purpose. Oh, maybe this is something that they just are featuring that will actually be in the toys to sell the toys.

Look, I don't want to skip forward and miss any detail of the scintillating plot. But when they do attack Guerrero's army in Gamibia, later on in the film, the vehicles are black because then there's a big scene where... Because when they're spotted later in daytime, Guerrero's, like, hilarious sidekick who's totally bumbler. Like, they painted the vehicles! Because, of course, they're all, like, funny for us.

I may have dosed on CBD gummies from Marfa at that point in the proceedings. I don't remember. My only note from the tour is that Ace Hunter has another specific fashion choice. And this may or may not be about related to camouflaging his bulge, which is to keep his gloves tucked in his belt in front.

Yes.

Which is also just a striking image.

Or perhaps just to tantalize you and drive your eyes toward that in that direction so that you can experience the grandeur.

Maybe. Maybe. But we do after the tour.

Yes.

We finally get one spectacularly awesome set.

Which is?

Which is the guest quarters.

Oh, my God.

Versus Kabata is bestowed. They are gloriously wild 80s deco. It looks like a nightclub.

But it's not, again, it's like this was someone's idea of sexy opulence.

Uh-huh.

The walls are all blood red, right? There's all sorts of glass sculptures. Yeah, mirrors everywhere. There's these glass sculptures. It's like, was Pablo Escobar the production designer of this film? Because every time the movie tries that kind of James Bondian sophistication. And by the way, like even James Bondian sophistication was not that great in the 70s. Diamonds Are Forever looks like it was designed by Huberti Givenchy compared to Megaforce. I mean, it's literally that tacky. And it's just it's just insane because again, it's so earnest. And you're like, which, by the way, Paul leads us to the dress uniforms, the dress uniforms. So then after we've had the interminable touring the play scene and the interminable, Barry Boswick goes to Persis Cambada's quarters, and they begin to have sort of their completely, completely unromantic affair. They have dinner and Boswick and Megaforce shows up in there. Paul, I can't describe these uniforms. Can you do it for me? Because I'm literally well, I'm like Grand Admiral Thrawn. I've literally been blasted to another galaxy by these uniforms. So please go ahead.

I mean, as if it's not enough that they have these gold lame jumpsuits, this skin-tight action wear, now we see, oh, well, it's evening and it's time for our dinner with our esteemed guests who have arrived and the entire Megaforce crew are wearing these things that you described the other day as having been maybe stolen from the Buck Rogers TV show wardrobe.

Yeah, I think they make the Buck Rogers dress uniforms look like, I don't know, the British Admiralty. I mean, it's like these are the colors. Are they cobalt blue? Are they sky blue? What is that blue?

Yeah, and there's this weird panel fold thing. But the best part is they have this sort of built-in baby powder blue ascots. Yes.

Paul, you and I need to have a real conversation about this.

Yes.

Now, first of all, it's not just Barry Boswick wearing this ascot. Barry Boswick wears a blue ascot, and Henry Silva wears a red ascot. So that's a whole thing.

And Edward Mulhair has his own blue and white, dark blue and white, navy blue and white patterned ascot.

But the real question is, are these ascots or are they dickies, Paul? Isn't an ascot supposed to be tied? These are sort of like elastic around the neck. I mean, it's not really like a necktie. It's sort of like something that you put on over your head, and just before you put on the tunic, so you don't have to wear a shirt under. I don't know. What are we looking at here?

I feel like this is the clip-on tie equivalent of an ascot, which kind of says it all about what Megaforce's whole thing and aesthetic and budget is about. Because yeah, it does seem to be optimized for economy and efficiency over fashion, but what a fashion statement. And these, so I haven't even mentioned. I don't know. I can't remember. Maybe I blocked it out. Whether I ever saw this movie all the way through until yesterday. It loomed large in my consciousness. Maybe I blocked out a lot of it. I certainly had not seen it for decades if I'd ever seen it again.

It's possible that it is only now that you've truly become a man.

It may be.

Having been through the trial.

I maybe just was not ready for it at the time.

What is most important about this dinner scene is that not only do we see the grandeur of the cobalt blue scarlet with the scarlet fold over where you can see the scarlet sort of lining to the dress tunic. These are also cinched very tightly at the waist and then they kind of balloon up before the boot. This is where we realize that Dallas was not the first love of Ace Hunter's life. It really was Guerrera. Now, we split this up into two soundbites because I don't think that you could truly digest the majesty of Barry Bostwick. I think the majesty of Barry Bostwick performance would overwhelm our audience. So this is the part where Barry Bostwick is explaining to Edward Mulher's character just who they're going to face in this upcoming battle.

Just for the record, General, there's one thing that Guerrera is not.

It's a fanatic.

Everything that he does, he does from money.

Is that a personal insight?

Guerrera and I go back quite a long ways.

Jump school, counterinsurgency, staff, command college. We served together for 18 months.

He was decorated twice for valor under fire.

And when things got a little shaky in Costa Brava, he was called home to command a crack armor regiment assigned to protect the capital.

But he was never allowed to fire a shot.

The politicians, to save themselves, ordered him to surrender.

And he had to watch his country die.

I've just moved to tears by his love of this man. I mean, it's like the soft of the livery, the loving, sibilant quality to his pronunciation. I mean, it's just, it's like, it's literally so moving. He genuinely loves this man.

And his deep, potent empathy toward Guerrero's, how do I say this in ways that don't completely excavate the explicit subtext of him not being able to fire a shot? Not being able to fire a shot, oh.

And the thing about it is, I was watching this scene and it occurred to me that this movie is what theater kids must think military people are like. It's like, it's so not in any way how anybody who's ever been involved with military shit ever talks about anything, you know? But it's so theatrical and so empathic and so like, I mean.

It makes the GI. Joe cartoon look like a work of documentary excellence.

It's just like Frederick Wiseman's GI. Joe, you know, like us. Errol Morris's GI. Joe. Yeah, I totally get it. The other thing is when he goes, we served together for 18 months. I think that's really the best 18 months of Ace Hunter's life.

Clearly, they are held in the most cherished compartment of his heart.

Perhaps in his hope chest at the foot of his bed.

There's one other thing I want to mention, though, that is startling in terms of the exposition heading into the dinner. This is all mixed up. It doesn't matter. At a certain point, I think on the tour leading up to this at some point, it is devolved to us that Megaforce has global surveillance capability to monitor all communications in all military bases throughout the world with real-time apparently machine learning language translation.

My note there was, holy shit, Big Brother surveillance state.

Yes, and it is like, oh, that's cool. And it's not like, this is terrifying.

And yet, they're surprised when they're betrayed at the end by the military. They don't know.

That's right.

By the politicians.

They're betrayed by the politicians who are always like...

Introduce this enormous, huge, world-changing thing, and then, yeah, no, we're not going to use that and we're going to ignore it in the plot. It's just like, ugh, please.

But returning to the interminable dinner scene, Commander Ace Hunter's exegetic monologue about his nemesis doesn't end there.

It's a whole one-man play in and of itself.

Producer Brad, please regale us with the rest of it because we can't even hold back any longer.

And it's crucial information.

But I saw him again about three years later in Nice. Like all mercenaries in Rhodesia, he was taking his R&R on the Cote d'Azur. He had quite a bankroll. He was buying anything that he could get his hands on.

I spent a few drunken days with him. I came that close to getting him back on our side.

First of all, those two dramatic pauses, especially the one after I saw him in wherever, and he was spending all this money, blah, blah, blah, and I came this close. What? He saw his old friend wearing fancy clothes, buying stuff, throwing money around, and he came. I was this close to something. I mean.

Do you think it's the performance or the script? What if Clint Eastwood had done this?

I mean, obviously, a lot of it is the performance because he's so soft and he's so soft spoken. I think Barry Bostwick's idea of, if not seething of like admiration is sort of, Paul, Clint Eastwood delivering this monologue.

I can't imagine Clint Eastwood getting anywhere near this monologue for all the money in the world. But the word that comes to mind as I'm hearing the dulcet tones of Barry Bostwick's performance is reverie. There's this just sense of reverie that he expresses that really takes this movie on a surprisingly intriguing turn.

Now, here's the thing, off of this moment in which we have totally just experienced the heights and peaks of Barry Bostwick and Henry Silva's past love affair, then we go into an expanded sequence that is all about, again, the black hole of lack of chemistry that is Purses, Combata and Barry Bostwick, because Purses, Combata, insists that she's gonna go on the mission. She is a soldier, she's trained in the field, she has all sorts of decorations, she's clearly somebody who has fought and won, so she's gonna go in the field with Megaforce, and Ace Hunter makes her basically go through all of the Megaforce tests, right?

It is extraordinary. There's one little thing that happens before that, which is then we get the plan scene, where we are told they have concocted the Hook, Line, and Sinker plan to lure Guerrera across the border. It's still convoluted and confusing and doesn't make a lot of sense.

To clarify, Hook, Line, and Sinker is the code name they use for the plan. It's not just Paul's description.

Yes, yes, that is the literal name of the plan. And they use the hologram device to show how they're gonna do this, and it's boring, it's death. And then Dallas hijacks, after they're done with the presentation for the plan and the hologram, he then hijacks the hologram display to show a holographic cartoon pig.

Like a weird dancing holographic pig, yeah.

That is not Porky Pig or any known IP cartoon pig, because they don't have that money or art isn't being made by that studio. And Dallas is delighted by this thing that's supposedly supposed to be funny, I guess, but everyone else is cringing and hating it. And I'm like, why do they put up with Dallas? There must be reasons why Ace Hunter puts up with such inane shenanigans. But it's also like, why was this even in the film? Like, how does shit like this not get cut?

I think that what actually happened there is that Dallas sort of manifested his Patronus, which is a pig. Also, I don't know, I can't remember an apropos of what, but at the end of the scene, I have Hunter, you sexist jerk. But I think that's just the whole movie. So I don't know.

It is, because, I mean, as you alluded to then, immediately following, okay, they got the plan. They're gonna lure Guerrero across the border so they can get him because they can't cross the border, as was told to Edward Moher in the opening of the movie. So they're gonna lure Guerrero across so they can get him. And then Pursus is like, I'm on the mission, I'm on the team. And clearly, this is the moment, this is the critical fulcrum between when this movie could be salvaged to awesomeness. Really? Or further descend into this abyss of whatever it is. Because we get this pretty kind of cool sequence where there's like, oh wow, she's a badass. Like she can do all these things and do them just as well. And we see her skydiving. After skydiving, she's like, let me fly the helicopter. She can pilot the helicopter. And again, the weird skydiving ballet duet. We've already mentioned that in Hunter's Glorious Rainbow Parachute. But she's awesome. We're getting to see this great potential female lead, action hero, who's gonna go toe to toe with Ace Hunter. Then there's this battle simulator, like this very big, elaborate, spooky room where they have this full, it's the arcade of my dreams.

It's supposed to be holographic, but it literally just looks like a reproduction from a 1930s movie. It's insanely bad.

Yeah, but she gets a perfect score her first time out driving one of these attack dune buggies or whatever they are. So she's cleared every freaking hurdle. She is awesome. She's already in her super cool black jumpsuit with a red scarf or something, and then Ace is in now a silver jumpsuit. It's worth noting, but no, she's denied.

She's first denied, like she says, producer Brad, could you play the incredible, horrific scene that was foisted on the world?

Is it because I'm a woman?

No. Then why?

You have got to understand. Those 60 guys, they have trained, they have fought, they have lived as one man. They think alike, to the point that they each know what the other man would do under any circumstance. And an outsider like you, any outsider, would create enough uncertainty to jeopardize the entire mission, and more importantly, their lives. And I just can't allow that to happen.

No, Commander, it's not that you can't, it's that you won't.

Like it?

No.

Understand?

Yes. But that's what makes you what you are.

A great leader.

Okay, let's unpack this. The majority of the scene takes place, it's sort of like a scene out of Singing in the Rain.

In silhouette.

They're behind a purple backdrop, and it's their silhouettes having this conversation. So he explains to her that he and his little He-Man-Woman-Haters Club are so tight that they basically can read each other's minds.

I want to just add one thing. So prior to this exchange, he also makes it clear that, oh, he feels bad that he put her through all these tests, because his presumption was that she would fail these tests, presumably because she's a woman.

Exactly.

And then that would give him an out to not accept her on the team. But he's an incredible asshole.

Such an asshole.

And has made her jump through every hoop that she has done. Like Ginger Rogers perfection, backwards and high heels, and has put all of Megaforce to shame. And now he's got to be like, oh no, it's not because you're a woman. It's totally because you're a woman. It's because of some mythical psychic bond that we all have that somehow cannot tolerate the inclusion of someone as incredibly badass as you.

And then she says, I don't like it, but I accept it. And then says, and this is what makes you a great leader?

Oh my fucking God.

It's nuts. Literally, at this point, I thought I was watching that Black Mirror episode, USS Callister, you know?

Oh boy.

Because-

This is a masterpiece, by the way.

Who is Ace Hunter, if not some incel, doing a virtual reality of this world?

And then it keeps, the chauvinism keeps escalating. It keeps escalating. Like it's not enough because then we go, we cut to, so not only is she, she takes this incredible insult with admiration.

Yes, as the team is leaving for Gamibia.

Yes, in the longest and most boring takeoff sequence I've ever seen committed to film.

Goes on and on, doesn't it?

There is a farewell when we're now, after being so intensely insulted and degraded. Degraded, yeah. She now is enamored with him.

Yes.

And kisses him goodbye. Not in a like, kiss my ass, you chauvinist, chauvinist monster, but in a swooning, oh, my hero is gonna go off and I'm gonna stay behind and be the Michael Bay female character who stays behind. At this point in the movie, I am seething with hatred for this movie. It is so infuriatingly offensive and it robs us.

Of Purses Kabata holding a gun and kicking some ass, which is something I wanna see.

Purses Kabata, post-Ilea Star Trek movie picture, emerging as a badass action heroine female lead and this movie destroys that. I'm so mad about it.

No, but here's the thing, Paul, and you're hitting on something that only began to dawn on me in this scene because he also tells her, I know this hotel in London called the, I don't know, the Dead Duck and let's have that drink there tomorrow. Okay, the premise of this film is that Ace Hunter is so charming, so awesome, so manly, so just humongously righteous and, but also masculine, that everybody can't help but love him. There's literally scenes in this movie where he is bombing the villains and they look up and they like give him the thumbs up because he's just so good at killing them. I mean, it's insane. I'm not exaggerating. This actually happens in the movie. Like at the end of the movie, Henry Silva is literally watching him destroy everything he's created and he's like smiling and giving him thumbs up. He bombs Edward Mohera's helicopter because for a perceived betrayal, Edward Mohera says, oh, good old chap, you know? I'm like, literally, this is the kind of guy that he shows up at your house and literally shits on your dog and you love him for it. And it's like, what male fantasy is this? Like what sort of toxically masculine, deeply, deeply closeted fantasy is this, you know?

I want to see the version of this movie where Ace Hunter is more accurately portrayed as the sociopath that he is.

And... He's played by Michael Shannon, right?

Sure, sure. And is not this sort of aggrandized mythic hero gone horribly wrong.

Yeah.

It's so, and I get it's the 80s and we have a quote about that later, but it's so off the rails, insane and wrong. And he also does this thing that I'm sure they were hoping was gonna catch on in popular culture.

Oh my God, Becky.

He kisses his thumb and then extends the thumbs up out to the other person.

Because he sort of thumbs up himself.

Yes.

He kisses the inner sort of top of his thumb and then he pivots his hand so that the part he kissed is facing out as if he's like collecting his kiss in the inside of his thumb and then shooting it out to you but with a thumbs up too. Because that's how cool he is.

It is like a salute to himself that then he demands the other party reciprocate to him because he is such a narcissist.

It's insane. The way this movie makes you buy into the idea that this guy is just the shit and that like literally he could punch you and you'd love him is insane. And you don't realize that that's what the movie is until about this point, because Persis Cambada gives him this kiss and it's insane. Then follows, by the way, then follows the longest scene of transit in the history of cinema. They're inside a C-138 Globemaster for what appears to be nine hours. I think you actually do the trip to Gamibia in real time.

There are three of them that are transporting the totality of Megaforce. And apparently they don't need to refuel. They just keep flying and flying and flying forever. It's night forever.

Because the scientist, Dr. Egghead, is that what they call him? Dr. Eggshell, Dr. Egghead?

Or just Eggstrum?

Eggstrum, Eggstrum. So they call him Eggstrum, yeah.

There is a very timely bit about a Rubik's Cube that confounds our French member of Megaforce for whatever reason. Just this whole sequence is boring. There is a moment I'm getting to, though.

Is it the same one that I'm getting to? Because there is one moment in this film, which in any other film would have been a... If this moment had been in a Marvel movie and it had been Tony Stark saying it to Ant-Man, it would have been amazing, but it's in this movie instead.

There is the one moment of...

It's like literally Josh Whedon came in and wrote one line in the movie and left.

It is, dear listeners, understand this is relative to the totality of the film.

Oh yeah, yeah, no, not me, clearly, yeah, yeah.

Given that context, there is a moment of sublime perfection in a little exchange between Ace Hunter and Dallas.

Can I do the Dallas part? It can be the Ace Hunter part, because I think we both wrote it down, ready?

I think we have.

It goes like this. Oh, we have a clip. Oh, I think it'd be better if we reenact it actually, but okay, let's do the clip.

I don't think, I don't presume I can do it justice. And it is out of the blue. It is completely out of nowhere. It is not connected to anything.

No, it's like literally, it's like, it's like, it's like.

Tiny little, just little scene.

It literally is like, they could only afford Joss Whedon to do a rewrite for a day, because he costs like a hundred grand a day to rewrite. And he just gave them this one line in left.

And it's like, imagine if the whole movie had been like this.

Producer Brad hit it.

What?

What, what, what, what did he tell you?

Well, he said, you love them in blue and you love them in red, but most of all you love them in blue.

It's totally inapplicable to anything that's going on here.

You did.

But it's very wise, very wise.

Totally inapplicable. First of all, the pause goes on. It's like, it's literally like, I had a birthday during that pause, during that dramatic pause.

This scene cannot be improved upon. It is this inexplicable spasm of perfection in this movie. And I can't explain it. It almost redeems the entire movie.

Isn't that weird how like literally, it's I've heard tell of soldiers falling asleep during prolonged torture. And I think that's what happened here. I think it's like literally, it's like we've had a stomach flu for an hour. And then you get to the second part of your stomach flu, where it's just a little bit better. And you're like, wow, this is heaven, because I didn't vomit for the last five minutes. And I think it's bad. I think it's-

And it's about the midway point of the film. But the thing I just keep, I literally, my jaw was on the floor as I was watching this scene and thinking, wait, what?

Right.

Where did this come from? Who took over the movie for this scene? And just imagining-

It's kind of like Robert Rodriguez-

The rest of the movie had been executed at this level because one of the things I was gonna, I mentioned before, because we have this team dynamic of these international badasses who were brought together and who gloat-trot and solve problems, although they solve it with violence. And it sort of is a primordial, clumsier, dumber, clunkier precursor to a dynamic we would get in great-

In all the Barbarians, in the Avengers.

And in Buckaroo Banzai. Which is one that comes to mind later that has a wit and a cleverness and it's just a wonderful, enjoyable thing. And that has all these things that this movie lacks and just doesn't have. It's sort of like this weird failed prototype for movies that would kind of come later. Except for this one scene.

But I think, like I said, I think they're trying to do something like, Guns of Navarone, Dirty Dozen. Like it's all that sort of, it's just literally this one moment like felt like it came out of another movie and I loved it. And it's also the moment, by the way, it's also the moment where you realize, Barry Postwick is a fucking amazing comedic actor. And the casting of him in this role is so misguided because this is a guy who should be a star in a whole other genre that is not this genre.

Exactly. And I think that this moment most clearly illuminates the fundamental flaw with the film is that this film did not decide or commit to what it should have been. Yeah, I think it started in conception, if I'm correct, as a action film, as a straightforward kind of action adventure thing. And then it kind of sways into trying to be somewhat comedic but doesn't succeed in most places, but in this one place it does. And it feels like, oh, if they had taken the time and commitment and effort to say, oh, let's, this is what the movie should be.

I want to correct you there because you said that the one stumbling block in this film is that lack of commitment to a tone. But I think the biggest flaw in the movie is the utter lack of talent and ability of anyone involved with it. What's interesting about it is that even as bad as this film is, it's pretty clear to me that these people are working at the height of their gifts. Uh, you know, I genuinely believe that Hal Needham and the writers and everybody in this film is literally working at the top of their game. And this is what they came up with. I don't know.

I disagree. I think that there are a lot of talented people here that are just not all living on the same planet. OK. And that there was a fundamental mismatch and misfiring between, you know, the producer of The Godfather with the Hong Kong Golden Harvest, Raymond Chow dimension and Hal Needham. And that there was just some fundamental misalignment that just disabled this film from congealing into something brilliant that I do think in some parallel universe probably exists.

Megaforce is what the Avengers is to us today, is what you're saying. It has been rebooted, it has been, every time it's been with great success, it's amazing.

So setting aside the whole idea that we have day by day increasing evidence we're living in a simulation, I wholeheartedly cling to the belief, if not hope, that we are part of a multi-dimensional, multiversal existence where there is a brilliant, amazing Megaforce franchise that fulfilled all its potential and in that earth, Barry Bostwick is the biggest star in the world.

It's the Harrison Ford of that universe. I have a slightly different interpretation, which is that in this universe, the opening of this film is kind of like the opening of the first seal, which tells us of the coming end times, but that's a whole other thing. Paul, then there's an action sequence that goes on for three, for exactly four minutes, which we know, because there is a countdown timer that's burnt into the side of the frame.

Yes, and I know we've gone long and I didn't think I'd have nearly as much to say about this film, but I'm finding it cathartic to get this all out. There are a couple things that happened before then that are really crucial. Three things, one, after that great scene and the Rubik's Cube bit, which is just dumb, it is revealed that Hunter gets air sick and requires copious amounts of Alka-Seltzer, another product placement, that Dallas keeps on hand for this very purpose. It's a kind of a beautiful moment of Dallas being there for Ace and taking care of him. It is then revealed as we cut back down to Henry Silva that Guerrera cheats at chess.

Yes, by the way, badly. He doesn't cheat particularly well. I know.

I just really like, why do you even play at all? It's a really weird, strange scene. I found it kind of amusing because of just how stupid it was. Then how are we going to deploy Megaforce? Are these three C-130s going to find some place to land? But no, they drive this fleet of Megaforce vehicles right out of the back of the bunker planes with parachutes on all of them and they all land perfectly and it just works and it is gloriously ridiculous.

Yes, it is.

But it's just funny because you're watching this and it's like, there's no way this many vehicles can fit in that plane and they just keep coming. They just keep rolling up the ramp, more of them keep coming and coming and they're just jumping off the plane and it's unintentionally hilarious to me. Then we get the execution of the hook, line, sinker plan which we have been foretold is going to take precisely four minutes to execute.

And in order to make sure we get how good Megaforce is, they put a four minute timer on the bottom of the screen so you can tell that it's only taking four minutes, which by the way, to me it was like, how long must I be in this hellishly badly produced action sequence whose geography makes no goddamn sense? Oh, three more minutes.

Yes. My notes are, then we have four minutes in pseudo real time where lots of shit blows up aimlessly and pointlessly. It's just some of the most boring action I've ever seen and it just feels like, oh, it's time for another installment of Hal Needham stunt spectacular with motorcycles and dune buggies and explodes.

I saw the Smokey and the Bandit movies and it's like, this is not a guy who, I mean, he can stage a car chase. Like he can, I mean, very basically, but it's not like he doesn't understand basic screen geography and stuff like that. And it's like, we just have these four minutes of senseless vehicular carnage, you know?

And it's like, what are they aiming? Are they just blowing shit up? Like indiscriminately, just blowing shit up.

Most egregiously though. Oh, by the way, you know what the countdown time they reminded me of? Do you remember in Hotshots Part 2, where they had the big action sequence and they had a counter for all the deaths, you know? And every time they killed somebody, the counter went up. And then like when they started killing people on the house, it was like, more deaths than Robocop, more deaths than Total Recall.

Yes, this should have had a counter for how many deaths of people of color. Oh yeah, or anonymous people of color.

How many sexist banalities were said during the course of the film? There should have been a timer for that. There should have been a timer for everything that was racist. But here's the thing, we discover something amazing in this film. So, Hal Needham cast himself as the control guy in the armored van, who's kind of the sentinel. He's keeping track over the entire operation, right?

The guy in the chair.

The guy in the chair. As so well executed in Team America, World Police. By the way, another movie that looks like The Dirty Dozen, you know.

Yeah, a better version of this movie.

Team America looks like a drama compared to this film, by the way. So anyway, so a couple of shrimps from the bad guys camp sneak up on the control vehicle with a bazooka. Hal Needham spots them. And then he pushes a button and this this cannon that looks kind of like a coffee can with like tubes of toilet paper glued to it turns around on a swivel, emits a noise. And then the bad guys are disintegrated? Is that what happened?

So this is the magic of editing in cinema. But the clear implication is that they have been vaporized. They are disintegrated.

Disintegrated.

Which begs the question, why aren't they using this for everything?

That's the thing.

How have they not been brought before the Hague? It is a nightmare weapon.

Who was the genius of military ethics who decided, let's give to these guys weapons, literally world-ending weapons. And by the way, the other thing you find out in this scene is the Megaforce has pew-pew lasers. But they're also firing regular ordnance, which is ridiculous, because as we know, pew-pew lasers, you don't have to carry bullets anywhere. You don't have to have refills. You don't have to have, like, you don't have to put them in magazines. And it looks cool.

But the rockets and explosions create smoke.

Oh, yes, they do.

And there's got to be smoke everywhere. There's lots of smoke all over the place.

I got to keep, we are running really, we can't do three hours on this movie because I'll die.

Tiny, tiny little things. One, the only highlight of this sequence is how hilariously pissed off Guerrero is. And Henry Silva is just really good at being really pissed off.

So annoying.

And then they complete the mission and it is suddenly inexplicably daylight for their victory ride.

Yes. And this is the part where the visual camouflage has worn off, so now the trucks look like nude pantyhose color with lightning bolts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the whole thing about the camouflage thing, like they're attacking at night in the dark, so we can't really tell that the vehicles have changed color. It doesn't matter. It's dark. It's not... Anyway, it doesn't matter. Then, Edwin Moher gets his mystery bad news.

Yes.

And then he and Pursus Combata fly off in a helicopter while Megaforce is stopped at their refueling base.

And then... Allow me to be the guy who now goes, wait, wait, let me go back a beat.

Awesome.

Henry Silva has dispatched Will Ferrell and Jim Belushi How could I forget? in a motorcycle with a sidecar to spy on Megaforce.

Yes, from another movie.

Will Ferrell's character takes out a telescope, looks at Megaforce and their vehicles that Arnold Lagergo's, they painted them! They painted the vehicles! Comedy gold. Henry Silva gets in his helicopter with his camouflage as a Red Cross helicopter because he knows the bad news before Megaforce does, even though Megaforce- He shows up first. He shows up first.

No, no, no.

Does he? Yeah. Yeah. Because this happens before Moher shows up because-

Oh, you're right, you're right, you're right.

Because Hunter introduces Guerrera to Moher and purses Combata and Guerrera says, you don't want to tell them the bad news or am I?

Ha ha ha.

If you don't tell them, I will. But before that, we have, again, the scene that further confirms the love affair between Dallas and Guerrera. And it is the following. Producer Brad, can you give us their meet-cute, please?

The reunion, the long-awaited, momentous reunion. Yeah.

You're not gonna fly all the way out here just to say hello?

My feelings were hurt. You hit town. You didn't call me.

I left you a message.

Bonnie, Ace, you were always a card.

And, Duke, you was always a prince.

Very nice. One piece zipper.

And it's worth noting, these two men have just been blowing the shit out of each other.

Yes, they've literally tried to murder each other's team. But here's the thing. The other thing about that is like, there's that whole part of like maybe like 42 minutes in the middle of that clip where you just hear, haha, slap, haha, slap, haha, haha. They're literally just touching each other and laughing. It's so weird. And then like one of them kisses the other. Yes. Like you hear the moi. I don't know which one kisses who, but like one of them just grabs the other and kisses him like on the neck or something.

And also like Guerrero is the guy they've been sent to lure across the border and capture.

Yes.

And here he is. Yes. In his glorious red ascot, in his full regalia. Yep. And after being incredibly annoyed by four minutes of death and destruction that Megaforce has rained down upon them, he is now happy as a clam.

The idea that Guerrero looks, sizes Barry Bostwick up and down and says, he literally, what is the line? He says, one piece, zipper, chic. I mean, the mind boggles. So now we've got all...

There are so many mysteries in those 18 months. They spent together that we will never know.

But you know, Paul, when I...

I just envisioned them going to Paris fashion shows together.

Paul, when I saw this clip, I came close to turning the movie off. Dramaturgically, here's what's happening. The villain of the movie has come in to give the bad news to the hero. The people who employed the hero come in to give him the same bad news. The villain tells Edwin Moher and Percis Cambada to go ahead and tell him the bad news. Edwin Moher and Percis Cambada tell him, and I don't know what it is, but they've crossed the border from Sardun into Gamibia, but they're behind the wrong border, which is an act of war. Sardun has to disavow them, right?

Well, and it's also, like he says, something to the effect that you did too good of a job. They were too effective in their assault.

You blew them up so hard that they realized they'd been blown up.

Yeah, so now it has crossed the threshold into being regarded as an act of war. And if we let you return to our side of the border, then that implicates us in that act of war. This may or may not be what's actually said or implied. It's the only way I can begin to make sense of it. The intentional or maybe more likely unintentional irony is that in this moment, Ace Hunter is being punished for doing too good of a job, just like he has punished Pursus Combata for doing too good of a job in all the hoops that he made her jump through.

You are reading a retributional subtext of this film that I just do not believe is intentional, but God bless you.

I think I'd get a gold star for that. I think you do. But then, yeah, it becomes clear that, oh, you know, the reason why Henry Silva is so happy is because he knows that Ace Hunter has been beaten by his own excellence and has gotten screwed by Edward Mulhair.

But this is where the true libertarian incel subtext of this film comes along, which is that the reason Guerrera and Hunter are such, just love each other so much and have this rapport and are able to literally hug each other. And Guerrera at one point quotes Gilbert and Sullivan, which is hilarious.

And there's a tinge of jealousy that passes across Dallas' face that's inexplicable.

Yes. So what you realize, the incel subtext of this film is that these two guys are libertarians, that they get fucked over by the government. And that leads us to our next clip, which is when Hunter finally confronts Edward Moher about being fucked over by politicians, right? Because Guerrera got fucked over by politicians and Hunter said, you know, politicians are only looking after covering their ass. And you realize that if just tough hombres in spandex with large phallic guns could solve this shit on their own, we wouldn't have these political problems in the world, right?

If only.

Producer Brad, regale us with this clip, please.

Ace, you are the best commander that ever lived. Maybe even better than me. But you have one fatal flaw. You've never understood that they are, they are just numbers, numbers. You're an idealist. In the 70s, we could be idealists. But today, it's too expansive.

You know, there's one thing you never understood. That there are some things that you can't put a price on.

If you would have said anything else, I would have been disappointed.

I love you, but you're hopeless.

So these are two fallen libertarians. They've been fucked over by politicians. Bostrick has gone to the side of idealism, and Silva has become a mercenary, right?

Yes, it's a great exchange between the two of them. Yeah, it's so great. It's great seeing Henry Silva, who is often consigned to kind of one-dimensional, scary villain bad guy roles, to actually get to have fun and have some texture and color to his performance and showing flavors of comedy that we don't really get to see from him, but that he's clearly great at. And I would love to have seen and gotten more of that, but it's fun.

And apropos of the fulminant racism of this film, much like many movies of its time though, is that you literally have an actor like Henry Silva, who over a great chunk of Hollywood history, he was around playing these character roles, and he never really got the chance to show what kind of an actor he could be, because he's Latino and he's darker skinned, and he's got black hair and dark eyes, and he just has a look that white people think is villainous, you know?

Yeah, and I do give the film some credit, grudgingly, for having a Latino villain who is interesting and fun.

You get the sense that he's actually good, even though he's so inept in this film. Yes, he's kind of an anti-hero. You do get the sense he's good at his job, yeah.

Yeah, and he's somebody that we come to have great affection for, and has layers, and depth, and kind of unexpected dimension.

You know, a good spinoff of this film would have been a workplace drama in which Guerrera is trying to train, like instead of meatballs with Sergeant Hulka, it's Guerrera. Can you imagine that movie?

Yes, well, there's one thing, though, that so that exchange comes after the revelation that Ace has been screwed by Mulher, and Ace has a very good line in response to this, which is the prior clip, and is also, and you know I love this, foreshadowing.

You know, General, in all of my years of soldiering, I've learned one thing. It's all on the wheel.

Well, there we go. It's all on the wheel, man. It all comes around. Interesting, yeah. I don't know, man. Again, the incredible, ruffian, like masculine wisdom of this guy, you know, like everything that comes out of his mouth is supposed to be some sort of shibboleth of great masculinity and raw male power and raw male knowledge and wisdom. I mean, it's incredible. It's incredible how much this movie thinks we like this guy. Yes.

And with that, Edwin Blahair and Pursus Combata board their big red and white super transport helicopter.

Yep.

And we are bestowed, inflicted, with the wedgie shot of all wedgie shots.

That's right, yes.

As Hunter, after he says goodbye to Pursus and they take off.

Yep. And we reinforce that Hunter and Pursus Combata have a date in London at the Dead Duck Inn.

Yes.

That's what it's called. Okay, so weirdly, Guerrero tells Hunter what the problem is. He says, he literally gives us the exposition of the only place where your globe masters can land is on the Dry Lake.

Yes.

And I have all of my tanks surrounding the only entrance to the salt bed. So literally, there is no way for you to go. But if you put your weapons down, give me all your high tech toys, I'll let you walk away. And of course, Hunter tells him, well, Hunter tells him he loves them and kisses him or something, right? I don't know what it is. And they part ways. And of course, then Hunter devices the plan because Hunter knows about a secret mountain pass that actually puts them behind the tanks so they can sneak up on the tanks, which a mountain pass that was obviously none of the maps that Guerrera got, but somehow Megaforce can see through their satellite recon or something, right? So there's that.

Yeah, we just have to go with that. But yeah, so now Ace Hunter and Megaforce have to plot their escape and he gives his team two options. One is every man for himself. We all just kind of make a break for the border on our own individually, which of course everyone rejects because they're a team. But his real plan is exactly that, which is that we're going to do this very bold gambit to try to sneak behind them and catch them off guard as we summon the planes in to distract them from the opposite direction. And it's kind of vaguely explained and hand-waved. And Dallas agrees and enthusiastically puts the Confederate flag on his motorcycle. Yep. And then we get this epic slow-mo montage, action montage that just goes on and on and on and on.

Yeah. I think Philip Glass made an opera about this montage.

Yes. With rockets and lasers and explosions galore. And it just is a mess. The other thing this film lacks is a really great score. I think that would have helped this film, especially in moments like this. It's kind of...

The score feels like it was done entirely in one of those Casio organs that we got for Christmas in the 80s. Let's just get to the end of this movie. Hal Needham literally has one... One of my friends has this saying about bad artists. He goes like, oh wow, he really reached into his bag of trick for this one. And Needham has one shot that he puts it... It's in the Cannonball Run movies. It's one of the smokey... And it's where he puts all of the cars in a line and they're all driving together in a line at the same time with a lot of dust behind them.

The punchline in this case. It turns out Ace Hunter's Rainbow Parachute was foreshadowing because trailing behind the phalanx of Megaforce vehicles emerges a rainbow of colored smoke trails.

That's right. That's right. Oh my God.

Emblazoning the desert.

Yes.

It's this giant rainbow of smoke that Megaforce unleashes.

Yes. They literally create a paramilitary version of gay pride.

It's pretty amazing in their skin-tight uniforms. As them, they make a run for the rendezvousing C-130s or whatever big transport planes that are perfectly timed so that they can board.

By the way, airplanes that are landing on a lake bed facing a single line of tanks, firing directly at these Globemasters, AKA the largest planes ever built other than the Antonov 225 Maria, right? This is the largest airplane that's ever been built. And 10 tanks firing simultaneously in the same direction cannot hit them.

Clearly manned by stormtroopers. But then in the moment as we're just about to have our moment of triumph and escape, Ace is down. Sprawled onto the desert and he recovers. He says, as the rest of this team is like going to the planes and boarding the planes and they're all waiting for him. But then he goes back because he has to say goodbye to Duke.

Yes. So basically, Dallas, Hunter's current love interest, is standing on the ramp of the plane giving these very plaintive looks of like, oh my god, is he going to come back? What's going to happen? I have to order them to meet the plane.

The planes have to take off.

Yeah, the plane's got to take off. And he's very perturbed. And he finally tells the plane to take off. As we see the grief in Dallas' face, Hunter rides his bike all the way up to Silva's Tank. And I mean, I can't, you know, please, producer Brad, do we have this clip?

Oh, listen, I just wanted to say goodbye and remind you that the good guys always win, even in the 80s.

Even in the 80s?

Because as Guerrero slash Duke reminds us, this is the 80s, man. This is a different time. Yeah, this is a time of contempt.

But Ace Hunter will not be denied.

Nope, he will not.

No.

And then comes the action climax of this film. The C-130 has taken off and-

Leaving Ace Hunter seemingly stranded.

On the dry lake bed. On that is when-

Racing in vain on his Megaforce motorcycle to try to catch up. But now it is, yeah.

What we have failed to mention is that between Ace and Professor Ekstrom, three times previously, Ace goes, so Ekstrom, did you do that special thing on the bike? Yeah, yeah, just wanted to press the one button, press the two button. Then later in the film he's like, Ekstrom, one and two? Yeah, one and two, one and two. So then, Ace grabbing the yoke of his bike says, one, this is for you, Ekstrom, and two, and then his bike, the very cheap cardboard wings on his bike deploy, right? A rocket engine fires in the back of the bike and he flies the bicycle onto the ramp of the globe, not just flies the bicycle, it takes a very long time for him to get there actually. Motorbike. Yeah, motorbike, sorry.

And I will say, thanks to the wonder of Zoptic. Zoptic. Zoptic. His Megaforce motorcycle, now jet bike assault cycle.

Yes.

Takes flight.

Takes flight.

And Barry Bostwick exudes a degree of glee unforeseen in this film. It has been established at his introduction how much he loves to pop wheelies.

Yes.

And now he gets to pop a sky wheelie.

Defying the laws of aerodynamics and wing stall, which by the way, those two air foils are about a foot and a foot and a half long. So I don't know how they're holding him up, but he pops a wheelie and his wings don't stall. I don't know why I thought of that. And then he starts doing this victory dance where he's kind of humping the bike, right?

A little enthusiastic.

Yeah, very enthusiastically. And then before he enters the Globemaster, he literally does a 360-degree barrel roll on the flying motorcycle.

Yes, which is completely plausible and totally so.

Totally so, yeah, no, no. You don't doubt it. You believe it. You totally believe it.

It doesn't take you out of the movie anymore than you've already been taken out of the movie 100 times.

My theory about this is that that was the motorcycle trying to eject him for the vigorous humping he was giving it. That he actually didn't tilt the bike, didn't do the barrel roll as the bike going, dude, get off of me. I'm gonna try to go upside down. Maybe I'm saying too much dramatic subtext in this film.

And then very, very slowly and deliberately through the magic of her projection, he gingerly, as he's vamping up a storm, he guides it perfectly onto the ramp that's still open in the back at C-130 to this jubilant team led by Dallas that are waiting to embrace him and celebrate him. And we get the gift of all gifts of Ace Hunter's victory.

He doesn't just get off of the... He doesn't just mount the bike. He literally pirouettes on the bike.

I should have chosen my phrasing better.

He lands with his legs spread, and he literally does like a jazz hands, and he goes, ha!

Yes.

And it's literally the most narcissistic thing... I mean, it's so like... It's not even a curtain call. It's just like, love me, America!

Oh, God. And then, as a perfect coda, as they are escaping...

And this film has no wrap-up. It literally ends on this. You don't go back to anything. It just ends like this. Please go on, Paul.

In a way, I mean, it's not... And Hal Needham is known for just getting out on a great ending. Hooper is the best example of this. It's one of the greatest endings of all time. But we cut back to the pseudo-good guys who are shitty, Edward Mulhair and inexplicably lovesick Pursus Combata at their base across the border or whatever, and Ace directs the air convoy to target their helicopter, and they blow it to smithereens. Because everything comes around, and it's all a wheel of...

That's his foreshadowing. Everything comes around.

This paid off.

But two things. This is also the scene where Henry Silva has been giving a thumbs up to his buddy for escaping that way. And Mulhair sees his helicopter blowing up like literally Megaforce commits another act of war by flying over the Sardunian border and blowing up a military commander's transport, which by the way, there might have been a pilot in there. We don't know, but this guy's such a sociopath. But Mulhair is happy about it because Ace is just that awesome. He's just like, good old chap, good old sport.

And also like they were just told, oh, they can't cross the border. It doesn't seem to make a difference whether they would have crossed the border on land or by air. It doesn't solve the problem.

Nope, nope. That doesn't matter because he's Ace Hunter. You can blow up your house and you love him.

Yeah.

And then Ace picks up the comlink on the, I'm sorry, I don't know military shit so well because I haven't written a military show in a while. So I'm just going to call it the comlink because I saw Star Wars this morning. He picks up his comlink and he tells the pilot, producer Brad, do we have, because this is the last line of the movie. Producer Brad, can you please give us the last line of this movie? Let me just remark on something. Has anyone loved London more than this guy apparently? Because he's not excited about the movie. He's like, I have a date in London. Gary Oldman in The Professional didn't chew on a line with this sort of rio.

I can't help but contrast, and this is grossly unfair, but just the dissonance between, say, this bit and the rendezvous promise date in Captain America, First Avenger between Steve and Peggy. Like, it's just these are polar opposites.

Polar opposites, yeah. And that in one, it is a movie about which you care, which has a cohesive plot, characters you like.

Beautiful and moving and...

Successful production design. Good photography, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, I love that movie.

I mean, this film literally looks like an episode of Fantasy Island. I mean, that's how badly shot this... I mean, Fantasy Island, I mean, look, famously shot on a TV schedule, eight days, no B camera, 135 millimeter camera that can barely move, only on tripods, no dollies, whatever. This looks horrible. And wow. Paul, have we made a good podcast discussing this film?

Has this worked?

Because we're both in such a state of mind.

I don't know. I feel like this is...

You made it 90 minutes, so I hope it's good.

Yes.

Yes.

This may be our most self-indulgent because it's the most sort of self-therapeutic for me. I just sort of needed to talk this through because of so many frustrations. I will also say that it now makes me feel far less bad about inflicting Grease 2 on the two of you and our listeners.

So here we have a completely earnest exegetic examination of toxic male masculinity, which is in fact a veil for a deeply racist and homophobic homeroticism that espouses a kind of libertarian men with guns with each other can sort of solve any problem without politicians or diplomacy, especially when you have somebody as great as Ace Hunter.

And that, dear listeners, is 1982 in a nutshell.

So, producer Brad, how did this movie do? We know they didn't make the sequel, Deeds Not Word, so how did we do?

Not yet.

Well, for the weekend of June 25, 1982, ET is still number one.

Really over this? Wow.

Number two is Blade Runner, which also opened the same week as Megaforce. Megaforce comes in at number nine and it made 3.5 million.

What other movies were there before Megaforce? Because we know the top two. What are three, four, five, six, seven, and eight?

Going in order would be ET, Blade Runner, Rocky III, Annie, Firefox, Star Trek II, Poltergeist at number eight is the thing, and then number nine, Megaforce.

So it was beaten by about five movies that opened anywhere between two to four weeks earlier.

Not only that, after this week, it only made two more million dollars over the course of its life.

Richly earned.

And for the year, Megaforce was the 94th highest-grossing film in all time, number 6,326.

Well, I guess that's why Hal Needham had to make Cannonball run, too, right? Because you do one for them and one for you, right?

I guess so.

Last question, Javi. You were comparing the Megaforce production value with the low-budget 1980s TV show, Fantasy Island. Where do you think this movie's budget lands with the eight movies we've seen so far? And to recap, we've seen ET., Poltergeist, Star Trek II, Grease II, Rocky III, Firefox, Blade Runner and Megaforce.

It sounds like a trick question because this movie looks like it was shot for $2, but this department told me it was actually cost up $50 million.

There are so many vehicles that they had to commission that were purpose built for the film. So many explosions. All of it shot on, I mean, not all of it, but a lot of it shot on location.

And a lot of it shot in, what was that process called? Introvision.

Introvision and Zoptic. Zoptic ain't cheap.

Zoptic ain't cheap, man. Producer Brad, I dare not answer this.

It's the third highest budgeted film we've seen. $30 million for Blade Runner, $21 million for Firefox, $20 million for Megaforce. Everything else costs less. Poltergeist and Star Trek are all under $12 million.

Yeah, those are small movies.

Insane. Insane. This is our second day at the multiplex this weekend because on Friday we saw Blade Runner. And today on Saturday we got in the Econoline van and went to see Megaforce. And Megaforce was so bad that we talked to our parents and said we got to go back on Sunday and you have to buy us tickets. You know, I bet that this is a movie my dad wanted to see and I went to see it because of him. You know, so I'm actually blackmailing my dad and saying he has to buy me tickets to an R-rated movie because he made me sit through the shit. And that R-rated movie is, Producer Brad?

Next up is The Thing by John Carpenter.

John Carpenter.

The remake of The Thing.

Do you think this movie will beat the remake curse, Paul?

I have high confidence.

Yeah, yeah, because I mean, John Carpenter made that Escape from New York. That one was pretty good, right?

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, while he may not be Barry Bostwick, Kurt Russell is pretty cool.

I mean, but he genuinely is no Barry Bostwick. I mean, thank God.

No one is.

But I bet he falls on the stage every day and thanks God that he's no Barry Bostwick.

Imagine Barry Bostwick as the lead in The Thing or in Blade Runner.

You know, but again, and I just want to go on the record that as much as we have bagged on Barry Bostwick in this thing, this is a case of horrible miscasting and it is a case of bad direction. He was literally told to play this like he played the Pirate King in Penzance. Look at any episode of Spin City. This guy is a great comedic actor and he's a really fine saved actor too, by the way. Yes. Barry, if you're listening, we fucking love you. Please don't take any of this personally. You were done dirty. Same to you, Michael Beck and Pursus Combata. Fuck it, I'll throw Edward Mulhair in there.

I'm guessing maybe the Edward Mulhair's role here directly led to his role in Knight Rider. I don't know.

I think Glenn Larson probably took the staff of one of his TV shows to see what they could rip off from this movie. Oh, sorry. There's a reason they used to call him Glenn Larson-y. But anyway, producer Brad. So next week is The Thing? The Thing. Until that time, dear listeners, we will see you next time in line.

At the multiplex.

Hey, Paul?

Something just occurred to me. Yeah? All right, so he tells the guy flying the Globemaster to push it, because he's got a date in London, right? Yes. Well, the date is with Persis Campada, right?

Yes.

So he just blew up her helicopter. How is she gonna get to London?

Yeah, he just marooned his date in the desert. Christ, what an asshole.