Hot Date

Australian director Russell Mulcahy had only one previous narrative film credit on his resume, 1985's Razorback, when he landed the gig directing future cult classic Highlander.  Razorback's atmosphere and muscularity and Mulcahy's experience with vivid short form filmmaking directing scores of music videos for the likes of Duran Duran, Elton John, Def Leppard and Human League, both played into him landing the gig.  A flop on it's initial release, the film gave birth to a mini cottage industry after a huge HBO and VHS following spawned five sequels and two TV versions, not to mention books and graphic novels.   Having never seen the film, Dan and Vicky look at the Highlander mystique with fresh eyes and ears (Queen did the songs and Michael Kamen provided the bombastic score) and they have strong thoughts on stars Christopher Lambert, Clancy Brown and Sean Connery and the directing style of Mulcahy.  There's also lots of recently seen including the comedy of Dave Chappelle, Dave Cross and Patton Oswalt, the n

John Frankenheimer took over directing duties from William Friedkin for the sequel to the Oscar-winning 1971 film The French Connection.  He got a reluctant Gene Hackman to return to star as New York City police officer Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle as well as Spanish actor Fernando Rey, the French connection himself.  Shooting took place entirely in Marseilles, France.   Dan and Vicky cover this prestige sequel from the seventies, comparing it to the original and discussing how the location switch from New York to France hurts and helps the film.  They also discuss Dan's side project of going back into the vault and cleaning up older Hot Date podcasts as well as lots of recently seen.  Vicky gives her thoughts on The Lego Batman Movie, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Edge of Seventeen and the TV shows The Fall and Iron Fist.  Dan checks in with The Last of Sheila, The Wicker Tree, Deathgasm, and the new films Raw and Kong: Skull Island.  And there's some harsh words from both our host

Alfred Hitchcock ushered in the advent of film sound with 1929's Blackmail, which became England's first talkie.  British producers, concerned they were lagging behind the Americans, who were already experimenting with sound in their films, convinced Hitchcock to film silent and talkie versions of Blackmail.   Blackmail is the second Hitchcock film discussed on Hot Date after 1948's Rope and our first from the silent era.  In addition to this classic suspenser, Dan catches us up on his newest play, his love for the late Bill Paxton and the Beatles films A Hard Day's Night and Help!, the cult classic Ninja III: The Domination, and the recent indie horror pic I Am Not a Serial Killer.  Vicky gives us her thoughts on big screen releases Logan and Get Out, classics The Naked City and The Killers, horror film Neon Demon and TV's Big Little Lies and Miranda.   Listen for 1929 music hits Tiptoe Through the Tulips and Wedding of the Painted Doll and an actual sound test starring the master of suspense himself. Hitch

It was an arms race at the 1964 box office between Fail Safe and the similarly themed Dr. Strangelove.  Stanley Kubrick pressured Columbia Pictures, the studio that owned both films, to release his film first.  As a result, Fail Safe, while critically  lauded, suffered under the indifference of a paying audience who thought they had already seen the definitive Cold War movie with Strangelove.  Little did they know how very different the two films were.  The sweaty, sobering, scary Fail Safe stars Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, Dan O'Herlihy, Frank Overton and Larry Hagman.   Dan and Vicky gush over the film, their third Sidney Lumet feature.  They discuss the film's relevance in it's own time and how it plays just as relevant in a Trump USA.  As always, they catch us up on their recently watched.  Movies include John Wick 2, Hell and High Water, Florence Foster Jenkins, Krampus, 1980's semi-slasher Windows and the 1969 Russ Meyer classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.  There's lots of comedy too from the likes

Michael Almereyda's Cymbeline from 2015 was his second Shakespeare adaptation and his second time working with actor Ethan Hawke.  Hawke played the melancholy Dane in Almereyda's Hamlet from 2000. Here he plays the scheming sexual predator Iachimo and joins Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich, Dakota Johnson, John Leguizamo, Delroy Lindo and Anton Yelchin in the star-studded cast.   Dan and Vicky take on their first movie based on a Shakespeare play and Dan compares his experience doing Cymbeline in 2008 with this film's take on the material.  You'll also hear how Vicky spent her very wet birthday and about her visit to the Shake Shack with a hot friend.   Recently seen and discussed includes the new M. Night Shyamalan film Split, the Oscar contenders Moonlight and Jackie, Korean horror Train to Busan, and William Friedkin's lost classic Sorcerer.  And Vicky tuned into HBO's The Young Pope and FX's Taboo and has some very juicy thoughts about both.   Listen to Hot Date 45: Cymbeline and leave us a star rating or some f

Director Jeff Balsmeyer was an American film storyboard artist itching to make his writing and directing debut.  His passion project was Danny Deckchair, a romantic comedy based on the real life adventure of California dreamer Larry Walters who tied helium balloons to a lawn chair to lift off into the sky over Long Beach in 1982.  After ten years of shopping the idea around and having recently married an Aussie and relocated there, Balsmeyer made and set his film in Australia.  Brit Rhys Ifans was chosen to play Danny, Justine Clarke came on as Trudy, his frustrated girlfriend, and Miranda Otto was a natural fit for Glenda, the new woman that comes into his life.   Dan and Vicky discuss this low budget charmer from 2004.  Vicky catches us up on her participation in the post-inauguration NYC Woman's March and all her recent viewing including the films Patriots Day, Creed, Midnight Cowboy and the Count Yorga films and the TV shows Sherlock, Smash and Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Dan tells us about

Director John Ford hadn't seen the film Red Dust when he agreed to direct its 1953 remake Mogambo but was intrigued by the challenge of bringing his skills with filming the wide open spaces of the American West to the African serengeti.  For his male lead he chose Clark Gable, in desperate need of a hit in his middle age. Ava Gardner, who brought along contentious boyfriend Frank Sinatra to the African location shoot, and Grace Kelly, rumored to have started a torrid affair with Gable, played the love interests.   Besides discussing the steamy and wild Mogambo and some of the backstage tensions that informed it, our Hot Date hosts catch us up on their recently seen. Vicky gives her thoughts on The Seven Samurai, Manchester by the Sea, Collateral Beauty, the doc Harmontown and her new blu-ray of A Hard Day's Night. Dan talks about George Romero's Martin, Cold in July, Prometheus, and 1971's Kiss of the Tarantula.  Their chat also leads them to the passing of Carrie Fisher and George Michael and the music and w

With only a few documentaries and short films on his resume, Francesco Barilli embarked on his first narrative feature, Perfume of the Lady in Black in 1973 Italy. The film was inspired by research Barilli had been doing on voodoo rituals and cannibalism and had less in common with the traditional stalk and slash giallos Italy was pumping out at the time.  He enlisted American expat Mimsy Farmer, who had moved to Europe when her acting career in the states seemed to be stalling, as his tortured lead.  Farmer, named after a line in a Lewis Carroll novel, would take to the genre and appear in several giallo/horror thrillers of the period. Dan and Vicky love the sub-genre and discuss how this idiosyncratic film differs from a traditional giallo.  They also catch us up on their recently seen including two older Hitchcock thrillers Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt, Truffaut's Day for Night, 1967's Valley of the Dolls, the Madonna concert film Rebel Heart and the new movies La La Land and The Autopsy of Jane Doe.  Th

Released in Ireland in 1997 and here in the US a year later, I Went Down was one of the most successful Irish films of the year.  It's story, about low rent Dublin mobsters trading barbs and gunfire, was a departure from the more serious IRA films being produced at the time.  It has a star making turn from Brendan Gleeson, on the verge of breaking big in the worldwide box office with The General, Michael Collins and Mission Impossible 2, playing a character named Bunny Kelly, and a lesser known, but expert, supporting cast in Peter McDonald, Tony Doyle and Peter Caffrey.   Dan and Vicky return to to the land of Eire (after episode 39's Odd Man Out) to discuss this comedy thriller along with their recently done and seen.  There's chat about surviving political talk at Thanksgiving, older films The Thin Blue Line, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Raising Cain and Lady Eve, new stuff like Netflix's Amanda Knox, I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House, and Gilmore Girls, and TV series Longmire and Scream.  Our hosts

For Episode 40, Dan and Vicky pick their favorite scary, shocking, sad, even funny death scenes from non-horror movies.  There are some classics thrown in the mix and some you wouldn't expect so get that Kleenex ready.  Filmmakers as varied as Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Brooks, John Carpenter and Werner Herzog get the spotlight.  Dan and Vicky even provide a few honorable mentions that didn't make the final cut.  It's wall to wall DEATH on Hot Date this week! As usual, they also get into what they've been watching recently.  For TV, Dan checks into Bates Motel and Vicky screams about Banshee.  Cinema includes big screen hits Arrival and Dr. Strange and classics The Most Dangerous Game and The Friends of Eddie Coyle. And, finally, our hosts try to keep it together when they give us their thoughts on the recent presidential election! Celebrate Death in the movies with Dan, Vicky, some Nine Inch Nails, a little Blue Oyster Cult, and movie clips galore.  Listen and leave us some feedback.      

We talk Odd Man Out, the classic 1947 British thriller from Third Man director Carol Reed.  It stars James Mason as Johnny McQueen, the leader of an Irish revolutionary group who ends up running for his life after a botched robbery attempt.  His love interest is played by Kathleen Ryan and the eccentric artist he runs into on his journey is Robert Newton.  There's Hot Date talk of Irish accents, rich production design, the beauty of Robert Krasker's cinematography and the eccentric and eclectic acting.   We also catch up with where Dan and Vicky have been and what they've seen.  Vicky talks about her family trip to Florida and Dan his Halloween week adventures.  Horror gore-meister Lucio Fulci enters the discussion again as does the Showtime series Penny Dreadful.  Recent big screen talk veers to Dan Brown's Inferno, horror sequel Ouija: Origin of Evil, and the Emily Blunt starring The Girl on the Train.  And then there's the controversial Walking Dead season 7 premiere -- Dan and Vicky have definite thoughts

Just in time for Halloween, Dan and Vicky discuss the 1978 horror thriller based on the Ira Levin novel, The Boys From Brazil.  Notorious death camp doctor Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) has come out of hiding in South America and gathered a group of Nazi colleagues for a nefarious plot that only famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) can stop.  James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen, Rosemary Harris, Anne Meara, John Rubinstein and a young Steve Guttenberg round out the cast.   In addition to the film -- their second Hot Date movie based on an Ira Levin novel --Dan and Vicky discuss Frankenstein leggings, the Paris catacombs, the inflammatory Samsung 7 and three week's worth of film and TV viewing.  They'll talk about recent Marvel heroes Luke Cage and Deadpool, the new Magnificent Seven, border thriller Sicario, the classic horrors of The Witchfinder General, Rituals, What Have You Done to Solange? and Victor Frankenstein and the new HBO series Westworld.  The Boys From Brazil on Hot Date 38!  Na-z

The original 2 hour cut of the Sylvester Stallone starrer Cobra was exceedingly violent and bleak, so much so that the MPAA insisted the film be cut to avoid an X rating. Initially resistant, Stallone and director/producer George P. Cosmatos gave in as much to avoid the dreaded rating as to challenge the highly tracking Tom Cruise movie Top Gun at the box office.  Stallone had recent hits Rambo:First Blood Part II and Rocky 4 and was under pressure to produce another hit.  The heavily edited final version of Cobra did have a huge opening weekend and made money for Warner Bros. but wasn't the hit those previous films were. Dan and Vicky give us their thoughts on this trash-tastic entry in 1980's big budget sleaze.  They have a few choice words for Sylvester Stallone and his script.  They also recount some of their recently seen including the new Blair Witch, Bridget Jones' Baby, Dario Argento's Dracula and Mother of Tears, a pair of giallo classics Night Train Murders and Short Night of Glass Dolls, the Polish

Dan and Vicky look at the 1969 musical Paint Your Wagon starring Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, Jean Seberg and Ray Walston.  To adapt his own Broadway show for the big screen, producer and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner chose writer Paddy Chayefsky and composer Andre Previn.  They changed the source material considerably and scored 10 million dollars from Paramount to bring their nearly three hour version to the screen.  Fraught with production problems, the film, shot almost entirely on real sets built in the rugged Oregon mountains, went 10 million dollars over budget and ushered in the beginning of the end for the movie musical. In addition to their thoughts on this bloated, plot heavy epic and it's legacy, Dan and Vicky talk about what they've seen lately.  Vicky, of course, outwatches Dan with the Italian series Gomorrah, the horror films The Black Cat, The Sender, Phenomena, The Funhouse and Torso, and the 1969 James Garner starring Marlowe.  Dan gives his reflections on Stranger Things and the new film Don't B

On Hot Date 35, Dan and Vicky discuss 1994's White, the middle film in the Three Colors trilogy from late Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski.  Zbigniew Zamachowski plays a man shunned by his spouse (Julie Delpy), adrift in his adopted country of Paris and longing for a return to his Polish homeland.  When a chance encounter leads him back to Poland, he uses the opportunity to exact an insidious revenge on his estranged wife.   Dan talks about his recent stay in Maryland, his upcoming show at BAM and recent watches like 1984's RepoMan, the HBO doc Hitchcock/Truffaut, the new film Lights Out, Bryan Cranston's Trumbo and the awful Boy Next Door.  Vicky reports back on Suicide Squad, Sausage Party, Ben-Hur, the Netflix series Stranger Things, older films Magnificent Seven and The Misfits and her run in with Madonna! You'll also hear the pop music of February 1994, a little Hakuna Matata, and learn how Vicky feels about the Hamilton soundtrack.  And be warned, there will be SPOILERS for the film.   Take a listen

Star Henry Fonda was looking for a movie project that would give him the rush of a stage performance.  He found it in 12 Angry Men.  A TV version was broadcast on CBS in 1954 and the Reginald Rose penned teleplay would provide juicy film roles for Fonda and a stable of seasoned New York theatre actors.  Unfortunately Rose and Fonda couldn't get any studio interested in a feature property most felt audiences wouldn't pay for after being broadcast free nationwide.  It's one room location and talky screenplay probably didn't help either.  Rose and Fonda eventually founded production company Orion-Nova and made the film themselves and brought on TV veteran Sidney Lumet to direct his first feature.  Although a box office failure, the film was nominated for three Academy Awards and is now considered a masterpiece.  Fonda, however, would never produce another film and shuttered Orion- Nova soon after.     In addition to giving the classic film lots of love and discussing their own jury duty experiences, Dan and Vick

Dan and Vicky discuss the hard to find 1980 film Resurrection starring Ellen Burstyn and Eva Le Gallienne in Oscar nominated roles and Sam Shepard, Lois Smith, Richard Farnsworth, Roberts Blossom, and Jeffrey DeMunn in supporting turns.  It tells the story of a woman paralyzed in a violent car accident that kills her husband but somehow grants her the ability to heal.   Along with their thoughts on this rarely seen film, Dan and Vicky discuss what they've been watching lately.  Vicky's fit in a ton of stuff in three weeks: The new Star Trek and Ghostbusters, the 1981 slasher The Prowler, the Jeremy Saulnier thriller Green Room, the CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Fulci's Perversion Story among them.  Dan talks about discovering Eva Green's brilliance in Penny Dreadful, his favorite new movie of the year The Invitation, 1971's Harold and Maude, and the female centered  thrillers The Shallows, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and The Stepford Wives.  You'll also hear the music and history of September 1980 and about Dan'

For her feature film directorial debut, actress/producer Helen Hunt chose this adaptation of the Elinor Lipman novel, Then She Found Me.  It took 10 years to get it to the screen and only wound up getting funded when Hunt agreed to star in the lead role and bring her friends Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler and Colin Firth in to play the other leads. The supporting cast is peppered with great New York actors -- Lynn Cohen, Ben Shenkman, John Benjamin Hickey, Geneva Carr and Robert Lupone -- and quick cameos from the likes of Tim Robbins, Janeane Garofalo, Edie Falco and Salman Rushdie.   Dan and Vicky discuss the romantic comedy and give their opinion on whether Helen Hunt pulls off her passion project.  Dan also catches us up on his work travels -- from Saratoga Springs to Paris -- and Vicky gives us a quick health check.  We hear about all the cool stuff they've been watching, from the top of Jodorowsky's Holy Mountain to the dusty pit of Mad Max's Thunderdome; from the heights of Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture

Dan and Vicky tackle noir again with the classic Otto Preminger film Angel Face.  The film was a very troubled production and our hosts give us a little background, with an assist from noir historian Eddie Muller's DVD commentary, on all the infighting, the jealousy and the on set violence that plagued the Jean Simmons, Robert Mitchum vehicle.  Beyond the juicy back stage stuff, they show a lot of love for the film and tell us why the ending is one of the most shocking in movie history.    Before that though, they get a little serious talking about the mass shooting in Orlando and Vicky's recent health problems but lighten up when talking about their recently seen.  Dan has thoughts on Phantom of the Paradise, The Conjuring 2, his Don't Look Now Blu-ray and Netflix's They Look Like People and Vicky expounds on the joys of The Lonely Island's Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, the spooky The Witch, Broadway's School of Rock and Mario Bava.  They also have some choice words for actress Rebel Wilson and people

Another ten Hot Date episodes down can only mean it's time once again for Dan and Vicky to make a top ten list.  This time our hosts decide to pick their favorite performances by an actress.  Every genre and era is represented and there will definitely be some surprises and head scratchers along the way.  There are a couple of Australians, a French woman, a Spaniard, even a Scientologist or two.  Filmmakers as varied as Woody Allen, Terrence Malick and Lewis Teague are represented.  But enough hints!  Before they get to their lists, Dan and Vicky tell us how they spent their Memorial Day. For Dan, it included lots of face pampering while Vicky dealt with lots of vomit.  You'll hear all about their recently seen (everything from Broadway's Hamilton to Alice Cooper's Monster Dog to the Degas show at MOMA).  And Dan gets on his soapbox about the controversy behind a recently retracted billboard for X-Men: Apocalypse.   It's ladies first on Hot Date 30, top ten favorite female film performances.