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4 episodes with radioactive dreams
2 episodes with radioactive dreams
2 episodes with radioactive dreams
2 episodes with radioactive dreams
Today we go into a pick JP selected. Radioactive Dreams a Albert Pyun film. Go give us a Follow, Like, and Share! our link tree has all our links! https://linktr.ee/cinenerds Radioactive Dreams https://youtu.be/an3WtOM6bTI?si=Ct1xzDeR5XaLE3oW Trailer https://youtu.be/aFl-TC2aTLE?si=s62D6vtZJIRs75ws
Originally from our Patreon: Albert Pyun (1953 – 2022) was the consummate independent genre filmmaker -- his audacious film output in the 1980s and 1990s amassed a string of brain-blending films that mixed sci-fi, fantasy, action, horror, comedy, Eastern and Western cinema, to create something wholly unique, something maybe best described using the title of one of his own films - Radioactive Dreams. 1982's THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, Van Damme's CYBORG, NEMESIS, DOLLMAN, even the original and much-maligned CAPTAIN AMERICA movie. Though he never achieved mainstream success, Pyuns films have haunted the minds of Steve and Josh and so many others - including our guest for the episode, BenDavid Grabinski (co-creator "Scott Pilgrim Takes Off"). Join us as we explore the Pyuniverse of cyborgs, kickboxing, muscle women, post-apocalyptic madness, and much more.
After a mysterious courier took over New Vegas, the new government needed all the help it could get. They've launched an experimental program to give felons on parole a chance to redeem themselves by investigating minor crimes. Of course, they don't trust felons to run around on their own, so they've programmed a robot as a parole officer to escort the felon. Someone's stolen cargo from the train yard. Can this unlikely pair of partners find the missing cargo? Chris as Wilmot "Skrewloose" Kunkel, ex-ganger and paroled felon David as R.O.B.O, a robot parole officer Ross as the GM
In the last entry for this Year of Pyun where I celebrate the movies of Albert Pyun Karl of The GMologist Presents and I discuss the 1997 movie Mean Guns. Spoilers within. Previous shows in the Year of Pyun series The Sword and the Sorcerer https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/455-The-Sword-and-the-Sorcerer-with-Jason-Hobbs-e1t2plk Cyborg https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/467-Cyborg-with-Joe-Richter-e1uqi9s Dollman https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/481-Dollman-with-Joe-Richter-e20f9tp Nemesis https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/487-Rons-Old-School-Compendium--Nemesis-with-Karl-Rodriguez-e211smd Omega Doom https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/W44fw8U7zAb Captain America https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/73njV3S1DBb Raven Hawk https://anchor.fm/jason376/episodes/525-Raven-Hawk-1996-e26vkmc Vicious Lips https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/542-Vicious-Lips-1986-e28aeht Radioactive Dreams https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/555-Radioactive-Dreams-1985-e299b5c Alien From L.A. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/565-Alien-From-L-A--1988-e29l0c9 Brainsmasher... A Love Story https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/577-Brainsmasher----A-Love-Story-1993-e299bf6 Ways to contact me: Google Voice Number for US callers: (540) 445-1145 Speakpipe for international callers: https://www.speakpipe.com/NerdsRPGVarietyCast The podcast's email at nerdsrpgvarietycast 'at' gmail 'dot' com Find me on a variety of discords including the Audio Dungeon Discord. Invite for the Audio Dungeon Discord https://discord.gg/j5H8hGr PLAY web forum http://www.dekahedron.com/boards/index.php Home page for this show https://nerdsrpgvarietycast.carrd.co/ Home page for Cerebrevore, the TTRPG panel discussion podcast https://cerebrevore.carrd.co/ Proud member of the Grog-talk Empire having been bestowed the title of The Governor Most Radiant Grandeur Baron The Belligerent Hero of The Valley. https://www.grogcon.com/podcast/ Ray Otus did the coffee cup art for this show, you can find his blog at https://rayotus.carrd.co/ TJ provides music for my show. Colin Green at Spikepit https://anchor.fm/spikepit provided the "Have no fear" sound clip. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/message
In the eleventh entry during this Year of Pyun where I celebrate the movies of Albert Pyun Daniel Norton of Bandit's Keep and I discuss the 1993 movie Brainsmasher... A Love Story. Spoilers within. Previous shows in the Year of Pyun series The Sword and the Sorcerer https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/455-The-Sword-and-the-Sorcerer-with-Jason-Hobbs-e1t2plk Cyborg https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/467-Cyborg-with-Joe-Richter-e1uqi9s Dollman https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/481-Dollman-with-Joe-Richter-e20f9tp Nemesis https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/487-Rons-Old-School-Compendium--Nemesis-with-Karl-Rodriguez-e211smd Omega Doom https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/W44fw8U7zAb Captain America https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/73njV3S1DBb Raven Hawk https://anchor.fm/jason376/episodes/525-Raven-Hawk-1996-e26vkmc Vicious Lips https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/542-Vicious-Lips-1986-e28aeht Radioactive Dreams https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/555-Radioactive-Dreams-1985-e299b5c Alien From L.A. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/565-Alien-From-L-A--1988-e29l0c9 Ways to contact me: Google Voice Number for US callers: (540) 445-1145 Speakpipe for international callers: https://www.speakpipe.com/NerdsRPGVarietyCast The podcast's email at nerdsrpgvarietycast 'at' gmail 'dot' com Find me on a variety of discords including the Audio Dungeon Discord. Invite for the Audio Dungeon Discord https://discord.gg/j5H8hGr PLAY web forum http://www.dekahedron.com/boards/index.php Home page for this show https://nerdsrpgvarietycast.carrd.co/ Home page for Cerebrevore, the TTRPG panel discussion podcast https://cerebrevore.carrd.co/ Proud member of the Grog-talk Empire having been bestowed the title of The Governor Most Radiant Grandeur Baron The Belligerent Hero of The Valley. https://www.grogcon.com/podcast/ Ray Otus did the coffee cup art for this show, you can find his blog at https://rayotus.carrd.co/ TJ Drennon provides music for my show. Colin Green at Spikepit https://anchor.fm/spikepit provided the "Have no fear" sound clip. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/message
In the tenth entry during this Year of Pyun where I celebrate the movies of Albert Pyun Spenser aka Free Thrall from Keep Off the Borderlands and I discuss the 1988 movie Alien From L.A. Spoilers within. We also talk about Spenser's experience moving his show to Substack. You can find his projects here: https://freethrall.carrd.co/ Previous shows in the Year of Pyun series The Sword and the Sorcerer https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/455-The-Sword-and-the-Sorcerer-with-Jason-Hobbs-e1t2plk Cyborg https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/467-Cyborg-with-Joe-Richter-e1uqi9s Dollman https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/481-Dollman-with-Joe-Richter-e20f9tp Nemesis https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/487-Rons-Old-School-Compendium--Nemesis-with-Karl-Rodriguez-e211smd Omega Doom https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/W44fw8U7zAb Captain America https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/73njV3S1DBb Raven Hawk https://anchor.fm/jason376/episodes/525-Raven-Hawk-1996-e26vkmc Vicious Lips https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/542-Vicious-Lips-1986-e28aeht Radioactive Dreams https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/555-Radioactive-Dreams-1985-e299b5c Ways to contact me: Google Voice Number for US callers: (540) 445-1145 Speakpipe for international callers: https://www.speakpipe.com/NerdsRPGVarietyCast The podcast's email at nerdsrpgvarietycast 'at' gmail 'dot' com Find me on a variety of discords including the Audio Dungeon Discord. Invite for the Audio Dungeon Discord https://discord.gg/j5H8hGr PLAY web forum http://www.dekahedron.com/boards/index.php Home page for this show https://nerdsrpgvarietycast.carrd.co/ Home page for Cerebrevore, the TTRPG panel discussion podcast https://cerebrevore.carrd.co/ Attend: BSerCon 3 https://tabletop.events/conventions/bser-con-3-online (sadly not in 3D) Proud member of the Grog-talk Empire having been bestowed the title of The Governor Most Radiant Grandeur Baron The Belligerent Hero of The Valley. https://www.grogcon.com/podcast/ Ray Otus did the coffee cup art for this show, you can find his blog at https://rayotus.carrd.co/ TJ Drennon provides music for my show. Colin Green at Spikepit https://anchor.fm/spikepit provided the "Have no fear" sound clip. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/message
In the ninth entry during this Year of Pyun where I celebrate the movies of Albert Pyun Daniel Norton of Bandit's Keep and I discuss the 1985 movie Radioactive Dreams. Spoilers within. Previous shows in the Year of Pyun series The Sword and the Sorcerer https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/455-The-Sword-and-the-Sorcerer-with-Jason-Hobbs-e1t2plk Cyborg https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/467-Cyborg-with-Joe-Richter-e1uqi9s Dollman https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/481-Dollman-with-Joe-Richter-e20f9tp Nemesis https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/487-Rons-Old-School-Compendium--Nemesis-with-Karl-Rodriguez-e211smd Omega Doom https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/W44fw8U7zAb Captain America https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/73njV3S1DBb Raven Hawk https://anchor.fm/jason376/episodes/525-Raven-Hawk-1996-e26vkmc Vicious Lips https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/episodes/542-Vicious-Lips-1986-e28aeht Ways to contact me: Google Voice Number for US callers: (540) 445-1145 Speakpipe for international callers: https://www.speakpipe.com/NerdsRPGVarietyCast The podcast's email at nerdsrpgvarietycast 'at' gmail 'dot' com Find me on a variety of discords including the Audio Dungeon Discord. Invite for the Audio Dungeon Discord https://discord.gg/j5H8hGr PLAY web forum http://www.dekahedron.com/boards/index.php Home page for this show https://nerdsrpgvarietycast.carrd.co/ Home page for Cerebrevore, the TTRPG panel discussion podcast https://cerebrevore.carrd.co/ Come to: GrogCon in Orlando, FL on 29 Sep to 1 Oct, 2023 https://www.grogcon.com/grogcon4/ Proud member of the Grog-talk Empire having been bestowed the title of The Governor Most Radiant Grandeur Baron The Belligerent Hero of The Valley. https://www.grogcon.com/podcast/ Ray Otus did the coffee cup art for this show, you can find his blog at https://rayotus.carrd.co/ TJ Drennon provides music for my show. Colin Green at Spikepit https://anchor.fm/spikepit provided the "Have no fear" sound clip. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason376/message
This week we're talking about North Of The Border, The Nth Review, Prey , Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, and Radioactive Dreams. Show music by HeartBeatHero and OGRE. Support the show! Joe's Linktree Get up to 2 months free podcasting service with our Libsyn code OZONE
Today on the 5: Thanks to a message on one of the Discords I hang out in, I was able to watch the post nuclear film Radioactive Dreams. While I was I had access to a better copy than this YouTube upoad, it was still an extremely fun movie.
Will, Ryan, and Adam watched Albert Pyun's Radioactive Dreams (1984). It's the story of two young men who emerge from a fallout shelter to find a world of sadistic mutants, disco freaks, and double crossing gangsters. Watch the full movie on Youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=an3WtOM6bTI
Welcome to the Pyuniverse! On this inaugural episode Raygun Busch, Luther Manhole, and Bryan Manning introduce the podcast and dive head first into the world of Albert Pyun by way of his second film, Radioactive Dreams.
My god these recent episodes keep getting better and better! Today the boys uncover a movie that is fantastic in just about every way imaginable.
We continue our look back at the movies released by independent distributor Vestron Pictures, focusing on their 1988 releases. ----more---- The movies discussed on this episode, all released by Vestron Pictures in 1988 unless otherwise noted, include: Amsterdamned (Dick Maas) And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim) The Beat (Paul Mones) Burning Secret (Andrew Birkin) Call Me (Sollace Mitchell) The Family (Ettore Scola) Gothic (Ken Russell, 1987) The Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell) Midnight Crossing (Roger Holzberg) Paramedics (Stuart Margolin) The Pointsman (Jos Stelling) Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell) Promised Land (Michael Hoffman) The Unholy (Camilo Vila) Waxwork (Anthony Hickox) TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today. At the end of the previous episode, Vestron Pictures was celebrating the best year of its two year history. Dirty Dancing had become one of the most beloved movies of the year, and Anna was becoming a major awards contender, thanks to a powerhouse performance by veteran actress Sally Kirkland. And at the 60th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the films of 1987, Dirty Dancing would win the Oscar for Best Original Song, while Anna would be nominated for Best Actress, and The Dead for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costumes. Surely, things could only go up from there, right? Welcome to Part Two of our miniseries. But before we get started, I'm issuing a rare mea culpa. I need to add another Vestron movie which I completely missed on the previous episode, because it factors in to today's episode. Which, of course, starts before our story begins. In the 1970s, there were very few filmmakers like the flamboyant Ken Russell. So unique a visual storyteller was Russell, it's nigh impossible to accurately describe him in a verbal or textual manner. Those who have seen The Devils, Tommy or Altered States know just how special Russell was as a filmmaker. By the late 1980s, the hits had dried up, and Russell was in a different kind of artistic stage, wanting to make somewhat faithful adaptations of late 19th and early 20th century UK authors. Vestron was looking to work with some prestigious filmmakers, to help build their cache in the filmmaking community, and Russell saw the opportunity to hopefully find a new home with this new distributor not unlike the one he had with Warner Brothers in the early 70s that brought forth several of his strongest movies. In June 1986, Russell began production on a gothic horror film entitled, appropriately enough, Gothic, which depicted a fictionalized version of a real life meeting between Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, John William Polidori and Claire Clairemont at the Villa Diodati in Geneva, hosted by Lord Byron, from which historians believe both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John William Polidori's The Vampyre were inspired. And you want to talk about a movie with a great cast. Gabriel Byrne plays Lord Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Shelley, Natasha Richardson, in her first ever movie, as Mary Shelley, Timothy Spall as John William Polidori, and Dexter Fletcher. Although the film was produced through MGM, and distributed by the company in Europe, they would not release the film in America, fearing American audiences wouldn't get it. So Vestron would swoop in and acquire the American theatrical rights. Incidentally, the film did not do very well in American theatres. Opening at the Cinema 1 in midtown Manhattan on April 10th, 1987, the film would sell $45,000 worth of tickets in its first three days, one of the best grosses of any single screen in the city. But the film would end up grossing only $916k after three months in theatres. BUT… The movie would do quite well for Vestron on home video, enough so that Vestron would sign on to produce Russell's next three movies. The first of those will be coming up very soon. Vestron's 1988 release schedule began on January 22nd with the release of two films. The first was Michael Hoffman's Promised Land. In 1982, Hoffman's first film, Privileged, was the first film to made through the Oxford Film Foundation, and was notable for being the first screen appearances for Hugh Grant and Imogen Stubbs, the first film scored by future Oscar winning composer Rachel Portman, and was shepherded into production by none other than John Schlesinger, the Oscar winning director of 1969 Best Picture winner Midnight Cowboy. Hoffman's second film, the Scottish comedy Restless Natives, was part of the 1980s Scottish New Wave film movement that also included Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl and Local Hero, and was the only film to be scored by the Scottish rock band Big Country. Promised Land was one of the first films to be developed by the Sundance Institute, in 1984, and when it was finally produced in 1986, would include Robert Redford as one of its executive producers. The film would follow two recent local high school graduates, Hancock and Danny, whose lives would intersect again with disastrous results several years after graduation. The cast features two young actors destined to become stars, in Keifer Sutherland and Meg Ryan, as well as Jason Gedrick, Tracy Pollan, and Jay Underwood. Shot in Reno and around the Sundance Institute outside Park City, Utah during the early winter months of 1987, Promised Land would make its world premiere at the prestigious Deauville Film Festival in September 1987, but would lose its original distributor, New World Pictures around the same time. Vestron would swoop in to grab the distribution rights, and set it for a January 22nd, 1988 release, just after its American debut at the then U.S. Film Festival, which is now known as the Sundance Film Festival. Convenient, eh? Opening on six screens in , the film would gross $31k in its first three days. The film would continue to slowly roll out into more major markets, but with a lack of stellar reviews, and a cast that wouldn't be more famous for at least another year and a half, Vestron would never push the film out to more than 67 theaters, and it would quickly disappear with only $316k worth of tickets sold. The other movie Vestron opened on January 22nd was Ettore Scale's The Family, which was Italy's submission to that year's Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The great Vittorio Gassman stars as a retired college professor who reminisces about his life and his family over the course of the twentieth century. Featuring a cast of great international actors including Fanny Ardant, Philip Noiret, Stefania Sandrelli and Ricky Tognazzi, The Family would win every major film award in Italy, and it would indeed be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, but in America, it would only play in a handful of theatres for about two months, unable to gross even $350k. When is a remake not a remake? When French filmmaker Roger Vadim, who shot to international fame in 1956 with his movie And God Created Woman, decided to give a generational and international spin on his most famous work. And a completely different story, as to not resemble his original work in any form outside of the general brushstrokes of both being about a young, pretty, sexually liberated young woman. Instead of Bridget Bardot, we get Rebecca De Mornay, who was never able to parlay her starring role in Risky Business to any kind of stardom the way one-time boyfriend Tom Cruise had. And if there was any American woman in the United States in 1988 who could bring in a certain demographic to see her traipse around New Mexico au natural, it would be Rebecca De Mornay. But as we saw with Kathleen Turner in Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion in 1984 and Ellen Barkin in Mary Lambert's Siesta in 1987, American audiences were still rather prudish when it came to seeing a certain kind of female empowered sexuality on screen, and when the film opened at 385 theatres on March 4th, it would open to barely a $1,000 per screen average. And God Created Woman would be gone from theatres after only three weeks and $717k in ticket sales. Vestron would next release a Dutch film called The Pointsman, about a French woman who accidentally gets off at the wrong train station in a remote Dutch village, and a local railwayman who, unable to speak the other person's language, develop a strange relationship while she waits for another train that never arrives. Opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on New York's Upper West Side on April 8th, the film would gross $7,000 in its first week, which in and of itself isn't all that bad for a mostly silent Dutch film. Except there was another Dutch film in the marketplace already, one that was getting much better reviews, and was the official Dutch entry into that year's Best Foreign Language Film race. That film, Babette's Feast, was becoming something more than just a movie. Restaurants across the country were creating menus based on the meals served in the film, and in its sixth week of release in New York City that weekend, had grossed four times as much as The Pointsman, despite the fact that the theatre playing Babette's Feast, the Cinema Studio 1, sat only 65 more people than the Lincoln Plaza 1. The following week, The Pointsman would drop to $6k in ticket sales, while Babette's Feast's audience grew another $6k over the previous week. After a third lackluster week, The Pointsman was gone from the Lincoln Plaza, and would never play in another theatre in America. In the mid-80s, British actor Ben Cross was still trying to capitalize on his having been one of the leads in the 1981 Best Picture winner Chariots of Fire, and was sharing a home with his wife and children, as well as Camilo Vila, a filmmaker looking for his first big break in features after two well-received short films made in his native Cuba before he defected in the early 1980s. When Vila was offered the chance to direct The Unholy, about a Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans who finds himself battling a demonic force after being appointed to a new parish, he would walk down the hall of his shared home and offered his roomie the lead role. Along with Ned Beatty, William Russ, Hal Holbrook and British actor Trevor Howard in his final film, The Unholy would begin two weeks of exterior filming in New Orleans on October 27th, 1986, before moving to a studio in Miami for seven more weeks. The film would open in 1189 theatres, Vestron's widest opening to date, on April 22nd, and would open in seventh place with $2.35m in ticket sales. By its second week in theatres, it would fall to eleventh place with a $1.24m gross. But with the Summer Movie Season quickly creeping up on the calendar, The Unholy would suffer the same fate as most horror films, making the drop to dollar houses after two weeks, as to make room for such dreck as Sunset, Blake Edwards' lamentable Bruce Willis/James Garner riff on Hollywood and cowboys in the late 1920s, and the pointless sequel to Critters before screens got gobbled up by Rambo III on Memorial Day weekend. It would earn a bit more than $6m at the box office. When Gothic didn't perform well in American theatres, Ken Russell thought his career was over. As we mentioned earlier, the American home video store saved his career, as least for the time being. The first film Russell would make for Vestron proper was Salome's Last Dance, based on an 1891 play by Oscar Wilde, which itself was based on a story from the New Testament. Russell's script would add a framing device as a way for movie audiences to get into this most theatrical of stories. On Guy Fawkes Day in London in 1892, Oscar Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, arrive late at a friend's brothel, where the author is treated to a surprise performance of his play Salome, which has recently been banned from being performed at all in England by Lord Chamberlain. All of the actors in his special performance are played by the prostitutes of the brothel and their clients, and the scenes of the play are intertwined with Wilde's escapades at the brothel that night. We didn't know it at the time, but Salome's Last Dance would be the penultimate film performance for Academy Award winning actress Glenda Jackson, who would retire to go into politics in England a couple years later, after working with Russell on another film, which we'll get to in a moment. About the only other actor you might recognize in the film is David Doyle, of all people, the American actor best known for playing Bosley on Charlie's Angels. Like Gothic, Salome's Last Dance would not do very well in theatres, grossing less than half a million dollars after three months, but would find an appreciative audience on home video. The most interesting thing about Roger Holzberg's Midnight Crossing is the writer and director himself. Holzberg started in the entertainment industry as a playwright, then designed the props and weapons for Albert Pyun's 1982 film The Sword and the Sorcerer, before moving on to direct the second unit team on Pyun's 1985 film Radioactive Dreams. After making this film, Holzberg would have a cancer scare, and pivot to health care, creating a number of technological advancements to help evolve patient treatment, including the Infusionarium, a media setup which helps children with cancer cope with treatment by asking them questions designed to determine what setting would be most comforting to them, and then using virtual reality technology and live events to immerse them in such an environment during treatment. That's pretty darn cool, actually. Midnight Crossing stars Faye Dunaway and Hill Street Blues star Daniel J. Travanti in his first major movie role as a couple who team with another couple, played by Kim Cattrall and John Laughlin, who go hunting for treasure supposedly buried between Florida and Cuba. The film would open in 419 theaters on May 11th, 1988, and gross a paltry $673k in its first three days, putting it 15th on the list of box office grosses for the week, $23k more than Three Men and a Baby, which was playing on 538 screens in its 25th week of release. In its second week, Midnight Crossing would lose more than a third of its theatres, and the weekend gross would fall to just $232k. The third week would be even worse, dropping to just 67 theatres and $43k in ticket sales. After a few weeks at a handful of dollar houses, the film would be history with just $1.3m in the bank. Leonard Klady, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, would note in a January 1989 article about the 1988 box office that Midnight Crossing's box office to budget ratio of 0.26 was the tenth worst ratio for any major or mini-major studio, ahead of And God Created Woman's 8th worst ratio of .155 but behind other stinkers like Caddyshack II. The forgotten erotic thriller Call Me sounds like a twist on the 1984 Alan Rudolph romantic comedy Choose Me, but instead of Genevieve Bujold we get Patricia Charbonneau, and instead of a meet cute involving singles at a bar in Los Angeles, we get a murder mystery involving a New York City journalist who gets involved with a mysterious caller after she witnesses a murder at a bar due to a case of mistaken identity. The film's not very good, but the supporting cast is great, including Steve Buscemi, Patti D'Arbanville, Stephen McHattie and David Straithairn. Opening on 24 screens in major markets on May 20th, Call Me would open to horrible reviews, lead by Siskel and Ebert's thumbs facing downward, and only $58,348 worth of tickets sold in its first three days. After five weeks in theatres, Vestron hung up on Call Me with just $252k in the kitty. Vestron would open two movies on June 3rd, one in a very limited release, and one in a moderate national release. There are a lot of obscure titles in these two episodes, and probably the most obscure is Paul Mones' The Beat. The film followed a young man named Billy Kane, played by William McNamara in his film debut, who moves into a rough neighborhood controlled by several gangs, who tries to help make his new area a better place by teaching them about poetry. John Savage from The Deer Hunter plays a teacher, and future writer and director Reggie Rock Bythewood plays one of the troubled youths whose life is turned around through the written and spoken word. The production team was top notch. Producer Julia Phillips was one of the few women to ever win a Best Picture Oscar when she and her then husband Michael Phillips produced The Sting in 1973. Phillips was assisted on the film by two young men who were making their first movie. Jon Kilik would go on to produce or co-produce every Spike Lee movie from Do the Right Thing to Da 5 Bloods, except for BlackkKlansman, while Nick Weschler would produce sex, lies and videotape, Drugstore Cowboy, The Player and Requiem for a Dream, amongst dozens of major films. And the film's cinematographer, Tom DiCillo, would move into the director's chair in 1991 with Johnny Suede, which gave Brad Pitt his first lead role. The Beat would be shot on location in New York City in the summer of 1986, and it would make its world premiere at the Cannes Film Market in May 1987. But it would be another thirteen months before the film arrived in theatres. Opening on seven screens in Los Angeles and New York City on June 3rd, The Beat would gross just $7,168 in its first three days. There would not be a second week for The Beat. It would make its way onto home video in early 1989, and that's the last time the film was seen for nearly thirty years, until the film was picked up by a number of streaming services. Vestron's streak of bad luck continued with the comedy Paramedics starring George Newbern and Christopher McDonald. The only feature film directed by Stuart Margolin, best known as Angel on the 1970s TV series The Rockford Files, Newbern and McDonald play two… well, paramedics… who are sent by boss, as punishment, from their cushy uptown gig to a troubled district at the edge of the city, where they discover two other paramedics are running a cadavers for dollars scheme, harvesting organs from dead bodies to the black market. Here again we have a great supporting cast who deserve to be in a better movie, including character actor John P. Ryan, James Noble from Benson, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs from Welcome Back Kotter, the great Ray Walston, and one-time Playboy Playmate Karen Witter, who plays a sort of angel of death. Opening on 301 screens nationwide, Paramedics would only gross $149,577 in its first three days, the worst per screen average of any movie playing in at least 100 theatres that weekend. Vestron stopped tracking the film after just three days. Two weeks later, on June 17th, Vestron released a comedy horror film that should have done better. Waxwork was an interesting idea, a group of college students who have some strange encounters with the wax figures at a local museum, but that's not exactly why it should have been more popular. It was the cast that should have brought audiences in. On one side, you had a group of well-known younger actors like Deborah Foreman from Valley Girl, Zack Gailligan from Gremlins, Michelle Johnson from Blame It on Rio, and Miles O'Keeffe from Sword of the Valiant. On the other hand, you had a group of seasoned veterans from popular television shows and movies, such as Patrick Macnee from the popular 1960s British TV show The Avengers, John Rhys-Davies from the Indiana Jones movies, and David Warner, from The Omen and Time after Time and Time Bandits and Tron. But if I want to be completely honest, this was not a movie to release in the early part of summer. While I'm a firm believer that the right movie can find an audience no matter when it's released, Waxwork was absolutely a prime candidate for an early October release. Throughout the 1980s, we saw a number of horror movies, and especially horror comedies, released in the summer season that just did not hit with audiences. So it would be of little surprise when Waxwork grossed less than a million dollars during its theatrical run. And it should be of little surprise that the film would become popular enough on home video to warrant a sequel, which would add more popular sci-fi and horror actors like Marina Sirtis from Star Trek: The Next Generation, David Carradine and even Bruce Campbell. But by 1992, when Waxwork 2 was released, Vestron was long since closed. The second Ken Russell movie made for Vestron was The Lair of the White Worm, based on a 1911 novel by Bram Stoker, the author's final published book before his death the following year. The story follows the residents in and around a rural English manor that are tormented by an ancient priestess after the skull of a serpent she worships is unearthed by an archaeologist. Russell would offer the role of Sylvia Marsh, the enigmatic Lady who is actually an immortal priestess to an ancient snake god, to Tilda Swinton, who at this point of her career had already racked up a substantial resume in film after only two years, but she would decline. Instead, the role would go to Amanda Donohoe, the British actress best known at the time for her appearances in a pair of Adam Ant videos earlier in the decade. And the supporting cast would include Peter Capaldi, Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenberg, and the under-appreciated Sammi Davis, who was simply amazing in Mona Lisa, A Prayer for the Dying and John Boorman's Hope and Glory. The $2m would come together fairly quickly. Vestron and Russell would agree on the film in late 1987, the script would be approved by January 1988, filming would begin in England in February, and the completed film would have its world premiere at the Montreal Film Festival before the end of August. When the film arrived in American theatres starting on October 21st, many critics would embrace the director's deliberate camp qualities and anachronisms. But audiences, who maybe weren't used to Russell's style of filmmaking, did not embrace the film quite so much. New Yorkers would buy $31k worth of tickets in its opening weekend at the D. W. Griffith and 8th Street Playhouse, and the film would perform well in its opening weeks in major markets, but the film would never quite break out, earning just $1.2m after ten weeks in theatres. But, again, home video would save the day, as the film would become one of the bigger rental titles in 1989. If you were a teenager in the early 80s, as I was, you may remember a Dutch horror film called The Lift. Or, at the very least, you remember the key art on the VHS box, of a man who has his head stuck in between the doors of an elevator, while the potential viewer is warned to take the stairs, take the stairs, for God's sake, take the stairs. It was an impressive debut film for Dick Maas, but it was one that would place an albatross around the neck of his career. One of his follow ups to The Lift, called Amsterdamned, would follow a police detective who is searching for a serial killer in his home town, who uses the canals of the Dutch capital to keep himself hidden. When the detective gets too close to solving the identity of the murderer, the killer sends a message by killing the detective's girlfriend, which, if the killer had ever seen a movie before, he should have known you never do. You never make it personal for the cop, because he's gonna take you down even worse. When the film's producers brought the film to the American Film Market in early 1988, it would become one of the most talked about films, and Vestron would pick up the American distribution rights for a cool half a million dollars. The film would open on six screens in the US on November 25th, including the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills but not in New York City, but a $15k first weekend gross would seal its fate almost immediately. The film would play for another four weeks in theatres, playing on 18 screens at its widest, but it would end its run shortly after the start of of the year with only $62,044 in tickets sold. The final Vestron Pictures release of 1988 was Andrew Birkin's Burning Secret. Birkin, the brother of French singer and actress Jane Birkin, would co-write the screenplay for this adaptation of a 1913 short story by Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, about a about an American diplomat's son who befriends a mysterious baron while staying at an Austrian spa during the 1920s. According to Birkin in a 2021 interview, making the movie was somewhat of a nightmare, as his leading actors, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Faye Dunaway, did not like each other, and their lack of comfort with each other would bleed into their performances, which is fatal for a film about two people who are supposed to passionately burn for each other. Opening on 16 screens in major markets on Thursday, December 22nd, Burning Secret would only gross $27k in its first four days. The film would actually see a post-Christmas bump, as it would lose a screen but see its gross jump to $40k. But after the first of the year, as it was obvious reviews were not going to save the film and awards consideration was non-existent, the film would close after three weeks with only $104k worth of tickets sold. By the end of 1988, Vestron was facing bankruptcy. The major distributors had learned the lessons independents like Vestron had taught them about selling more volumes of tapes by lowering the price, to make movies collectables and have people curate their own video library. Top titles were harder to come by, and studios were no longer giving up home video rights to the movies they acquired from third-party producers. Like many of the distributors we've spoken about before, and will undoubtedly speak of again, Vestron had too much success with one movie too quickly, and learned the wrong lessons about growth. If you look at the independent distribution world of 2023, you'll see companies like A24 that have learned that lesson. Stay lean and mean, don't go too wide too quickly, try not to spend too much money on a movie, no matter who the filmmaker is and how good of a relationship you have with them. A24 worked with Robert Eggers on The Witch and The Lighthouse, but when he wanted to spend $70-90m to make The Northman, A24 tapped out early, and Focus Features ended up losing millions on the film. Focus, the “indie” label for Universal Studios, can weather a huge loss like The Northman because they are a part of a multinational, multimedia conglomerate. This didn't mean Vestron was going to quit quite yet, but, spoiler alert, they'll be gone soon enough. In fact, and in case you are newer to the podcast and haven't listen to many of the previous episodes, none of the independent distribution companies that began and/or saw their best years in the 1980s that we've covered so far or will be covering in the future, exist in the same form they existed in back then. New Line still exists, but it's now a label within Warner Brothers instead of being an independent distributor. Ditto Orion, which is now just a specialty label within MGM/UA. The Samuel Goldwyn Company is still around and still distributes movies, but it was bought by Orion Pictures the year before Orion was bought by MGM/UA, so it too is now just a specialty label, within another specialty label. Miramax today is just a holding company for the movies the company made before they were sold off to Disney, before Disney sold them off to a hedge fund, who sold Miramax off to another hedge fund. Atlantic is gone. New World is gone. Cannon is gone. Hemdale is gone. Cinecom is gone. Island Films is gone. Alive Films is gone. Concorde Films is gone. MCEG is gone. CineTel is gone. Crown International is gone. Lorimar is gone. New Century/Vista is gone. Skouras Films is gone. Cineplex Odeon Films is gone. Not one of them survived. The same can pretty much be said for the independent distributors created in the 1990s, save Lionsgate, but I'll leave that for another podcast to tackle. As for the Vestron story, we'll continue that one next week, because there are still a dozen more movies to talk about, as well as the end of the line for the once high flying company. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon. Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode. The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment. Thank you again. Good night.
We continue our look back at the movies released by independent distributor Vestron Pictures, focusing on their 1988 releases. ----more---- The movies discussed on this episode, all released by Vestron Pictures in 1988 unless otherwise noted, include: Amsterdamned (Dick Maas) And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim) The Beat (Paul Mones) Burning Secret (Andrew Birkin) Call Me (Sollace Mitchell) The Family (Ettore Scola) Gothic (Ken Russell, 1987) The Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell) Midnight Crossing (Roger Holzberg) Paramedics (Stuart Margolin) The Pointsman (Jos Stelling) Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell) Promised Land (Michael Hoffman) The Unholy (Camilo Vila) Waxwork (Anthony Hickox) TRANSCRIPT From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today. At the end of the previous episode, Vestron Pictures was celebrating the best year of its two year history. Dirty Dancing had become one of the most beloved movies of the year, and Anna was becoming a major awards contender, thanks to a powerhouse performance by veteran actress Sally Kirkland. And at the 60th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the films of 1987, Dirty Dancing would win the Oscar for Best Original Song, while Anna would be nominated for Best Actress, and The Dead for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costumes. Surely, things could only go up from there, right? Welcome to Part Two of our miniseries. But before we get started, I'm issuing a rare mea culpa. I need to add another Vestron movie which I completely missed on the previous episode, because it factors in to today's episode. Which, of course, starts before our story begins. In the 1970s, there were very few filmmakers like the flamboyant Ken Russell. So unique a visual storyteller was Russell, it's nigh impossible to accurately describe him in a verbal or textual manner. Those who have seen The Devils, Tommy or Altered States know just how special Russell was as a filmmaker. By the late 1980s, the hits had dried up, and Russell was in a different kind of artistic stage, wanting to make somewhat faithful adaptations of late 19th and early 20th century UK authors. Vestron was looking to work with some prestigious filmmakers, to help build their cache in the filmmaking community, and Russell saw the opportunity to hopefully find a new home with this new distributor not unlike the one he had with Warner Brothers in the early 70s that brought forth several of his strongest movies. In June 1986, Russell began production on a gothic horror film entitled, appropriately enough, Gothic, which depicted a fictionalized version of a real life meeting between Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, John William Polidori and Claire Clairemont at the Villa Diodati in Geneva, hosted by Lord Byron, from which historians believe both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and John William Polidori's The Vampyre were inspired. And you want to talk about a movie with a great cast. Gabriel Byrne plays Lord Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Shelley, Natasha Richardson, in her first ever movie, as Mary Shelley, Timothy Spall as John William Polidori, and Dexter Fletcher. Although the film was produced through MGM, and distributed by the company in Europe, they would not release the film in America, fearing American audiences wouldn't get it. So Vestron would swoop in and acquire the American theatrical rights. Incidentally, the film did not do very well in American theatres. Opening at the Cinema 1 in midtown Manhattan on April 10th, 1987, the film would sell $45,000 worth of tickets in its first three days, one of the best grosses of any single screen in the city. But the film would end up grossing only $916k after three months in theatres. BUT… The movie would do quite well for Vestron on home video, enough so that Vestron would sign on to produce Russell's next three movies. The first of those will be coming up very soon. Vestron's 1988 release schedule began on January 22nd with the release of two films. The first was Michael Hoffman's Promised Land. In 1982, Hoffman's first film, Privileged, was the first film to made through the Oxford Film Foundation, and was notable for being the first screen appearances for Hugh Grant and Imogen Stubbs, the first film scored by future Oscar winning composer Rachel Portman, and was shepherded into production by none other than John Schlesinger, the Oscar winning director of 1969 Best Picture winner Midnight Cowboy. Hoffman's second film, the Scottish comedy Restless Natives, was part of the 1980s Scottish New Wave film movement that also included Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl and Local Hero, and was the only film to be scored by the Scottish rock band Big Country. Promised Land was one of the first films to be developed by the Sundance Institute, in 1984, and when it was finally produced in 1986, would include Robert Redford as one of its executive producers. The film would follow two recent local high school graduates, Hancock and Danny, whose lives would intersect again with disastrous results several years after graduation. The cast features two young actors destined to become stars, in Keifer Sutherland and Meg Ryan, as well as Jason Gedrick, Tracy Pollan, and Jay Underwood. Shot in Reno and around the Sundance Institute outside Park City, Utah during the early winter months of 1987, Promised Land would make its world premiere at the prestigious Deauville Film Festival in September 1987, but would lose its original distributor, New World Pictures around the same time. Vestron would swoop in to grab the distribution rights, and set it for a January 22nd, 1988 release, just after its American debut at the then U.S. Film Festival, which is now known as the Sundance Film Festival. Convenient, eh? Opening on six screens in , the film would gross $31k in its first three days. The film would continue to slowly roll out into more major markets, but with a lack of stellar reviews, and a cast that wouldn't be more famous for at least another year and a half, Vestron would never push the film out to more than 67 theaters, and it would quickly disappear with only $316k worth of tickets sold. The other movie Vestron opened on January 22nd was Ettore Scale's The Family, which was Italy's submission to that year's Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The great Vittorio Gassman stars as a retired college professor who reminisces about his life and his family over the course of the twentieth century. Featuring a cast of great international actors including Fanny Ardant, Philip Noiret, Stefania Sandrelli and Ricky Tognazzi, The Family would win every major film award in Italy, and it would indeed be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, but in America, it would only play in a handful of theatres for about two months, unable to gross even $350k. When is a remake not a remake? When French filmmaker Roger Vadim, who shot to international fame in 1956 with his movie And God Created Woman, decided to give a generational and international spin on his most famous work. And a completely different story, as to not resemble his original work in any form outside of the general brushstrokes of both being about a young, pretty, sexually liberated young woman. Instead of Bridget Bardot, we get Rebecca De Mornay, who was never able to parlay her starring role in Risky Business to any kind of stardom the way one-time boyfriend Tom Cruise had. And if there was any American woman in the United States in 1988 who could bring in a certain demographic to see her traipse around New Mexico au natural, it would be Rebecca De Mornay. But as we saw with Kathleen Turner in Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion in 1984 and Ellen Barkin in Mary Lambert's Siesta in 1987, American audiences were still rather prudish when it came to seeing a certain kind of female empowered sexuality on screen, and when the film opened at 385 theatres on March 4th, it would open to barely a $1,000 per screen average. And God Created Woman would be gone from theatres after only three weeks and $717k in ticket sales. Vestron would next release a Dutch film called The Pointsman, about a French woman who accidentally gets off at the wrong train station in a remote Dutch village, and a local railwayman who, unable to speak the other person's language, develop a strange relationship while she waits for another train that never arrives. Opening at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on New York's Upper West Side on April 8th, the film would gross $7,000 in its first week, which in and of itself isn't all that bad for a mostly silent Dutch film. Except there was another Dutch film in the marketplace already, one that was getting much better reviews, and was the official Dutch entry into that year's Best Foreign Language Film race. That film, Babette's Feast, was becoming something more than just a movie. Restaurants across the country were creating menus based on the meals served in the film, and in its sixth week of release in New York City that weekend, had grossed four times as much as The Pointsman, despite the fact that the theatre playing Babette's Feast, the Cinema Studio 1, sat only 65 more people than the Lincoln Plaza 1. The following week, The Pointsman would drop to $6k in ticket sales, while Babette's Feast's audience grew another $6k over the previous week. After a third lackluster week, The Pointsman was gone from the Lincoln Plaza, and would never play in another theatre in America. In the mid-80s, British actor Ben Cross was still trying to capitalize on his having been one of the leads in the 1981 Best Picture winner Chariots of Fire, and was sharing a home with his wife and children, as well as Camilo Vila, a filmmaker looking for his first big break in features after two well-received short films made in his native Cuba before he defected in the early 1980s. When Vila was offered the chance to direct The Unholy, about a Roman Catholic priest in New Orleans who finds himself battling a demonic force after being appointed to a new parish, he would walk down the hall of his shared home and offered his roomie the lead role. Along with Ned Beatty, William Russ, Hal Holbrook and British actor Trevor Howard in his final film, The Unholy would begin two weeks of exterior filming in New Orleans on October 27th, 1986, before moving to a studio in Miami for seven more weeks. The film would open in 1189 theatres, Vestron's widest opening to date, on April 22nd, and would open in seventh place with $2.35m in ticket sales. By its second week in theatres, it would fall to eleventh place with a $1.24m gross. But with the Summer Movie Season quickly creeping up on the calendar, The Unholy would suffer the same fate as most horror films, making the drop to dollar houses after two weeks, as to make room for such dreck as Sunset, Blake Edwards' lamentable Bruce Willis/James Garner riff on Hollywood and cowboys in the late 1920s, and the pointless sequel to Critters before screens got gobbled up by Rambo III on Memorial Day weekend. It would earn a bit more than $6m at the box office. When Gothic didn't perform well in American theatres, Ken Russell thought his career was over. As we mentioned earlier, the American home video store saved his career, as least for the time being. The first film Russell would make for Vestron proper was Salome's Last Dance, based on an 1891 play by Oscar Wilde, which itself was based on a story from the New Testament. Russell's script would add a framing device as a way for movie audiences to get into this most theatrical of stories. On Guy Fawkes Day in London in 1892, Oscar Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, arrive late at a friend's brothel, where the author is treated to a surprise performance of his play Salome, which has recently been banned from being performed at all in England by Lord Chamberlain. All of the actors in his special performance are played by the prostitutes of the brothel and their clients, and the scenes of the play are intertwined with Wilde's escapades at the brothel that night. We didn't know it at the time, but Salome's Last Dance would be the penultimate film performance for Academy Award winning actress Glenda Jackson, who would retire to go into politics in England a couple years later, after working with Russell on another film, which we'll get to in a moment. About the only other actor you might recognize in the film is David Doyle, of all people, the American actor best known for playing Bosley on Charlie's Angels. Like Gothic, Salome's Last Dance would not do very well in theatres, grossing less than half a million dollars after three months, but would find an appreciative audience on home video. The most interesting thing about Roger Holzberg's Midnight Crossing is the writer and director himself. Holzberg started in the entertainment industry as a playwright, then designed the props and weapons for Albert Pyun's 1982 film The Sword and the Sorcerer, before moving on to direct the second unit team on Pyun's 1985 film Radioactive Dreams. After making this film, Holzberg would have a cancer scare, and pivot to health care, creating a number of technological advancements to help evolve patient treatment, including the Infusionarium, a media setup which helps children with cancer cope with treatment by asking them questions designed to determine what setting would be most comforting to them, and then using virtual reality technology and live events to immerse them in such an environment during treatment. That's pretty darn cool, actually. Midnight Crossing stars Faye Dunaway and Hill Street Blues star Daniel J. Travanti in his first major movie role as a couple who team with another couple, played by Kim Cattrall and John Laughlin, who go hunting for treasure supposedly buried between Florida and Cuba. The film would open in 419 theaters on May 11th, 1988, and gross a paltry $673k in its first three days, putting it 15th on the list of box office grosses for the week, $23k more than Three Men and a Baby, which was playing on 538 screens in its 25th week of release. In its second week, Midnight Crossing would lose more than a third of its theatres, and the weekend gross would fall to just $232k. The third week would be even worse, dropping to just 67 theatres and $43k in ticket sales. After a few weeks at a handful of dollar houses, the film would be history with just $1.3m in the bank. Leonard Klady, then writing for the Los Angeles Times, would note in a January 1989 article about the 1988 box office that Midnight Crossing's box office to budget ratio of 0.26 was the tenth worst ratio for any major or mini-major studio, ahead of And God Created Woman's 8th worst ratio of .155 but behind other stinkers like Caddyshack II. The forgotten erotic thriller Call Me sounds like a twist on the 1984 Alan Rudolph romantic comedy Choose Me, but instead of Genevieve Bujold we get Patricia Charbonneau, and instead of a meet cute involving singles at a bar in Los Angeles, we get a murder mystery involving a New York City journalist who gets involved with a mysterious caller after she witnesses a murder at a bar due to a case of mistaken identity. The film's not very good, but the supporting cast is great, including Steve Buscemi, Patti D'Arbanville, Stephen McHattie and David Straithairn. Opening on 24 screens in major markets on May 20th, Call Me would open to horrible reviews, lead by Siskel and Ebert's thumbs facing downward, and only $58,348 worth of tickets sold in its first three days. After five weeks in theatres, Vestron hung up on Call Me with just $252k in the kitty. Vestron would open two movies on June 3rd, one in a very limited release, and one in a moderate national release. There are a lot of obscure titles in these two episodes, and probably the most obscure is Paul Mones' The Beat. The film followed a young man named Billy Kane, played by William McNamara in his film debut, who moves into a rough neighborhood controlled by several gangs, who tries to help make his new area a better place by teaching them about poetry. John Savage from The Deer Hunter plays a teacher, and future writer and director Reggie Rock Bythewood plays one of the troubled youths whose life is turned around through the written and spoken word. The production team was top notch. Producer Julia Phillips was one of the few women to ever win a Best Picture Oscar when she and her then husband Michael Phillips produced The Sting in 1973. Phillips was assisted on the film by two young men who were making their first movie. Jon Kilik would go on to produce or co-produce every Spike Lee movie from Do the Right Thing to Da 5 Bloods, except for BlackkKlansman, while Nick Weschler would produce sex, lies and videotape, Drugstore Cowboy, The Player and Requiem for a Dream, amongst dozens of major films. And the film's cinematographer, Tom DiCillo, would move into the director's chair in 1991 with Johnny Suede, which gave Brad Pitt his first lead role. The Beat would be shot on location in New York City in the summer of 1986, and it would make its world premiere at the Cannes Film Market in May 1987. But it would be another thirteen months before the film arrived in theatres. Opening on seven screens in Los Angeles and New York City on June 3rd, The Beat would gross just $7,168 in its first three days. There would not be a second week for The Beat. It would make its way onto home video in early 1989, and that's the last time the film was seen for nearly thirty years, until the film was picked up by a number of streaming services. Vestron's streak of bad luck continued with the comedy Paramedics starring George Newbern and Christopher McDonald. The only feature film directed by Stuart Margolin, best known as Angel on the 1970s TV series The Rockford Files, Newbern and McDonald play two… well, paramedics… who are sent by boss, as punishment, from their cushy uptown gig to a troubled district at the edge of the city, where they discover two other paramedics are running a cadavers for dollars scheme, harvesting organs from dead bodies to the black market. Here again we have a great supporting cast who deserve to be in a better movie, including character actor John P. Ryan, James Noble from Benson, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs from Welcome Back Kotter, the great Ray Walston, and one-time Playboy Playmate Karen Witter, who plays a sort of angel of death. Opening on 301 screens nationwide, Paramedics would only gross $149,577 in its first three days, the worst per screen average of any movie playing in at least 100 theatres that weekend. Vestron stopped tracking the film after just three days. Two weeks later, on June 17th, Vestron released a comedy horror film that should have done better. Waxwork was an interesting idea, a group of college students who have some strange encounters with the wax figures at a local museum, but that's not exactly why it should have been more popular. It was the cast that should have brought audiences in. On one side, you had a group of well-known younger actors like Deborah Foreman from Valley Girl, Zack Gailligan from Gremlins, Michelle Johnson from Blame It on Rio, and Miles O'Keeffe from Sword of the Valiant. On the other hand, you had a group of seasoned veterans from popular television shows and movies, such as Patrick Macnee from the popular 1960s British TV show The Avengers, John Rhys-Davies from the Indiana Jones movies, and David Warner, from The Omen and Time after Time and Time Bandits and Tron. But if I want to be completely honest, this was not a movie to release in the early part of summer. While I'm a firm believer that the right movie can find an audience no matter when it's released, Waxwork was absolutely a prime candidate for an early October release. Throughout the 1980s, we saw a number of horror movies, and especially horror comedies, released in the summer season that just did not hit with audiences. So it would be of little surprise when Waxwork grossed less than a million dollars during its theatrical run. And it should be of little surprise that the film would become popular enough on home video to warrant a sequel, which would add more popular sci-fi and horror actors like Marina Sirtis from Star Trek: The Next Generation, David Carradine and even Bruce Campbell. But by 1992, when Waxwork 2 was released, Vestron was long since closed. The second Ken Russell movie made for Vestron was The Lair of the White Worm, based on a 1911 novel by Bram Stoker, the author's final published book before his death the following year. The story follows the residents in and around a rural English manor that are tormented by an ancient priestess after the skull of a serpent she worships is unearthed by an archaeologist. Russell would offer the role of Sylvia Marsh, the enigmatic Lady who is actually an immortal priestess to an ancient snake god, to Tilda Swinton, who at this point of her career had already racked up a substantial resume in film after only two years, but she would decline. Instead, the role would go to Amanda Donohoe, the British actress best known at the time for her appearances in a pair of Adam Ant videos earlier in the decade. And the supporting cast would include Peter Capaldi, Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenberg, and the under-appreciated Sammi Davis, who was simply amazing in Mona Lisa, A Prayer for the Dying and John Boorman's Hope and Glory. The $2m would come together fairly quickly. Vestron and Russell would agree on the film in late 1987, the script would be approved by January 1988, filming would begin in England in February, and the completed film would have its world premiere at the Montreal Film Festival before the end of August. When the film arrived in American theatres starting on October 21st, many critics would embrace the director's deliberate camp qualities and anachronisms. But audiences, who maybe weren't used to Russell's style of filmmaking, did not embrace the film quite so much. New Yorkers would buy $31k worth of tickets in its opening weekend at the D. W. Griffith and 8th Street Playhouse, and the film would perform well in its opening weeks in major markets, but the film would never quite break out, earning just $1.2m after ten weeks in theatres. But, again, home video would save the day, as the film would become one of the bigger rental titles in 1989. If you were a teenager in the early 80s, as I was, you may remember a Dutch horror film called The Lift. Or, at the very least, you remember the key art on the VHS box, of a man who has his head stuck in between the doors of an elevator, while the potential viewer is warned to take the stairs, take the stairs, for God's sake, take the stairs. It was an impressive debut film for Dick Maas, but it was one that would place an albatross around the neck of his career. One of his follow ups to The Lift, called Amsterdamned, would follow a police detective who is searching for a serial killer in his home town, who uses the canals of the Dutch capital to keep himself hidden. When the detective gets too close to solving the identity of the murderer, the killer sends a message by killing the detective's girlfriend, which, if the killer had ever seen a movie before, he should have known you never do. You never make it personal for the cop, because he's gonna take you down even worse. When the film's producers brought the film to the American Film Market in early 1988, it would become one of the most talked about films, and Vestron would pick up the American distribution rights for a cool half a million dollars. The film would open on six screens in the US on November 25th, including the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills but not in New York City, but a $15k first weekend gross would seal its fate almost immediately. The film would play for another four weeks in theatres, playing on 18 screens at its widest, but it would end its run shortly after the start of of the year with only $62,044 in tickets sold. The final Vestron Pictures release of 1988 was Andrew Birkin's Burning Secret. Birkin, the brother of French singer and actress Jane Birkin, would co-write the screenplay for this adaptation of a 1913 short story by Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, about a about an American diplomat's son who befriends a mysterious baron while staying at an Austrian spa during the 1920s. According to Birkin in a 2021 interview, making the movie was somewhat of a nightmare, as his leading actors, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Faye Dunaway, did not like each other, and their lack of comfort with each other would bleed into their performances, which is fatal for a film about two people who are supposed to passionately burn for each other. Opening on 16 screens in major markets on Thursday, December 22nd, Burning Secret would only gross $27k in its first four days. The film would actually see a post-Christmas bump, as it would lose a screen but see its gross jump to $40k. But after the first of the year, as it was obvious reviews were not going to save the film and awards consideration was non-existent, the film would close after three weeks with only $104k worth of tickets sold. By the end of 1988, Vestron was facing bankruptcy. The major distributors had learned the lessons independents like Vestron had taught them about selling more volumes of tapes by lowering the price, to make movies collectables and have people curate their own video library. Top titles were harder to come by, and studios were no longer giving up home video rights to the movies they acquired from third-party producers. Like many of the distributors we've spoken about before, and will undoubtedly speak of again, Vestron had too much success with one movie too quickly, and learned the wrong lessons about growth. If you look at the independent distribution world of 2023, you'll see companies like A24 that have learned that lesson. Stay lean and mean, don't go too wide too quickly, try not to spend too much money on a movie, no matter who the filmmaker is and how good of a relationship you have with them. A24 worked with Robert Eggers on The Witch and The Lighthouse, but when he wanted to spend $70-90m to make The Northman, A24 tapped out early, and Focus Features ended up losing millions on the film. Focus, the “indie” label for Universal Studios, can weather a huge loss like The Northman because they are a part of a multinational, multimedia conglomerate. This didn't mean Vestron was going to quit quite yet, but, spoiler alert, they'll be gone soon enough. In fact, and in case you are newer to the podcast and haven't listen to many of the previous episodes, none of the independent distribution companies that began and/or saw their best years in the 1980s that we've covered so far or will be covering in the future, exist in the same form they existed in back then. New Line still exists, but it's now a label within Warner Brothers instead of being an independent distributor. Ditto Orion, which is now just a specialty label within MGM/UA. The Samuel Goldwyn Company is still around and still distributes movies, but it was bought by Orion Pictures the year before Orion was bought by MGM/UA, so it too is now just a specialty label, within another specialty label. Miramax today is just a holding company for the movies the company made before they were sold off to Disney, before Disney sold them off to a hedge fund, who sold Miramax off to another hedge fund. Atlantic is gone. New World is gone. Cannon is gone. Hemdale is gone. Cinecom is gone. Island Films is gone. Alive Films is gone. Concorde Films is gone. MCEG is gone. CineTel is gone. Crown International is gone. Lorimar is gone. New Century/Vista is gone. Skouras Films is gone. Cineplex Odeon Films is gone. Not one of them survived. The same can pretty much be said for the independent distributors created in the 1990s, save Lionsgate, but I'll leave that for another podcast to tackle. As for the Vestron story, we'll continue that one next week, because there are still a dozen more movies to talk about, as well as the end of the line for the once high flying company. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon. Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode. The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment. Thank you again. Good night.
Movie Meltdown - Episode 594 Join us as we continue on our labyrinthian discussion of different films and filmmakers. And once we realize we're actually just hiding in the round rack of life, we also mention… Dawn of the Dead, Invaders from Mars, Elvis, Blonde, Albert Pyun, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Terrifier, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, They Live, Everything Everywhere All at Once, once your eyes stop uncrossing, Dan O'Bannon, unapologetically what it is, George Miller, Looney Tunes world, James Karen, Alien from L.A., Wendie Jo Sperber, Stan Winson, new terrible things waiting to happen tomorrow, Cyborg, Bruce Willis, special make-up effects, Tobe Hooper, this is great French toast, Thom Mathews, Tales From the Crypt, I've got one word for you… mime, Dario Argento, Hunter Carson, The Return of the Living Dead, Baz Luhrmann, torturing a puppet on-screen, production design, Radioactive Dreams, Robert Zemeckis, Kevin Bacon, long trench coats, twenty isolated viewings, in 3D, American Graffiti, I'm not a smart person and the color correction on these movies is actually really good! “It felt so cinematic and so big and so broad and beautiful to behold. That you know, you're just like, man I think this is like - his best movie.”
Lee, Tanner, Nick, Bobby and Mike celebrate the life of and career of recently departed filmmaker Albert Pyun by discussing his sophmore effort, Radioactive Dreams. This post-apocalyptic coming of age story starring Michael Dudikoff and John Stockwell delves into more complex themes than your typical direct-to-video efforts of the era while bringing all the over-the-top action you'd expect.
Margarete Schneider ist Produktmanagerin bei der Gamecity Hamburg und seit einiger Zeit Mama. Sie hat zuvor beim Publisher Daedalic gearbeitet, beim Carlsen Verlag ein Volontariat gemacht und Print & Publishing bis zum Magister studiert. Hier treffen also Spiele und Bücher zusammen.
Liam is one half of the amazing Cinepunx! Along with his co-conspirator Josh Alvarez, Liam takes deep dives into films old and new. Knowing that Liam is an old timey hardcore punk, I thought he’d make a great guest. I touch on a very serious topic at the beginning of the episode, but this is […]
Liam is one half of the amazing Cinepunx! Along with his co-conspirator Josh Alvarez, Liam takes deep dives into films old and new. Knowing that Liam is an old timey hardcore punk, I thought he’d make a great guest. I touch on a very serious topic at the beginning of the episode, but this is […]
Phillip Hammer (John Stockwell) and Marlowe Chandler (Michael Dudikoff) are a couple of goofs who find themselves wandering a strange new post-apocalyptic world after spending 15 years in a bomb shelter in Albert Pyun's wild, new wave-y action comedy RADIOACTIVE DREAMS! Featuring a pounding soundtrack, lizard people, swearing kids, and - of course - the great George Kennedy, it's our main topic on this episode of George Kennedy is my Copilot which also features digressions
Throwdown Month carries on this week with 2 more forgotten cult flicks Meet the Hollowheads and Radioactive Dreams. Joe looks deep into the cornfields of his heart for Children of the Corn Part 5 and Scott takes a trip down memory lane for his history with train horns.
Nine years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cinema's most enduring symbol of the perils of nuclear proliferation first crawled out of Tokyo Bay. We discuss how the original GODZILLA (1954) channeled the mood of its time. PLUS: how the media talks about the congressional wrangling over the reconciliation bill.Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage. To hear weekly bonus episodes, subscribe to the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus/
Nine years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cinema's most enduring symbol of the perils of nuclear proliferation first crawled out of Tokyo Bay. We discuss how the original GODZILLA (1954) channeled the mood of its time. PLUS: how the media talks about the congressional wrangling over the reconciliation bill.
Skoj efter katastrofen! Den här gången är Alex med, för att prata om två otroligt Film och Skit:iska filmer! Intrépidos Punks handlar om ett Mad Max-gäng som härjar i vanliga 80tals-Mexiko. Kanske har de hippaste stilarna i filmhistorien! Radioactive Dreams är en härlig Albert Pyun-film från 1985. Man blir ju peppad alltså!
The boys head into the far off future of 2010 and venture into a post-nuke world full of cannibals and disco mutants! They're joined by Jesse from the Apple to Oranges podcast as they swing dance down the streets, search for a couple of special keys, and fend off all the sewer rat-dogs along the way! Follow us on Instagram @stabbypod and tell us what to watch next!
Hosts Josh and Jamie and special guests Will Sloan & Justin Decloux (of The Important Cinema Club) discuss b-movie legend Albert Pyun with a double feature of his post-apocalyptic rock opera noir RADIOACTIVE DREAMS (1985) and his incredible shrinking man meets death wish oddity DOLLMAN (1991). Next week's bonus episode is a patron-exclusive bonus episode on CLASS OF 1984 (1982) and DANGEROUSLY CLOSE (1986), you can get access to that episode (and all past + future bonus episodes) by subscribing to our $5 tier on patreon: www.patreon.com/sleazoidspodcast Intro // 00:00-14:14 RADIOACTIVE DREAMS // 14:14-1:08:34 DOLLMAN // 1:08:34-1:50:00 Outro // 1:50:00-1:54:48 MERCH: www.teepublic.com/stores/sleazoids?ref_id=17667 WEBSITE: www.sleazoidspodcast.com/ Pod Twitter: twitter.com/sleazoidspod Pod Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/SLEAZOIDS/ Josh's Twitter: twitter.com/thejoshl Josh's Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/thejoshl/ Jamie's Twitter: twitter.com/jamiemilleracas Jamie's Letterboxd: letterboxd.com/jamiemiller/
Bill speaks to filmmaker, author, podcaster, film programmer and home video label founder Justin Decloux about his many endeavors in film culture, including the Laser Blast Film Society, The Important Cinema Club podcast, the Gold Ninja Video label, the feature films TEDDY BOMB and IMPOSSIBLE HORROR and the book RADIOACTIVE DREAMS: THE CINEMA OF ALBERT PYUN. Topics include: Will Sloan, ARMY OF DARKNESS, the importance of good collaborators, the films of Charles Roxburgh and Matt Farley, RADIOACTIVE DREAMS, Canadian cinema, Fred Olen Ray, Letterboxd, Emily Milling, the Loose Cannons podcast, CRITTERS 4 and playground deception. Visit Justin Decloux’s official site: https://justindecloux.com Visit the official site for The Laser Blast Film Society: https://www.laserblastfilmsociety.com Watch TEDDY BOMB: https://www.amazon.com/Teddy-Bomb-Christian-Murdoch/dp/B07DZ2F6RX Watch IMPOSSIBLE HORROR: https://www.amazon.com/Impossible-Horror-Creedance-Wright/dp/B07ZDLSV2Z Buy movies and books from Gold Ninja Video: https://goldninjavideo.com Listen to The Important Cinema Club Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/the-important-cinema-club Support the Important Cinema Club Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theimportantcinemaclub Listen No Such Thing As A Bad Movie: https://soundcloud.com/nosuchthingasabadmovie Buy RADIOACTIVE DREAMS: THE CINEMA OF ALBERT PYUN: https://www.amazon.com/Radioactive-Dreams-Cinema-Albert-Pyun/dp/1078206481/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2TIYP3941KK67 Buy UNMASKED PART 25, featuring an audio commentary with producer Mark Cutforth, moderated by Peter Kuplowsky and Justin Decloux: https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/unmasked-part-25 Listen to The Bay Street Video Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/thebaystreetvideopodcast Listen to the IMPOSSIBLE HORROR soundtrack by Emily Milling: https://emilymilling.bandcamp.com/releases Subscribe to Film Trap on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWLpWvJv2paIaa6U9gcw4AA Follow Justin Decloux on Letterboxd: Justin Decloux’s profile
Show 23 sees us brave Arctic conditions and forced baptisms in the Euro-Russian helmed The Red Tent before we swap our furs for Trilbys and red wigs in the post-apocalyptic Radioactive Dreams and then we round things off with an unusual take on time travel in The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey.
Horror! Medo! Desespero! Pânico! Sofrimento! No episódio desta semana nos reunimos para falar sobre o filme pós-apocalíptico Radioactive Dreams estrelado pela dupla John Stockwell/Michael Dudikoff e dirigido pelo Albert Pyun em 1985. E além de nossa resenha habitual você ouvirá sobre outras obras pós apocalípticas e como o Exumador se veste para o Cabaré. Então aumentem seus iPods porque mais um Podtrash está no ar! Duração: 88'09''Média TD1P: 4,6 ELENCO Almighty, o Estagiário de Chinelos!Bruno "Gunfree" GunterDemétrius "Anjo Negro" Santos Douglas Fricke, o ExumadorEdson Oliveira ARTE DO BANNER Shin Koheo, o Maratonista nu! EXTRAS DESTE PODTRASH IMDb do FilmeTrailer do FilmeFilme dublado em Espanhol (com legendas auto-geradas) Escute esta playlist no Spotify! FEEDS E LINKS DO PODTRASH Podtrash na iTunes StorePodtrash no SpotifyFeed completo do PodtrashFeed sem os Lado BFeed do Lado BCanal do Podtrash no YoutunerParticipe do Grupo “Esse Merece um Podtrash” lá no Facebook!Participe do grupo do Telegram dos Ouvintes do PodtrashConheça a Loja de Camisetas As Baratas! CONTATOS DO PODTRASH podtrash@td1p.com@podtrashFacebook do PodtrashCaixa Postal 34012 – Rio de Janeiro, RJ - CEP 22460-970 CAPA DESTE PODTRASH
On a very special episode of the show, Justin and Will discuss the Writer/Director Albert Pyun and his films DECEIT, CAPTAIN AMERICA, KNIGHTS and CYBORG. He made 44 films, worked primarily as an independent operator, and Justin wrote a book about him! You can buy Justin's book RADIOACTIVE DREAMS: THE CINEMA OF ALBERT PYUN right here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1078206481 This week on the Patreon episode we watched THE WRECKING CREW and discussed ONCE UPON A TIME IN...HOLLYWOOD. Become a Patreon subscriber for $5 a month and get an exclusive episode every week! www.patreon.com/theimportantcinemaclub If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop us a line at importantcinemaclubpodcast@gmail.com
If you don't know who Albert Pyun is, then you must listen to this episode! Colin, Justin and April discuss two movies directed by Pyun to celebrate Justin's new book! It's Pyun's cinematic debut The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)and the somewhat awkward Captain America (1990). Buy Justin's book Radioactive Dreams: The Cinema of Albert Pyun Now! https://www.amazon.com/Radioactive-Dreams-Cinema-Albert-Pyun/dp/1078206481/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Radioactive+Dreams&qid=1564065355&s=movies-tv&sr=1-3-catcorr Support us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/nosuchthingasabadmovie Email us at nosuchthingasabadmovie@gmail.com Tweet at us! @NoSuchThingPod @apriletmanski @Sgtzima @DeclouxJ
Wych Vs. The Doomsday Clock: Week #65, 8 Hours 00 Minutes to Doomsday – Noir Long Pig A-Go-Go On this episode: Wych wakes up to a brand new adventure This week: Couches, Cats & Mondo Nerds with Spats! MOVIE TITLE: Radioactive Dreams (1985) (1:38 Run time) IMDB DESCRIPTION:After a nuclear war, Phillip Hammer and Marlowe Chandler have spent fifteen years on their own in a bunker, stuffed with junk from the 40s and old detective novels. Now, nineteen-years-old, they leave their shelter to find a world full of mutants, freaks, and cannibals. They become famous detectives in the struggle for the two keys that could fire the last nuclear weapon. Director: Albert Pyun (as Albert F. Pyun) Known For: 1982’s The Sword & The Sorcerer, 1989’s Cyborg & The Nemesis series Stars: John Stockwell … Phillip Chandler Best known for 1983’s Christine, 1986’s Top Gun & Writing and staring in 1997’s Breast Men! Michael Dudikoff … Marlowe Hammer Best known for appearing as Joe Armstrong: American Ninja – 1, 2 & 4! Michele Little … Rusty Mars Best known for forgettable roles such as Denny in My Demon Lover, Stella in Mystery Date & Nurse Pierce in Article 99 Facebook [...]
We're back! Join us as we conclude our brief Albert Pyun series! We tackle his sophomore (but not sophomoric) post-apocalyptic nuclear boogie-woogie epic: Radioactive Dreams! Featuring the the pair with charm to spare: Michael Dudikoff & John Stockwell! Listen in as Phil, Kit, Lil, & Graham discuss the ins and outs of probably the most fun apocalypse you'll ever see!!!!
Lee and Daniel kick off a series looking at (mostly) 1980s sci-fi with two odd-ball entries into the genre, those being the obscure "Radioactive Dreams" (1985) and the cable tv staple "Cherry 2000" (1987). Listener comments and what they've watched as of late are also covered. "Radioactive Dreams" IMDB "Cherry 2000" IMDB Featured Music: "The Barricades" by Basil Poledouris & "Guilty Pleasures" by Sue Saad.
We watched the like totally rad 1985 film, "Radioactive Dreams", ya dig?
Disco Mutants, Bob Ross and Time Travel segue into a strong Atari finish. This episode: MovieSquat (3m:31s) Radioactive Dreams + Galaxy of Terror = I Dream of Disco Mutants TubeSquat (22m:27s) The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross + Voyagers! = The Joy of Time Travel ToonSquat (43m:09s) The Jetsons + Sectaurs = Spacely Symbion Sprockets GameSquat (1h:03m:07s) Warbirds (Lynx) + Tape Worm (2600) = War Worm vs. Beaky Birds retrosquat.com @retrosquat Music/SFX: https://evanking.bandcamp.com/album/20xx Want to be a guest host for this segment? DEMAND to be on the show!
POST-APO(P)! C'est pas parce que le monde est détruit qu'on va se comporter comme des sauvages hein? Analyse de trois film post-apo à caractère satirique, un par animateur, THE BED SITTING ROOM, RADIOACTIVE DREAMS et NIGHT OF THE COMET. Qu'est-ce que les trois ont en commun? Tune-in pour quelques leçons de (sur)vie.
POST-APO(P)! C'est pas parce que le monde est détruit qu'on va se comporter comme des sauvages hein? Analyse de trois film post-apo à caractère satirique, un par animateur, THE BED SITTING ROOM, RADIOACTIVE DREAMS et NIGHT OF THE COMET. Qu'est-ce que les trois ont en commun? Tune-in pour quelques leçons de (sur)vie.
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