Mini #129
When Animals Compete
There have been a lot of animals in movies, but which are the BEST animals? Stuart Wellington leads a highly-scientific investigation.
Episodes
Episode #452
Summer Camp
The Flop House is headed to Summer Camp! A few weeks of sun, swimming, hiking, crafts — we’re gonna make each other SO MANY FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS that our circulation is gonna cut off! We’re gonna have so much fu– what? It’s just a movie? But… it stars Diane Keaton, Alfre Woodard, and Kathy Bates, so with those actors it’s gotta be at least a little fun, righ– it’s not? Oh, poop.
Mini #128
Listener Roulette, with Hallie Haglund
Hallie joins the Flop House gang once more, to discuss random topics selected by YOU, the listeners!
Episode #451
Better Man, with Hallie Haglund
Robbie Williams is a chimp. That’s not an insult, just an accurate description of Better Man, from the director of past Flop House subject, The Greatest Showman. This one’s the rare FH movie that was a critical success while being a financial flop — will we agree with the critics? Oh, and we buried the lede: HALLIE’S BACK!
Mini #127
Always Room for Giallo, with Alejandro Arbona
We’re joined by longtime friend of the show (but first time on mic!) Alejandro Arbona, a 20-year veteran of comics editing and a comics writer himself, to discuss everyone’s favorite extravagantly-perverse Italian thriller genre — GIALLO. We discuss what defines a giallo and differentiates it from other sub-genres (and the slasher films it helped inspire), and then Alejandro runs us through a little giallo title quiz. It’s so jam-packed with info we didn’t have room for Elliott (jk, he had scheduling issues, that li’l scamp will be back next time!).
Episode #450
Unfrosted, with Alex Smith
We flashback to discuss a movie that was much-requested when it was first released, but just didn’t fit into our schedule — Jerry Seinfeld’s baffling paean to the Pop Tart, Unfrosted, a film that throws an astounding cavalcade of comedy talent at ideas that seem (apologies) a bit undercooked. Also, we were blessed by the rare in-studio presence of our beloved producer, Alex Smith, who hadn’t actually seen the movie, which made explaining the madness of the “plot” all the more enjoyable.
Mini #126
Impressionable Peaches
While we were all fortunate enough to record in-person, Stuart filled Dan and Elliott with booze and forced them to do celebrity “impressions.” It’s either our most fun episode or our most embarrassing! Or both!
Episode #449
The Electric State
What’s the deal with Netflix’s The Electric State? Well, for one thing we know that IT’S ELECTRIC… boogie woogie woogie. But also, it’s a movie arguing for the primacy of real-life connection that feels utterly algorithmically designed, what with its Chris Pratts and Millies Bobby Brown and cute robot pals, and it cost… $320 million?? That can’t be right. There must be a smudge on these accounting sheets. Anyway, we talk about it!
Mini #125
Cinematic Mechanics
Elliott puts on his greasy overalls to look under the filmic hood, as we figure out what makes a good “robot movie,” ask why Heartbeeps was a bad one, and see if we can pull out the robot defibrillator to restore its cinematic heartbeep.
Episode #448
Heartbeeps
We tie a bow around Max Fun Drive 2025 and our “Movies Without Spider-Man” series with (?) Paul Schrader’s (?) magnum opus, Heartbeeps. It’s the classic tale of a guy robot and a girl robot in love and also there’s a bad stand-up comic robot and a mean cop robot and a baby robot and Andy Kaufman does one of the world’s most irritating voices and what the fuck is this thing?
Episode #447
Venom: The Last Dance
“Movies Without Spider-Man” Max Fun drive continues (please consider supporting our show!) with the thrilling (?) conclusion (??) of the Venom saga — Venom: The Last Dance, the touching story of…
Episode #446
Kraven the Hunter
We start out our special “Films Without Spider-Man” theme month (in honor of Max Fun Drive — please consider supporting our show!) with one of the more ostentatiously-Spider-Man-free films of last year: Kraven the Hunter. C’mon, Kraven, we KNOW you guys know one another–remember that last hunt? Just swallow your pride and phone Spidey to drop by! We’re cravin’ it!
Mini #124
Bad Movie Godfathers, with Harry Medved and Harry Pallenberg
We welcome one of the godfathers of bad movie culture, Harry Medved, of the seminal books “The Fifty Worst Films of All Time” and “The Golden Turkey Awards,” and discuss his PBS show “Locationland” where he and comedian Dana Gould visited the filming sites for Plan 9 From Outer Space! And we also spend a little time talking to Locationland producer Harry Pallenberg about his father’s work with John Boorman on Exorcist II: The Heretic (the Golden Turkeys’ pick for #2 worst movie of all time) and the oft-referenced Zardoz!
Episode #445
Star Trek: Section 31, with Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica
Wow! The first new Star Trek movie in eight years! What’s that you say? Oh. TV movie? And it’s less a “movie” and more a “we were going to develop a new series and that fell through so we made it a one-off, 90 minute thing?” Huh. Well, Star Trek: Section 31 may not be a “movie” in the same way we’ve used that word for most of its existence, but it was still a good excuse to hang out with our friends Adam and Ben from Max Fun’s terrific Trek shows Greatest Gen and Greatest Trek, so every cosmic cloud has a silver lining, we guess.
Mini #123
80’s Goofs
The Goofmaster returns to quiz Stuart and Elliott about some IMDb “Goofs” from 1980’s movies that didn’t live up to the standards of viewers with enough free time to log movie goofs on IMDb.
Episode #444
Here
A lot of stuff happened… HERE. Well. Not that much stuff, actually. Like, six couples lived here. Most of them were pretty boring. But at one point there were dinosaurs! That’s pretty cool, right? Anyway, enjoy our discussion of the latest installment in Robert Zemeckis’s inexplicable slide from “can do no wrong” to “can do … wrong!”
Mini #122
Monster Mashers
Following a couple of failed “Dark Universe” attempts, Elliott leads a brainstorming session to explore how his co-hosts might revitalize the Universal Monsters.
Episode #443
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Harold and the Purple Crayon is a lovely, enduring children’s classic (if you’ve never encountered it, have Steve Buscemi read it to you!) — did Hollywood treat it with gentleness and respect, when they decided to use it as the jumping-off point for the movie “Harold and the Purple Crayon?” The answer may not surprise you!
Mini #121
Hi, Resolutions!
Elliott completes a loose trilogy of minisodes — one per Peach — all about the changing of the year. His take? What New Year’s resolution would you make on behalf of various franchises?
Episode #442
Joker: Folie à Deux
For our first full episode recorded and released in 2025, we wanted to start things off with a bang, so we watched the sequel to a love-it-or-hate-it film, except this time around most non-John Waters/Quentin Tarantino folks seemed to just hate it. That’s right, it’s the further adventures of that notorious clown prince of stair dancing, the Jokester, in… Joker: Folie à Deux, the film that got the lowest Cinemascore EVER for a “superhero movie.” What will WE make of it?
Mini #120
Coming Attractions in 2025
Dan looks forward to the year ahead, and asks the rest of the Flop House gang which of 2025’s cinematic offerings float their cineaste boats. We’re in season 2 of…
Episode #441
Spice World, LIVE
As we all recover from our New Year’s hangovers, enjoy this, the second of our two live shows from last May’s “Saint Audio Podcast Festival” in Oxford, England. We discuss Spice World, a film we also had the privilege of introducing at The Ultimate Picture Palace, for a screening the evening before, and — honestly? The movie was a total blast. We hope you have fun listening to the love fest.
Mini #119
’24 in Review with Stu
As New Year’s approaches, and we say goodbye to 2024, Stuart takes us on a gamified tour through the year in movies.
Episode #440
Borderlands
We discuss Borderlands, a video game movie that got delayed for several years, with extensive reshoots where an uncredited director took over for Eli Roth — but it’s probably okay,…