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THE BEASTMASTER is a 1982 fantasy action movie directed by Don Coscarelli (best known for the PHANTASM films #TheBallIsBack). Marc Singer stars as Dar, rightful heir to the throne of Aruk and prophesied slayer of the evil priest Maax (Rip Torn). Born with the power to speak to animals, Marc befriends a number of mammals on his journey to reclaim the throne (including other humans, though they play a distant second fiddle to the beasts in this film, tbh).

THE BEASTMASTER is not a GREAT movie, and a couple of us even struggled to find much joy in it at all. But it still makes for a great discussion, including an evaluation of the movie on its own terms and plenty of comparisons with its (much better) contemporary, CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982). Plus, what animal familiar would we pick? What’s the largest animal we could beat in single combat? (My money’s on Harry and the kangaroo.)

Do these things:


Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care
Read “Hey, Beastmaster’s On: Epic Fantasy Gets Its Revenge” by Michael Popham for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/04/05/hey-beastmasters-on-epic-fantasy-gets-its-revenge/
Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/perisphere-blog-post-guidelines/

#OfSwordsAndSorcery #DCP

Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.com to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "Main Theme" by Lee Holdridge from THE BEASTMASTER soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 276: THE BEASTMASTER (1982)

3:42 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, Ltd.)

10:38 - It’s not very good, is it? Or maybe it’s just boring

28:17 - Things that kind of make no sense

43:34 - CONAN-parisons

57:27 - The frustratingly un-pullable threads of this movie

1:05:35 - Our favorite bits of animal acting

1:13:24 - The Junk Drawer

1:17:42 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1982

1:19:24 - Cody’s Noteys: Phy-love (animal-adjacent questions)

Featuring filmmaker/programmer Kris Montello and Something Rotten host Blake Hester!

SAMURAI REINCARNATION is a 1981 samurai fantasy action film written and directed by Kinji Fukasaku. Shiro Amakusa (Kenji Sawada) is the sole survivor of a massacre of Japanese Christians during the Shimabara Rebellion. Witnessing the devastation, Shiro renounces the Christian God and vows vengeance on the Tokugawa regime that perpetrated the massacre. Now in league with Satan, Shiro gains the power to resurrect the dead and assembles a team of the aggrieved undead to execute his plans, including disgraced samurai wife Gracia Hokusawa (Akiko Kano), the lustful monk Inshun Hozoin (Hideo Murota), legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi (Ken Ogata), and young ninja Kirimaru Iga (Hiroyuki Sanada). The movie follows Shiro’s group as he amasses a demonic force, pursued by Musashi’s rival, Jubei Yagyu (played by Sonny Chiba).

With noted Fukasaku Freak Blake Hester (of Something Rotten) and Kris Montello (filmmaker, Programming Manager for the Asian-American International Film Festival, and programmer for the Slamdance Film Festival), we’re picking apart this tokusatsu samurai freakout with a fine-toothed comb. How well does it work as an action movie? How do its historical origins make its transgressive violence hit even harder? How does it use Judeo-Christian imagery to tap into a specific Japanese social context? What does Fukasaku’s no-holds-barred iconoclasm bring to a demonic fantasy setting? That’s all in here!

Find Kris…


At the the Asian-American International Film Festival in August 2024 at https://www.aaiff.org/
On Twitter at https://twitter.com/kris_montello

Find Blake…


At https://blakehester.rocks/
On Twitter at @metallicaisrad
On Something Rotten, the podcast he co-hosts about nihilism in video games https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/something-rotten/id1523064458
On Trylove episodes about POSSESSION (1981), PULSE (2001), and BURST CITY (1982)
On Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/blakedtfp/

Also do these things:


Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care
“Street Fighting Man: Samurai Reincarnation Star Sonny Chiba Was a Kinji Fukasaku Favorite” by Hannah Baxter for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/04/05/street-fighting-man-samurai-reincarnation-star-sonny-chiba-was-a-kinji-fukasaku-favorite/
Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/perisphere-blog-post-guidelines/

#OfSwordsAndSorcery #DCP

Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.com to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Illusion” by Hozan Yamamoto from the SAMURAI REINCARNATION soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 275: SAMURAI REINCARNATION (1981)

7:06 - What is it about Fukasaku?

12:19 - Militarized power and the historical context of SAMURAI REINCARNATION

20:34 - No good guys or bad guys — just a struggle for power

28:21 - How Fukusaku robs powerful institutions of their ‘honor’

42:23 - Where the movie slows down and how well it actually works as an action movie

57:22 - Japanese cultural context of Judeo-Christian imagery

1:02:59 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1981

1:06:34 - The Junk Drawer

Noted Arnie fan Celia Mattison is back to discuss the swords and sorcery classic!
John Milius’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN adaptation limits its view of the character to his pursuit of vengeance and conquest. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a rich, pagan paean to one’s drive for self-determination!

On this episode, we talk about what rocks in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s star-making role, how James Earl Jones’s cold, calculating Thulsa Doom is a perfectly cast contrast to Conan’s Austro-Cimmerian barbarism, and the different paths men can go after they become self-aware.


Find Celia on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CeliaMattison and on her Substack, “Deeper Into Movies”: https://deeperintomovies.substack.com/
Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care
“Fathers True and False in Conan the Barbarian” by Chris Ryba-Tures for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/29/fathers-true-and-false-in-conan-the-barbarian/
“Conan the Chad and Tolkien the Virgin” by Timothy Zila for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/29/conan-the-chad-and-tolkien-the-virgin/
Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/perisphere-blog-post-guidelines/
Get tickets to the 43rd Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (April 11-15): https://mspfilm.org/mspiff/

#OfSwordsAndSorcery #35mm

Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.com to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "Anvil of Crom" by Basil Poledouris from the CONAN THE BARBARIAN soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 274: CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982) with Celia Mattison

4:20 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

6:10 - A movie about conquering and being conquered

10:12 - A more moody, epic, anti-theist movie than you might assume

15:46 - How much character is there to Conan?

23:55 - Mythologization of the self as a man’s man

31:32 - “The opposite of ego death”

36:13 - Conan’s moral compass, such as it is

45:46 - How Thulsa Doom is cast in contrast to Conan

54:07 - How the ending foregrounds the action figure movies of the '80s

1:02:57 - The Junk Drawer

1:10:21 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1982

1:13:30 - Cody’s Noteys: Conan the Parnassian (Conan-themed haikus)

Two years before ALIEN (1979), Ridley Scott packed a bunch of audacious ideas about empire, masculinity, and class into his feature debut: THE DUELLISTS.

Rival officers in Napoleonic France, Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) and Armond d’Hubert (Keith Carradine) are thrown into a mythical, divinely comic cycle of nearly deadly clashes after d’Hubert is instructed to rein in Feraud’s glorified bloodlust. No matter how far he goes, d’Hubert always finds himself at the tip of Feraud’s sword. Over the course of almost two decades, Feraud and d’Hubert orbit concepts of honor, loyalty, and the essence of servitude as each hones their blade on the other’s ego.

In this discussion, we talk about how some of the movie’s ideas feel far ahead of their time; how the movie deflates and then glorifies the art of honorable single combat; how important a love story really is in a movie like this; and how THE DUELLISTS serves as something of a codex for almost 50 years of Ridley Scott’s directorial endeavors.


Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care
“Sword Master Rates 10 More Sword Fights In Movies And TV | How Real Is It?” by Insider (Feb. 16, 2021): https://archive.org/details/youtube-0edTDUQfqys
“Harvey, the Haughty Hussar” by Alex Kies for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/16/harvey-the-haughty-hussar/
Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/perisphere-blog-post-guidelines/
Get tickets to the 43rd Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (April 11-15): https://mspfilm.org/mspiff/

#TheSimmeringFuryOfHarveyKeitel #35mm

Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.com to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: “Main Theme” by Howard Blake from the THE DUELLISTS soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 273: THE DUELLISTS (1977)

3:50 - The episode actually starts

6:37 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

11:18 - It’s goofy until it’s not

16:22 - The DNA of Ridley Scott’s filmmaking

19:36 - Modern-feeling characters in a movie set during the Age of Enlightenment

23:53 - Ridley Scott’s strengths and how he adapted to the constraints of this project

33:34 - Managed doses of Harvey Keitel vs. Keith Carradine, the doofus

43:23 - Laura and the point of d’Hubert’s romantic subplot

59:38 - The ending

1:10:22 - The Junk Drawer

1:19:23 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1977

1:21:06 - Cody’s Noteys: Spot the Scott (Ridley Scott tagline trivia)

There wasn’t anything quite like Michael Roemer’s NOTHING BUT A MAN before it, and there arguably hasn’t been anything quite like it since. All the same, it’s often cited as “ahead of its time” – a critical, realistic look, almost documentary in nature, at the life of a black American man in the middle stages of the Civil Rights Movement. Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon), the son of a deadbeat drifter hoping to avoid the same fate, leaves behind the independence of his railroad section gang to settle down with Josie (Abbey Lincoln), a well-to-do schoolteacher. Duff’s pride – in his independence, in his manhood, in his blackness – attracts Josie, but rankles the black community around him, who’ve adapted to leaving well enough alone in the deep Southern town they call home. Duff’s chief critics include the aggressive white populace and Josie’s father, a black preacher and community organizer sitting comfortably under the thumb of the town’s white movers and shakers.

Written and directed by a German Jew who left the country at the start of World War II and released just months after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the movie was critically lauded but underpromoted, underseen, and misunderstood at the time of its release. Its 1993 U.S. rerelease brought it back to the world stage, with its reevaluation cementing it as a forerunner of a storytelling and filmmaking style that wouldn’t find its footing until arguably the 2000s. In this episode, we discuss the semi-autobiographical nature of Roemer’s story, its contemporary appraisal, its show-stealing performances, stage-play blocking, inventive cinematography, and the implications of its ambivalent ending.


Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care
“Back to the Future: Michael Roemer’s Nothing but a Man” by Nazeeh Alghazawneh for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/18/back-to-the-future-michael-roemers-nothing-but-a-man/
“Film Notes: NOTHING BUT A MAN” by Michael Kerbel for the Yale Film Archive: https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00003
Watch NOTHING BUT A MAN on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sKqyQ5eq2o
Get tickets to the 43rd Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (April 11-15): https://mspfilm.org/mspiff/

#TooFarInFront #35mm

Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.com to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave" by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas from the NOTHING BUT A MAN soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 272: NOTHING BUT A MAN (1964)

4:44 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

8:06 - How ahead of its time it really is

12:42 - How Roemer managed to “get it”

19:03 - Key performances

22:10 - Locking eyes vs. avoiding each other’s gaze

25:05 - Materialism for the marginalized and the need to feel like a man

31:02 - Surviving in a world that requires you to be more perfect than perfect

37:55 - The precariousness of these people’s way of life

49:56 - The climax of the movie

1:00:50 - What makes Lee the key to Duff’s decision to come back to Josie

1:05:06 - The ending

1:12:36 - The Junk Drawer

1:23:15 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1964

1:25:31 - Cody’s NO-teys: When Was This Photo of Jason Dafnis Taken?

1:27:58 - The first photo

1:31:12 - The second photo

1:33:16 - The third and final photo

Sweet, heartwarming, funny, and deeply weird, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH plays to its creator duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s strengths: swift writing, a flair for the dramatic, and deeply affecting images.

David Niven stars as the should-be-late British RAF Squadron Leader Peter Carter, who falls in love with American soldier June (Kim Hunter) over the radio on his way to the hereafter. But in the throes of World War II, Carter’s demise slides under the radar of the reaper sent to collect his soul (Marius Goring as the foppish Parisian Conductor 71), leaving the lovestruck Lancaster pilot in the lurch, legally speaking: Does his passion for a woman he met minutes before his intended death warrant a stay of execution? Or should he be sentenced to serve out the term of his miscarried doom?

Going two for two on the Trylon’s Spring 2024 highlight of Powell and Pressburger’s production company The Archers, we discuss A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH from several angles on this episode: As postwar comfort cinema; as a visual piece astonishingly ahead of its time; as a consideration of the value of human emotion in the face of celestial stakes; and as a singular mixture of the comic, the tragic, and the existential.


Donate to help our friend and previous guest Nick Ransbottom get life-saving cystic fibrosis care: https://www.gofundme.com/f/get-nick-lifesaving-cystic-fibrosis-care
“Make It So: A Journey in Overthinking ‘A Matter of Life and Death’” by Lucas Hardwick for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2024/03/01/make-it-so-a-journey-in-overthinking-a-matter-of-life-and-death/
“War, love and weirdness: A Matter of Life and Death – 70 years on” by Brian Dillon for The Guardian: https://theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/04/war-love-and-wierdness-a-matter-of-life-and-death-70-years-on
Get tickets to the 43rd Annual Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (April 11-15): https://mspfilm.org/mspiff/

#TwoByTheArchers #DCP

Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at trylovepodcast@gmail.com to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at trylon.org.

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Closing audio: "Opening Sequence" composed by Allan Gray and performed by the Queen Hall Light Orchestra from the A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH soundtrack.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 271: A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946)

4:09 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

6:30 - Did they EVER make ‘em like this?

16:23 - Fearlessness, experimentation, and creativity

24:37 - The controlled scattershot of ideas and how it wins you over again and again

31:38 - What works and doesn’t in the courtroom third act

54:16 - Our favorite shots

1:01:03 - The Junk Drawer

1:05:39 - Cody’s Noteys: A Platter of Life and Death (poisoned food dish movies trivia)