Mike Dodge

'Sweaty men!' enthuses Bob Honcho. The Steve Reeves adventure film, The Giant of Marathon (1959), aka The Giant of Marathon, features lots of sweaty men. And that's as good a reason as any to give it a commentary track. Enter the Film Crew, three repairmen whose lowly employment includes providing these tracks for crummy movies. The threesome suffer through the homoerotic antics of the ancient Greeks, portrayed mainly by hairless musclemen wearing what look like gleaming white diapers. They mock the token temptress for looking like the Joker and the token female lead for seeming uninterested in her leading man. But they can't blame her. With a suitor who asks his comrades for baby wipes (at least in their version), she's probably better off without him.

What if there was a primitive island tribe where all the women were gorgeous and all the men were nasty-looking uggos? Might Mother Nature fix this by creating a tribe on a nearby island where all the men are hunks, and the women are brutes? You’d think not, but the makers of Wild Women of Wongo are not you. Wild Women of Wongo is a sex farce without the sex or the farce, set in a never-never land of uncivilized island dwellers who all look like someone going to a Halloween party as “uncivilized island dweller.” Add a crocodile who comes in the form of stock footage and rubber model, a lot of awkward dancing, and an actress named “Adrienne Bourbeau” who refuses to actually be Adrienne Barbeau, and you got yourself a movie. Mike, Kevin and Bill will DANCE their way into your hearts with this riff.

An unwitting scientist (King of Blandness Peter Graves) is abducted by aliens and forced to help them with their sinister plan to conquer the earth with giant mutated insects. It isn’t a very good plan, but they’re not very competent aliens, hobbled by having to wear hooded onesies and ping pong ball-halves over their eyes. Will he save the world? Of course he will, we’re still here, aren’t we? And thanks to the Film Crew, we learn all about that legendary film acting technique called the Robechet - a “sudden, expressionless, dead-eyed closeup” used lavishly in Killers From Space. It’s so fun and easy to do, soon you’ll be pulling Robechets on all your friends, who in turn will despise you! Try one today!

The Film Crew gives a commentary track to Walk the Angry Beach (1968), aka Hollywood After Dark, featuring Rue McClanahan as a stripper. Beloved, sassy Golden Girl Rue McClanahan stars as an unbeloved, depressive stripper who wants to become a movie star but can’t get any roles better than, say “Stripper #3” in Mondo Topless. But love is in the air, mingling with LA smog, as Rue falls for assistant junkyard attendee Tony, played by Anthony Vorno (Sweet trash, Jailbait Babysitter). Surprisingly, things go wrong and one of them turns up dead. There’s plenty of dimly-lit Burlesque dancing on a bare, presumable filthy stage, plus pale, hairy men in tight swimsuits, and drug-laced creepy sex! HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD! It’s up to the Film Crew to turn this bleak cautionary tale into a hilarious, um, cautionary tale. Lunch is provided.