For years various friends have been telling me that I HAVE to watch the Evil Dead.  I just HAVE to.  It's the most amazing movie ever created!
The caveat to these proclamations is that you have to enjoy B-movie horror flicks and that you kind of have to be in the right mood to watch it.  If you're not a fan of the over the top cheesy old school horror flicks?  You're going to hate this movie.  I'll tell you that right off. 
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Billy was the one who came up with the concept of doing a film series for the podcast.  Pick a group of movies all related to each other and release them.  Picking one was ridiculously hard.  Think about it.  What do we choose?

Lord of the Rings?
Star Wars?
Evil Dead?
The Marvel movies?

We even tried to think outside the box.  Andrew Lloyd Weber movies?  Robert Rodriguez's Mexico Trilogy?  The possibilities were limitless.  We ended up drawing the name of the series out of a hat.  OK, we did the 21st century version of this.  Chris downloaded a randomizer app on his phone and entered all the names on the list and we picked it that way.

This was one of the few movies that we all watched together.  Other than Wonder Woman, because of our busy schedules, most of us watch the movies on our own and in our own time.  This time, Billy, T, and I settled in on a Saturday and ran through this and a couple of the others.
The movie itself was about what I expected it to be.  A no frills- ahead of its time-horror flick.  Because I'm not familiar with horror films in general, I don't know if this was spawned by others or if others were spawned by this one.  I know that these are familiar tropes that we see constantly now.  A group of friends go into the woods looking to relax and have a good time.  Something evil is released (NEVER READ THE LATIN) and everybody dies.  I tell you this because I can't spoil something that you've likely already seen even if you haven't seen this particular movie.  In fact, to give you more details would spoil this particular version of the trope.

I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would and the rest of the team did too.  Have a listen to our latest episode and let me know what you think.  Do you like this type of movie?  Did you like this movie?

​ I can't tell you when I saw this movie for the first time.  I honestly don't remember.  What I do remember was being completely and utterly blown away by how ridiculous it was.  In all the best ways.  The cast was unreasonably talented and there are some actors in here that are now major household names. 


It wasn't just the cast for me though.  I used to attend a summer camp sort of like this one.  It lasted only a week, but it was the same concept.  Sleep away camp with older teenage counselors and outdoor activities.  Once I reached an age in which I didn't want to attend that camp anymore, I ended up going to our family's new (old) place in Connecticut.  That will be a separate post.  Across the river from our place was an old resort which is now a nature preserve.  This resort was a little more Dirty Dancing-esque than Wet Hot American Summer, but it had the same kind of vibe.


I love ridiculous comedies when they are done well, which I feel as though this one is.  Part of the point of this movie is to be as ridiculous as possible while drawing on some of the experiences of camp in general as well as the writer/director's personal experiences at camp. 


The movie itself was shot with all the actors basically living at the camp while shooting and things got a little crazy.  I highly recommend that you not only watch the original movie, but that you watch the making of documentary called Hurricane of Fun.  There's also a Netflix series (thank you Netflix) about the first day of camp in which all the original actors come back and make things even more ridiculous by refusing to acknowledge that they are all in their 40s playing teenage roles.


As you listen to the podcast, you'll hear that some of the team felt that maybe they'd find the movie funnier if they had seen the series first.  I hope that's not the case for you.  I hope that you will love the movie just as much as I did without the backstory or supplemental stuff that I've gone without all these years.  That's probably just me being elitest about it though.  I really just want everyone to enjoy it in general. 


What do you think?  Have you seen any of these?  

We finally managed to get to the theater and see Wonder Woman this weekend.  We ended up having to wait because T was on vacation for opening weekend.  Saturday we ended up breaking from our usual schedule and recorded an episode first.  Then we went to the theater and recorded the Wonder Woman episode.  We've never done it like that before and it definitely took a ton of time out of the day.
We had done the reserved seating in the local theater so that we wouldn't have to worry about finding six seats in the same area.  We have a tendency to run everything down to the last minute as a group and I definitely did not want to have to be scrambling for space.  When we got into the theater, the previews were playing but there was no picture.  The movie ended up delayed because of technical difficulties.  Once the movie got started though, I knew I was in trouble.
I maintained a low level of teariness throughout most of the movie.  From the moment the score began in the opening credits until the ending credits began.  I never outright cried, but I came close. 

Confession?  I never was the biggest Wonder Woman fan.  I always felt like I was supposed to be, but it didn't resonate with me like it did for Teresa or countless other folks like her.  I was always drawn more towards Batman and Superman and truth be told, I didn't really even know very much about her.  Over the last ten years or so, that has gradually changed but growing up I had no frame of reference for her. I also had not seen Gal Gadot perform as Wonder Woman because I've yet to see Batman v Superman.

I have read up on the character extensively.  One of my favorite characters from her cannon is Donna Troy and I really hope they bring her around at some point. 

I'll tell you now that the movie was amazing.  For more, of course, you'll have to take a listen to our podcast which I've left a copy of above.  But overall it wasn't just a great Wonder Woman movie, it was a great movie.  It completely transported me to her world and I wanted to live in it with her.

Highly recommend you see the movie if you haven't already.  If you have, take a listen to the podcast for our thoughts.  Did you feel the same way we did?  Did we forget something?  Let us know in the comments.

This week we are forgoing the usual dog and pony show.  It's not that we don't have a movie to review, it's that we have certain episodes we want to release on certain days to correspond with certain things.  Plus, the social media stuff for one block of movies is proving difficult to write.  Whose bright idea was it?  Billy's that's who.  Maybe I should make him write it all?  Part of it also has to do with the fact that it is incredibly difficult to work around the schedules of six people.  Especially when holidays and vacations and birthdays come into play.


So this time around you're not getting a movie review, you're getting our bloopers.  You're getting more of our tangents.  You're getting a whole lot of silly nonsense.  I've not heard what Chris put together.  It could be utter shit.  It is a bunch of one off ridiculousness from our previous episodes so it could be fun if you've been following along this whole time.


We'll see how it goes.  Tune in next week because we will be back to the movies with a big one.  It's going to be wonderful.  Get it?  WONDER-ful?  Yup, that's the hilarity you can expect from our bloopers episode.  Actually, we just talk about taint too much.  Tune in.