Episode 1: Stealth

Audio Note

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Substandard sound quality.

Tag[]

"Tonight on The Flop House we discuss the sentient robot film Stealth. 'Sentient'—a word I only learned how to pronounce after recording this podcast. Enjoy."

Official Show Notes[]

"In the inaugural episode of The Flop House, the team examines Rob Cohen's fighter-plane-run-amok film Stealth. Meanwhile, Simon discusses sex toys, Stuart does some video store filing, and Dan mispronounces 'sentient' a lot. Also, the gang recommends a few things that don't suck."

Movie Summary[]

Premise[]

Deeply ensconced in a top-secret military program, three pilots struggle to bring an artificial intelligence program under control before it initiates the next world war.

Story[]

Navy fighter pilots Ben Gannon, Henry Purcell and Kara Wade are tasked with training an unmanned plane to hit important overseas targets. Ben doesn't trust the artificial-intelligence technology, especially after the plane is hit by lightning and rewired. However, the Navy is determined to put the plane in the air–even after it goes off on a mission of its own. Ben knows he has to stop the technology before it sparks a new world war.

Final Judgments[]

“The movie was a goddamned snore factory.”
—Simon @23:00
“That movie’s really crappy, don’t watch it.”
—Stuart @23:20
“I’m gonna have to agree with you both.”
—Dan @24:10

Episode Highlights[]

Tangents[]

Extreme Deep Insertion

Sound Effects @18:30

Some Other Robot Movies[]

2001: A Space Odyssey
Short Circuit
Top Gun
Transformers

Quotes[]

“I don’t know if I'm gonna make a lot of friends with this comment, but I would argue my favorite part of the movie was literally any part where you got a good look at Jessica Biel’s ass. You know, because it was really nice to look at, and it made me forget that there was a robot fighter pilot trying to kill everybody.”
—Stuart @14:45

“Kris Kristofferson is not in this film. That’s important that I point that out.”
—Simon @16:10

“I’m saying that Sweet Home Alabama is a dirty lie.”
—Dan @17:40

Dan: What bothers me about this film is that the screenwriter credit is from W.D. Richter, best known for writing Big Trouble in Little China...

Simon: Shit, that is a good movie.

Stuart: Still?

Dan: Also the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And I believe that W.D. Richter did The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. He was the director of that movie.

Simon: I can’t believe that that guy wrote Stealth. I cannot believe that.

Stuart: Yeah, no...

Simon: Can’t believe it. That and Stealth? They must have edited the shit out of that script then, before it went into production. Because I can’t believe that guy wrote that script.

Dan: They’re two of... two of my personal favorites: Buckaroo Banzai and —

Simon: Well, I mean, because Stealth sucked, and yet Big Trouble in Little China is really good...

— @12:40

Listener Mail[]

(No mail this time, obviously.)

Recommendations[]

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) by Rachel Talalay (Dan)
The Hitcher (2007) by Dave Meyers (Stuart)
Laws of Attraction (2004) by Peter Howitt (Simon)
The Monster Squad (1987) by Fred Dekker (Stuart)
The Ten (2007) by David Wain (Simon)

Stinger[]

Simon: I like Cinema Craptacular. Um... The Bad Film Inspectors? Dude! I really do like The Bad Film Inspectors as a name. I think it's a tremendous name for this show.
The Terrible Talkies! It ought to be The Terrible Talkies, or the — where is it at? — or The Bad Film Inspectors.

Stuart: Well, I like Bad Film Inspectors.

Simon: You do? Because the idea being that we inspect them.

Stuart: I mean, I think The Flop House is like if we were actually being like serious and like: "Hey, let's name something something."
The Flop House is really good. Bad Film Inspectors just makes me wish that I had like a pair of really cool sunglasses.

Simon: Bad Film Inspectors sounds like it's a really cool comic book idea.

— @29:40