And we're back into the Phantoms & Operas sagas, seeing how two distinct film eras take on the Phantom: the auteur era of the 70s, and the slasher horror era of the 80s! In the time when creative vision was king, two Phantoms emerge. Wicked, Wicked attempts a new cinematic technique called DuoVision as a Phantom haunts a mid-range hotel, while Brian De Palma and Paul Williams unite for the rock opera Phantom of the Paradise, blending the Phantom with Faust and a lot of great tunes. But on...

'Tis the season to embrace, be merry, and hope the rich jerks in your life get haunted, and to celebrate, Dan and Keith take on a Curated Selection of Christmas Carols. Trying to cover every version of Dickens' classic holiday haunting would be an act of madness, so after travelling back to 1901 for the first ever film Scrooge, the boys examine ways Scrooge cinema tried to add elements to the story, be it meta-commentary, modernization, Muppetization, and more. Bill Murray, Michael Caine, Som...

At last it arrives! In sleep it sang to you, in dreams it came... the Phantoms of the Operas Mega-Saga begins! Dan and Keith head way, way back to the silent era for the first film adaptation of Gaston Leroux's gothic horror novel the Phantom of the Opera, with Lon Chaney as the signature Phantom. Then it's off to China for Chinese cinema's first ever horror movie, the loose Phantom remake Song at Midnight, which may have added an element to Phantom lore? Back in America, the 40s tried a vers...

It's the big 100th episode, and to celebrate, our hosts (or are they?) dig into our lords and saviours, the RoboCops! In 1987, Paul Verhoeven satirized capitalism through a hero that was part man, part machine, and all cop, and John Tebbutt explains what got lost from the later director's cut, while Emma Gallaher relates her first-time-viewing experience. Then, 27 years, two sequels, a TV show, and at least one cartoon later, a star-studded remake was attempted that came close to touching on ...

Wrapping up our dissection of Fantastic Four cinema with two polar opposite takes on Marvel's First Family. In 2015, Josh Trank attempted a more grounded, body-horror-infused take that met with severe studio notes and mandated reshoots, leading to a bunch of grey corridors and one action beat before the credits. It did not go over great. This very year, the MCU finally got their crack at the characters, and presents a whimsical, retro-futuristic world where an established Fantastic Four takes...

The Fantastic Four! Once dubbed "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine," they've struggled to make it on the big screen, split between earnest attempts at blockbusters and quickie attempts to retain the film rights. And Dan and Keith are here to tackle one of each as the road to First Steps begins. Roger Corman produced the first attempt, a low-budget B-movie never intended to see the light of day, but which didn't account for the nascent internet's ability to spread a video file. Eleven years ...

Dan drags Keith into his film history brainrot in order to answer a question: do the biggest hits of the 20th century need or warrant a remake? We look at the biggest hit of each year from 1927 until 1999, from the dawn of the silent era to the birth of Jar Jar Binks and ask which of these hit films should be made again, which should stay lost to film history, and which will never stop being remade. Join in!

John Carpenter September continues as Dan and Keith crack open 1976's Assault on Precinct 13, and its 2005 remake, the same year as The Fog's remake. Carpenter's version favours simplicity, as the soon-to-close precinct is besieged by a seemingly unending and unstoppable horde of nigh-inhuman gang members on a vendetta, until only a handful remain. 2005, however, takes a different spin, as this titular precinct is under siege from corrupt cops, meaning the simple menace of the original is rep...

Welcome to Carpenter Summer, where Dan and Keith take on two 2005 remakes of vintage John Carpenter flicks! First up, The Fog, one of three 1980 horror movies starring Jamie Lee Curtis, in which an eerie fog sweeps over a small California town, bringing with it ghost sailors out for revenge! Or their money back. Or both? Twenty-five years later, Early-Smallville Tom Welling and Just-Started-Lost Maggie Grace headline a remake of this simple ghost story that lathers on lore, sets up a love tri...

Throw on your special glasses and get ready to get haunted as Dan and Keith dig into 13 Ghosts. Back in 1960, William Castle attempted a new gimmick: a special pair of glasses for audiences that either made ghosts appear, or made the movie utterly incomprehensible, as a family inherits their ghost-hunting uncle's house only find it filled with approximately a dozen ghosts. Forty-one years later, it's the cast in the special glasses as Tony Shalhoub must save his family from a little over ten ...

Casablanca! Generally regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made, perhaps the most correct the Oscars have ever been, and the last movie you'd ever expect to see on a podcast about remakes! So why is our favourite they-slash-femme comedienne Munsi-Parker Munroe joining Keith to talk about it? It's not like there's a secret 90s Casablanca remake that's also a grim sci-fi comic book adaptation starring Pamela Anderson, right? Right? RIGHT!? Love for a cinema classic quickly gives way to d...

While James Gunn's Superman is soaring through theatres, Dan and Keith look back at the first time he wrote a big-screen adaptation of a Warner Bros. franchise: a pup named Scooby-Doo. Digging into the casting, the rewriting of the pitch, we ask: is it over-hated? Is it more clever than it's given credit? Maybe. Then it's time to jump from 2002 to 2020 as WB tries to launch a Hannah-Barbera Cinematic Universe with Scoob!, teaming up Mystery Inc. with less familiar characters Blue Falcon, Dyna...

Dan, Keith, and guest Emma Gallaher are back to Transylvania for the 21st century Nosferatus! In 2024, horror auteur Robert Eggers decided to take another spin at Count Orlok... and perhaps because of this some amateur filmmakers Kickstarted their own version in 2023, with almost three recognizable stars in the mix. We tackle this low-budget retread first, which makes some odd choices with the central trio, then move on to Eggers, which shifts the focus from money-focused Thomas to tormented ...

Dan, Keith, and returning guest Emma travel as far back in film history as we've ever been to discuss the cinematic attempt at to file the serial numbers off Dracula with Nosferatu! In this first installment, it's heute auf Deutsch time as our hosts break down 1922's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, one of the earliest and most groundbreaking surviving horror movies of the silent era. How does it hold up? Can it hold up, asks Keith? Then we jump to the 70s, as Werner Herzog takes his own spin...

People always say "You couldn't make a [insert Mel Brooks classic] today." But were there movies Mel Brooks shouldn't have remade? That's the question facing Dan and Keith, presented by guest Olav Rokne of the Hugo Book Club, as we tackle To Be Or Not To Be. In 1942, Jack Benny starred in a farcical comedy about a theatre troupe rallying to save the Polish resistance from the Nazi occupiers, an occupation that was still very much ongoing during the film's release. Did that make the comedy a t...

Dan and Keith head all the way back to the time to that brief overlap between the Golden Age of Hollywood and the dying days of vaudeville with comedy legends the Marx Brothers. In A Night at the Opera, Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx were said to hit a new height by blending their signature antics with a more grounded emotional arc (outsourced to supporting characters), but how do those antics hold up? Are aspects a little too vaudeville for a modern audience? And who would be bold enough to ...

Dan and Keith head to ancient Greece and classic hero Perseus to weigh old-school stop motion against modern CG in the Clashes of the Titans! Back in 1981, legendary animator Ray Harryhausen wrapped a storied career with Clash of the Titans, in which Harry Hamlin's Perseus fights his way through stop-motion monsters to win the girl and claim a throne. Nearly three decades later, an all star cast (and Sam Worthington, fresh off one of the biggest hits in film history so you probably haven't al...

Turns out Rollerball was not the first instance of a Norman Jewison classic being remade by John McTiernan, so Dan and Keith strap in for round two, the Affairs of the Thomases Crown. In 1968, last days of the Hays Code, Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway squared off as bored millionaire turned bank robbery mastermind Thomas Crown and the insurance investigator who gets pulled into his orbit while trying to prove he's the thief, in a languid romance featuring some crimes. In 1999, when sexy crime...

Lllllllllet's get ready to ROLLERBALL! Dan and Keith dig into the 1975 cult classic dystopic sports flick Rollerball, in which James Caan must rise up against the world's corporate overlords by playing the best darn game of Rollerball he can, after about an hour of worldbuilding that only partially builds the world. In the early 2000s, legendary action director John McTiernan attempted to remake it for the Extreme Sports era, a truly epic mess of a process that sank his entire career. Dan and...

Beloved friend of the podcast and Video Vulture John Tebbutt is back, and he's got a doozy for Dan and Keith. Schlock king Roger Corman unites Mission: Impossible's Peter Graves, iconic western villain Lee Van Cleef, and B-movie queen Beverly Garland for the sci-fi thriller, question mark, It Conquered the World, in which a Venusian alien lures an Earth scientist into helping it seize control of our world, and only the scientist's wife and best friend can turn him away from his alien pal. The...