105 Heavy Metal 1981

Don Felder, the unsung hero of the most loved/hated band ever The Eagles, bestows some righteous licks upon the adult animated universe in this week's cult classic Heavy Metal (1981). Another notch in the belt of Mark's Dan O'bannon'othon, Matt takes a nostalgic trip into his 80's adolescence and remember his first exposure to the T&A laden comic book magazine. Not exactly up to the snuff of today's slick CGI bombast, Heavy Metal does lay the groundwork for future tropes however.

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104 A Clockwork Orange

This week Matt and Mark review Kubrik's A Clockwork Orange. Viddying the horror-show ultra-violence and some of the ole in-out in out, we seek the film's thematic elements through its stylistic fog. While Alex is a miserable, violent, and possibly irredeemable bastard, he provides us a window into an alien personality that we experience but with whom we aren't necessarily asked to sympathize. And that may've been  the films worst sin in many critics' eyes, thus dismissing a beautifully wrought film of near artistic perfection.

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103 Return of the Living Dead

Once again Matt and Mark return to the sub-genre of horror comedy. A highly rated film by Alien screenplay writer Don O'Bannon, RotLD sets the mood for all slapstick zombie horror to follow ("brains... more... brains"). While Mark indulges the silliness and touts its original ideas, Matt is less engaged. Not necessarily an indictment of the film per-se as much as a 'been there, done that' attitude calloused by henceforth imitators. None-the-less a worthy outing.

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102 The Thing 1982

And finally.... John Carpenter's The Thing is reviewed this week on The Cult of Matt and Mark. While much is to be said about the making of this strange dread-filled movie adaptation of the original Campbell novella, Matt and Mark delve into the viability of The Thing as an organism, attempting to rationalize its motives, desires, and biology. Dismissing Ebert's dismissal of this seminal Sci-Fi horror classic, we are drawn to the film 30 years on, engaging it again and again with homage prequels and video games as we try to capture a little of Carpenter's original paranoid beauty.

Download: 102 The Thing