The Blob Show!

Jo discusses her age-inappropriate love for Michael Myers and distracted-boyfriend-memes herself, crowbarring John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN as a gateway to Jason Voorhees.

In an interesting experiment in self-sabotage, Tony and Charley record a chess game for the audio medium.

Our resident NES aficionado Joey takes her co-hosting duties very seriously in our overview of Capcom's Mega Man (1987), Mega Man 2 (1988), Mega Man 3 (1990), and Mega Man 4 (1991).

Charley and Tony each count down their ten favorite films of 2023.

Please enjoy a brief automated reading of the history of The Blob Show which serves as the hype trailer for our return.

The whole gang is back to compare and contrast two evil teams of animatronic robots posing as entertainment at children's dining establishments. We're talking Blumhouse's FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S (2023, d. Emma Tammi) and the Nicolas Cage vehicle that tried to steal its thunder, WILLY'S WONDERLAND (2021, d. Kevin Lewis).

Charley and Tony shake off the rust in their return to exhaustively spoil the ineffable Motern Media double-featch HEARD SHE GOT MARRIED (2021) and HEARD SHE GOT MURDERED (2023). Still keeping it niche in 2024, Charley even invites Matt Farley to perform in Arizona.

Charley and Tony unveil their favorite films of 2022 and talk a lot about feelings and grief!

In another instance of my offspring trying to out-esoteric me, Jo selects her ten favorite movies of 2022.  

It's 2023 and we have Super Mario Bros. 2 fever.  Joey tries her best to conquer its idiosyncrasies while Charley and Tony wonder at its unique world design and character play.  In a collective effort, we try not to body shame Luigi.

Charley and Jo commandeer the program to measure their parents against the silliness quotient.

Tony, Charley, and Jo marathon the entire series of ARCHIE'S WEIRD MYSTERIES including the Blob-themed episode "Beware of the Glob."

A Charley and Jo exclusive.

Welcome back to PoochiTubi, the Blob Show sub-podcast where Charley navigates dog-themed family films available on the Tubi streaming service.  Today's episode covers six more entries: BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE (d. Wayne Wang, 2005), ARMY DOG aka LEAP (d. Ezra Kemp, 2016), THE RETRIEVERS (d. Paul Schneider, 2001), PANCHO, EL PERRO MILLONARIO aka MILLIONAIRE DOG (d. Tom Fernández, 2014), DOGGY DAYCARE: THE MOVIE (d. Matty Johnson, 2015), and ROBO-DOG (d. Jason Murphy, 2015).  Most of these films are unwatchable but I'm committed to the bit. 

In celebration of Judy Garland's centennial birthday, The Blob Show unearths a very special, unlistenable episode from the archive: a feature-length The Wizard of Oz commentary recorded in 2020.  Please sync up your listening device with the 1939 MGM classic for intended, punitive results.

Charley and Tony dissect the 1990 sequel to A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia after Uncle Marky leant us a Super Game Boy.  ASMR fans rejoice; the jellybeans are back.

Charley doesn't let Tony get much of a word in edgewise in her breakdown of Tommy Lee Wallace's miniseries STEPHEN KING'S IT (1990).  We also detour into such light subjects as original sin.  

Welcome to PoochiTubi in which Charley navigates dog-themed family films available on the Tubi streaming service.  In today's episode we cover UGLY BENNY (2014), WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS (1974), THE DOG WHO SAVED HALLOWEEN (2011), and LITTLE HEROES (aka PAWS TO THE RESCUE) (1999).  

Charley and Tony return to count down their favorite films of 2021.  Spoilers in the remaining show-notes.

Films mentioned: Strawberry Mansion (d. Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney); Psycho Goreman (d. Steven Kostanski); The Worst Person in the World (Verdens verste menneske) (d. Joachim Trier); Dead Till Death (d. Will Carsola); Skater Girl (d. Manjari Makijany); Saint Maud (d. Rose Glass); Agnes (d. Rickey Reece); Muppets Haunted Mansion (d. Kirk R. Thatcher); The Beatles: Get Back (d. Peter Jackson and Michael Lindsay-Hogg); The Legend of Luo Xiaohei (罗小黑战记) (d. MTJJ); The Power of the Dog (d. Jane Campion); Encanto (d. Jared Bush, Byron Howard, and Charise Castro Smith); Can't Get You Out of My Head (d. Adam Curtis); Mixtape (d. Valerie Weiss); Memoria (d. อภิชาติพงศ์ วีระเศรษฐกุล, Apichatpong Weerasethakul); Bad Seeds (Mauvaises herbes) (d. Claude Cloutier); Spencer (d. Pablo Larraín); Petite maman (d. Céline Sciamma); Mandibles (Mandibules) (d. Quentin Dupieux); Drive My Car (ドライブ・マイ・カー) (d. 濱口 竜介, Ryusuke Hamaguchi); The Adventures of Bandit and Wild Wes (d. Travis Mills)

In which we discuss the prototypical slasher/late-Universal monster and celebrate Ricou Browning.  Please forward your well-wishes to the Gill-Man actor here:

Ricou Browning
5221 SW 196 Lane
Southwest Ranches, FL 33332

That Jo-I-Know performs a most-spirited recitation of the 1960 Dr. Seuss classic.

In honor of our Michigan listeners, we delve further into our exhaustive coverage of Oz On Film this week exploring the two-strip Technicolor silent record of The University of Michigan League's 1936 freshman pageant OZ UNIVERSITY.  At least two pressing questions are raised: Is this Professor Wogglebug's first (only?) film appearance?  How does Dorothy's trouble with villainous anthropomorphic architecture connect to the Link's quest for the Mask of Scents?  I thought this was a pretty esoteric episode until Charley had me hold her beer.

Charley and Tony hand the reins to our new showrunner, Joey.  A companion piece to episode #092, our resident Goosebumps expert recaps the television adaptation of R.L. Stine's THE BLOB THAT ATE EVERYONE (d. Randy Bradshaw) and conducts a brief interview with Goosebumps himself.  You wouldn't understand.

Sub-amateur birders Charley and Tony discuss some recent desert spottings including the Canyon Towhee, Abert's Towhee, Gambel's Quail, Cactus Wren, and the invasive Great-tailed Grackle.

Tony tries to marshal some arrangement in this rocky episode as Charley and Joey chase the pie-in-the-sky fool's errand of synopsizing PAW Patrol: The Movie ("not the show, the movie"), though some may call their recap rubble.  Behind the scenes, Tony continues his investigation into whether "PAW" is an acronym justifying its title formatting; more to come.

Charley and Tony get literary with a bedtime review of the fifty-fifth book of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series: The Blob That Ate Everyone.  

Charley draws parallels between the Depression-era 2000 Coen Brothers screwball musical and the politics of Rafael Pérez Grovas's 1981 film SANTO AND THE BORDER OF TERROR (Santo en la frontera del terror) proving The Blob Show is always a good place to call out white supremacy.

We celebrate our new Poland listens by providing commentary over Zbigniew Rybczyński's 1975 experimental animation OH! I CAN'T STOP! (Oj! Nie mogę się zatrzymać!) and discuss whether its POV monster should be invited into the blob canon.  

Charley struggles to bridle her enthusiasm though we are only seven episodes into John R. Dilworth's COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG.  

Charley bookends her THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAJORA'S MASK coverage drawing parallels to Wang Chu-Chin's 1988 Taiwanese action-fantasy THREE-HEAD MONSTER aka GINSENG KING.  We surprisingly cover a lot of serious topics (genocide, omniscience) and big feelings in an episode about zombies and giants, but maybe that's to be expected from a purported NEVERENDING STORY knockoff.  

HEY! HO! BLOB SHOW!  Here is an episode where we talk about death, punk, and fascism.  We also draft Ramones and speculate as to whether Japas, the bass player for THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAJORA'S MASK house band The Indigo-Go's, is modeled after Johnny Ramone.  

The gripping conclusion to Charley's THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAJORA'S MASK walkthrough in which she defeats the titular villain's various incarnations and reminisces on the Skull Kid's redemption.  

Charley muses on the emotional weight of THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAJORA'S MASK's most protracted side-quest: Link runs around for three days playing matchmaker for two star-crossed lovers only to reunite them in time for the apocalypse.  She has been replaying this side-quest all week and was also tickled to see the end of Sakon's narrative arc.

It wouldn't be The Legend of Zelda if it didn't get a little spooky.  In part four of our MAJORA'S MASK miniseries (The Blob Show's own sidequest), Charley explores the Ikana Graveyard, Canyon, and Castle while encountering lots of zombies, mummies, ghosts and skeletons.  

Episode 3 of our THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAJORA'S MASK miniseries.  Charley talks swimming with the Zora, sneaking around the pirate fortress at Great Bay Coast, and the different bosses of the Great Bay Temple including an encounter with fiendish blob Mad Jelly (that's Schizo-Schleim for our German listeners).

Episode 2 of our THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAJORA'S MASK miniseries.  Charley talks about Goron life, Snowhead Temple, and the wonders of Romani Ranch.

The first part of the miniseries in which Charley excitedly talks about the 2000 Nintendo 64 release THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAJORA'S MASK.  This episode roughly charts the introduction of basic gameplay as well as a walkthrough of the Southern Swamp, Deku Kingdom, and Woodfall Temple.

Blazing a distinctly narrow trail in the genre of family-friendly splatter, Steven Kostanski delivers a fully-populated monsterverse in PSYCHO GOREMAN: a practical-effects-driven '80s pastiche which reads as insouciant STRANGER THINGS.  Charley and Tony discuss how it subverts the tropes of suburban fear and breakdown of nuclear family in... scratch that... they narrate a funny toilet scene, diss STAR WARS, and complete an exhaustive PG monster draft.   

Did you know monkeys aren't the only flying anomaly in Oz?  Tony and Charley discuss the troubled production behind the scenes of the 1939 MGM production (going through directors Norman Taurog, Richard Thorpe, Busby Berkeley, George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and King Vidor) and give commentary on the extended (and sadly cut) Busby Berkeley-choreographed "If I Only Had a Brain" in which the Scarecrow flies.  Lastly, we find out who has the brain when Charley takes the Wiz Quiz.

Charley and Tony dive into the Jackie Chan/Sammo Hung vehicle WHEELS ON MEALS and its readymade-franchise-seeking-movie-tie-in video game KUNG-FU MASTER (SPARTAN X, d. Takashi Nishiyama).  

With summer just around the corner, it's Spielberg season again at the Blob Show.  Charley and Tony talk JAWS and trauma, quickly review the blue raspberry SHARK BITE LOLLIPOP, and then embark on a tour of LJN's JAWS released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987, a game loosely structured after JAWS, THE REVENGE.  

Charley and Tony report on location at Lake Como in Fort Worth, Texas where they saw many birds uncommon to their desert home.  They discuss their corresponding plates in John James Audubon's The Birds of America, which these two dudes were able to tick.  They also experience a tornado warning.

159. Northern Cardinal

12. Baltimore Oriole

67. Red-winged Blackbird

236. Black-crowned Night Heron

386. Great Egret

106. Black Vulture

Charley goes solo for analysis of SANTO IN THE VENGEANCE OF THE MUMMY (Santo en la venganza de la momia, 1971) d. René Cardona.

Nothing brings our family together like a creature feature.  Tony and Charley discuss Frank Marshall's directorial debut ARACHNOPHOBIA (1990), a second-tier release from Amblin Entertainment in which the sum of its parts may be greater than the whole.  We also play the eponymous 1991 spider shoot 'em up developed by BlueSky Software.

Sometimes the universe just gives you the best things like Santo and the blob in the same movie with a Jesús Zarzosa spy score. 

After some early dismissal from Charley that this short documentary was "only talking," your hosts discuss the antics of fanaticism and the fun possibility of visiting the Phoenixville Blobfest one year.  

And a happy birthday to The Blob Show!  We recorded this episode on the one-year anniversary of our premiere.  Charley immediately suggests we cancel the program and start a new podcast reviewing our favorite episodes of the first year of the Blob Show.  So it gets a little meta.

Thanks for listening!

Joey joins Charley and Tony is this chaotic exploration of RKO's KING KONG (1933).  We also review Rocket Fizz's King Kong Cola, speculate on the unrealized film projects of stop-motion animation pioneer Willis H. O'Brien, and debrief the intellectual property woes of director/creator Merian C. Cooper, Universal City Studios LLC, and Nintendo Co., Lt. in a long-winded segment titled King Kong Legal Corner.

The tables quickly turn on Charley's lighthearted Hyrule romp when the ReDead appear in the Nintendo 64 version of THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME.  Tony and Charley talk the importance of sound design in the construction of fear, different Link appearances in the Zelda canon, and the 1989 Atlus/LJN Nintendo release FRIDAY THE 13TH.

An amorphous Greek casserole becomes mutated after being mistakenly struck by a UFO beam.  Tony and Charley investigate the 1999 Blob parody THE ATTACK OF THE GIANT MOUSSAKA (d. Panos H. Koutras) while baking their own eggplant dish.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of The Blob Show— and my phone approaches insufficient storage— I thought I'd compile an olio of segments I couldn't bear to trash.  These are largely from the show's early development when Tony and Charley were trying to find their voice and Joey was, literally, trying to find her legs.