Episode 26 – Pumping Iron (1977) with Dave Brouillette

“Blood is rushing into your muscles and that’s what we call The Pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling, like your skin is going to explode any minute, and it’s really tight – it’s like somebody blowing air into it, into your muscle. It just blows up, and it feels really different. It feels fantastic.”

This month, we’re hitting the weights and getting a good pump with Dave Brouillette, as we bench press the 1977 bodybuilding docudrama that got Arnold noticed in Hollywood: Pumping Iron!

Cameras document – or is it dramatize? – the lives of the world’s leading bodybuilders as they prepare to compete for their sport’s top 1975 amateur and professional championships. One is junior high school teacher, Mike Katz, who aspires to the title of Mr. Universe. Another is shy underdog, Lou Ferrigno, who hopes to flex his way to the title of Mr. Olympia. But to do that, he must topple the reigning five-time returning champion, a certain popular and charismatic Austrian, just a couple years away from Hollywood superstardom.

Episode 16 – Last Action Hero (1993) with Roz Townsend

This isn’t the movies anymore.

We’re back. This time we’re traveling to the world behind the silver screen with artist Roz Townsend to dissect the meta-fictional cult action/comedy movie that many at the time considered Arnold’s first box office flop, Last Action Hero.

Teenager Danny Madigan is the world’s biggest fan of the Schwarzenegger-helmed Jack Slater series of action movies. When a magic ticket literally transports him into Slater’s cinematic universe, he finds himself in an over-the-top world where a combination of bad puns and giant explosions can always save the day. But when one of the movie’s villains steals the ticket and discovers his own nature as a fictional character, Danny and Jack must follow him back into the real world, a place where, suddenly, the bad guys can win.

Episode 9 – Escape Plan (2013) with Todd Maxfield-Matsumoto

Breaking out is an inside job.

After nearly forty years of waiting, it’s finally happened. It’s time to inject ourselves with tracking devices and ready our homemade sextants.  This month, we sit down with our good friend Todd Maxfield-Matsumoto to dive into the long-awaited team-up movie between Arnold Schwarzenegger and his longtime cinematic rival, Sylvester Stallone: Escape Plan.

Ray Breslin is a security expert who breaks out of maximum security prisons for a living. His skills are put to the test when he’s hired to escape from the ultimate black site detention center for the worst criminals on Earth, and staffed a corrupt warden and his violent costumed guards. But Breslin isn’t alone. His escape is aided a fellow inmate, played by our favorite Austrian badass, who thinks that teaming up with Breslin may be his ticket to freedom.

Episode 4 – Predator (1987) with Jeremy Whitman

predatorposter

“Nothing like it has ever been on Earth before. It came from another planet for the thrill of the hunt. It picked the wrong man.”

It’s time to return to the decade of Reagan with Jeremy Whitman of the Rated80s podcast, and look at one of Arnold’s most iconic action films, 1987’s Predator.

When an elite team of commandos embark on a rescue mission in the South American jungle, they find themselves the prey of an extraterrestrial big game hunter. One by one, they’re slaughtered until only one man remains.

And he’s not about to become the monster’s latest trophy.