FEAR AND LOATHING IN CINEMA
by Bryan Kluger
Fear and Loathing in Cinema where we take an old movie and deep dive into the production, behind-the-scenes, and casting to see if the film still holds up or if it never really did! Here on this first episode, hosts Bryan Kluger from Boomstick Comics, High Def Digest, and Screen Rant, along with good friend Dan Moran of Boomstick Comics joins in on the fun.
Episodes
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Episode #169 – Encino Man (1992)
This week, on Episode #169, Bryan Kluger, Marc Ciafardini, and Sandi Glass are thawed from the Ice Age and dropped, somewhat irresponsibly, into 1992 California for Encino Man. You know, the movie that introduced Brendan Fraser to the world and gave Pauly Shore an entire dialect of his own. The...
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Bonus Episode with Musician Randy Edelman
For this special bonus episode, Bryan Kluger and Marc Ciafardini welcome the legendary musician and film composer Randy Edelman, a man whose résumé is so packed with movies that there is a decent chance his music has been playing somewhere in your life without your permission. You may not...
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Episode #168 – Running Scared (1986)
This week, on Episode #168, Bryan Kluger and Marc Ciafardini strap on their bulletproof vests and travel back to 1986 Chicago for Running Scared, which is the gloriously violent, ridiculously cool buddy-cop film starring Billy Crystal, Gregory Hines, Jimmy Smits, Joey Pants, and enough roller...
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Episode #167 – The Wizard (1989) With Luke Edwards
This week on Episode #167 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, Bryan Kluger, Marc Ciafardini, and Sandi Glass do what any responsible adults in 2026 should do. They reconnect their old video-game consoles and revisit The Wizard. You know, the 1989 film that has long been accused of being less a movie...
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Episode #166 – Mannequin (1987)
This week, Bryan Kluger, Marc Ciafardini, and Sandi Glass climb into the time machine, set the dial to 1987, and spend some quality time with Mannequin. You know the movie starring Andrew McCarthy, James Spader, Estelle Getty, and the one and only Kim Cattrall, who somehow manages to make being a...
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Episode #165 – The Last Airbender (2010)
This week, Bryan Kluger and Preston Barta willingly wander into M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, which is a film so catastrophically misguided it briefly convinced audiences that one of Hollywood's most fascinating directors had misplaced his compass entirely. Before Shyamalan…
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Episode #164 – Pain and Gain (2013)
On the latest episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, Bryan, Dan, and Preston do what every middle-aged movie podcaster eventually must do. They stare into the sun of American masculinity and discover that it is wearing a tank top from a Miami gym. Their subject is Pain & Gain, which is Michael...
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Episode #163 – Tomb Raider (2018)
On Episode #162 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, Bryan, Dan, and Chelsea strap themselves to the wings of the 2018 Tomb Raider reboot and attempt to survive the turbulence. Starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, the film operates on the charmingly deranged belief that if one adventure-movie…
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Episode #162 – Wide Awake (1998)
On Episode #162 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, Bryan, Dan, Preston, and Chelsea crack their eyelids open for Wide Awake, the charmingly odd little comedy-drama that spent years gathering dust on a Harvey Weinstein shelf before escaping into the world as M. Night Shyamalan's first feature, long...
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Episode #161 – Tenet (2020)
Naturally, Bryan, Preston, Dan, and Chelsea tackle the questions that Nolan either intentionally raised or accidentally unleashed upon humanity. What does Tenet actually mean? Why does every explanation somehow require a flowchart? Can human beings learn to invert themselves through concentration...
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Episode #160 – Top Gun (1986)
On Episode #160 of the Fear and Loathing in Cinema podcast, Bryan, Preston, and Dan descend into the beautiful chaos of Reagan-era action mythology, unpacking why every hero in the '80s looked like he survived entirely on black coffee, Marlboros, and trauma. They discuss how Maverick belongs to...
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Episode #159 – John Carter (2012)
Episode #159 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema finds Bryan, Chelsea, Dan, and Preston wandering deep into the crimson sands of John Carter, Disney’s enormously expensive attempt to convince the world that a shirtless Confederate soldier jumping around Mars was the future of blockbuster…
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Episode #158 – Jaws 4: The Revenge (1987)
This week on Episode #158 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the gang wades into the warm, cursed waters of Jaws 4: The Revenge, the film that effectively harpooned the Jaws franchise into the bottom of the ocean nearly four decades ago. The episode plays less like a review and more like a marine...
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Episode #157 – Moonwalker (1988)
This week on Episode #157 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we found ourselves tumbling headfirst into the glittering, bewildering cosmos of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. To call it a movie feels almost impolite. It is, instead, a kind of cinematic music video stitched together at the exact moment...
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Episode #156 – Murder By Numbers (2002)
In Episode #156, the group turns its attention to Murder by Numbers, a 2002 relic starring Sandra Bullock, Ryan Gosling, and Michael Pitt. It's a film most people remember the way one remembers a locker combination, which is vaguely, and with no real confidence it was ever correct. The hosts…
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Episode #155 – Song of the South (1946) With Kevin Willmott and Shawn Edwards
There are episodes of a podcast that arrive with the breezy confidence of a brunch invitation. It's light, convivial, and gone before the coffee cools. And then there is episode #155 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, which arrives more like a subpoena. The subject, as it turns out, was Song of the...
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Episode #154 – Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)
Episode #154 finds the panel wading into the tiara-strewn chaos of Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), a mockumentary so dark it occasionally feels like it’s whispering its jokes from the trunk of a car. With a cast that reads like a particularly unhinged reunion, including Kirsten Dunst, Allison Janney,...
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Episode #153 – The Island (2005)
On episode 153, the gang attempts to escape The Island, Michael Bay’s glossy 2005 action curio, which arrived sandwiched between the pyrotechnic bravado of Bad Boys II and the toy-store industrial complex known as Transformers. The film itself behaves like three movies crammed into a trench coat:...
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Episode #152 – The Rules of Attraction (2002)
On the show’s 152nd episode, Bryan and Preston head back to campus with The Rules of Attraction, the 2002 collegiate fever dream starring the late James Van Der Beek alongside a parade of early-aughts luminaries. Adapted from the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, yes, that Bret Easton Ellis, of…
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Episode #151 – Milk Money (1994)
For their 151st episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, the gang ups the ante, literally, with Malibu 151 and revisits 1994’s Milk Money, that improbable artifact in which Melanie Griffith and Ed Harris (in one of his rare turns as a gentle, flustered dad rather than a granite-faced...
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Episode #150 – The Pest (1997)
Certain milestones demand champagne. Others demand a collective cry for help. For our 150th episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, the four of us, pestering podcasters marooned in Texas, chose the latter and marked the occasion by revisiting the 1997 cinematic curio The Pest. The post...
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Episode #149 – Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)
By the time we arrived at Episode #149 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, Gerarduary, the sacred month in which we collectively reflect on the brawny altar of Gerard Butler was breathing its final, heroic breaths, we chose to close it out not with subtlety or restraint, but with Tomb Raider:...
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Episode #148 – RocknRolla (2008)
On Episode #148 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, the four of us are still trapped in Gerarduary, which is our month-long cinematic endurance test disguised as a tribute to Gerard Butler. Texas, in solidarity, has chosen this exact week to become the Arctic. The power grid is nervous. We…
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Episode #147 – Geostorm (2017)
On Episode #147 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, we find ourselves still lingering in January of 2026, a month that has overstayed its welcome and thus demanded a rebrand. We now call it Gerarduary, a ceremonial observance devoted to Gerard Butler. He's the cinematic Spartan who has spent...
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Episode #146 – Dracula 2000 (2000)
On our first Fear and Loathing in Cinema episode of 2026, we do what any sensible group of adults would do to welcome a new year. We consecrate January to Gerard Butler. Or, as it will now be known in perpetuity, Gerarduary. This is not a bit so much as a lifestyle choice. And what better way to...
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End of Year 2025 Awards
The end-of-the-year episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema has arrived, like a tipsy friend barging into your living room on December 31st with a notebook full of opinions and absolutely no intention of keeping them to themselves. This isn’t an episode devoted to a single film so much as it is a...
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White Elephant 2025
Here we are again, gathered for our annual White Elephant episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast, a tradition in which Bryan, Dan, Preston, and Chelsea select a movie and secretly foist it upon another unsuspecting co-host. Historically, this exercise has had a fifty–fifty chance of...
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Episode #145 – Electroma (2007) with Todd Rohal
On Episode No. 145 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we set out with the mild intention of having a civilized conversation and immediately abandon it. Bryan, Preston, and Chelsea welcome director Todd Rohal, making his inaugural appearance, and, if we’re lucky, not his last, just as his new film,...
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Episode #144 – Ocean’s 8 (2018)
On Episode No. 144 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the three of us reunite like a ragtag crew of slightly overcaffeinated jewel thieves to conduct a meticulously unplanned heist of your ear holes. Our target? The 2018 film Ocean’s 8, that all-women-led sequel/spin-off/reheated-leftovers entrée of...
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Episode #143 – Wicked: For Good (2025)
On Episode No. 143 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we four self-appointed munchkins, each of us barely tall enough to see over our own opinions, link arms, step onto the yellow brick road, and march straight into the emerald wreckage that is Wicked: For Good. What follows is less a film…
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Episode #142 – Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995)
On Episode #142 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we pack our khakis and emotional baggage for a journey deep into the heart of Africa, by way of Hollywood’s wildest pet detective. Yes, we’re talking about Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, the sequel that taught us all the difference between bat…
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Episode #141 – The Number 23 (2007)
On Episode #141 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, there are, depending on how many voices you hear in your head, two, possibly three people who dared to confront The Number 23, Joel Schumacher’s 2007 cinematic thriller of numerology, noir, and naked Jim Carrey angst. Yes, that Joel Schumacher. You...
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Episode #140 – Return To Oz (1985)
On Episode #140 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, three brave souls click their ruby slippers and tumble, not into the glossy green hell of the Wicked franchise, but straight into the cracked, nightmarish cobblestones of 1985’s Return to Oz.Forget show tunes and moral lessons. This Oz comes…
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Episode #139 – Tron: Legacy (2010)
On Episode #139 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, four brave digital explorers, Bryan, Dan, Preston, and Chelsea, once again jack into the pixelated abyss to revisit Tron: Legacy, Disney’s 2010 attempt to convince us that glowing spandex and motorcycles could carry emotional weight. It’s an apt…
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Episode #138 – S1MONE (2002)
On Episode #138 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, five people who still refuse to let their phones listen to them take a deep dive into one of Hollywood’s most prescient nightmares about technology, S1M0NE, or Simone for those of us who haven’t updated our operating systems since 2002. The post...
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Episode #137 – Junior (1994)
On Episode #137 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the four cinematic sperms finally find their egg, and what an egg it is. The year is 1994. America is wearing denim on denim without irony. The internet is a rumor. And somewhere in Hollywood, Ivan Reitman, the comedic alchemist behind Ghostbusters...
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Episode #136 – Major Payne (1995)
On Episode #136 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the four of us Green boys decided to lace up our metaphorical combat boots and enlist, not in the Marines, but in the 1995 Damon Wayans comedy Major Payne. For some of us, this film has long been chiselled into the granite face of the Comedy Mount...
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Episode #135 – Zack and Miri Make A Porno (2008)
On Episode #135 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, four cinephiles who, for the episode, style themselves as podcasting pornographers. They slip into something more comfortable this week with Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008). It was Smith’s answer to the Judd Apatovian moment, when…
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Episode #134 – Superman III (1983)
On episode #134 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the four superhero sidekicks that is Bryan, Dan, Chelsea, and Preston, voluntarily subject themselves to Superman III (1983), the cinematic equivalent of doing whippets in a RadioShack parking lot. This is the movie where Christopher Reeve, once…
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Episode #133 – Blue Streak (1999)
On episode #133 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the squad piles into the back of a cop car with Martin Lawrence and Luke Wilson to revisit Blue Streak (1999), a film that now feels like both a time capsule and a comedic piece of nostalgia. Remember when buddy action comedies reliably paired the...
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Episode #132 – Operation Dumbo Drop (1995)
By the 132nd episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, one begins to wonder if Bryan, Dan, Chelsea, and their revolving door of guests aren’t actually podcasters at all, but cultural archaeologists, digging through the cinematic rubble of the ’90s with the patience of Indiana Jones and the appetite...
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Episode #131 – Kindergarten Cop (1990)
On the 131st episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, a podcast that has spent more time in the ‘90s than the Clinton administration. Bryan, Dan, and Preston revisit a movie that asks the big, important questions: Can an Austrian killing machine convincingly teach preschool? Is it okay to…
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Episode #130 – Don’t Mess With The Zohan (2008)
On the gloriously unhinged 130th episode of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, Bryan, Chelsea, Wade, and, making a cameo so brief it rivals Dave Matthews in Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Preston, plunge headfirst into Adam Sandler’s 2008 absurdist comedy of a movie. You remember Zohan, don’t you? The one...
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Episode #129 – Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
Some people move to Texas for the brisket. Others come for the low taxes, wide skies, or a spiritual reawakening via H-E-B. But for Chelsea Nicole; fearless co-host, cinephile, and recent expatriate from the state that resembles a giant penis (Florida); it was the promise of freedom. And by...
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Episode #128 – Bloodsport (1988)
There are few films that could convince four grown men in 2025 to willingly dodge the U.S. military draft, board a non-refundable flight to Hong Kong, and enter an underground full-contact martial arts tournament with zero formal training; ave, perhaps, for some light cardio and a YouTube rabbit...
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Episode #127 – Reign Of Fire (2002)
On Episode #127 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, a podcast that functions as both group therapy and cinematic exorcism, our scaly trio of hosts turned their collective, dragon-singed gaze toward Reign of Fire; the 2002 post-apocalyptic lizard-thon that imagined a world where dragons reemerged from...
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Episode #126 – The Devil’s Own (1997)
On Episode #126 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, our beloved panel of armchair cine-soldiers (who may or may not be honorary members of the IRA; the Irish Rewatching Association) don their greenest beer goggles and deep-dive into one of the more politically confused action-thrillers of the Clinton...
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Episode #125 – Howard The Duck (1986)
On Episode #125 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we cracked a dozen metaphorical eggs and finally found the perfect duck. Not a perfect duck, the perfect duck: 1986’s Howard the Duck, a film so strange, so inexplicable, so duck-breasted, that it could only have emerged from the mind of George…
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Episode #124 – Bobby Deerfield (1977)
On Episode #124 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, we revved our engines for a fast-paced thrill ride and instead crashed gently into a velvet-lined existential romance with Bobby Deerfield, Sydney Pollack’s 1977 film that stars a post-Godfather, pre-Scarface Al Pacino; looking like a haunted Calvin...
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Episode #123 – Now You See Me (2013)
On Episode #123 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, our brave quartet; Bryan, Dan, Chelsea, and Preston; take a break from dodging dinosaurs and emotionally recovering from Fallen Kingdom to pull a rabbit out of their collective cinematic hat. Their target this week? Louis Leterrier’s 2013...
About this show
Fear and Loathing in Cinema where we take an old movie and deep dive into the production, behind-the-scenes, and casting to see if the film still holds up or if it never really did! Here on this first episode, hosts Bryan Kluger from Boomstick Comics, High Def Digest, and Screen Rant, along with good friend Dan Moran of Boomstick Comics joins in on the fun.
Hosted by
Bryan Kluger