Popular Antiquarian

We continue our deep dive in the weirder corners of pop culture with Draganta, episode 9 of Saban Entertainment’s tokugatsu adjacent fantasy series Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog. Having obtained magical weapons, magical armour, and an entire working dragon Rohan, Deidre, Ivar, and Angus must now find the legendary warrior Draganta, something that proves a lot easier than you might have expected. Also I think I’m going mad.

Our ongoing deep dive into the power rangers adjacent tokugatsu TV show Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog continues as we explore part two of The Taming of Pyre in which Rohan, Angus, Deidre, and Ivar must do battle with four evil sentinels, a fire-breathing dragon, and their ongoing short term memory problems. Having lost their weapons in the last episode how are they going to deal with the challenges facing them and will the answer somehow be turtles? Listen along to find out.

Episode 7 of Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog is a two parter! Very exciting. Queen Maeve has assembled all four of Mider’s diabolical sentinels to attack the mystic knights while they’re busy trying to tame a dragon that definitely doesn’t want to be tamed. There’s also a twist at the end that I definitely didn’t see coming. Listen along to find out more.

Episode 6 sees the established formula very much in place as Angus has to claim his magical armour from a bored Irish character actor dressed like a fool while everyone else is distracted by a low effort monster summoned by the dastardly Queen Maeve who has other things to worry about, namely the low quality of the entertainers at her court.

It’s a double event here on Popular Antiquarian as HJDoom casts a jaundiced eye over episodes 4 and 5 of Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, Tash Hound of Temra and Ivar and the Sea Serpent. Deidre’s after her magical armour but the script writers are more concerned with how that’s going to affect Rohan. In episode 5 it’s Ivar’s time to shine and you’d better believe he’s going to somehow make it all about his special cup.You can support my nonsense by going to www.patreon.com/hjoom and pledging as little as a single quid or local equivalent.

Episode 3 of Mystic Knights sees our heroes quest for the first bit of magical armour that will allow them to tame Pyre, the dragon of Dare which is the namesake of this episode despite being in it for all of three minutes. Will Deidre tell the boys off, will Angus find some way of embarrassing himself, and will Rohan develop some kind of personality? Listen along to find out.

We’re back with episode 2 of the Saban Entertainment fantasy action series set in a TV executive’s idea of what ancient Ireland looks like. Having assembled the main cast they are now sent to the actual land of Tir Na Nog to do magical trails at the behest of a tiny king with a terrible beard. Can they manage to persuade him to help them before the castle of Kells is overrun by the forces of Temra? Listen along to find out.Also I have a new game out at patreon.com/hjdoom. It’s called Mr Blobby and the Propaganda of the Deed and it’s a deeply libellous text adventure about light entertainment’s most deviant son. Yours for only a quid or local equivalent.

It’s time for a new season of Popular Antiquarian and this time our main focus is going to be Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog, the weird Irish themed Power Rangers knock off from 1998. In this first episode we’re meeting the main cast and trying to decide which one is the most irritating (it’s Angus). Join HJDoom for another deep dive into something that absolutely does not deserve the care and attention being lavished on it.

It’s comics time on Popular Antiquarian as my parlous state of mental health sends me scurrying into the comforting embrace of 1960s Batman, here represented by issue 350 of Detective Comics from April 1966. The Caped Crusader has allegedly met his match in the shape of the very stupid Monarch of Menace but what kind of quality does this retro comic represent? Listen along to find out. The Batman story in this issue features art by Sheldon Moldoff pretending to be Bob Kane, inking by Joe Giella, lettering by Joe Letterese and cover art by Joe Kubert. It was written by Rob Kanigher.

We’ve already covered Titanic 2 on the podcast and it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in my life so my expectations for Titanic 666 were rock bottom. Technically Titanic 2 2 being a sequel to Titanic 2 which is not itself actually a sequel to Titanic but if I think about it too long my head starts to hurt. Titanic 666 stars Jamie Bamber and Keesha Sharp and was directed by solid journeyman Nick Lyons. It was made for Tubi which is where streaming dreams go to die.

Apes. Monsters. We all know them. We all love them. We all admire them. Whether it’s King Kong, Godzilla or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man it’s fair to say that everyone enjoys seeing something very large do violence to a populated area. These are exactly the kind of special effects laden movies that you might expect The Asylum to struggle with so their mockbuster of Godzilla Vs Kong definitely conjures a degree of concern. Is that concern warranted? Find out by listening along as HJDoom reviews Ape Vs Monster.

Who doesn’t love a very cheap movie based on a successful film adaptation of a wildly successful novel written by a man who writes with all the grace and flair of a malfunctioning toilet? That’s what we get with The Asylum’s The Da Vinci Treasure, a mockbuster of the 2006 adaptation of The Da Vinci Code. They may not have Tom Hanks or Paul Bettany but they do have C Thomas Howell and a depressingly brief turn from Lance Henrikson. Join us for a truly wild ride that takes in London, half of Italy, Athens very briefly, and also Afghanistan for some reason in search of treasure hidden by Leonardo Da Vinci for very unclear reasons.

Edge of Tomorrow is great. A really solid high concept scifi action movie anchored by Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt’s undeniable chemistry. Age of Tomorrow, The Asylum’s mockbuster of the same movie is a little different in that it’s not high concept, there’s very little action, and the leads have the kind of chemistry you would associate with rotting vegetable matter. I can usually find something laudable about these films but this one is a bit of a struggle. Listen along to find out how The Asylum goes about filming a serious fire in a building they only have for the afternoon.

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter was a somewhat unsuccessful film but that’s never been a barrier to The Asylum trying to cash in on someone else’s marketing budget. In this case they simply replaced the vampires with zombies and the budget with the contents of a child’s dressing up box. They do at least have noted character actor Bill Oberst Jr playing the lead but will that be enough to redeem this film? Listen along to find out.

It’s something of a double header this episode as I actually sat down and watched Morbius, the film that Dracula: The Original Living Vampire is mockbustering. Morbius, it may shock you to learn is not a good movie but there’s always the possibility that The Asylum will manage to turn out something even worse. Listen along to find out.

It’s possible there are worse film makers out there than Michael Bay and if there are they’ve almost certainly worked for The Asylum at some point. Transmorphers is their attempt to recreate the cinematic magic of Bay’s Transformers movie, an astonishing franchise that somehow manages to be much stupidity than the Saturday morning cartoon from the 80s. How well does it work? Listen along to find out.

When the villainous Loki is trying to cause Ragnarok there’s only one person you can turn to - Kevin Nash. In the unlikely event that Kevin Nash doesn’t make it then it’s going to fall to his son Baldir to deal with the menace. In the even more unlikely event that Baldir also dies horribly then I guess a young Thor’s going to have to step up to the plate to prevent a multiverse shattering apocalypse. How does this pan out? Listen along to find out.

Once upon a time you couldn't move for gorillas in the movies and, thanks to the King Kong remake in 2005, the Asylum got on some of that sweet ape action. Ostensibly an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World this horribly cheap jungle adventure features Bruce Boxleitner as the token actor you've heard of. How bad does the giant ape look? Listen along to find out.

The sheer brass neck of making an unauthorised sequel to Titanic is in many ways the most impressive thing about this film. Is it possible to remake one of the greatest visual spectacles in modern cinema without access to vast quantities of money? Is it possible to do it without access to a boat? All these questions and more will be answered in this week’s episode.

If there’s one thing The Asylum loves it’s riffing on the work of James Cameron. Battle for Pandora, timed to coincide with the release of Avatar: The Way of Water in 2022 attempts to ride on the coattails of Cameron’s beautiful but boring science fiction epics. There’s no money for an actual epic so instead they follow a well-worn path in low budget science fiction. How well does it land? Listen along to find out.

In 2014 there was arguably only one film less hotly anticipated than the remake of Robocop and that was the mockbuster of the remake of Robocop. Android Cop, The Asylum’s foray into the world of Robocop rip offs, a remarkable fecund genre of movie. It’s got a stacked cast by the standards of Asylum movies since it features both Michael Jai White and Charles S Dutton in key roles. But will the middling star power of the man who starred in Spawn be enough to save this movie? Listen along to find out.

The Star Wars franchise is one of the most beloved pieces of intellectual property in the world, despite Disney's best efforts to run it into the ground. Can the Asylum produce something worse than The Rise of Skywalker? Listen along to find out how space opera works when you can't afford either space or opera.

In which HJDoom spends far too many words talking about The Asylum’s 2009 creature feature that does more or less what it says on the tin. There’s a shark. There’s an octopus. There’s no money. Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus stars Debbie Gibson, Lorenzo Lamar, Vic Chao, and Sean Lawlor. It was written and directed by Jack Perez under the pseudonym Ace Hannah.

Who knew that you could avoid infringing the copyright of The Terminator by simply sticking a letter S on the end? The Asylum that’s who. This was far from their first rodeo and it’s an effort to cash in on Terminator Salvation a film that looks better in retrospect only because everything got much worse after that point. The Terminator takes the core premise of a robot uprising but adds a little of that low budget magic by relocating most of the action to a small town in the middle of nowhere. Is it any good? No. Obviously not but is it any good by the peculiar standards of Asylum movies? Listen along to find out.

The Universal Monster movies are one of my absolute favourite things so the obvious thing to do was watch a deeply cynical attempt to cash in on their unique visual aesthetic whilst spending as little money as possible. What a glorious time to be alive.

Snakes on a Plane was arguably 2006’s biggest disappointment, a film that promised so much more than it was able to deliver despite the presence of noted charisma haver Samuel L Jackson. Fortunately all was not lost as The Asylum bravely decided to tackle the idea of reptiles on public transport with Snakes on a Train. It’s got no budget but can it manage to deliver some slithery thrills regardless? Listen along to find out what opinions HJDoom has on the matter.

Zombie movies. The finest art form known to humanity or only the second finest art form known to humanity? This is one of the questions that may or may not be answered as HJDoom takes on The Asylum’s first movie produced in house and a rare foray originality (insofar as a zombie movie in 2004 could be called original). It’s certainly very cheap but is it also rubbish? Listen along to find out.

Episode 2 of our deep dive into The Asylum sees us tackle the company’s first and arguably most successful mockbuster, H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds from 2005 which just so happened to come out at the same time as Spielberg’s riff on the classic novel. It’s obviously incredibly cheap but it does have H Thomas Howell in it. Will that help? Listen along to find out.

The Asylum is perhaps the most hated movie studio in Hollywood, churning out extremely cheap movies which are usually based on an existing and more popular film. They are the undisputed masters of the mockbuster and their films are typically derided as parasitic cash ins. We’re going to find out if all that hate is deserved by watching as many Asylum movies as I can stand. We start with one of their early films from 2002, the simple tale of a bullied weirdo who turns into a murderous scarecrow for reasons that are deeply unclear.

HJDoom examines the infamous fanfic by Jim Thiess

issue 5 of Animal Man, a DC superhero comic written by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Chas Troug and Don Hazlewood with colours by Tatjana Wood and letters by John Costanza. The cover art is by Brian Bolland.

Join HJDoom has we explore the work of a forgotten master of the weird tale, Allison V Harding. A curious and elusive figure who wrote over a short period but left behind a fascinating body of work.

Who doesn’t love a Gameboy game about a being of pure id? Wario Land 2 from 1998 is a fascinating little game which shows that it’s not always the most powerful platform that has the most memorable games. HJDoom takes you on a tour through the strange history of a large, furious man.

HJDoom takes a look at an episode of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon from 1987, The Collect Call of Cathulhu, and gives his barely informed thoughts on this curious slice of kids entertainment inspired by the works of HP Lovecraft.

Join Hieronymous J Doom as he takes you on a tour of media produced before the turn of the millennium. In this inaugural episode we're looking at I Was A Communist For The FBI, a classic piece of red scare paranoia from the 1950s.