Tentpole Trauma

Stephen King's The Dark Tower fantasy series has been a long-gestating white whale project in Hollywood, passing through countless development hands and having many promising false starts. Hopes were high when a feature film finally came to fruition in 2017 starring Idris Elba as the heroic Gunslinger and Matthew McConaughey as his Man in Black nemesis, only to be dashed when the film arrived as a slapdash, woefully truncated pastiche with little fealty to the beloved source material or its iconic characters, gunning down any hopes of a viable franchise. Join Sebastian and Dark Tower superfan Rodney as they forget the faces of their fathers, as well as much of this movie, as they attempt to make sense of this mangled mess of an IP cash-in.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe may have been past their prime by 1987, but that didn’t stop shlockmeisters Golan and Globus from capitalizing on the popular toy and cartoon property by attempting a big budget film adaptation. Despite casting a near-perfect He-Man in Dolph Lundgren and boasting up and comer Courteney Cox, as well as a delightfully hammy Frank Langella in the role of the villainous Skeletor, the film tanked with fans and critics and helped to bankrupt Cannon films. Join Sebastian and Richard as they grasp for the power and grapple with this campy 80s fantasy misfire.

Seemingly doomed from the start, the sixth installment of the famed Halloween series, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, shaped up to be a rotten pumpkin for fans when it hit theaters in 1995. Helmed by Joe Chapelle and written by super fan Daniel Farrands, the film added a ludicrous backstory for the iconic slasher, suffered the real life death of mainstay Donald Pleasence, and featured a baffling debut performance by future Ant-Man Paul Rudd. Join Sebastian, Matt, and the Grindbin podcast’s Bobby as they cast the runes, weather the curse of Thorn and suffer through two versions of this franchise altering trainwreck.

With a director at the height of his game and a star at the early peak of his fame, Blow Out, directed by Brian De Palma and starring John Travolta, was poised to be one of the big hits of 1981. But despite being a rock solid re-imagining of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up and a nail-biting thriller in its own right, the film blew a flat tire at the box office. Join Sebastian and Jennifer as they comb the audio files for clues as to why this clever and suspenseful neo noir failed to blow up commercially.