When We Were Young podcast

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Oh, you thought we were done talking about all the creepy-crawlies that go bump in the night, that slither in wait hoping to swallow you whole, and that can somehow turn on a gas oven using a dorsal fin? Hardly! In this dazzling, toothsome, and scaly finale to When We Were Young’s ‘90s Creature Feature extravaganza, Chris and Seth revisit three more hit movies that represent the monstrous tail end of this genre’s heyday.

First, they were pretty sure the end was near when their boat sank in the jungles of the Amazon River and they were nearly swallowed whole by an immense ANACONDA (1997), but they were saved at the last moment by a documentary film crew led by JLo, Ice Cube, and an indecipherable but legendary Jon Voight.

Hoping to find respite and relief in the calm waters of LAKE PLACID (1999), they instead found Betty White raising a world-record killer crocodile, and Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, and Oliver Platt competing to see who’d had the most severed heads flung at them.

Finally, in one last desperate attempt to get away from it all, Seth and Chris took a trip and a dip in the DEEP BLUE SEA (1999) heading to an underwater scientific research station at the forefront of Alzheimer’s research – but the three resident bioengineered mega-sharks who also lived there immediately crashed their party and proceeded to flood them out! These giganto makos had the gall to eat Seth’s parrot, and one of these cunning sharks nearly got Chris too – until he took all his clothes off and electrocuted it. Dazed and shocked to have made it out alive, our hosts have sworn never to leave dry land or violate the Harvard Compact ever again.

Grab your swimsuits as we revisit the waterlogged beasts of the latter days of Hollywood’s creature features in what is by far the wettest episode of WHEN WE WERE YOUNG yet. Follow When We Were Young on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Facebook.com/WWWYShow and email episode suggestions to wwwyshow@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and review us on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts (or wherever you get your podcasts) so more folks check out the show!

Help us defray the costs of creating this show, which include recording remotely, purchasing movies/shows/music to review, delivery food to eat our feelings, and producing & editing in-house at the MFP Studio in Los Angeles, California by donating to our Patreon account at patreon.com/WhenWeWereYoung

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:33:01 — 184.9MB)

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Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the ’90s, an elite team of podcasters has been selected to journey deep into the jungle, dive deep into the ocean, and dig deep underground to locate some of the deadliest predators ever known to moviedom.

Two of cinema’s greatest auteurs made creature features that have gone down as classics – Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS in the ’60s and Spielberg’s Jaws in the ’70s. In their wake, however, the genre known as “nature horror” took a steep downhill turn into low-budget schlock, and sadly creature features became an endangered species.

But for a brief, beautiful window during the 1990s, movies about hungry, hungry critters great and small came roaring back! The genre flirted with becoming mainstream again, nabbing bigger budgets, bigger stars, and monster-sized box office receipts (in some cases).

So welcome to Part One of our ’90s Creature Sexa-Feature! (“Sex” as in “six.” Get your mind out of the gutter – there might be alligators down there!) In this episode, we unearth 1990’s TREMORS, which features Kevin Bacon and Reba McEntire pole-vaulting away from giant worms, then direct all eight of our eyes toward the shrieking spiders of ARACHNOPHOBIA (from that same year), which still has the power to scare at least one of our hosts off his tuffet. Finally, we go bananas for the killer gorillas of CONGO (1995), which features Tim Curry, Laura Linney, and a host of others giving performances that are almost as big as the lost diamonds of Zinj.

Pour yourself a green drop drink and pack up that sesame cake, because we’re hunting down and rounding up the very finest big screen animal attacks of the 90s! (Survival not guaranteed.)

Follow When We Were Young on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Facebook.com/WWWYShow and email episode suggestions to wwwyshow@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and review us on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts (or wherever you get your podcasts) so more folks check out the show!

Help us defray the costs of creating this show, which include recording remotely, purchasing movies/shows/music to review, delivery food to eat our feelings, and producing & editing in-house at the MFP Studio in Los Angeles, California by donating to our Patreon account at patreon.com/WhenWeWereYoung

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:44:39 — 92.6MB)

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If you thought we had just one bun in the oven for our lineup of Arnold Schwarzenegger comedies about birth and child-rearing – surprise! This topic is actually twins!

In our previous episode, we cooed over 1988’s Twins, in which Schwarzenegger popped his cherry as a humorous leading man and wowed us with his lack of vanity in getting laughs. In this episode, we carry our “Schwarzepreggers” topic to term, seeing if Arnold’s final two collaborations with Ivan Reitman are what we’re expecting – and if they still deliver.

In KINDERGARTEN COP (1990) Arnold stars as Detective John Kimble, a grim cop who learns that the only way to bust a drug dealer is to go undercover as a kindergarten teacher. (Don’t ask.) There’s plenty of deception, betrayal, yelling at children, gunplay on school grounds, and even a feral ferret – but are the laughs here, or absent? This bizarre blend of kiddie hijinks and deadly police drama just might have to stay after class. 

Then, Arnold teams back up with Reitman and Danny DeVito for JUNIOR (1994), a movie about how becoming a single parent affects a man’s love life, friendships, and career – because he has inseminated his new work crush Emma Thompson’s secretly stolen ovum, implanted it in his own abdomen, and become pregnant himself. Junior is notorious for pushing high concept star vehicles to their extreme, subverting Schwarzenegger’s tough guy persona as he contends with morning sickness and kooky cravings instead of the usual cyborg nuclear attack. But nearly 30 years later, does Junior fill our bellies with laughter as easily as it fills Arnold’s belly with a viable infant? Grab some forceps, because the chuckles may not come so easily this time around!

Follow When We Were Young on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Facebook.com/WWWYShow and email episode suggestions to wwwyshow@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and review us on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts (or wherever you get your podcasts) so more folks check out the show!

Help us defray the costs of creating this show, which include recording remotely, purchasing movies/shows/music to review, delivery food to eat our feelings, and producing & editing in-house at the MFP Studio in Los Angeles, California by donating to our Patreon account at patreon.com/WhenWeWereYoung

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:22:58 — 90.4MB)

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Arnold Schwarzenegger became world famous in the 1980s as the jacked-up star of macho blockbusters like CONAN THE BARBARIAN, PREDATOR, COMMANDO, and THE TERMINATOR. But in the late 80s and early 90s, he teamed up with GHOSTBUSTERS director Ivan Reitman for a trio of family-friendly comedies, starting with 1988’s TWINS. Schwarzenegger’s comic chemistry with Danny DeVito drove this broad, fairly inexpensive studio comedy to rake in over $200 million and become the fifth-biggest earner at the box office that year, proving Arnold’s ability to draw big crowds outside the action genre and paving the way for several more seminal turns in blockbuster comedies.

In this episode of the podcast, we look back at Arnold’s austere Austrian childhood and the 1977 documentary PUMPING IRON, which chronicles the bodybuilding championships that first catapulted him to worldwide renown (and also chronicles his orgasmic workouts). Then, we check back in on TWINS and see whether this beloved 80s comedy still has us laughing for two. (One blue line means we didn’t like the movie. Two blue lines means we did.)

So join us for the conception of our “Schwarzepreggers” lineup and see if Ahnuld’s comic chops have held up as well as that hulking body — or if he should’ve just stuck to his day jobs as world-class athlete, popular governor, and unparalleled action hero instead. Along the way, we discuss Schwarzenegger’s big screen sex appeal (or lack thereof?), marvel at his unique combination of himbo charm and tireless ambition, ogle his out-of-this-world physique, and debate whether Arnold can still tickle our funnybones as effortlessly as he could break all of our other bones.

Follow When We Were Young on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Facebook.com/WWWYShow and email episode suggestions to wwwyshow@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and review us on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts (or wherever you get your podcasts) so more folks check out the show!

Help us defray the costs of creating this show, which include recording remotely, purchasing movies/shows/music to review, delivery food to eat our feelings, and producing & editing in-house at the MFP Studio in Los Angeles, California by donating to our Patreon account at patreon.com/WhenWeWereYoung

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:56:42 — 127.6MB)

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If you were a ’90s kid, chances are you wanted just two things in life: for Nick to take over your school, and a spot saved for you on the big orange couch synonymous with SNICK.

Nickelodeon’s Saturday night programming block for pre-teens launched in 1992 and became an instant hit with the demographic who was still awake at 8pm but had nowhere to go. Now that we’re all grown up, is there anything worth revisiting in any of the many shows that graced the SNICK lineup?

Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, we take a look back at CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL, ALL THAT, ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?, THE SECRET WORLD OF ALEX MACK, ROUNDHOUSE, THE ADVENTURES OF PETE & PETE, and some of the other shows that made us feel like we finally had something to do on a Saturday night. Plus, we try and figure out why Super Soakers had such a monopoly on children’s advertising in the ’90s.

Follow When We Were Young on Twitter and Instagram at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at Facebook.com/WWWYShow and email episode suggestions to wwwyshow@gmail.com. Don’t forget to subscribe and review us on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts (or wherever you get your podcasts) so more folks check out the show!

Help us defray the costs of creating this show, which include recording remotely, purchasing movies/shows/music to review, delivery food to eat our feelings, and producing & editing in-house at the MFP Studio in Los Angeles, California by donating to our Patreon account at patreon.com/WhenWeWereYoung