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Big Daddy Dispatch: October
🕑 Added 2025-09-30 23:50:50 +0000 UTC
Dispatch One Hundred, September 30th, 2025
Greetings WHM Family!
Welcome to Big Daddy Dispatch issue #100! Firstly, we need to thank you all for supporting us for 100 Dispatches and 100 months(ish) of Patreon content! Insane to think about. We have no plans of stopping and with the newly unleashed Craven tier, our jobs get better and better as we keep providing you with fun as hell exclusive shows. There’s literally no way to do any of this without you, so thanks for being the most important members of this podcast!
Also, speaking of the Craven tier…it’s almost here! The inaugural episode of Scaredy Cats , a quarterly video show (that’ll also be available as an audio offering) covering newer horror films! What better title to start with than one with creepy as shit Richard Brake, possibly creepier Justin Long, and the surprisingly not creepy at all Bill Skarsgård in Zach Cregger’s Barbarian! And what better time to start than everyone’s favorite month of the year, the Spooktacular? We really think this is going to be the best one yet. Join us and find out.
Banner Credit: We Hate Movies Logo by Felipe Sobreiro
WHM Barbarian Logo: by the indomitable Felipe Sobreiro, you really should check out his stuff.
15TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW AT THE BELL HOUSE IN BROOKLYN
Tickets are now on sale for our 15th Anniversary show on December 6th at the Bell House in Brooklyn! We’re doing a live episode on Total Recall! Yes, it’s the Arnold one. The good one! It’s gonna be a WLM episode talking about Kuato, Mutant Dean Norris, Sharon fucking Stone, and a ton of bad Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions, live on stage! These Brooklyn shows sell out fast, so get your tickets asap here!
LAST MONTH ON WHM
Summer Patreon Unlock – The Shining (1980)
Hey, ever heard of this one? Well, it was one of our first ever We Love Movies episodes we offered on the Patreon so it made sense to unlock this one so everybody can enjoy it. This one has it all, a bizarre Stanley Kubrick conspiracy theory song, Tony (the little boy that lives in Danny’s mouth) romancing Mrs. Torrance, and even some appreciation for one of the best horror movies ever made!
Episode 819 – Aliens (1986) (Patrons Only)
As the kids went back to school, the boys went back to LV-426, the planet that attacked Ripley’s ship in Alien, alongside Ripley, Paul Reiser’s heartless company man, and a shit-ton of marines ready to kick ass and die horribly in this month’s We Love Movies episode. Do they just let anyone get cryogenically frozen these days? Sounds pretty good to us! Is Jonesy technically the oldest cat depicted on screen? Would the franchise have survived without Sigourney Weaver and Ripley? Also, rest in peace, Bill Paxton. You were an incredible yeller and swear-word sayer, among many other estimable things.
Episode 820 – On Deadly Ground Redux (1994)
Following the Game Master’s triumphant win in the finale of the 2024 VHS Trailer Game, he sent himself and the other fellas back to revisit Steven Seagal’s directorial debut, in which Seagal fights Michael Caine, John C. McGinley, Billy Bob Thornton, an ocean of stuntmen, and a star-stunned R. Lee Ermey to avoid environmental disaster in Alaska. Isn’t it amazing to see Seagal move, stand-up, and run? Almost no sitting! Incredible! How many weeks did it take to make Seagal’s fur snowsuit? And why exactly did they have to make Michael Caine look like an evil cartoon of an oil CEO? Gross, on several counts. Also, The 2024 VHS Trailer Game Cameo message is here!
Episode 821 – The Conjuring (2013)
The gang split as they headed out with Ed and Lorraine Warren to bilk hundreds of people out of their hard-earned money, home-cooked vittles, rides, places to sleep, and other favors and compensation in return for lying to them extensively until they leave or the people stop being annoying...oh, sorry, I mean, catch ghosts that are spooky and cure bad houses. Is this movie very boring? Or very much not? Does anyone train dogs to smell and find ghosts? If not, Sharks, we have a great business idea. How many real scares are here after you take out the jump scares? Also, Ed Warren struggles to keep his daughter and others out of his room of haunted dolls and inanimate horrors of the modern world.
Episode 822 – Predators (2010)
Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve struggled to maintain their proven Predator love by dealing with this 2010 bungle in which Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Welton Goggins, Mahershala Ali, Danny Trejo, and Alice Braga as an IDF sharpshooter face off with numerous predators. How did they fuck up such a clever premise? Can we get subtitles for these predators? Why exactly does one of these characters have to be a serial killer? This is no Con Air, and we would know, because we love Con Air. Also, this fall, you want to go where everyone knows *inexplicable, angry alien gurgle” That’s right, it’s Predator: Cheers.
Well, shit, you really thought we were doing a We Hate Movies episode on this one, but we ended up mostly just doing a We Love Movies on the techno-action classic, in which the avatars of tech-pioneers Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner fight a revolution against a fascistic, all-powerful program who pits software-people against each other in battles to the death. First of all, yes, that’s what this movie is about. Second of all, David Warner is also in this, and he rules. How much of this is a Star Wars knock-off? Is that the coolest helicopter to ever be filmed? What are other movies that build their own minimal yet all-encompassing style in the action/sci-fi genre like this and are successful too? It’s a real short list, folks.
WHAT ARE WE WATCHING?
This is a space for us to talk about some NON-We Hate Movies related content that we've shoved into our eyeballs in the last month: TV, Movies, Cartoons, and Sports (maybe?). Just about anything that isn't pornography.
Andrew:
Here’s some non-film festival stuff I’ve taken in this month:
Uncut Gems (2019): In preparation for seeing The Smashing Machine at TIFF, I went back to this one for the first time since, well, since I saw this movie at TIFF. I picked up the Criterion 4K ages ago and finally gave it a spin. Wow, what a picture. The Sandman is at the top of his game here. Love how this film gets your blood pressure up so effortlessly. Even knowing the ending, the conclusion is no less shocking on repeat viewing.
Devil on Campus: The Larry Ray Story (2024): This is the Lifetime Movie adaptation of the story about Larry Ray, the maniac who started the “Sarah Lawrence Cult” out of his daughter’s on-campus apartment, then later in his Upper East Side pad. Billy Zane plays the titular Larry and my friends, it is something to behold. As the FBI raids his apartment at the end (it’s a true crime thing, this ain’t no spoiler), Zane utters one of the funniest closing lines to a Lifetime Movie I’ve ever heard.
Annabelle Comes Home (2019): In my quest to re-watch all the Conjuring films before catching Last Rites, I found out that this Annabelle entry is actually a back-door Warren tale, so I had to check it out. It’s like if they mixed Adventures in Babysitting into the Conjuring Universe. A teenage Judy Warren is babysitting a kid and Judy’s dumb friend accidentally unleashes the Annabelle demon from the Warren’s haunted museum room… all while the Warrens are out of town on business! Lol. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga bookend the film with a welcome appearance on both ends, but the film itself actually isn’t all bad. Dumb fun.
Smooth Talk (1985): A wildly good film featuring a heartbreaking Laura Dern performance and a supremely creep-tacular Treat Williams. Really dug this.
Tron: Legacy (2010): I had the bug after re-watching Tron for the show, so later in the night after we recorded the episode, I popped this on and it’s still such a wild ride. The story is whatever, but I forgive all of this film’s shortcomings because the vibes and the ride are top notch. The de-aged Bridges is unsettling, that needs to be said. That tech still isn’t great, so yeah, in 2010 it was rough.
Leatherface (2017): Similarly, after re-watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) for our WLM this October, I decided to go check out this prequel of sorts, as it was the only one in the franchise I’d yet to see. Man, is this ever dog shit. It’s directed by the guys who did Inside, so the kills are insane, but overall this is terrible. Lili Taylor as the mom of all these mutants is kind of just whatever in the film, but man, Stephen Dorff as this crazed Texas cop is a real scene. Ultimately, I’d say not to bother as this continues the streak of all but one Texas Chainsaw-affiliated sequel/prequel/remake being totally unwatchable.
Chris:
The Long Walk (2025): It’s well-made, well-acted, and more bluntly upsetting in its use of horrific state-sanctioned violence than I was expecting, but I still feel it’s too narrow to be much more than an admirable genre workout. I saw someone compare this to Punishment Park and while it’s not difficult to see why one would make this comparison, it drastically shortchanges the older and far-more daring film. The problem with The Long Walk is that it does not spur many questions, there’s no curiosity baked into the filmmaking and much of what Hoffman, Jonsson, and the rest of the superb cast do to make us think beyond the confines of the maddening titular “contest” has to do with the inner, intimate feelings of their characters. The fact that we get to know these boys before the military puts a bullet in their head for fun, profit, and patriotism only gives you so much if you don’t summon a similar interest in the details of the world or the system that governs that world to match it. The other most recent King adaptation, The Life of Chuck, had the opposite issue: the world is explosively curious and detailed but the characters, purposefully or not, seem slight and made primarily to interact with the unpredictable world than explore it all in conjunction. The Long Walk feels more complete and satisfying (in a laudably unsettling way) than Chuck because it’s more obviously connected with certain genre tenants, similar to the best recent King adaptation, Doctor Sleep. All three are superior in every way to those It movies and that all-but-buried Salem’s Lot remake.
The Company (2003): Despite being obsessed with Altman in college, I somehow never pushed myself to seek this out even when it came out somewhat nearby to good ol’ SUNY Purchase. Perhaps it was all too close to home, seeing as Purchase is well-known for their dance conservatory, but that doesn’t sound like me even when I factor in that I was drinking five-to-ten beers every other day or so. Regardless, it was stupid of me not to seek it out and I’m glad Criterion helped me rectify this blind spot because it’s fucking great. Neve Campbell has never been better than she is here as Ry, an emerging star at the Joffrey Ballet, which is being steered by the legendary Alberto Antonelli (Malcolm McDowell) as they prepare to mount a new experimental work about an enormous blue snake. Altman is known for his seemingly effortless orchestration of characters moving past each other and crashing into one another throughout a vast collection of oddballs and evened-out loners in some major city, and he transfers that talent to the stage without rendering this movie stage-like. The world itself seems smaller too, even with a thankfully mostly silent James Franco coming in as Ry’s new boyfriend, a talented chef, but Altman’s brilliant visualizations of the different dance pieces here, as well as the dramatic after-parties and exacting practice sessions, feels as rambunctious, funny, surprising and moving as Nashville, Gosford Park, and 3 Women. What’s been added to this, the master’s penultimate film, is an element of physical grace that I cannot recall ever being in any other film in his catalog and feels as elemental to Altman’s entirely unique view of the art of movement as the deflating humor feels essential to revealing the base, battered humanity of his characters.
Him (2025): I already can barely remember the contours of this fumbling attempt at Jordan Peele xeroxing, made far worse by the fact that Peele serves as producer here. Director Justin Tipping certainly has the talent to craft a few startling and unsettling images, but it doesn’t matter much when the script is this indecisive and turgid. The relationship between the talented young football star, Cade and Isaiah White, the NFL legend who is staring down the barrel, is the core of the film and there’s no attempt to render any part of it sincere. Instead, there is just constant, overblown depictions of pain, emotional and physical, restrained and buried until its dredged up and prodded until it erupts. I guess you could call it a kind of return? Of the repressed? The style and tone of the film is that of someone loudly and radically rewriting the book, but the bones of this thing are beyond familiar and the script never slows down enough to give us a convincing and consistent glimpse at who these two men are. And at the end of the film, we still don’t really know and I suspect that that was not the point anyone here was trying to make, at least so much so that he risked the comprehensibility of his film to make it.
Eric:
We have been so busy doing episodes and covering film festivals, there has not been much I watched this month that we haven't talked about on the air. Here's a few from the Toronto International Film Festival we didn't discuss, plus a Charles Bronson flick.
Junk World (2025): I did not see the first one of these but this was pretty cool. It's entirely stop motion and quite the technical feat. Directed and written by Takahide Hori, it explores the distant future and multiple dimensions. Basically the world is a trash pile (obviously) and the human government is at odds with some type of robot-race that clones themselves. There's a portal to another dimension. There's a friendly bodyguard robot that ends up a God to a different dimension. Really dig the time loops and weirdness of this one. That said, it suffers from Anime dialogue where every single time someone talks they re-explain everything you already knew.
Fuze (2025): This is a totally fine bank heist movie starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Theo James. Sam Worthington is farting around too. A crew at a construction site in London discovers a WWII bomb that's still ticking which sexy thief Theo James exploits to commit a bank robbery while the block is evacuated. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the military bomb expert called in to dismantle the bomb. The movie at the end of the day is just serviceable and okay because it thinks it's more clever than it is.
Borderline (1980): A very sleepy border patrol movie starring Charles Bronson. Its politics aren't pure right-wing trash which is shocking. 1980 was a different time, there was some empathy left in the tank. Bruno Kirby is a young agent sent in from New York, hence his funny voice, you understand. I like that it's explained away in a line like we're covering up Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent. Opens with the rare credit: Introducing Ed Harris. Towards the start we get Ed Harris vs Wilford Brimley, featuring a shotgun which was a delight. Extra half star for that scene.
Steve:
Relay (2025): This is a movie I caught at the end of August (in a theater with three other people) that I thought was cool enough that more people should check out now that it’s available digitally. A thriller about the lengths one has to go to to be truly private in a world where digital footprints are everywhere and just how insidious big business is in regards to whistleblowers. Riz Ahmed does really well here in a Conversation-y kinda mode, with Lily James and Sam Worthington (who I like these days) adding good supporting turns. Not revelatory, but a decent watch. Also, great on-location NYC and Jersey City filming, specifically right in my neighborhood.
Predators (2025): Sorry, this is NOT about hunting man for sport (although it kind of is). I caught this at Film Forum a few weeks back and it’s one of the better documentaries I’ve seen in a bit. Full disclosure: I’m usually watching Netflix true crime slop that barely qualifies as “documentaries” but still, the point stands. It does a great job of investigating the urge to publicly shame, and revel in that shame with some of the least sympathetic people on earth and on the other end, the dopes and creeps that showed up on To Catch a Predator in the early aughts. It’s much better than a “remember that old TV show?” doc, which you see a lot of these days. It’s well filmed, well presented, and presents a level of empathy that’s hard to replicate but difficult to ignore. A fascinating watch.
One Battle After Another (2025): Holy shit. Probably my favorite of the year thus far and it seems like that’s going to stick. Just an exciting, deeply funny, resonant film from Paul Thomas Anderson. That chase scene might be one of the best, if not the best of the millennium. It works because you sincerely care about the outcome and you care about the characters and the stakes. Speaking of the characters, Sean Penn is so goddamn repugnant it’s beautiful to watch. Leo is continuing this generational run he’s on by playing a dopey, loveable, overwhelmed activist dad, and he hits all those notes perfectly. Teyana Taylor lights the movie on fucking fire in the first reel and you are locked in as an audience member ever after. Chase Infiniti is so fucking likeable and sincere in this that she carries 80% of the emotional weight in every scene she’s in. Oh, and my beloved Benicio just does what he always does and hijacks your attention every time he’s in frame. I’ll likely be saying “just a few small beers” the rest of my podcaster life.
Absolute Batman Volume #1: The Zoo by Zack Snyder, Nick Dragotta & others: I’m going to go to Comic Con next week and I decided to try to see what the kids were reading. This was the book that everybody’s been raving about so I decided to give it a shot and the answer is…ehh. The art is absolutely gorgeous and BIG BATMAN is fun to read as an action protagonist, some of the action gets a little uber violent, but it’s certainly fun. The story, welp that’s where I have my issues. I guess I’m tired of these long running “Ultimate” style re-treads of established characters, especially Batman because how many different ways can you make an anagram of the established facts. Oh, ok, he’s lower-middle class in this one, that’s interesting. His mother’s still alive…sure, I’ll get behind that. He grew up with the Penguin, the Riddler, Catwoman, Two-Face, and Killer Croc and they had Stranger Things-esque sleepovers? Get the fuck out of here. Seriously, leave. It’s just incredibly not interesting and brings the book down whenever they show up as lil kids or as adults. Also no to edgy Alfred and the Batmobile being a goddamn dump truck. It’s a shame because the Black Mask plot is kinda cool and it would’ve worked well in an in-continuity story as opposed to setting it on Earth god-only-knows-what at this point.
PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND
Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from
Lemmy from Los Angeles, who asks:
“What’s the scariest scene in a non-horror movie you guys can recall?”
Andrew: The answer to this question is, and will always be: the dumpster scene from Mulholland Drive.
Chris: The obvious one is the basement scene from Zodiac when you start wondering if the man who voiced Roger Rabbit is in fact playing the Zodiac Killer. Very tense. There are sequences from El Sicario, Room 164 that still freak me out, all the more so because it’s just a guy in a chair telling the story of his life. Most recently, I have to go with Oppie getting interrogated by Boris Pash in Oppenheimer. I know the guy is a piece of shit and all but Casey Affleck really did unnerve me in that role and that’s not a feeling I often feel in Nolan movies and felt very particular to that film and what it was trying to get across.
Eric: There's so many scary scenes in non-horror movies. This is hard to narrow down. When I was a kid the Large Marge portion of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure was scary. As an adult, I guess the coked-out on the run from the helicopter scene in Goodfellas. It's tense and because I grew up in an isolated area, I assume everything is about me. Helicopter? Yep, it's after me. Car? They've finally found me.
Steve: I’m going to copy Eric’s structure and make this a two-part response. As a kid? Any scene in Tim Burton’s Batman with Jack Nicholson as the Joker. I remember being so excited watching that movie in theaters at five years old, enjoying the first few action sequences and when he changes just absolutely losing my shit. Specifically the scene with the joy buzzer, at that point I didn’t care how many Batmobiles and cool action scenes were coming, I wanted to leave the goddamn theater. As an adult? Honestly, the gambling sequence in Lost in America (1985), the idea of waking up in a hotel room to find out that you’ve been absolutely ruined financially for the stupidest reason possible (GAMBLING) is absolutely horrifying and Brooks and Haggerty play it perfectly. It plays right on that razor’s edge of horror and comedy.
OCTOBER SCHEDULE
Say what? The schedule in advance?! It's the least we could do! By subscribing to this newsletter, you get a sneak peek at what we're putting out this month:
October 7th – Needful Things (1993)
October 14th – Halloween (2007)
October 21st – Thirteen Ghosts (2001)
October 28th – Leprechaun in the Hood (2000) with James A. Janisse and Chelsea Rebecca
Patreon Episodes:
October 2nd – We Love Movies: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
October 9th – Once in a Lifetime: The Haunted (1991)
October 16th – MELR0210: 90210: “A Night to Remember” (s3, e27) Melrose Place: “The Doctor Who Rocks the Cradle” (s3, e12)
October 17th – Animation Damnation: The Toxic Crusaders: “The Making of Toxie” (s1, e1)
October 21st at 8pm EST – WHM After Dark: Come with your questions at the ready and spend an hour hanging out with the gang!
October 23rd – The Gleep Glossary: Warmaster Tsavong Lah
October 24th – The Nexus: TOSTAS: “The Slaver Weapon” (s1, e14), TNG: “The Mind’s Eye” (s4, e24)
October 29th – Scaredy Cats: Barbarian (2022)
October 30th – Friday the 13thmentary Part 2!
PATREON RSS BUG
If you’re having trouble with the RSS feed updating or episodes not appearing in your app, Patreon has acknowledged this bug and they have a fix: "Try unsubscribing and re-subscribing via your app by re-entering the unique RSS feed you were given and is on our Overview section of the Creator page. Or try using a different podcast app or RSS feed reader."
Please consult this page and contact Patreon Support if the problem persists. We apologize for any inconvenience you’ve experienced on Patreon and truly appreciate your continued support!
UPCOMING NEWS AND PROMOTION
In case you missed it we opened our Patreon Shop with our very first offering, our virtual live show from 2021 on Terminator: Dark Fate is now available for purchase! This is a killer show from the dark times and it’s safe to say we were still suffering from QUARANTINE MADNESS. If you missed it and always wanted to listen, here’s your chance! You get a new introduction recorded by us, the show from that night, and an audio file of the whole thing so you can enjoy the show again on the go!
On Screen Live has had some kick-ass episodes lately! We’ve had great dispatches from the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, covering all manner of yet to be released films! Subscribe on our YouTube Channel to never miss a broadcast!
We also have all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point. Eric has also put out great clip packages like WTF Exorcism with Marc Merrin, Dr. Loomis is the Worst Doctor, Dilf Den, George Bailey as Michael Meyers, John Wick-Mentary, Toby Jones in Bee Movie, Sausage Claus, David! Muppet Hitchcock Presents, and many more! You can also watch the entirety of our Witchboard episode! Complete with visual gags (most of which are almost funny.). You'll find all sorts of cool shit like Mailbags, VHS Trailer Games, Full Episodes like Rampage (2018), Any Which Way You Can, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Saw III. Like we said above, these are great for sharing and introducing folks to the show. There's so much content there we can't list it all here. Just go and subscribe already!
TJ Hooker…Is back! Join Eric and Ben as Sharon Stone shows up for a failed backdoor pilot! Listen here!
Please note that from now until at least the end of 2025, ALL PROFITS from our merch store store will be going directly to the Center for Reproductive rights! Shit’s bad out there and we know it’s likely to get worse and we want to do something, SO, If you're a fan of the show and a fan of looking sharp, you should check out our merch on our new and improved merch store on Dashery! We have some hot off the presses designs by Felipe Sobreiro such as the Barbarian logo from our upcoming Scaredy Cats, Too Old For This Shit and Sheenpril Logos as well as A Certain Fat Director enjoying his favorite film filter of all time! We also have "The DILF Den", and a "Crispy Critters" design from friend of the show, Nathan Hamill! There’s a ton of other great designs like The VHS Trailer Game Logo, Demon-o's Pizza, Egg Lawyer, The Order of the Boop, The Kornkast design and many more, with more to come!
That's going to do it for this month's Dispatch! Enjoy the Spooktacular!
Take it easy,
Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve
We Hate Movies
Comments
Paul
I’m hoping I won’t need to do this: I’m requesting the WHM gang do “One Battle After Another” for WLM during Listener Request Month.
Matt
Leprechaun in the Hood - we prayed for times like this and it happened.
