This week, the B-Movie Boys travel to Eternia… and then immediately right back to suburban America… to break down the 1987 fantasy adaptation Masters of the Universe.

Dolph Lundgren is He-Man. Frank Langella is Skeletor. Courtney Cox finds a synthesizer that may or may not control the universe. There are laser guns, foam rocks, multiple rubber-suit henchmen, and a villain performance that goes way harder than the rest of the movie deserves.

We dive into toy-line economics, budget gymnastics, earthbound fantasy compromises, and what happens when Shakespearean villain energy collides with mall parking lots.

The Schlockometer is deployed. Eternia is judged. Skeletor absolutely does not phone it in.

Tear down the good. Celebrate the bad. Good Journey.

Mentioned in this episode:

1. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
2. Cannon Films
3. Mattel
4. Gary Goddard
5. Superman
6. Star Wars
7. Flash Gordon
8. Rocky IV

Our Links:

1. BMovieBoys.com
2. Official Discord
3. Patreon
4. Facebook
5. Instagram

Incoming transmission. Incoming transmission. Let's boogie.

Welcome to the B-Movie Boys, where B Movies get the love they deserve and the respect that they don't.

I'm Dave Michaels.

I'm Bryan Betz.

And this week on the program, we are talking about a very different type of B movie.

Yeah, I have a question, Dave.

Yeah, buddy.

How does one decide what is a B movie and what is just a poorly received, eventually cult movie?

For this one, you gotta look deeper. You gotta kind of look at the making of the history of. It's not a B movie on the surface by any means.

This is a B movie with an A movie costume on it.

I almost feel like it's an A movie that became an honorary B movie.

Is there a difference?

It's one parading as the other. And maybe we'll figure it out.

Gary Goddard.

I'm gonna give him a fucking. He deserves a fucking for this.

I feel like we should have. We should have. This is our first hint of the B movie ability of this, of this film.

Because Gary Goddard has created such television shows as Captain Power, Mega Babies and Skeleton Warriors.

Duh.

And I don't know those shows, but based on the titles. That's some B movie territory.

But Gary Goddard also has a really fascinating career. Mostly after this. But there's some befores. It's mostly after this. I think we'll get there. No, he deserves everything he gets. We'll get there.

I don't know what that means, but.

It'S a good one. Weirdly, I don't know why I worded it that way. Like I phrased. Okay, this motherfucker is going to get his come up. He's going to get what he deserves.

He thinks he's the master of the universe. He's not even the master's own domain. He'd be the first out in a masturbation contest with his friends.

Just turn into the Hulk for some reason.

I don't know why either. Lou Ferrigno.

Yeah, brother, this guy's getting what? Everything that comes his way.

It's fine. Lou Ferrigno's never going to hear this.

Oh, I meant Hogan. The other Hulk.

Somehow going to hear it less.

Neither of them will hear it.

Bryan, have you ever seen Masters of the Universe?

No, I have never seen Masters of the Universe. I'm actually not even very familiar with he man and the Masters of the Universe. The property, the lore, the. The background.

This is like an earlier in the 80s thing. And I was. I was just a wee lad in the 80s. I was a baby boy.

Well, we came along in the late 80s. He man was kind of out already.

Yeah. This is an existing property for my entire life and one that I never really paid a lot of attention to except for the memes.

I'm there with you where, like, I feel like, yeah, of course I know he man. You know, like she.

Right.

You know, like, maybe I don't know because I can't even think of him right now. I didn't grow up with he man same.

But I feel like if I did, it might have made this movie even more fun.

Or more infuriated. Depends. If you ask.

Why don't we get into this thing with a schlockometer and determine whether this is a B movie parading as an A movie or an A movie parading as a B movie.

You're saying that either way, there's a costume on this movie?

Oh, yeah. This thing is not pure of heart.

I know. No, I think this is such an interesting thing to dive into because this has all the DNA of a B movie except for the finished product.

All right, our schlockometer starts off the category the Audacity. And before we can do that, we need to talk about what this movie is about.

Skeletor, a skull faced warlord on the planet Eternia, takes over Castle Grayskull and traps a powerful sorceress in a force field that slowly drains her energy. But slowly. Is it slowly at all? Is it slowly?

It doesn't seem like it's happening that slowly. It's like by the time the moon rises, your power's gone.

It's gone. But also, how long does it take the moon to rise?

I don't know what the days are.

Like on Eternia, which makes the stakes pretty darn arbitrary.

How many tech runs. Is that what they called it?

Chromas, I think they were called or something like that?

Yeah. I don't know. 0.6 until the moon rise.

Either way, when the moon does rise, Skeletor is going to absorb all the power of the universe and basically turn himself into. Into some sort of God looking thing. Donald Trump's version of a God. Just by slapping gold on something and saying it looks cool.

Gold leaf Skeletor is my favorite. Skeletor.

Oh my God. Careful with this one.

Meanwhile, he man and his small group of allies rescue an inventor Chaos Muppet named Gwildor. Looks like A furry little dude.

It's pretty much just like Hobble Hoggle, whatever it is in Labyrinth.

Oh, yeah.

But with like, maybe one extra chromosome or one less. I don't know. It doesn't have the right amount.

It's somewhere between him and the Lucky Charms Leprechaun.

Right. It's somewhere between Eli Manning and Payton Manning.

So Gwildor created this MacGuffin called the Cosmic Key. It's a gadget that opens portals to anywhere in the universe by playing specific music tones.

It's the reason Skeletor was able to invade the castle in the first place.

It is not too far removed from something that Bill and Ted would want.

Oh, yeah. They would definitely take some sort of excellent journey to retrieve one of these.

Bill and Ted as Doctor who's. Why is that not a thing?

That's a fantastic question. That should be a thing.

It should be a thing. Why are we not creating the things? Why are other people who are stupider than us creating the things?

If we're just gonna keep reusing the same stuff, combine some fun stuff, put.

Things together with other things, make those things coexist, crossover. But also, don't make it a crossover, just make it its own new thing.

Still one of the older things inspired by the other thing.

It's gotta have the bones, the other thing. But it can't go the whole way to the other thing.

Right. Because then you're wearing a skin suit of the other thing. Nobody wants that.

Except in a Doctor who episode. You definitely want that.

You do want skin suits in Doctor who.

Ah, this is complicated. How can we get this made? Also, Keanu Reeves wearing a skin suit of someone else. Like a Face off style type thing. I want it. I want it now.

I'm into that. Very much so.

I recently watched Face Off. If you want to just watch one John Woo movie to understand John Woo, watch Face Off.

Face off will do it every time.

Our heroes, they're going to try to storm the castle and save the Sorceress, but Skeletor's army is too strong.

Got those, like, 10 of them, dolphin shaped heads.

They are dolphin shaped, but also they're robots.

Bottlenose robots. Because Mattel was like, hey, we can't have our hero killing people.

But also, this is the Star wars of the 80s, so we got to make them look like that too. Oh, God.

Dilemma robots solve all the problems.

They do.

Unfortunately, in this movie, our heroes, they're forced to escape using Gwildor's prototype key, which yeets them to a mysterious barbaric planet called Earth.

Oh, the suspense you held off there.

Welcome to Earth.

Welcome to Earth. Where they put their meat on these weird white sticks.

That's two fried chicken movies in a row.

Kind of crazy.

Is this a trope?

I hope so, because I love fried chicken.

Do you think we're gonna find out next week?

Oh, I hope so, but we don't know what we're talking about next week yet, so.

No, we still don't. We have no idea. I'm terrified to see what it's gonna be.

We kind of had fried chicken in the first episode too. I mean, it wasn't chicken, but there were birds on fire.

A lot of birds on fire.

I'm confused that Teela knows what meat is, but she's surprised that it came from animals.

Keep in mind Gildor talked to a cow.

You're right. Thinking too hard about it. Once again, this is one of those.

Movies you just gotta suspend it all. You have to. You gotta turn it off. Logic. You're not welcome here, buddy. You get the out.

Absolutely.

You enjoy the ride, but you get the out.

When they land in California, they lose the cosmic key. Two teenagers, Julie with the dead parents and her musician boyfriend Kevin, find the key.

Oh, the way you just said Julie with the dead parents was like a Ted 10, 220 AD while we had.

A baby eats a boy.

God, you just squeezed in Julie with dead parents.

Julie with the dead parents. That's her name, isn't it, Mom?

Have a date with Julie dead parents.

Kevin is a musician and he thinks that this device is some kind of weird synthesizer. And he starts fiddling around with it as you do.

We should have learned from the who's Tommy album fiddling about. It's not good. Don't fiddle.

Especially if you can see and can hear and are smart.

But is Kevin any of those things?

Well, meatloaf math. He can see and he can hear. That's two out of three. It ain't bad.

It ain't bad. It's 100% reversal on a Helen Keller. So that's something else to think about.

Aren't most of us.

I don't know. I'm kind of stupid and she was kind of smart, so she's got me there.

All right, that's fair.

Do you ever think about someone like a Helen Kelly? You're just like, what the fuck am I even doing?

Absolutely.

Yeah. The one that always gets me is when I'm doing the dishes and I'm sitting there going, just like. There's only so Many hours in the day. God damn it.

This is taking forever. I'm sure Mark Cuban's not doing his dishes. And I don't know why I often think of is the Cubes doing this.

I feel like you might have just changed my life forever.

Why?

Because now I'll never do the dishes without thinking ever again. Without thinking about Mark Cuban and how he's definitely not doing his dishes right now.

And he has all that extra time because he's not doing the dishes. But also he might be doing the dishes. He also seems pretty down to earth. I don't know.

It's hard to say.

Kevin's gonna fuck around with this weird thing that he found in a cemetery as you do by fucking around with it. He sends out a signal that alerts Skeletor to their location.

Skeletor is just gonna send his right hand woman, Evelyn, and a group of armored spirit Halloween henchmen to Earth to get the device back.

It's his plaything. He wants it back.

I love Skeletor and I'm not afraid to say it.

Skeletor. Frank fucking Langella is acting in a completely different movie from everybody else.

He is, but he's also having the time of his life doing it. Oh yeah. He's looking at this thing as someone who's going to eat all of the scenery, but also do it in the most professional manner you possibly can.

Which is crazy when it looks like you're just wearing a rubber mask.

He did this almost full method.

That's wild.

He approached this like he would a Shakespearean play, as he put it, where the robe that he picked out for the costume, it had a flow a certain way or it wasn't going to work for his Skeletor. He took this so seriously. I love what he's doing in this movie and I love this scene, especially because Evil Lynn is just sitting next to him being.

Being his little right hand woman there. And then she speaks up and he says, okay, you go to Earth dead because you said something. Go put your money where your mouth is.

I'm gonna stay here if I have to go there. You're gonna regret it. Probably more than they will and they're gonna regret it. I love the way Skeletor approaches this entire movie.

Skeletor's a badass and he's absolutely stealing the show.

Looks like shit.

Yeah, he's like the anti Dolph Lundgren in this movie.

Dolph Lundgren, that is a man molded out of fucking. Just pure sex.

Molded out of sex. That sounds like item description from Goop.

Careful. I didn't look. All I'm going to say is careful.

I didn't mean to invite that. My bad. So the henchmen get their asses kicked by he man and they report back Skeletor straight up disintegrates one of them as punishment.

And then he sends them back to Earth with evil Lyn and even more troops, making it clear he's not messing around.

But also, he's still kind of messing around.

He is doing a little mess around. If he was really, really serious, he'd go himself.

And I love how we as the audience know he's going to go by himself at some point in this movie. I mean, of course this movie is just a constant wink, ding to the audience the entire way through. If you just let it all go.

Enjoy the ride and you will have a ball with this movie.

Turn your brain off and just have fun.

And the movie's about to get more fun because back on Earth, a local detective named Lubeck, James Tolkien, slacker Principal Slack Strickland from Back to the Future, he is back at Whittier High School. I can't believe it either. But he starts investigating the strange explosions and chaos that are going around in this town.

He confiscates the cosmic ray from Kevin, thinking it's stolen property. That Evelyn and the Henches. It's a great bad name. Evelyn and the Henches. Great bad name.

They're going to capture Kevin and they're going to use a mind control collar to force him to talk. It's like cosmic waterboarding.

Cosmic waterboarding with a lasso of truth wrapped around your neck.

Which actually, actually, actually this movie's got everything, man.

Absolutely everything.

You know what it's missing though?

What?

A music store.

You know what, it's funny you say that because he man and friends rescue Kevin and and track everyone to a music store where a huge laser blasting fight has broken out.

It's totally different than Blues Brothers in that music store.

It is very different. Because of the lasers.

I was more thinking because it's like an opposite of a Ferrigno with a Ray Charles. So right now we have a hear no evil, see no evil situation going on here. Evelyn finally retrieves the key through some shape shifting.

She kind of just doesn't kind of. She turns herself into the dead mom that's being.

You can't do that to Monica. I mean Julie, I mean the girl.

From the Bruce Springsteen video. That's all she was at this time. When Courtney Cox got cast in this movie. It was a good music video. Don't get me wrong.

But how is she still the girl from the Bruce Springsteen video? Even today, we know exactly what we're talking about.

That is pretty crazy. There's still time to be discovered for something completely innocuous.

Can I tell you the weirdest thing about this entire scene?

Of course.

How so?

Eva Lynn turns herself into dead mom in order to draw out the woman character in order to capture her damsel in distress. We all know how that works.

Yeah.

Holy shit.

Which features Dick Van Patten drawing out Princess Vespa.

Yeah.

That is interesting. I'm going to disguise myself as your parent. You're going to come out and say hi and give me the thing I.

Need and I'm going to take you. And now that is that. And that's that. There you go. The more you know do, do, do, do.

So, yeah. She gets back the cosmic key and opens a portal so Skeletor himself can arrive on Earth.

Skeletor is going to Thanksgiving parade float himself through the streets of whatever city. This is usa.

So good. So good. So Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade of him.

There's a hundred percent less Goo Goo Dolls though.

There is 100 less goohoods.

That is a band that is strictly built for the Macy's Day Parade now. Just like Rockapella.

Yeah.

Skeletor's gonna capture he man and he's gonna take him back to Eternia. Julie just gets hurt and all that's going on. Julie's really stressing Kevin out. It's so appropriate. I love it.

Moonrise finally is gonna happen in this movie. Even though it feels like it took no time at all. I don't know how chromas work. But that's how the good guys talk and the bad guys talk.

And it is some sort of measure of time that is not explained. It might as well be the metric system.

It is either imminent or very far away. Until it's not.

That is the most hopeful and bleak thing I've ever heard in my life. Time, man.

We don't know.

But now that the moon has risen, Skeletor absorbs all the energy of the universe. And he becomes so powerful that he gets a costume change. And becomes gold. Now.

Now he could sell an extra toy.

And he declares himself the master of the universe.

That's the name of the movie.

It's not.

You're right. Because of pluralisms.

Because Skeletor, he's gonna try and force he man to kneel and mit defeat. But Gwildor and Kevin are like, now we're gonna fix this cosmic key synthesizer thing by rocking out with our. I don't wanna. I don't wanna say it.

It's too.

It's not that type of movie. Oh, you guys have music on your planet. We watched this thing all together during a good old fashioned schlock hop.

And we were all waiting for Dolph Lundgren meat to just hang all of us.

We were forgot that this movie's rated pg, apparently. Then again, back then it didn't really matter.

Didn't matter at all. You can hang some dong, get away with it. You can hang dong in a PG.

Movie if you're Dolph Lundgren. Dolph Lundgren can do anything he wants except speak English.

He can do almost anything he wants. You're right.

Kevin manages to play the exact musical tones needed to open the portal back to Eternia. And Lubic is going to get dragged along for the ride because he was about to arrest everybody. And it takes a whole chunk of the wall.

Which made me very happy.

He's a very good cop and a very bad cop.

He is the perfect movie cop.

I feel like this is the type of cop who would teach kids dare. He's like, listen, drugs are bad, but they're also really cool. Be safe about it.

Okay, guys, there's a time and a place for everything, and it's called college.

And now here's Sex Ed.

There's a time and a place for everything, and it's called college.

And here's driver Zed. Yeah, this is all one week of high school. Probably the same teacher. All three zives.

And he speaks in the third person, which is a fun little character quirk.

He talked about a stick shift. They didn't talk about a stick shift. They didn't talk about a stick shift. And it was all three different categories. I'm so confused right now.

You got to take better notes.

Skeletor celebrating becoming the master of the universe. But the good guys arrive and there's gonna be a final battle that just erupts.

And all the words I just put together weren't even cool sounding at all. And yeah, there's so much cooler than anything that happened in this Movie.

They were fighting on Earth. Now they're fighting in this room that's supposed to be Eternia. Gary Goddard, Gary Goddard back in the.

Day, New Jersey Devils Martin Brodor Kick saving a beauty. Gary Goddard this entire movie. Kick save at a beauty.

God damn it. We're gonna finish it.

One way or another, we will get there.

Evelyn is bummed out that Skeletor's not sharing his new powers with her. Cuz like she was right there with him the whole time and he's like, I get out of here. So she orders all of her troops to retreat.

That's not good news for Skeletor. Even though he is the master of the universe, with all the power ever.

In existence, he somehow has all the power of the universe. But if he doesn't have his army, it's difficult for him to fight against he man who does not have the power of the universe anymore.

I don't know how this works. We're not supposed to think about it.

But he man has a sword. Yes.

He gets his sword back and he has the power.

And we only know that because he says, I have the power. I love this movie so much, man. It hurt like to watch how much I loved it.

It's one of those movies where there is a pre Masters Universe part of my life and now there's going to be a post Masters Universe part of my life.

And I can't wait. Yeah, it's. Oddly enough, the whole time we were watching it, it was giving me Flash Gordon vibes.

Both because it's almost exactly like Flash Gordon, but also because I knew that there was no going back to my life before it.

The biggest difference between Masters of the Universe and Flash Gordon is Masters of the universe is about 100, 150 times less horny.

Approximately a hundred times less horny. And about seven years is the difference between them.

He man. With his powerful sword, he breaks Skeletor's power staff and throws him into a deep pit. After Skeletor tries one last sneaky little attack.

So we just return to the Jedi Palpatine to get out of this movie.

Yep. Apparently all the power was concentrated in his staff. That was a poor choice.

And you know, he lost the power because all of his gold and shiny armor disappeared.

It changed. Another costume change back to his robes. I love that you can tell how much power he has based on what he's wearing.

The sorceress is freed. She heals Julie. The earthlings return back to Earth. But.

But Julie wakes up on the morning that her parents were supposed to die in a plane crash because she's been sent back in time. And I didn't even know they could do that.

I didn't either. But let's talk about this plane crash.

Plane crash that Julie thinks is her fault.

How is it her fault? Her dad was the pilot. We learn that now.

Yeah, she wasn't even there.

Also, what type of plane is this? This is a very modest house.

I guess in the 80s if you had a modest house, you had enough money for a plane. A little Cessna, I guess.

I mean, I do see that in a lot of pictures from the 80s. Like, oh, Cessna costs like five bucks, right? You can buy one.

Yeah, I bought this house for like a grand, so why not?

Fuck old people, right?

Minimum wage is gonna be the same for the next 20 years. Might as well spend it while it's worth something.

911 wasn't even their 9 11. JFK was holy. They can't relate to us at all and we can't relate to them at all. So stop fucking trying. We're different.

This is a weird way to rage at old people.

What a weird place to do it.

I can't believe you finally snapped in Master the Universe. Because the dad shouldn't own a Cessna.

The dad had a Volvo in the driveway. There's no way it's a Cessna parked at the old airstrip.

He had the Cessna because he had a Volvo in the driveway.

That might be it.

He could have spent that Cessna money on a bigger house and a better car, but he chose the Cessna. He didn't go to Starbucks once a week.

That's what it takes to buy a Cessna. That is the first tip on every money saving thing is. Hey, do you really need that coffee? Yeah, I fucking do. Yeah.

It's the only thing making me keep this car on the road and not in a ditch.

Julie gets upset at her parents, says, don't get on that plane. She takes her dad's plane keys and leaves the house and they can't get on the plane and I guess live.

I guess so. I didn't realize that time travel was an option the entire movie.

Time travel would have been a real easy way out of all of this.

Yeah.

Also, what is any of this? So does any of it matter?

Does it matter? I don't know.

Kevin's gonna show her a magical souvenir to Prove their adventure really did happen. And that is Masters of the Universe. It ends on such a high note.

Oh, that wasn't a dream. Oh, wait, there's a post credit scene.

More. I couldn't believe it.

It blew my mind.

It's Skeletor popping up from the pit and all he says is, I'll be back. I'll be back. I got like end game level chills watching that. And there's no reason I should have.

I was like, I need Masters of.

The universe 2 now and I'm not gonna get it. Which is a shame.

No, and we'll talk about that too, I'm sure.

The audacity.

They wanted to make a he man movie. It had to be super toyetic and it was based on already a toy franchise.

And it's important to note it was based on the toys, not on the TV show.

Yeah, it really should have been.

But I think this movie is what absolutely torched the line.

I guess sales had started to dip while they were mid production.

And Mattel threw a Hail Mary with this movie by making all these rules saying, we want this movie to be made. We're teaming up with Cannon Films, which is how you know you're in for an absolute treat.

Oh yeah, it's gonna be great.

But they seemed to the can of films because they wanted to make a blockbuster to reinvigorate the toy line.

From the team that brought you Superman, the Quest for Peace, how do we.

Look at the Audacity? Do we look at it as a he man movie? It kind of is.

It's a. It is. I mean, yeah, it's a he man movie. It is a major toy license at the peak of its popularity. Is that audacious?

It's not audacious.

But what Gary Goddard had to go through to get this thing made is in terms of the story, this is a he man movie that does the old fish out of water trope to make it work. We'll get there. 4.

I can live with a 4. It feels high because I don't think there's much audacious.

I thought it felt low. I don't know why. Oh, I can't explain why I felt that. It just felt it.

My gut four is where your gut went and mine is lower. My gut is feeling. This is maybe like a two or a three even.

I'm okay with a three.

I feel like that's probably. We're gonna have to settle.

Let's settle. I'm okay with that. Just like Julie did for Kevin in this movie. We'll settle.

Yeah. Kevin.

She could add He Man. I'm just saying.

She could have. And also, we took he man, the giant toy property and mythical warrior and turned him into hey, these teens are gonna hide you from the cops.

And that's the movie.

Pretty much. Yeah. That's the movie.

Three for audacity. But let's talk about the heart.

The heart again. It's a movie about teens and franking He Man.

Wow. When you put it that way.

But also, it's not because he man is trying to stop Skeletor. Skeletor's trying to get to Earth, even though he's also not. Skeletor's just flexing for an entire movie.

Skeletor just wants to take over Eternia and in turn, the universe. He wants ultimate power, but the problem is that he man can stop him. So he needs to stop he man first.

Do you think it's appropriate for us to be talking about the story for the heart of this movie, or do you think we should dive behind the scenes a little more? Because the entire movie happens behind the scenes. What you see this movie on screen is nothing.

That is the smallest fraction of what this movie is.

The finished movie, the final product, is a documentary of its own making. This is truly a documentary, its own making. The making of Master the Universe is bat shit crazy.

The hoops they had to jump through for this to even be completed is insane.

And I think the craziest part of making this movie is that this movie exists because of Spider man, which makes.

No sense, but I love it. I love it so much that Spider man gets to have a piece of this story and then not exist for many more years.

Golden Globus of Cannon Films fame. They had the rights to Spider man in the 80s.

Yeah.

And they did not want to make the movie because they wanted to create more money for themselves to make the Spider man movie the right way. So they decided to make a Superman 4 instead.

They took the budget for Spider man and spread it out amongst Superman 4 and Masters of the universe, thinking both would be hugely successful, and then they could just take that money and make their Giant Spider man movie.

And keep in mind that they did this before ever shooting a frame of film.

That's just smart.

It's not at all smart. They pre sold the movie before anything was shot.

And that was what Canon Films was famous for, was getting the budget for these movies by pre selling distribution. They sell something that doesn't exist.

They thought eventually they would have the money to, you know, make it all.

Okay, but they never even intended that because Mattel put up half the money for this movie, and then Cannon Film said, we don't have the money. So Mattel had to say, okay, we'll put up the rest of the money. Also, Gary Goddard, director. Fuck, what do we do?

Absolutely insane. He didn't even have a second unit because the budget was so tight. So everything in this movie is shot by Gary Goddard.

And they went with the fish out of water trope of putting this thing in modern California instead of showing Eternia because it was just matte paintings. Just because of the budget. Welcome to the B movie part of this movie.

It allegedly has a $22 million budget, but I don't know that they ever saw any of that money.

I don't know if they ever did.

But when you look under the hood of what this movie is, you had crew members working for free with just hope that they will get paid for that day's work. Gary Goddard, the director, literally telling crew members, hey, you're supposed to get paid by the end of the day. You're here already.

Don't get upset. How about we just work the day? We're going to send this producer off to get your monies. You're here already. Please work, please, please work, please.

And they did.

Yeah.

Directing's a lot more than what you just see on screen.

Very much so.

I'm going heart.

I'm going with, oh, this is actually tricky because there's so many angles to look at this thing from, because there is the Mattel side, there is the Cannon film side, there is the Gary Goddard side.

There's also the Frank Langella side, There.

Is Frank Langella's side. Gary Goddard gets an 11, Frank Langella gets a 10, Cannon Film gets a 2. Mattel gets a 2.

So that averages out to. I'm not actually gonna do the math, like a seven.

I'm fine with it. I don't think that's the average at all. Felt right, though.

I don't think so either. But I like it, damn it.

I like it, damn it.

The next category is technical incompetence.

There is nothing incompetent about this movie.

No, this is a pretty well made movie, actually.

Especially when you consider that they were literally putting lens caps on the cameras at a certain point of the day because they were like, we don't have money to shoot more film.

They literally shut down production mid shooting day by standing in front of the cameras. To which director Gary Goddard said, are we just shut down for the day or. They said, nope, that's a wrap.

And Gary Goddard said, well, we don't have an ending. And that's how he ended up shooting handheld on a black screen. I have the power scene, this battle between Heman and Skeletor.

It looks this cheap because it's that cheap.

It is that cheap. And I think that's more for low budget ingenuity. Technical incompetence. I'm not seeing it. I think this is a very competent movie. Zero. Straight up.

Zero.

I'll go one because I like Damn it. And I wanted to score points.

Okay, well, how about this? The score, yeah, is very good, but definitely ripped from so many different places.

We'll get there.

All right, so let's go with a one for technical incompetence.

Oh, it's a shame whenever movies are really well made because this is to not. Even though it secretly is.

We just scored this, by the way. More incompetent than Deathbed the Bed that Eats.

I can't believe it either. Right?

Low budget ingenuity.

I have to go huge on this thing.

Creativity in the face of zero money. And like we just discussed, Gary Goddard fucking full send on this.

This is a $22 million movie. That sounds like a lot of money.

And it is, especially in 87.

And don't get me wrong, it is for a He man movie. What they were trying to do, it is not even close to what they needed.

No, no, especially because they didn't have half of it until were almost done shooting and the whole thing is just a mess.

Well, you had Mattel putting up half the money and then you had Cannon Films literally running out of money during this production. Yeah, the company making the movie ran out of money.

Well, they thought they were going to make more money from Superman 4, so they used the Spider man money and got him a little bit farther. But no, Gary had to shoot the end of this movie on his own.

With his own money.

It's insane.

This movie shouldn't have to go like this. This is a Big property that they put to a bunch of exploitation filmmakers because that is what Canon Films was.

They took advantage of whatever was hot at the time and tried to turn off whatever they could as fast as they could, as cheap as they could. Yeah, they got their hands on some big properties and they fucked it up.

Against all odds.

Gary Goddard had to finish this movie without any money and he had to make it make sense. And he did. I'm going with a full blown 10.

Full 10. This movie would not exist if not for him finishing it on his own with his own money. So, yeah, that's 10.

The movie had so little money from Cannon Films that Cannon Films started taking down sets mid production to save money.

To which Gary Goddard then had to angle the cameras to hide the spots where there's no sets and order bigger and more matte paintings to cover the spaces. How did he pull this off?

I don't know. I remember watching that final fight going like, this is an awful lot of close ups and quick shots. And it makes sense when you find.

Out why I always tell you whenever you have a close up, it's because they're hiding something when it doesn't feel necessary.

Yeah. And here they were hiding that they didn't have a set.

How about that? And I like the way that he kind of like buried it in there. He's like, no, it's because, like, they have the power.

It's all the power in the universe is condensed onto them. It's the one single light. It's like, no, it's just a key light that you have there. Like that's nothing.

It's just the lights that you still had. No, it's because they're the only ones with the power. 10 for low budget ingenuity. Next category, Genre exploitation.

It's canon films. It's exploitation by default.

From the rip, we're already exploiting something.

They tried to make Star wars with a little bit of Flash Gordon thrown in. I saw somebody call it Star wars for jocks.

No, that's Flash Gordon.

Exactly.

He's literal jock. He plays for the New York Jets. I understand this, they're barely athletes, but still it counts for genre exploitation. Full blown 10.

So 10. I feel very exploited. The next category is the Holy Trinity. Blood, boobs and booms.

We don't have a lot of blood. We have blood. It looks like garbage, though.

There might be blood, I guess.

Yeah, no boobs.

Absolutely not.

We got booms.

We definitely have plenty of them. Lots of them. Pretty good ones.

Ah, this isn't even like meatloaf math. This is like Bat out of Hell, part two, where you have, like, the one good song. You're like, yeah, we'll wait for it.

1993 meatloaf. This is what we got.

I kind of want to go like two.

Well, I feel like we need to give it at least three for having the booms.

That's fair. You're right.

That's a third of the Trinity.

It's a third of the. We're figuring this out.

Chill out.

It's a work in progress.

All right, three for the Holy Trinity. The next category is memorable characters.

There are so many.

Jesus Christ, Gwildor, Gwildor, Gwildor will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

The replacement for Orko.

Oh, yeah.

A little floaty guy.

He's got, like, a shadow for a face with just two eyeballs.

Yeah. They said that was too hard. So let's go get the Hoggle Hobble bastard from Labyrinth, too. We could do Hoggle.

That's his name. Yeah.

I don't even know if that's it. I just.

I think it is.

David Bowie's bulge is really distracting that movie. It's really hard.

That is the star of Labyrinth.

That is. Do you think that any time Bowie, he would look the woman in the eye, just go, good journey.

Good journey.

Or is that more of a lungren thing?

Oh, man.

I don't like to think of Grace Jones accepting a good journey after she's about to go for a lungren ride. I don't like that.

Wow. There's a lot happening there, for sure.

No, it's a lot of skin. Skin.

Yeah. It doesn't feel right to cap it off with a good journey.

Memorable characters. I'm never going to forget this movie ever in my life.

No. Frank Langella. God damn it.

Franklin Dell doing Shakespearean Skeletor. Yes, please.

Good luck. Jared Leto.

Jared Leto has no chance, even though. Does Frank Langella have an Oscar? He got nominated for an Oscar. Frost. Nixon. But I don't remember if he got it.

And that's also kind of funny how he played Skeletor and Richard Nixon.

What a combo.

Some would say he feels typecast as the bad guy.

I'm okay with an eight for memorable characters. I almost want to go higher.

I do, too. So what do we do? I don't know what to do.

We both want to go higher.

This movie. I love this movie.

I think we go higher.

Yeah, I'll go at 9. I don't think it's a 10.

I agree. I don't think it's perfect.

And it's strictly because I had to Google a couple names already.

Next category is quotes. Good Journey.

Good Journey is one of my favorite quotes that's ever existed in the history of anything.

It was so much fun. We were doing our good old fashioned schlock hop. Every time they said it, everybody that was there watching the movie would also say it in the chat.

It is infectious.

It is infectious and wholesome, and maybe that's what the world needs more of. Maybe.

I think you're right. Are there any other memorable quotes?

Lubik has a really good line that I can't think of on the spot. That's not good for Lubik.

He does say Lubik a lot.

He loves saying Lubik a lot.

I feel like there should be more that I remember, but it all comes back to Good Journey.

Good Journey carries at least a five on its own. That's a great line.

Yeah. And I know Frank La Jella had a really good line, too, but I can't remember what it was.

Something about is the loneliness of being a hero the same as the loneliness of being a villain.

That is a very good line. It's very like Rucker Hauer Blade Runner, like Tears in the Rain that he.

Was bringing something next level to this.

Bringing the heat. He cared. His son wanted him to take this movie because he loved he man. He's like Skeletor. All right, I'll do that. Hell, yeah, that's fine.

It's funny. He says that this is his favorite movie he's ever done. And then Dolph Lundgren says it's his least favorite.

So how crazy is that, too? But Dolph Lundgren also said he'll come back for a cameo if they ever ask him.

Well, yeah. Money, please, Dolph.

Hunger. Doesn't need it. He is the most fascinating man in Hollywood. Hard stop.

I'm having a hard time coming up with a counterpoint. So, yeah, I'll allow it. Dolph Lundgren, most fascinating man in Hollywood.

If you don't know why either, go listen to our Punisher episode we did on the Gate podcast from a long, long ago. Or Google. It's worth a Google. Dolph Lundgren.

It's worth it.

Very much. Worth A Google 5 for quotes. Yeah, I'm all right with that.

All right, next category is entertainment value.

10.

10.

I had a ball watching this Thing and I watched it again twice.

The plot makes as much sense as you remember the first time. You have just as much fun though too though. It's a perfect movie. Really excellent.

Final category is cult ability.

This is an incredibly culty movie.

I completely agree. Even in the experience we had with just Good Journey, it was immediately it felt like we were in a moment together.

We were all doing this thing and I could see how it could definitely scale.

But this was a $22 million movie. It only made $17 million in the box office.

Yeah, it's not ideal.

Critically, it's a 21% of Rotten Tomatoes. Only a 41% for the audience. And yet.

And yet the story behind Masters of the Universe, a lot of people know because it's that famous of a what went wrong story.

Yeah, I'm surprised that I haven't come across like a Fantastic Four Roger Corman style documentary about it.

I'm a little surprised about that too. There's a ton of small little vignettes and stuff like that all over YouTube. You can find anyone talking about this movie was involved with it.

They will all talk about it. It's crazy.

Maybe we need to make our own documentary.

We might need to make our own schlocky better. That is a fantastic idea. Cult ability. This thing is through the roof in my mind.

Yeah, I agree.

This is Flash Gordon levels. This thing should be midnight movie levels. I'm going with a 9.

I'm happy that you didn't say 10 because I would have to talk you down to a 9. It is not a 10, but a 9. I agree with not a 10.

Unfortunately not a 10. I love this movie, but I wish it was a 10. I want the score as high as it possibly can.

I want it to be a 10. But yeah, a 9 is is most appropriate.

Now, before we started actually scoring it, I asked about is this a A movie parading as a B movie or a B movie parading as an A movie? And I decided amongst me, myself and I, that if it scored below a 50, it's an A movie parading. If it scores above a 50, it's a B movie parading.

And we gave it a 67. This is certified B movie.

This is a B movie. This is another level of B movies. And I think that is so friggin cool.

It really Is there's a lot of different ways to achieve B status.

In the old days, it used to be that you were just the second movie of a double feature. There were certain B movie crews that were part of these giant studio systems that would make these movies. And it evolved.

Once we got into the home video, once we got into the midnight screenings, once we got into these art house eccentrics, it evolved.

And in the 80s, you start to see these projects that look like a movies, but when you just dig a little bit deeper, just scratch that surface and see what's cooking underneath, you see that it's a B movie the entire time. The DNA screams B movie. I love that so much.

And the final product, as much as it looks like in a movie, you can feel the bones. You know, at some level, what you're watching is. Is not a full budget production, but God damn it, is it fun.

67 is the ultimate meatloaf math of scores too.

I can't believe it.

We did it. Six, seven.

Oh, he's bringing it back. Or letting it die. I'm not sure which direction it's going yet.

Beating that dead horse.

You might be watching six, seven. And like, it's mid life Benjamin Button moment right here. I'm not sure which way it's going. Quite.

This is reaching out from the grave trope.

Can I tell you some other cool things that Gary Goddard did?

Yeah, absolutely.

Because this is really the only movie he ever directed.

That's unfortunate.

It's not okay, because Gary Goddard is famous for a lot of other reasons. Gary Goddard has directed and designed some of the biggest theme park attractions around the world. Really? Jurassic park, the ride.

Terminator 2, 3D, battle across time, Star Trek, the Enterprise, Fantasia, Jaws, the Amazing Spider Man At Universal Studios, he did the James Bond 007. Like the thrill, the man has done a ton of things that you all know and you never knew.

Very cool. You know what? I'm happy for him that he found his niche.

You know what? I don't have a problem saying this, And I hope Mrs. Goddard's listening. Gary Goddard fucks.

Gary Goddard fucked. I have sat on many of that man's rides and enjoyed myself a lot.

And now that everyone knows that Gary Goddard fucks, it is time for us to pick our next movie to talk.

About our next thrill ride, if you will.

Bryan, we have no idea what this is going to be.

No clue.

We have a list of RB movies. There's a whole bunch of them. They vary in when they came out, budget, genre, exhibited. They're all over the place.

They contain multitudes.

I think maybe the best way for this to work this time is just for us to throw our list of movies into ChatGPT and let it pick this time until we figure out a system that's going to work a little better.

Yeah, let the AI choose for us. I'm into that.

So I plugged in our first three episodes into ChatGPT to let it guide where the discussion's going to go in terms of B movies. And it said birdemic. It was the incompetence that was what made it the B movie deathbed.

It was that outsider art, eccentric feeling that made it the B movie masters of the universe. It was that prestige that wasn't. That was the movie. And Chat GPT said, hey, those three are great.

And the logic progression is to talk about a transgressive underground B movie. Okay, yeah, we're letting it pick. It makes sense to a robot.

If the robot says it makes sense, then the ones and zeros add up.

Oh, holy shit.

That is jah.

What a pig.

Fucking waters. I can't wait.

That feels like a big one. So that's exciting.

It is an intentionally offensive movie. I cannot wait.

But until then, you can find us in all of the places that you expect to find us. Social media, your podcast feed, patreon. Patreon.com katepodcasters keeping that thing floating.

I can't believe it either.

All sorts of content on our Patreon actually, that spans a multitude of shows and ideas. I'm sure we'll just keep adding more interesting things to it.

Patreon's kind of our idea just to have some fun, to try new things out and see what works, see what doesn't work. And just if we want to talk about something, we're going to talk about it.

It's like our test kitchen.

It is, but without the. What is it?

23 flavors.

What is it? What is it?

Bobby Flav? 47 different ingredients.

47. I'm so I cut it in half and I'm. I apologize to the entire Flay family. Jesus Christ.

We also have a discord where we do our good old fashioned schlock hops on the weeks that we record. We screen the movie and we chat it up while we're watching it. And it's actually a really good time and a great way to actually digest these films.

It's a lot of fun just enjoying these movies with other people. It is a great time.

It's a really good way of kind of faking that theater environment and having a collection of reactions.

It's important live. You don't realize how important is to have until you're doing it.

Absolutely. You can also send emails with suggestions, comments, questions, all that.

You can send them to bmovieboyspodmail.com and we will read your email and might even read it on the air.

Probably will.

Honestly.

We're likely going to do that. Everything you guys say is interesting and if it has Cars, the Pixar movie, you got my attention for sure.

Absolutely. Still trying to figure out that universe never will.

Going to keep questioning it. Don't know why I'm not worrying more about my actual universe that I still don't understand either.

These are all existential problems that I'm going to have to address on my own. And that's fine.

Yeah. Also, be sure to rate review subscribe all that good stuff so we can get in front of more ears. I always want to say eyes, but it's ears.

I know that we have been around for a long time as other podcasts and stuff, but this is a new podcast. Rate review subscribe. It helps us an absolute ton. Please, please, please immensely. Be cool. Help us out.

Yeah, be cool man.

Just be cool. Bryan, you got anything else?

That is it for me.

But until then, in the immortal words of Dolph Lundgren's he man, but without all the strange accents so you can.

Actually understand it ADR later with his actual other words, good journey. The B-Movie Boys is a MacGuffin Media Network podcast hosted and produced by Dave Michaels and Bryan Betz.

Edited by Dave Michaels Social media support provided by Micah Perdue. Visit bmovieboys.com for more.