Ninety For Chill: The #Podcast...with @CatBusRuss

Episode 132: "Arena (1989)" - An Evil Penguin in Sloth's Corner & Raimi's "Doctor Strange"

”Arena (1989)” - An Evil Penguin in Sloth’s Corner & Raimi’s ”Doctor Strange”

Tues, Aug 8, 2023
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CatBusRuss returns to his blogging roots. This episode is dedicated to "Arena" from 1989. Our host wrote a review for this Charles Band produced feature back in 2019, and it caught the attention of one of the premier nerdy minds in the Champaign/Urbana metroplex, Tim Bates of Evil Penguin Games. Tim has had a big influence on his fellow retail geeks, like friend of the show Kodiak Thompson, by exposing them to media like the "John Dies at the End" franchise.
Tim and Russ have essentially been working together the past six years, but it was not until the CatBus shared his review of this feature on Facebook did the two expand their conversations from complaining about customers to movies. "Arena" was one of Tim's favorite movies growing up and at one time he owned a VHS copy of it. As for our host's relationship with the film, it took him 30 years to get around to it.

His fascination with gaudy, low-budget faire had only started in 2009. But he remembers growing up on early eighties "Star Wars" knock offs. Add in a tournament fighting element, and Russ wishes his cinema snobbiness had passed decades prior.

This is not to say that Russ has totally abandoned being a cinematic elitist. He still is a tired of a lot of big-budget studio films, but he knows dissing the mere concept of them may not be fair. Russ liked the first three phases of the MCU, so despite the fatigue towards the series, the fear of being too judgmental means he must continue with MCTuesday. For this installment, the feature he takes on is Sam Raimi's "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness".

Allow me to get out of third-person. Happy Prof. Shurtleff of Illinois Central College? I (CatBusRuss) will try not to make so much light of violent death in this summation. This is my declaration of changing perspective.

It is late. This time typing in the wee morning hours was not my intention. The podcast that this blog's title is based on is still five days from being released. I have just fallen into some strange circumstances, and prepping this blog just happens to be the best use of my time.

I am actually at my primary retail job. The shift leader who was supposed to be making sure the project team that corporate brought in was under the weather, so someone had to fill in. To his credit, he was here when I arrived after a five-hour shift at my secondary gig, I obtained a change of clothes, and picked up some dinner. What a trooper?

I feel like a jerk for not immediately crossing the street because of his dedication. If only I would have known that another member of leadership was not filling in for him, my instinct would have been to just leave one job for the other. The boredom would have been absolutely torturous after I got done with my morning duties that I "traded" shifts for. Sitting around listening to podcasts and not doing anything is only asking for me to fight off sleep.

And since the business is closed, I would be left starving. You cannot advertise that there are people working here, so ordering out was not going to be an option.

I suppose I could go and find some "Goo Gone" to clean up the tape from old signs, but I cannot let myself be the only one who does the unnecessary tasks in the place. Those tasks will probably still be done tonight anyway. There is probably three hours, at the very least, before the night ends, and this blog is not going to take up that much time.

Plus, writing this blog out kind of lets me feel like a bad boy. Blogging on the clock, we know where that got me with the former Marine Bank. You would think I had learned my lesson.

Speaking of lessons, if you have to bank with Clock Tower Community Bank and live in the Champaign/Urbana area, do so at the one located in the Shoppes of Knollwood (2229 S Neil in Champaign). It is best to avoid the two-faced management that may have been held over. I think I have seen Angie Zindar's van parked there whenever I am heading to Moe's or Slim Chicken's.

I usually use the past blog post as a template for the current post. This is where I throw out a pitch to be a guest on "Ninety For Chill: The #Podcast with @CatBusRuss". It seems like I may have a couple of guests lined up for August 22 and 29, but no certainty. If you want to be a guest on this podcast. October will be horror themed, so do not think that you need to rush to be on the show. Send an email with your requests/demands to russthebus07@gmail.com.

So what's been up since I last wrote? My trivia team, ~\?/~, had a respectable performance at #FreePubTrivia's Tourney of Champions in Chicago. Working two jobs with questionable air conditioning and lots of day drinking at that event resulted in exhaustion/dehydration puking, but the day was already a win, so I really cannot complain. The anecdote about the post event suffering is either for sympathy or schadenfreude, take your pick.

Otherwise, my time was dedicated to the past podcast, "Low Budget Movie Demons & Undead Angels". It was a fun(ish) assessment of my appreciation for no budget and exploitation cinema. "Killjoy" and "Terminator 2 (a.k.a. "Shocking Dark" and "Alienators")" were tough, but the shot on video "Zombie Apocalypse (2010)" and "Zombies Anonymous" were still worthwhile with these rewatches.

What I should have made time to rewatch was Kevin Tenney's "Brain Dead (2007)". I bring that up because my guest for this soon to be published podcast (speaking in past tense), is Tim Bates of Evil Penguin Games. We thought about covering "Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama" at the end of our "Night of the Demon's" episode. If we made that parallel, the horror humor of "Brain Dead" would have been a nice warm up.

But, "Ninety For Chill" is about worthwhile 90-minute movies (as my ad read from Chris Hardwick states). The best bet would be to cover the feature that I reviewed years ago that peaked Tim's interest, Charles Band presents "Arena".

We had a lot of fun chatting about this low-budget hybrid movie. It tries to capture the "Rocky" aesthetic, if it was the plodding Schwarzenegger in the Stallone role. The feature is a space opera, but feels like it is using decaying "Star Wars" alien costumes. This movie may have been released five years too late.

Studios would no longer try to make Lucas knock offs after the success of "Ghostbusters". No audience would come to see it in the cinema. But Band was releasing two movies a year, one for the big screen and one for VHS. This was definitely the latter.

This film was one of the last gasps from Band's original studio, Empire. Not even being 20 years into his financing career, he was still appreciative of great effort being put into the films he attached his name to. And it is that effort which makes "Arena" a fun B-movie that any kid could enjoy and any parent would find inoffensive enough.

Tim and I have a lot of fun with the mistakes that were overlooked. There is some great make up on a lot of peripheral characters, but the director must have needed to get the primary actors scenes filmed in short-time frames because some of the leads just have a single colored make up place over their face and told to show up on set.

There are a lot of shots where you see the puppet not working. If you can enjoy Ed Wood and the effort his players put in, you will forgive those scenes. And back to the make up and costumes, there are some great portions to most of the aliens. Too bad a slight turn will show you all the strings.

Most of our leads ended up working on "Babylon 5" or "Star Trek" shows, so they all know what kind of movie they are in. This means they all deliver the best performances you can expect for this flick. You cannot help but admire their efforts. With a simple enough story about a human trying to hang with the strongest aliens, it is just fun. If a sober watch fails you, try it high.

Since this episode has not been published, I have not watched "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" yet. My plan was to originally watch "Spider-Man: No Way Home", but I think my conversation with Tim confirmed that the story conclusion has no impact on the MCU and was just Sony's way out of being attached to Disney. If it is not going to be in the continuity of the MCU, I will not MCUNextTuesday it.

If "Strange" tells me to watch the "Shang-Chi" and the "Eternals", I will get back to them. It was C2E2's promotion of "Black Panther" and "Guardians of the Galaxy" that inspired me to return to this franchise, not new characters. Perhaps, I'm too old for this shit.

Which of course leads me to mention ThePoeticCritic. She wants these films to end, so she thought Screen Junkies' Honest Trailers should set me on the path to see the films she does. I do not think it worked.

Follow me on Twitter @catbusruss. If you want to be on the show, contact me on Twitter or send an email to russthebus07@gmail.com. All we need is a theme, movie, director, or actor and a focus on sub 100-minute material. As long as the credits start before the 1:39:59 mark on the runtime bar, the movie qualifies.