Episodes

  • C2E2 2026: Super Mario Body Horror with Geena Davis & "Aliens: Resurgence"

    C2E2 2026: Super Mario Body Horror with Geena Davis & "Aliens: Resurgence"
    Apr 1 2026
    CatBusRuss & ThePoeticCritic survived another Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo. Perhaps this was achieved by effectively staying out of each other's hair. Maybe it was getting the convention's celebrity sound bite from Geena Davis on DAY ONE. After that, could he really be let down?Well, the White Castle on Cermak and Wabash tried to put a damper on that, but when you have your big sis giving you the time to chat about their convention experiences, the Stevens siblings are unstoppable.ThePoeticCritic seemed to be up in Chicago to focus on making sure her boyfriend had a good time. She did not check out any celebrity panels on day one, but day two she checked out Christopher Eccleston. At the same time, CatBus was checking out Elizabeth Olsen's panel. He had seen the Ninth Doctor at Chicago Tardis while this would be a first with an Olsen sibling. She is in the MCU, so did we get any "Doomsday" spoilers? Lets just say, there were no fan questions.The other celebrity panel he checked out was Martin Sheen & Dule Hill's "West Wing" Reunion. It was fun to hear about Martin passing on his wisdom and his Lawrence Fishburne handshake to the younger actor, and he made sure the audience was with The No Kings protests in spirit. Russ thinks that was his way of apologizing for perhaps inspiring the current orange twat-in-chief with his performance in the "Dead Zone".If there was a decision that Russ may have regretted, it was skipping the Charlie Cox & Krysten Ritter panel to check out Trisrex Studio's showing of their fan film, "Aliens: Resurgence - For the Hive". Russ's fear was, as a critic, he would have probably gotten a better narrative from the cast of "Daredevil: Born Again", but that would deny him the chance to see pure, unadulterated passion that an aspiring fan could put out in 40 minutes.The only panel on Day Two that the siblings attended together was for Svengoolie and the Sven Squad. It was fun honoring the finest horror TV hosts, but Russ may have had more fun at the educational panel hosted by "Femmes Reading Filth" about what is needed for excellent, erotic fan fiction.As for Day Three, the highlight for Russ was handing out the "I (Cannon Group) Crazy Flicks" buttons to the Channel Awesome team. Hopefully, telling them about all the previous media he has purchased from the guys over the years would provide forgiveness for not granting them his patronage. (They should have brought more stickers.)ThePoeticCritic did let her younger brother know he may have missed out on the "Jurassic Park" reunion with BD Wong, Wayne Knight, and the grown up grandchildren. Russ told her if he could not pick Wong's brain about "Men of War", he did not miss much.If there was any problem that truly came to bug our host, it was that watching that short film meant his Letterboxd resolution to 15 documented films was broken. But, since its broken, he decided to post a review for 2023's "The Super Mario Bros. Movie". Did this pump him up for the sequel coming out today, or does he continue to stand by 1993's "Super Mario Bros."?If you need to pick a winner, try a flavor from Doich! Snacking Dough. It is cookie dough with more protein, less sugar, and none of the eight major allergens. Our host is not a cookie fan, but this stuff taste great and leaves you feeling full quickly. Follow the link below to save 20% on your order and give the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough a try.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://snwbl.io/doich-foods/RUSS76280
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    1 hr and 21 mins
  • C2E2 2026: Day 1 - Geena Davis, Movie Arguments, and "Blood for Irina"

    C2E2 2026: Day 1 - Geena Davis, Movie Arguments, and "Blood for Irina"
    Mar 28 2026
    Thanks to ⁠ThePoeticCritic⁠'s beau, CatBusRuss managed to actually get a pass to all three days of C2E2 2026, so he got to plan on how to approach the convention and get the right amount of sleep. There were not many celebrity panels that he was interested in for the first day, but Geena Davis made the struggle to find the new main stage worth it. Our host is so on the ball that he even got to get a question answered from her.For the sound bite, the con may have been made for him. But I Dig Crazy Flicks is recognized as a business, so networking should be the focus of this excursion. Thankfully, Facebook actually let a post from Chicago Podcasters Unite! to show up in his feed. Russ hopes he has made some new digital radio friends. When one of them is up for chatting about "Six String Samurai", a lot of promise for future guests is what he left with.It also lead him to check out a fun educational panel from Lit-X. "The Learning Dead: What Zombie Stories Teach Us About Education" was the best panel the group has demonstrated since our host had been attending them. Were we celebrating the idea of an apocalypse? Per chance. We all agree that it is better to be ready for that than a Lake Michigan Tsunami.Speaking of disasters, that may be what the rest of the panels led to, but in a fun way. Russ's recent sobriety allowed convention goers to leave unharmed after some of their opinions at Channel Awesome's "Movies Everyone Disagree on with You" panel. As for "Hear Me Out: Smash or Pass", CatBus cannot help but feel like an outcast for not wanting to shag Tony the Tiger while being McCurious about the Grimace.This weirdness seems to be an appropriate place to post his review for Chris Alexander's "Blood for Irina". Russ purchased this film from the editor of "Delirium Magazine" back at last year's Indiana Comic Convention. He meant to post this movie, that is better than its IMDb rating, back in Octorber, but it definitely did not deserve the attention over "Sinners".What also deserves attention is Doich! Snacking Dough. It is cookie dough with more protein, less sugar, and none of the eight major allergens. Our host is not a cookie fan, but this stuff taste great and leaves you feeling full quickly. Follow the link below to save 20% on your order and give the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough a try.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://snwbl.io/doich-foods/RUSS76280
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    57 mins
  • UI-Con 2026: Ninety For Chill in (Aeon) FLUX with Andrew Tiede

    UI-Con 2026: Ninety For Chill in (Aeon) FLUX with Andrew Tiede
    Mar 25 2026

    CatBusRuss and Andrew "Couchman Bakes" Tiede, knew that UI-Con was primarily an anime convention once they walked into the Illinois Conference Center at the iHotel, but their first of three panels that Friday demonstrated that the crowd may not have that much love for flesh-and-blood, English language-focused conversations. Perhaps they will color their hair or at least get some kawaii wigs for 2027.

    This was essentially the first empty room for the "Ninety For Chill: The Panel". A situation like this does not really affect an underemployed pro-wrestler and an aspiring comedian. They have both performed in front of smaller crowds. If anything it was educational to the crew from the convention who would walk in and take pity on the two. The staff was provided a demonstration of how to roll with the punches. And it let Andrew practice his crowd work.

    "Ninety For Chill" was what "I Dig Crazy Flicks" evolved from. Russ believes that a movie should be no shorter than 70 minutes and no longer than 100. Andrew is just a few years behind our host age wise, which still places the two closer to 50 than hopeful. So they both grew up squeezing four films on one SLP VHS tape. Despite similar Midwestern upbringings, the Couch Man's past of doing three-hour podcasts based around movie marathons with Russ led him to open up with the thesis, "Perhaps Russ is wrong".

    Andrew brings up history to demonstrate Russ maybe too narrow minded, but can you win with guy whose Mom insists he should have been a lawyer? Nine hours of putting up with the CatBus to discuss "Tombstone", "The Thing", and "From Dusk Till Dawn", he was going to try.

    To get you into the mindset of CatBusRuss, our host has attached a review for an under-appreciated attempt to capitalize on the early aughts trend of bad ass heroins in sci-fi with the Charlize Theron starring adaptation of MTV's "Aeon Flux". He enjoyed it, but is a live-action remake of a cartoon something you want more than 100 minutes of?

    A way that you can be a winner is to give Doich! Snacking Dough a try. It is cookie dough with more protein, less sugar, and none of the eight major allergens. Our host is not a cookie fan, but this stuff taste great and leaves you feeling full quickly. Follow the link below to save 20% on your order and give the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough a try.⁠⁠

    ⁠⁠https://snwbl.io/doich-foods/RUSS76280
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Underwater (2020) & Michael Biehn vs. The Academy

    Underwater (2020) & Michael Biehn vs. The Academy
    Mar 18 2026
    CatBusRuss will occasionally bring up the fact that Harrison Ford does not have a lifetime achievement academy award. He does not work as much as Samuel L. Jackson, but he has as many Oscar nominations. Another actor who deserves similar recognition to the man who brought life to Han Solo is Michael Biehn."The Terminator", "Aliens", "Tombstone". Those three films alone should make us wonder why the radar barely picks up this actor's efforts. So our host is going to do his best to make those blips a bit louder.Mentally, it has been a rough week for CatBusRuss. He is making his best effort to find a guest(s) for his panels at Missouri Comic Con (Springfield, MO, April 11 & 12). There are job interviews that technology seems hellbent on derailing. Trying to be a gym rat takes up a good chunk out of his times. Needless to say, the results at the Academy Awards did not need to be so off the mark."Kpop Demon Hunters" was the best animated feature of 2025? That is probably the worst decision since "Frozen" winning the award in 2013. But after enjoying "Wish", Russ cannot declare that. He needs to watch the Nordic fantasy to be certain. But he has already watched 15 films this month (like the prior two).There are video games to be played. "I Dig Crazy Flicks" is not paying the bills yet, so he need not be obligated to watch another 15 movies per month. If he must watch a movie, why not the only Michael Biehn/James Cameron collaboration he has yet to see, "The Abyss"?Because Russ started this podcast as "Ninety For Chill", 2 hours and 20 minutes is far too long a runtime. Fortunately, this episode will still give you aquatic sci-fi. Before we get to some Biehn flicks, CatBus provides us with a review for the 2020 Kristen Stewart feature, "Underwater".Once he concludes this placeholder for Cameron's under the sea film, this episode has reviews for Biehn flicks from the past three completed decades. Hear about him as an amnesiac assassin in 1991's "Timebomb". He provides great support to Sean Patrick Flanery in the 2006 vampire comedy "The Insatiable". And Russ provides a review of his grindhouse-inspired, directorial domestic feature debut, "The Victim" from 2011.Is Michael Biehn the Harrison Ford of genre cinema? That sounds like a pretty cool title to bestow on him. Perhaps that is better than any statuette.As for other rewards, CatBusRuss discovered Doich! Snacking Dough. It is cookie dough with more protein, less sugar, and none of the eight major allergens. Our host is not a cookie fan, but this stuff taste great and leaves you feeling full quickly. Follow the link below to save 20% on your order and give the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough a try.⁠⁠https://snwbl.io/doich-foods/RUSS76280
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    39 mins
  • B-Fest 2026: Too Many Pirates, Too Many Ron Perlmans, and ThePoeticCritic

    B-Fest 2026: Too Many Pirates, Too Many Ron Perlmans, and ThePoeticCritic
    Mar 11 2026
    CatBusRuss and ThePoeticCritic conquered another B-Fest. If you had to endure "A Gnome Named Gnorm" after watching at least 11 movies in 20 hours, you would definitely feel like you earned a win. For our podcast host, it was seeing "Demons" on the big screen for the first time (and a blu-ray of "Best Defense" that no one else claimed after the raffle concluded). For his sister, it was just further cementing the friendships the world wide web has provided her (and probably further bashing her younger sibling's appreciation of "Disney's Wish").When the CatBus arrived back in Morton, Illinois on Sunday, his father asked, "How was the festival?" He told his dad that, "The movie qualities were lesser, but the reactions were greater." To which he responded, "So, bad movies, good times." As long as you get the latter, the trip to Northwestern is worth it.The two siblings both agreed that B-Fest is a harder habit to break than tattoos. If you enjoy your first lock in at the Norris University Center, you will be back every year. It takes at least two ink appointment before you insist on using your skin as canvas. This is cinema heroin, but there are times that feel like movie-house fentanyl.Like Russ jamming himself into roller skates to once again introduce "Plan 9 from Outer Space" and "The Wizard of Speed and Time". He did not fall which is what his big sister feared, but when he got to see one of his childhood favorite space operas, "The Ice Pirates", he realized he over thought his presentation. But the sores in his toes were worth realizing that this early Ron Perlman film is damn near perfect, at least for B-Fest with its skates and blacksploitation. This is one he and his dad will probably try to sneak on for his little sister's kids."Voyage of the Rock Aliens" checked off the other element that makes for a great B-Fest, a kaiju (and lovable monsters like Michael Berryman).As for films that required drugs to either enjoy or forget, the "24 Hours of the Best of the Worst Movies Ever" had them. The two siblings debate whether or not the biggest Australian bomb, "The Pirate Movie", had anything redeeming about it. Should Russ regret not watching the Yuletide Nazi Elf movie "Elves"? Were too many household pets maimed in this marathon? Were Clint Howard and Alfonso Ribeiro's fates too gruesome or too funny in "Arachnophobia" knock off "Ticks"?There were some definitive crowd pleasers. We cannot call them art, but Bruce Lee's battles with other pop culture icons from "The Dragon Lives Again" and the absolute insanity of the elevator horror feature "Down" have to be seen by all cinephiles to grasp what B-movies can be truly offer.As for other offering, CatBusRuss discovered Doich! Snacking Dough. It is cookie dough with more protein, less sugar, and none of the eight major allergens. Our host is not a cookie fan, but this stuff taste great and leaves you feeling full quickly. Follow the link below to save 20% on your order and give the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough a try.https://snwbl.io/doich-foods/RUSS76280
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    1 hr and 54 mins
  • CatBusRuss & B3 Podcast Present: James Whale's Monsters & Tubi's Nanoshark

    CatBusRuss & B3 Podcast Present: James Whale's Monsters & Tubi's Nanoshark
    Mar 7 2026

    With B-Fest occurring this weekend (March 6 & 7, 2026), CatBusRuss feels there can never be too many monsters to chat about around Northwestern's annual event. So he reached back in the original "Ninety For Chill dot Com: The Podcast" feed for his first conversation with the crew of the B3 Podcast. Rae and Ween join the then Cool Movies Darth to discuss James Whale's most famous monster features, "Frankenstein" and "The Invisible Man".

    Since ThePoeticCritic was on the most recent episode of "I Dig Crazy Flicks", and CatBusRuss will be chatting with her about B-Fest 2026 for the next canonic episode, our podcast host decided that there needs to be a little more variety when it came to the voices on the feed.

    Russ and the duo of dames from Cleveland have a conversation where nothing is off limits, so this will be a longer episode, and perhaps a bit raunchy. It is from a time where the three "B's" stood for something, so you may want to brace yourself for the next two and half hours.

    To honor his friends from the Buckeye state, our host decides to try "Tubi or Not Tubi". He may have cheated since he always meant to get around to this Z-budget "Fantastic Voyage" X "Jaws" feature, but "Nanoshark" may serve as further evidence that cheaters never prosper.
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    2 hrs and 19 mins
  • Criterion's "Kpop Demon Hunters" v. Chris Benoit for the Hall of Fame

    Criterion's "Kpop Demon Hunters" v. Chris Benoit for the Hall of Fame
    Mar 4 2026

    CatBusRuss and ThePoeticCritic get ready for B-Fest 2026 by having a conversation about an overblown b-movie premise, "Kpop Demon Hunters". The feature is about to get a blu-ray release. Our host does not have an issue with that. What he takes issue with is that it gets to hold a spot in the Criterion Collection.

    Russ would refer you to Screen Junkie's Honest Trailer for this feature to support his argument. His big sister thinks its okay to let Netflix have its fun. And then she suggest that it will get the Oscar for best animated feature, which that leads to CatBus on a it would be better for Chris Benoit to be in the WWE Hall of Fame rant.

    This conversation also serves as a birthday gift for TPC's little brother, so she seems a little more patient with his controversial takes. She provides a means of reason, but how can she deny the damage this fad of a flick will cause. Kids will just throw around copies of "Kagemusha", "Killers", and "Koko: A Talking Gorila" to fight over the tale of Rumi, Mira, and Zoey".

    At least the other animated features in the Collection are further away in the alphabet. Films like "Fantastic Planet". This may have been one of the first Criterion blu-rays he had purchased, but he thinks there is a particular mood one may need to be in to watch a French film that has a trailer with gives off "Mad God" vibes. To be done, done, done with the Huntrx, the mood has been found.
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    47 mins
  • "Subway" to GalaxyCon's St. Louis's 1985 Action Movie Triple Threat with Nix Eclips

    "Subway" to GalaxyCon's St. Louis's 1985 Action Movie Triple Threat with Nix Eclips
    Feb 25 2026
    Like the "Great American Bash" in the late eighties, "⁠I Dig Crazy Flicks⁠'s" 1985 Action Movie Triple-Threat Match: Stallone v. Arnie v. The Cannon Group (⁠Dudikoff⁠, ⁠Bronson⁠, Norris) continues its tour. It had arrived at GalaxyCon St. Louis on October 12, 2025. ⁠CatBusRuss⁠ was joined by ⁠Nix Eclips⁠ of ⁠Cinema Shitshow⁠ to determine who was the TRUE action hero of the last year where an action film could be violent just for the sake of it.Arnold "John Matrix" Schwarzenegger left GalaxyCon Des Moines winning his first "1985 Action Movie Triple-Threat Match". No one left ATL Comic Convention's Triple Threat with their hand raised, but it was determined that two of the Cannon Group's heroes fell to Sylvester Stallone and The Governator. (It was also determined that Chuck Norris left unscathed as per the rules of the Internet.)Saint Louis was a fun environment. They had their own candidates of who was the baddest, the meanest, and the master. CatBus left the city that he has an unspoken rivalry with (Go Cubs Go!) knowing that perhaps "The Last Dragon" Taimak's Converse's should be kissed.Russ will be heading back to Show-Me State for another edition of this cinematic brawl. To be prepared for the Missouri Comic Con in Springfield, he is looking for other action flicks from 1985 that he may have missed. This led him to continue filling his Letterboxd with Christopher Lambert movies."Subway" was sold as such. It was Luc Besson's sophomore feature effort. He would be the director of "Lucy", "The Fifth Element", and "The Professional", so that would lead one to believe that this would be action-packed cinema. What is certain, it fits his Cinema du Look aesthetic.
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    58 mins