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PODCAST

Multiplex Overthruster

Javier Grillo-Marxuach |Paul Alvarado-Dykstra | Bradley Dumont

Join two-time Emmy Award winner Javier Grillo-Marxuach (writer-producer of Lost, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, The Witcher and creator of The Middleman) and Paul Alvarado-Dykstra (co-founder of Fantastic Fest, the leading genre film festival in the US) as they travel back in time to revisit the summer movies that shaped their generation: movie by movie, weekend by weekend, and year by year. Starting with the legendary summer of 1982, movie experts Javi and Paul - aided and abetted by the

tv & film film history

All Episodes

2:31:00

Gremlins - Summer of '84

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2026/09/25

The cinema of the 1980s brought us many great showdowns: Kirk vs. Khan, Rocky Balboa vs. Clubber Lang, Tom Cody vs. Raven Shattick… and now PAUL VS. JAVI! And what brought these two to go toe to toe? None other than Joe Dante’s beloved Amblin classic Gremlins! Join us as Paul and Javi - refereed by the ever equitable Producer Brad - clash over this timeless phantasmagoria of small town Americana, par-for-the-course ’80s orientalism, and unhinged looney tunes puppet mayhem and ultra-violence. Find

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2:37:49

Conan the Destroyer - Summer of '84

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2026/08/11

All too often, nostalgia seduces us into remembering things better than they actually were. But every once in awhile, the opposite occurs, and we get to re-experience something that turns out to be far better than our memory somehow maligned. Listen as Javi, Paul, and the ever mystical Producer Brad return to the days of high adventure as their dread is transmuted into delight by the startling revelation that the Conan sequel does not actually suck, but is kind of awesome! Arnold Schwarzenegger

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2:00:27

Top Secret! - Summer of '84

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2026/07/27

Between the blockbuster successes of Airplane! and The Naked Gun!, Jim Abrahams and the Zucker Bros. took a more scattershot satirical turn with Top Secret!, which parodies everything from Cold War spy thrillers to Elvis rock and roll musicals to WWII espionage dramas to ’60s beach party movies to an entire flashback remake of The Blue Lagoon. Skillfully surfing these crashing waves of colliding genres is none other than an impossibly young, beautiful, and charming Val Kilmer in his film debut,

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2:32:01

Star Trek III - Summer of '84

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2026/07/17

They say the third time’s the charm, and if you’re Star Trek, the third time is all about the charm. The studio may have cut the budget and schedule to cash in on the success of "Star Trek II,", but when you have a cast that has worked together for decades - and a director who is part of that cast - the characters can’t help but come through, especially when they are all on a mission of friendship. Spock may have died in "Star Trek II," but the gods of retconning were having none of it, and so the

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3:03:14

Ghostbusters: Summer of '84

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2026/07/11

To this day - twenty-two years later - you can still walk into a room anywhere in the civilized world and shout “Who ya gonna call?” and get an emphatic hollaback of “GHOSTBUSTERS!” Is there more that needs to be said? Yes, there is. About three hours worth if you’re Paul, Javi, and the preternatural Producer Brad! For a franchise that has been rehashed, rebooted, re-animated, and spun-off so many times, the original still holds the power to provoke laughter, surprise, wonder, and, occasionally, a

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1:53:19

Streets of Fire: Summer of '84

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2026/06/01

In this gritty, neon-soaked, leather-wearin’, motor oil-stinkin’, rockabilly-singin’, pole-dancin’, pickaxe-swingin’ installment, Paul, Javi, and the tough-talkin’ Producer Brad travel to another place, another time to bear witness to a “rock’n’roll fable”. It’s Streets of Fire, one of the oddest mainstream summer movies of the eighties; a feature-length music video that is equal parts western, Road Warrior dystopia, Blade Runner quasi future noir, and Berlin sex club fashion show! It’s Diane Lane,

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2:07:21

Repo Man - Summer of '84 Spring Special #2

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2026/05/07

Imagine a dystopian America where authority is malignant, the profit motive rules all, everyone is on the grift, all goods and services have been devalued to the least of their utility and value, and the infrastructure has crumbled into a depressing echo of its former self… this morning’s New York Times? No! It’s Alex Cox’s punk rock masterpiece Repo Man! Made in that special time before John Hughes and the Brat Pack got their hooks in him, Emilio Estevez embodies youth in revolt as he teams up with

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1:46:29

Timerider: '84 Spring Special

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2026/04/30

What happens when a hard-ridin’, gravel scratchin’, manly-man motocross champ accidentally finds himself in the middle of a time travel experiment run by a private corporation unaware that they set up their equipment too close to a public rally race? What if our hero finds himself stranded in the old west with no way home? What if our protagonist never realizes he has traveled through time for most of his own story? Join them varmints Paul and Javi, guided through time and space by the Doc

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2:45:08

Never Say Never Again: Summer of '84 Holiday Special

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2026/03/13

Every once in a while, a loophole in time, space, and copyright law opens and spits out an object straight out of bizarro world. The summer of ’83 gave us an “official” James Bond film starring the well past-his-prime Roger Moore, and the fall of ’83 answered with NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN - an apostate remake of THUNDERBALL directed by the man who gave us THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and starring none other than Roger Moore’s also well past-his-prime predecessor Sean Connery! What could possibly go wrong

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2:00:30

Deathstalker: Summer of '83

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2025/11/14

The Summer of ’83 concussively concludes with a gloriously metal swords and sorcery adventure helmed by the 1st AD of The Beastmaster, and penned by the writer of Vampire Hookers and Rainbow Brite. Deathstalker, our morally messed up but oddly philosophical anti-hero, is sent on a quest by weird witch Toralva to unite the sword of justice, amulet of life, and chalice of magic in order to “become the power” before the evil Lord Munkar does. Join Javi, Paul and, intrepidly, Producer Brad on this wild

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1:58:24

Strange Brew: Summer of '83

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2025/08/22

Okay you hosers, so welcome to our podcast. So today we’re gonna chug a couple cold ones, put on our tuques and watch as comedy titans Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas take their beloved characters from television and comedy albums to the big screen in The Adventures of Bob and Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew! While it would have been perfectly acceptable for them to do their small screen schtick on the big screen and call it a movie, this ambitious duo instead decided to cast themselves as Rosenkrantz and

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2:13:40

Yor, The Hunter from the Future

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2025/08/16

Cavemen. Dinosaurs. Lasers. Robots. A mysterious medallion. A talking box. Choice meats! And oh that theme song. This barely begins to dip into the brain-bending fountain of wonders that is YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE. Javi, Paul and - intrepidly - Producer Brad have ventured to Yor’s World and returned forever changed by this Italian adaptation of an Argentinian graphic novel that was distilled from a four-hour television mini-series, and is criminally unavailable on any streaming service or

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1:53:17

Valley Girl

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2025/08/09

Behold the birth of the cinematic icon that is Nicolas Cage. Bask in the glory of his historic first on-screen freak-out. Witness his wondrous weirdness expertly unleashed by director Martha Coolidge, who made the most of a tiny budget, tight schedule, and tepid script to deliver a (sub-)cultural landmark by way of the Sherman Oaks Galleria. This week, Javi, Paul - and for sure, like totally, Producer Brad - pop their pastel polo collars as they venture valiantly into the strange suburban vortex of

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2:10:16

Risky Business: Summer of '83

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2025/08/02

Put on your Ray-Bans, rev up the Porsche, and crank up the Tangerine Dream! It’s time for the movie that made Tom Cruise a star, which somehow Javi and Paul had never seen! Listen as they, with the help of ever-patient Producer Brad, get past their preconceived notions and are rewarded with a teen sex comedy that has more in common with Blue Velvet than Porky’s. Suburban high school senior Joel (Cruise), afflicted with anxiety about getting into Princeton and left home alone by his materialistic

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1:37:02

Superman III: Summer of '83

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2025/07/03

You’ll believe a man can sigh as Supergeeks Javi, Paul and - indestructibly - Producer Brad discover the third time’s not the charm with Superman III, though it does offer one unforgettable high-concept scene (and a truly funny setup and payoff). Our hosts boldly bend format this episode by picking three scenes each to examine (one of which may or may not involve bowling vandalism via Super-sneeze) as they struggle to maintain their sanity against the artificial Kryptonite of this threequel’s

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2:17:56

Trading Places: Summer of '83

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2025/06/19

What happens when screen legends Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche play obscenely wealthy commodities brokers who wager on an insidious, impromptu nature-vs.-nurture experiment that subjects an unwitting Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd to radical reversals of fortune? You get an ’80s screwball comedy update of The Prince and the Pauper that also showcases the great Jamie Lee Curtis and Denholm Elliott, along with a host of amusing cameos by the likes of Al Franken, Bo Diddley, and Giancarlo Esposito, all

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2:29:17

Octopussy: Summer of '83

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2025/06/05

For decades, Javi has maintained that Octopussy is a vastly underrated and quite entertaining entry into the James Bond oeuvre… now listen as this belief crashes in a malestrom of flaming regret as Paul and the ever patient and understanding Producer Brad bear witness to the end of one of Javi’s most cherished delusions! Octopussy may have been billed as “James Bond’s all time action high” but in this clear-eyed rewatch, the Multiplex Overthruster crew finds that surviving the experience of watching

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2:02:21

WarGames: Summer of '83

Multiplex Overthruster ·

2025/05/29

SHALL WE PLAY A GAME? The Multiplex Overthruster crew has faced many dangers - wrathful space dictators, power-hungry fantasy wizards, horny suburban teenagers - but now they face their greatest challenge! Is it the artificial intelligence playing the titular War Games? Is it the military industrial complex that kept them in fear of the mushroom cloud for their entire childhoods… well, yes, it’s those things but it’s also (dun-dun-dun) NOSTALGIA! Marvel as Javi rediscovers his love for a

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