As part of When It Was Cool’s Hallowe’en Month, the pod looks at some of its favorite 1960s spy TV shows and what happens when they run into some creatures. Or do they? First, we have the Man from UNCLE and the second season episode “The Bat Cave Affair.” What is THRUSH’s “Operation Night Flight” and why does the agent behind it, Count Zark (Martin Landau using his Bela Lugosi impression 30 years before Ed Wood), seem to be dressed as a certain Transylvanian nobleman? Can Napoleon Solo (Robert

Don Fargo, Rip Tyler and Mike Diamond in “Rip’s Corner” from WOW TV. We have our first back to back guest, even though

With the recent passing of Jean-Luc Godard, we look at three French New Wave heist films: Shoot the Piano Player, Band of Outsiders and Le Doulos. We start with a very cursory explanation of the French New Wave, Cahiers du Cinema and the influence of Post WWII gangster films, what we would later call film noir: private eyes, trench coats and fedoras, femmes fatale, chiascuro lighting and so on. (Apologies to all my former film professor for some very brief oversimplifications.) Shoot the Piano

The Inspector and The Matzoriley Brothers, from The Great De Gualle Stone Operation. (C) 2022 MGM. In this episode, we look at what

We’re back with a new episode of The Plot and it’s back to the spies, this time in comic book form with two topics for discussion First up is Secret Six, the seven-issue DC Comics from 1968 and 1969. We look at the creation of the book, its fairly obvious inspiration (see Episode 1), the members of the team, their mysterious leader and an issue-by-story description of their missions. We talk about the book’s premature end, the unsolved mystery surrounding Mockingbird and how that was unofficially

We’re happy to welcome for the first time to the show, Kris P Lettuce (@krisplettuce), the man behind the Armstrong Alley You Tube channel. We discussed the treasure trove of found footage he has been posting on his channel featuring independent wrestling from the 1980s., 1990s and 2000s. First up, we talked about his channel and the origins of all this footage, including a subject we’ve been talking a lot lately on the show, tape trading. Just how big was the list of footage from which he was

We’re happy to welcome back Mike Sempervive (@sempervive) for another marathon pod. The main focus of the episode is the first Great American Bash in July 1985. We go over the show match-by-match, what was going on for each person at the time going into the show and where things were going after the show on the road to Starrcade 1985. We also talk about the other JCP show that night in Columbus, Georgia. There’s also discussion of both the magazine coverage of the show and the video tape, put

The Plot returns with a look at one of the greatest heist comedies in film history, 1951’s The Lavender Hill Mob., starting Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway. We discuss the film’s plot, how a mild-mannered bank clerk masterminds a robbery of an armored car full of gold. We also give some background on the film, Ealing Studios, some of the creators behind the scenes and its filming. We also give a quick shout to the new video game Card Shark, a tale of grifting and card cheating in

We’re happy to debut a new podcast series in conjuction with the When It Was Cool network with the first episode of The Plot. What’s that, you ask? It’s going to be an examination of the spy/heist genre. It will look at film, television, comics, cartoons and whatever else that can fall under that umbrella. First up, we go to the very top of the genre for me, the original Mission Impossible TV show, which ran on CBS from 1966 to 1975. Naturally, we start with the Pilot, which starred Steven Hill

We’re happy to welcome Karl Kesel (@karlkesel) back for his annual visit to discuss the latest Impossible Jones kickstarter. At the time of recording, there were two days left in the Impossible Jones / Polecat Kickstarter, which has been trying to reach its latest stretch goals in the final days. Karl tells about new character Polecat, what he has in common with last issue’s guest star Captain Lightning and some of the other new friends and foes in this issue. We also talk about the Even Steven

We have a very special show and a very special guest today. It’s our first on-location recording and it’s a big one. While going through Southwestern Virginia, I was able to stop and have a conversation with the legendary Hall of Famer, the Boogie Woogie Man, Handsome Jimmy Valiant.. We sat down ringside at Boogie’s Wrestling Camp to have a chat about a lifetime in the wrestling business. We couldn’t get to everything in his almost six decades career , but we talked about his early years in the

It was a bittersweet podcast to do, reliving the life and career of the great Gilbert Gottfried with Longbox Heroes’ co-host Joe Sposto (@joesposto). Most of our memories revolve around Gilbert’s 122 appearances on the Howard Stern show. We discuss our history of hearing Gilbert on the show and many of his famous incidents over the years: Dracula Gottfried, the Jerry Seinfeld voicemail, arguing with Amy Heckerling’s assistant and many more. We also go over many of his other credits: from

Moon Knight 24 cover by Bill Sinkiewicz. (c) 2022 Marvel. We’re happy tp welcome back Karl Stern (@WIWCool)

We’re happy to finally have filmmaker, journalist and author Greg Klein (@JYDbook) on the pod for a chat his new book, his old book and more.. To start, we discuss Greg’s new book, The Paper Tigers, a fictional account of a real-life incident in baseball history. After Ty Cobb was suspended in 1912 for going into the stands and attacking a fan, his teammates refused to play a game in Philadelphia, leaving manager Hughie Jennings to find replacement players. The novel tells the story of some of

We’re very happy to welcome back writer, comedian and podcaster Kevin Day (@kevinhunterday) back to the show to talk comedy, football and more. The reason we wanted to have Kevin back on the show was to discuss the British panel show on TV, following the death last year of Sean Lock. Kevin worked with Sean on a number of shows and has written for dozens of shows including Have I Got News for You, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Here Comes the Buzzcocks and many more. We talk about why they are

We’re joined on the podcast by Phil Schneider (@philschneider) from DVDVR and Segunda Caida to discuss his new book, Way of the Blade: 100 of the greatest bloody matches in wrestling history. We talk about how he came to write the book and some of the nuts and bolts behind it: how did he pick the matches to include and not include, wanting a wide geographical and historical spread without overloading one particular time and place and such. We talk about a good number of the matches in the book

We’re happy to welcome back Andre Segers (@andresegers) from GameXplain, depsite Nintendo doing one of their famous stealth drops a few hours before our scheduled recording time. We talk about that announcement, an update for Mario Karl Live, as well as some of the other games Andre has been playing recently. He’s been playing Mario Party Superstars just about every day with fans on the GX Youtube channel, so we chat about how that has been going so far, future additions and how conectivity has

I’m happy to welcome @karlkesel back to the show to talk about his newest Kickstarter project, Impossible Jones & Captain Lightning Team Up. With less than a week to go, Karl talks to us about the new project, the recently shipped Impossible Jones & Holly Daze Team Up, the creations of those characters and how they were influenced by his writing Harley Quinn, the creation of Captain Lightning, bringing childhood creators to life, the Ditko-like Even Steven and the back-up that will be written by

We had such great plans for episode 100. Unfortunately, life gets in the way sometimes. We had lined up a bunch of folks to discuss the night that changed Continental Championship Wrestling, when Robert Fuller turned on Bob Armstrong in a steel cage and joined the Stud Stable with his brother Ron and cousin Jimmy in August 1985. But, due to all the sad wrestling news from this week, we were left with the only piece of the show that was recorded before the deaths of Jody Hamilton, Bert Prentice

There were two choices for what to do for episode 99 - hockey or female spies, so we chose the latter. To talk about Agent 99, Mrs. Peel, April Danger and lots others, we’re happy to welcome back to the pod John Champion (@DVDGeeks) from the Mission Log Podcast amongst other shows. We start, of course, with Agent 99 herself, Barbara Feldon and Get Smart, including the start of the show, her role as straight woman/love interest, the evolution of the show , the 90s Fox sequel/revival and the Numb