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Talking Pondo: Once Bitten and Ed Wood
Description
In this episode, Marty gives Clif the film Ed Wood to watch and Clif gives Marty the film Once Bitten to watch.
This week, Marty and Clif kick things off with Once Bitten (1985), an early theatrical starring role for a young Jim Carrey. A vampire countess needs the blood of a virgin to preserve her youth and beauty, and high schooler Mark Kendall might be just the guy she's looking for. What follows is an '80s teen sex comedy with fangs, a prom-night dance-off, questionable jokes and enough period-specific weirdness to fill a time capsule. They look back at the movie's familiar coming-of-age tropes, it's enjoyably dated sensibilities and the early glimpses of the manic comic performer Carrey would become.
Then it's time for Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), a fictionalized look at the filmmaker behind such cult oddities as Glen or Glenda? and Plan 9 from Outer Space. With Martin Landau's Oscar-winning performance as Bela Lugosi, the film follows Wood's determination to make movies despite his limited resources and questionable filmmaking skills. More than anything, they connect with the film's affection for filmmaking itself: finding your people, scraping together the resources and making something because you can't imagine doing anything else.
Along the way: Jim Carrey's evolution from aspiring leading man to full-on comedy superstar, the wonderfully strange conventions of '80s teen movies, scrappy little vampire comedies and a compelling case for why the love of movies matters.
#TalkingPondo #OnceBitten #EdWood #JimCarrey #TimBurton #MoviePodcast #80sMovies #CultCinemaShow less
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