Big Daddy Dispatch: September (with Craven Tier Announcement!)

Dispatch One Hundred, August 29th, 2025

Greetings WHM Family!

Welcome to Season (Sweet) Sixteen! We’re well rested from our summer break and are already in the studio recording kick-ass content for September and beyond! Speaking of… we’d love to announce a brand new Patreon tier…Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for, The Craven!

It's a new $15.00 tier that will (of course) give you access to everything the Walsh tier and below offers, but also crucially gives you exclusive access to two new WHM offerings:

WHM After Dark: This is going to be a live, monthly video hangout with the WHM gang (similar to those after parties we’ve had after video live shows) where the gang is answering your questions on Patreon and you get to watch along live! This video will be available for replay if you miss it and will be available 24 hours after broadcast as an mp3 for those not interested in watching! The first hang is Tuesday, September 16th at 8pm Eastern Standard Time! Stay tuned to the BDD and Patreon Weekly announcements to know when the monthly hang is gonna be!

And that’s not all, you’ll also get a brand-new show called…

WHM Scaredy Cats: This is a quarterly video show now on Patreon! So, every quarter (like the commentaries) you’ll get a full-length video episode that nobody else gets! This will also be available as an mp3 for those not interested in seeing our faces. Why the name, you ask? Well, everything we do on this show tier is going to be horror-centric. Not only that, but new horror…as in movies that have come out in the last 10 years and are just too fun to wait for that damnable 10-year rule! We’re kicking the tier off in style in October with Zach Cregger’s fantastic Barbarian!

Whew! That’s a lot to take in, we know. So much cool shit going on at the WHM HQ including all the planning to make this improbable, impossible 16th Season the very best one yet.

Banner Credit: We Hate Movies Logo by Felipe Sobreiro

All Image Credits: by the indomitable Felipe Sobreiro, you really should check out his stuff

15TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW AT THE BELL HOUSE IN BROOKLYN

Tickets are now on sale for our 15th Anniversary show on December 6th at the Bell House in Brooklyn! We’re doing a live episode on Total Recall!  Yes, it’s the Arnold one. The good one! It’s gonna be a WLM episode talking about Kuato, Mutant Dean Norris, Sharon fucking Stone, and a ton of bad Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions, live on stage! These Brooklyn shows sell out fast, so get your tickets asap here!

LAST MONTH ON WHM

Episode 814 – Harry and the Hendersons (Live in Seattle)

Recorded last November at Seattle’s Washington Hall, the boys head into the woods to find a sasquatch and come out with a great conversation about John Lithgow and his family dealing with their own sasquatch problems. What kind of smells are you dealing with when you bring a bigfoot into your home? Does Lithgow prefer the godless being that has ended up at his doorstep to his own flesh-and-blood son? Why can’t we see a shaved Harry? We want to see the horror! Come on! You scare maybe 100 kids, tops, and everyone else is so, so happy.

Episode 815 – Casino Royale (2006)  (Patrons Only)

To match with the righteous live episode on Quantum of Solace, the boys head back to England to get Jimmy Bond back out there and assassinate Mads Mikkelsen...for Queen and country. Is the key to a great Bond movie to make it as much like a DTV action-thriller as possible? How great is Mads in this movie even before the ball torture? Was the chemistry so good that it required Eva Green’s character to become important in every Craig Bond movie? Probably not, right? Praise be to Martin Campbell for making one of the few truly great Bond movies out there, alongside GoldenEye...which he also directed    

Episode 816 – The Goonies (Live in Portland)

A classic nostalgia-buster episode from the boys’ stop at Mississippi Studios in Portland last year, with Andrew, Chris, Steve, and Eric chasing down the myriad reasons why this tale of the titular group of annoying pre-teens and their adventures with local pirate history and family crime syndicates doesn’t quite work. Is there a movie monster more unsettling than Anne Ramsey? How do parents listen to all this over-talking all day long and not lose their minds? Is Martha Plimpton bobbing for...crabs...in this movie? Shout out Cyndi Lauper for a great theme song to an okay movie!                   

Episode 817 – Quantum of Solace (Live in Oxford, UK)

The first show from the boys’ recent six-show jaunt across the pond finds Andrew, Steve, Chris, and Eric helping out Jimothy Bond as he does Jason Bourne-fighting against the many low-level assassins of Dominic Greene and Quantum. Who the fuck is Mr. White and why would anyone care about him in a brand-spanking-new James Bond movie? Is Mathieu Amalric a good Bond villain? Why is his heavy named Elvis and why don’t we know that until we go to the IMDB to check? Does M have a young boyfriend who loves Monster Energy Drink (the white cans)?  Not so good, but the song’s underrated, truth be told. Jack White did a good job and got shit for it. Such is the way of the world.

Episode 818 –Pretty Woman (Live in Boston)

The gang returns to Beantown once more to talk about an extremely L.A. movie, namely the one about a rich guy, Richard Gere falling for a call-girl, Julia Roberts amidst shopping sprees, rape threats, and Hector Elizondo interludes. Was that a magician at the...adult...party we see at the beginning of this movie? Why is Julia Roberts playing an alien from outer space instead of a sex worker? Does everyone remember the McDLT? Also, listen to the full episode to hear the exciting conclusion to this season’s VHS Trailer Game!

WHAT ARE WE WATCHING?

This is a space for us to talk about some NON-We Hate Movies related content that we've shoved into our eyeballs in the last month: TV, Movies, Cartoons, and Sports (maybe?). Just about anything that isn't pornography.

Andrew:  

Jackie Brown (1997): Until OUATIH came out, this was easy for me to toss out as my favorite QT film, and in many ways, that’s still true. I absolutely love this movie and I will always be mesmerized by the opening shot with Pam on the airport people mover. Sometimes I just play it over in my head, hearing Bobby Womack singing, “Across 110th Street,” so beautifully. I think the way I think about the films now, this is my favorite contemporarily set QT film and OUATIH is my fave QT period piece. Both excellent. 

Phantom of the Opera (1943): I picked up that Universal Monsters 4K set with the beautiful book-shaped box art, although I wish they tossed all the sequels into this set too. Anyway, the Universal Monster film that never got a sequel was the 1943 Phantom of the Opera with the glorious Claude Rains. The gigantic crane/tracking shot of the orchestra that flies up into the opera house, passing the chandelier and focusing in on some spectators in box seating, it’s really incredible, especially for the time. 

Gags the Clown (2018): When people hear/read me complain about the state of modern horror, this is what I’m talking about. I’ve always loved finding gems in the sea of smaller horror films, but lately the stuff I stumble across hasn’t been great. Take this for example, it starts off with a decent enough idea: the ripped from the headlines story about a person going around dressed as a clown, just standing around creeping people out. I think it’s got a great opening 10-15 minutes and after that, the wheels come off the wagon.

Night of the Juggler (1980): Caught this virtually unseen bit of NYC sleaze a couple weeks back and I’m still thinking about it. James Brolin plays an ex-cop who runs around Manhattan and the Bronx trying to get back his kidnapped daughter who’s been snatched off the street in a case of mistaken identity. So much amazing on-location filming, including a scene where Dan Hedaya chases Brolin through Bryant Park while firing a shotgun wildly. It’s getting a disc release from Kino Lorber in a few weeks and yeah, my 4K is already pre-ordered. 

Love Hurts (2025): It would mean I have to watch this again, but this may just be a Stay Tuned for January. Even though we’ve molded that month into more of a “Stuff We Caught Last Year That We Want to Talk About” month, we do watch bad things throughout the year and this is one of them. As I said on Letterboxd, it’s a tits-to-tail misfire. Everything about this fails at every turn. Woof.

Showing Up (2022): This may just be my favorite Kelly Reichardt film, although Meek’s Cutoff and Night Moves are right up there too. Anyway, I went through this for the first time since seeing it at NYFF and I really love it still. I say much about it on my Letterboxd review, but I’m really thrilled that a tiny art flick like this got a 4K release with Dolby Vision/Atmos on it. I know Reichardt’s pace is not for everyone, but I really love her work and want to spread the good word wherever I can. Seek out her stuff. You’ll know after a single viewing of one of her films whether or not you vibe with her stuff.   

Chris: 

Fixed (2025): Genndy Tartakovsky is a fascinating case. Though he’s made his money off of the Hotel Transylvania franchise, he’s best known for his work with Adult Swim and Cartoon Network, who have given safe haven to his most beloved ideas, including Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and the more recent Primal. The flagrant tastelessness of his first collaboration with Netflix, centered on a dog having one last big blowout before his balls are snipped by his owners, sticks out even in such staggering company but for all the wrong reasons. Though the animation is glorious to behold, the ball-obsessed humor does begin to grate on you as the runtime ticks down and unlike much of Tartakovsky’s work, there’s no sense of heart or tough moral compass to the story of Bull, the weird horny dog, voiced by Adam Devine. There’s an element of nostalgia here for the age of outwardly horny and gross animation that infiltrated everywhere, including Nickelodeon in the 1990s, but it’s not enough to make me enjoy a full deluge of ball jokes that Al Bundy would find overblown.

Dying (1976): The great Michael Roemer left us earlier this year, having spent much of his career remembered for only one of his five fantastic films, the roaring, yet quiet 1964 melodrama Nothing But a Man. The lone bright side to his passing is the fact that now his entire catalogue has become more readily available, most notably the robust dark comedy The Plot Against Harry and this visceral, yet unerringly sensitive documentary about three terminally ill people during their final days on this plane of existence. Each section offers its own unique view of our own private end-times, but you may very well feel entirely changed by the second section, in which we meet thirty-something Bill, his two young boys, and his wife, Harriet. Where Bill seems largely resigned to the slow march of his fate, his wife is seen completely coming apart over the incalculable trajectory of terminal illness. At one point, she says that she wished the doctors could figure out some way for him to die quicker, to ensure she can find a second husband who can give guidance to her already clearly troubled children. For those scenes alone, Dying would count as the best doc I’ve seen this year; seen in total, Roemer’s sole documentary feature is among the very best of the genre/style to see release.

Mountainhead (2025): Here I thought the man behind Succession would at least be able to muster the creative amplitude to make a funny, halfway interesting movie about the end of the world from the viewpoint of four isolated billionaire morons. Alas, this movie seems stuck between being believable and being entertaining, unable to push the action of the film and the philosophies of the four billionaires into the realm of the hallucinatory and absurd, aided by storied tales of unending appetites for drugs, sex, and sensory titillation. Mountainhead is much too serious to deal in the base addictions of many of these men, and thus much of the film comes off like a dumping ground for Jesse Armstrong’s B-level material, plotlines and one-liners that he always liked but just never felt at home in Succession.

Eric:

Riding Shotgun (1954): I'm becoming a full-fledged grampie. No, I am not like your father watching "normal" westerns like the spaghetti or John Wayne kind. No, I'm your grandfather watching the ones starring Cary Grant's boyfriend, Randolph Scott. I really like all of these I've seen and Riding Shotgun is no exception. And no, it's not about calling dibs on the front seat of a car. 

Slow West (2015): Had a good time revisiting this 10-year-old A24 title. I think this popped up in my head because of the unsettling disgusting shit man Kodi Smit-McPhee played in the not-good Maria last year. This isn't a perfect movie and Ben Mendelsohn feels a bit wasted in his role... However, you got landscapes, the night sky, and Michael Fassbender as a handsome cowpoke? Giddy up! 

The Lady Hermit (1971): Not a super-gripping story, but a lot of great kills. Contains a fight that appears to be the direct inspiration for the Temple of Doom rope bridge scene.

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972): This rocks. A young girl is enslaved by a brothel and eventually works her sexuality as a weapon. Then she also works weapons as weapons. Big recommend! 

Blackbelt (1992): Don "The Dragon" Wilson hired as a bodyguard in a very The Bodyguard type movie from executive producer Roger Corman. This movie is only serviceable in the end and yet somehow remains maybe the best Don "The Dragon" Wilson movie? Any recommendations for this dude? I generally find his movies boring as sin. 

Plane (2023):  Playing summertime catchup with Gerard Butler. This should've been titled Plain. Hey, flight attendant, don't wake me for this one. 

The Naked Gun (2025): I was wrong to criticize the trailer for this. Although that scene is my least favorite, I had so much fun with this movie. If you haven't seen it yet, go. Go to a theater and support the return of comedy movies.

Steve:

Superman (2025): Fuck yes! It’s a bit late, but the last BDD was written early and I hadn’t had the chance to weigh in to you fine folks as your resident Comic Book Expert. I was quite honestly blown away, just a lovely movie and a welcome change and final nail in the coffin that was the DCEU. Good riddance. Corenswet gives us a Superman that’s likeable, charming, funny, and, dare I say, heroic! Imagine that! There’s so much DC lore and love to pick over and enjoy and it’s very clear that Gunn is having a ball here and for the most part tamping down his worst instincts (which seem to have all been shoved into Peacemaker season 2, if the abysmal first episode is any indication) to bring a fun, poppy, and comic centric take on Metropolis that feels at least twenty years overdue. I had a ball and I can’t believe I haven’t watched it again…yet.

Dangerous Animals (2025): Count me out, gang. I just didn’t see it with this one. I know everybody loved it and yes, it’s the best Jai Courtney performance by a mile, but the material is so sparse and anonymous that it doesn’t really matter. Feels like a touch better than a Lifetime movie, to be quite honest. Also don’t write me shark checks your movie can’t cash.

Night on Earth (1991) & Dead Man (1995): Oh, the wonders of catching a movie in a bar with the sound off. A couple weeks back, my favorite spot here was playing Jarmusch’s Dead Man, and I was like, oh right, I fucking love that guy. So, I went and revisited Dead Man for the first time in twenty years and found I loved it even more than I remembered. The methodical, ruminative pace set to Neil Young’s trippy, elegiac score is exactly my kind of movie. It reminds me that golden age of Johnny Depp was nothing to trifle with, especially before he started Jack Sparrowing and Mortdecai-ing all over the place. This is a quiet, sad, confused dude in way over his head. Loved it. It may a contributing factor to why we named our kitten Iggy Pop.

It also led me to fill a Jarmusch gap and finally watch Night on Earth and I’m so glad that I did. I think the best quality Jim Jarmusch has is that he confidently makes movies for himself, knowing there’s gonna be an audience there to make the effort. The four shorts are disparate, weird little stories that don’t connect in any way, and make one feel a little isolated in your own corner of the world, but knowing that all these little stories are happening in succession makes it a moving testament to the diversity of the human experience. Also, Roberto Benigni going on about fucking a sheep made me laugh harder than I have in months.

Night of the Juggler (1980): I saw this with Andrew at the IFC and I can’t add much because it’s a sleazy, wild movie (warning: problematic language ABOUNDS). All I need to say to sell you on the movie is this: Dan Hedaya shotgun sequence. Find it. Watch it.

PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND

Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from

Jamie, from Toronto who asks:

“With these prequel/midquel/whatever series coming hot and heavy for Alien, Friday the 13th and It, do you have an idea for an unexplored corner of a horror franchise that you'd like to see?”

Andrew: Since OSL is still off the air, although we talk about it a tiny bit on our Aliens W❤️M episode, I do just want to make mention of the fact that I think Alien: Earth is fantastic. At the time of this writing, they’ve only aired three episodes, but I’ve watched each one twice. Of course, the jury is still out on this Crystal Lake series. I’m trying to both stay hopeful and not get my hopes up, if that makes sense. I think the care is there, and I’ll watch anything with Linda Cardellini in it. So, we’ll see. That said, I think we could get an interesting series out of some kind of Creature from the Black Lagoon series. Maybe we call it Black Lagoon and it’s about a group of scientists going up against some kind of hotel developer who plans on opening a big resort near the Black Lagoon and they’re trying to warn him about all the nasty creature stuff that’s happened there over the years. I think the Creature is the Universal Monster who gets the least love, and I re-watch all three of those movies a lot, so it’d be cool to expand that world. 

Chris: To me, the obvious answer here is Hellraiser. You get to spend the first few episodes tracing how Pinhead, Butterball, and the Chatterer came to become what they are, which also allows you to get creative about your view of Hell. From there, you either give it an original idea, or you get Frank’s long-running campaign to be captured by hell and his subsequent escape. There’s plenty of meat on the bone in my view, but hey, I’d also love to see what happens in the village after the events of The Witch too.

Eric: I feel like anything I can think up would be bad, like do we need a 10-episode prequel series exploring Scatman Crothers starting work at the Overlook Hotel? Buying those sick ass paintings? No. Would I watch it? Yeah, probably. My one demand is an entire bottle episode of Hallorann takes place at an antique shop or an artist studio/gallery - yes, wherever he got those paintings. I need to know more!

Steve: Thinking about how pointless and utterly stupid something like the Harry Potter TV series is going to be after seeing that fucking Hagrid image, and loving Alien: Earth so far, has me thinking maybe the best way to do these things is to practically throw out the source material and do your own thing. So, I suggest Ed & Lorraine: Conjurers, it’s the story of Ed and Lorraine Warren in a darkly comic series where they are portrayed as con artists bilking people out of their life savings while they pretend to perform exorcisms on their bipolar children and pretend their dead parents are actually proud of them or whatever. You know, the real story. Starring Paul Walter Hauser as drinking himself to death Ed and Kate Mara (fresh off of Friendship) as his main squeeze Lorraine, the brains of the outfit. Damn. I just talked myself into this and I want three seasons.

SEPTEMBER SCHEDULE

Say what? The schedule in advance?! It's the least we could do! By subscribing to this newsletter, you get a sneak peek at what we're putting out this month:

September 2nd  – The Shining (1980) WLM Patreon Unlock

September 9th  – On Deadly Ground (1994) Redux

September 16th – The Conjuring (2013)

September 23rd – Predators (2010)

September 30th – Tron (1982)

Patreon Episodes:

September 4th – We Love Movies: Aliens (1986)

September 11th – MELR0210: 90210: “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window” (s3, e26) Melrose Place: “The Days of Wine and Vodka” (s3, e11)

September 16th at 8pm EST – WHM After Dark: Come with your questions at the ready and spend an hour hanging out with the gang!

September 18th – Animation Damnation: Tiny Toon Adventures: “Hollywood Plucky” (s1, e26)

September 19th – The Gleep Glossary: Gavin Darklighter

September 25th – The Nexus: TOSTAS: “The Ambergris Element” (s1, 13), TNG: “The Host” (s4, e23)

PATREON RSS BUG

If you’re having trouble with the RSS feed updating or episodes not appearing in your app, Patreon has acknowledged this bug and they have a fix: "Try unsubscribing and re-subscribing via your app by re-entering the unique RSS feed you were given and is on our Overview section of the Creator page. Or try using a different podcast app or RSS feed reader." 

Please consult this page and contact Patreon Support if the problem persists. We apologize for any inconvenience you’ve experienced on Patreon and truly appreciate your continued support!

UPCOMING NEWS AND PROMOTION

In case you missed it we opened our Patreon Shop with our very first offering, our virtual live show from 2021 on Terminator: Dark Fate is now available for purchase! This is a killer show from the dark times and it’s safe to say we were still suffering from QUARANTINE MADNESS. If you missed it and always wanted to listen, here’s your chance! You get a new introduction recorded by us, the show from that night, and an audio file of the whole thing so you can enjoy the show again on the go!

On Screen Live is currently on a summer hiatus, but there’s so much to look back and enjoy, including our finale, when Eric broadcasted live from Sin City! Subscribe on our YouTube Channel to never miss a broadcast! And be sure to tune in on Monday, September 15th at noon/eastern as we broadcast our coverage of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on a special On-Screen Live: TIFF Edition!

We also have all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point. Eric has also put out great clip packages like WTF Exorcism with Marc Merrin, Dr. Loomis is the Worst Doctor, Dilf Den, George Bailey as Michael Meyers, John Wick-Mentary,  Toby Jones in Bee Movie, Sausage Claus, David! Muppet Hitchcock Presents, and many more! You can also watch the entirety of our Witchboard episode! Complete with visual gags (most of which are almost funny.). You'll find all sorts of cool shit like Mailbags, VHS Trailer Games, Full Episodes like Rampage (2018), Any Which Way You Can, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Saw III. Like we said above, these are great for sharing and introducing folks to the show. There's so much content there we can't list it all here. Just go and subscribe already!

TJ Hooker…Is back! Join Eric and Ben as Sharon Stone shows up for a failed backdoor pilot!  Listen here!

Please note that from now until at least the end of 2025, ALL PROFITS from our merch store store will be going directly to the Center for Reproductive rights! Shit’s bad out there and we know it’s likely to get worse and we want to do something,  SO, If you're a fan of the show and a fan of looking sharp, you should check out our merch on our new and improved merch store on Dashery! We have some hot off the presses designs by Felipe Sobreiro such as the Superman II Live Show, Too Old For This Shit and Sheenpril Logos as well as A Certain Fat Director enjoying his favorite film filter of all time! We also have "The DILF Den", and a "Crispy Critters" design from friend of the show, Nathan Hamill!  There’s a ton of other great designs like The VHS Trailer Game Logo, Demon-o's Pizza, Egg Lawyer, The Order of the Boop, The Kornkast design and many more, with more to come! 

That's going to do it for this month's Dispatch! Enjoy this banger of a month and all the rad stuff we’re kicking off season (SWEET) sixteen with!

Take it easy,
Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve
We Hate Movies