Welcome to Episode 17 of Nooks and Crannies!

Paa_ul_s Podcast: Action Flicks, First Blood Part 1ish

This week on Nooks and Crannies, Paul Combs foolishly agreed to join Matty for what turned into an absolute marathon session, and I ain't talking about Paul’s Running, nope we did a genre deep dive on Action Movies. (5:05) We kick things off with an overview of some of the features of the genre, spoiler alert: not a lot (any) female leads until the 1980’s, so this is a dudefest episode…good thing Paul is so darn likable. Paul uses Commando as the quintessential action flick, we also name drop: Beverly Hills Cop as action-comedy, Rambo 3 to see Rambo in Afghanistan and the Last Action Hero as a perfect parody action movie.

We then get into the real early history (8:15) including the Lumiere bros. classic “proof of concept” film from 1895 Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat technically this is the first “Action” film. (12:10) Buster Keaton (IMDB) gets a well deserved focus in this early history (1920’s), be sure to watch The General (1926) in Paul’s opinion it is his finest work or The Frozen North (1922) cuz its Buster in Canada! I also found this amazing interview he gave in the early 70’s overdubbed on a compilation of his greatest stunts. Paul reminded us all about Harold Lloyd who Matty treated like the lesser Keaton (14:35), but I did remember to bring up the famous hanging from a clock stunt from Safety Last! (1923).

To cap the 20-30’s off, Matty gushes over Errol Flynn and the impact The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) had on young Mamoo when he was a wee lad (20:11), but not this one from the 20’s that is really quite awful. After an awkward edit break where I was planning on playing a movie trailer but thought better of it…We chat about Paul’s favorite role model James Bond and who he considers the personification of his own personality Sean Connery (28:20).

The 1950-60’s was dominated by Westerns and military films when it came to “Action” films, the 1970’s was kinda depressing and Sci-fi then took over the action genre for the latter half of the decade. It was not until the 1980’s that the genre itself became fully fledged. So in this last segment (33:00), Paul and I try to name as many movies as possible, including for some reason T1 and T2? The OG Mad Max, The French Connection (35:26) Paul has a doozy of a tidbit on this film, Dirty Harry, Bullet surprised to learn that this is one of Paul’s favorites and he smartly explained why the late 60-70’s saw a boom in car-centric action movies, Death Race 2000 (1975) the amazing early Sylvester Stallone film, Dirty Dozen and The Wild Bunch, Independence Day and Saving Private Ryan dunno why here but there you go.

Oh right, Matt tries to explain why there is no such thing as a Canadian Action movie but does throw Last of the Mohican out there as a pitiful example (46:00). Then we finally cap this half!?! That’s right folks, this is only the first half of the Marathon. But we end with one of the most controversial reveals in Nooks and Crannies HISTORY, Paul almost gets booted..it got real ugly (47:26).

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Proud of you Lindsay