Hello! This is the Doomed Show.

'Hello! This is the Doomed Show.' runs on a simple engine: one movie, two fans, and a plot summary that never gets far without an interruption. Richard introduces most of these episodes. His partner changes, with Mark joining for Mark of the Witch (1970), Simon for I, Madman (1989), and Jeffrey for H!TITDS #256 - Scream for Help. That matters, because the show lives on the back-and-forth, built from agreement, one-upmanship and sentences corrected on the fly. The dated titles run from 1970 to 1990 and move between horror and action. There is a hellhound in Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978), a vampire in Pale Blood (1990), and diamonds plus a jungle escape in Strike Commando 2 (1988). The recaps are thorough, but the detail mostly exists to set up the next reaction. In the Devil Dog conversation, a father fights off the dog's hypnotic pull toward the lawnmower blades, and the pair are delighted when the dog just trots away as if conceding a round. The kids' sudden turn gets the same treatment, since the film skips any gradual slide and makes them rotten on the spot. Pale Blood prompts a comparison with the bare, neon-lit look of Manhunter, followed by a short case for issuing everyone a portable coffin. Strike Commando 2 earns a note that Brent Huff seems to be genuinely trying to act, and pure glee when the story stalls for a negotiation scored with circus music. Not every beat lands as a joke. During Mark of the Witch, the two stop to question whether a bird was really harmed for a scene, then head straight back into the plot. Tangents are welcome too. I, Madman (1989) doubles as a holiday episode, and an acting-class scene spins off into a conversation about Othello and how quickly a college course moved past it. In H!TITDS #256 - Scream for Help, even the welcome becomes a bit, with Jeffrey turning the title into a mock plea to Richard. Vocabulary moves easily between strong language and film-nerd shorthand, and the tone ranges from excited to dry to mock-serious. What a listener gets is less a verdict than a full, fond tour of a film's strangest decisions. Nobody pretends these are masterpieces, and nobody sneers either. The show is a member of the Legion Podcast Network. For a first taste, the Strike Commando 2 (1988) episode shows the format at full speed, circus music and all.