In the shark-infested Caribbean of film podcasts, where opinions arrive vacuum-sealed and pre-approved by Letterboxd disciples who say “actually” the way sommeliers say “oak-forward,” there floats a strange and likable little vessel called Fear and Loathing in Cinema Podcast. It is less a podcast than a late-night booth at a diner where the mozzarella sticks have gone cold, the coffee has achieved sentience, and nobody particularly cares who wins the argument so long as the argument remains entertaining.
The show traffics in the usual pleasures of movie obsession. There’s nostalgia, critique, and the occasional unnecessary defense of a sequel no jury would acquit. But its real talent lies in what might be called the affectionate autopsy. Films once left for dead are dragged back onto the slab, not to be mocked exactly, but reconsidered with the squinting tenderness usually reserved for old tattoos and high-school yearbook photos. Was it bad? Certainly. Was it perhaps interestingly bad? Now we’re talking. The podcast understands that cinema history is littered with glorious disasters, and sometimes the wreckage is more revealing than the masterpiece.
At the center of it all is a quartet with the chemistry of a dinner party that somehow survives both politics and tequila. Bryan Kluger hosts with the relaxed confidence of a man who has willingly walked into a burning theater because he heard the third act gets weird. Dan Moran approaches plot holes like a litigator cross-examining an unreliable witness. Preston Barta mounts passionate defenses for cinematic lost causes with the zeal of a public defender representing Waterworld. And Chelsea Nicole, whose observations often land with surgical precision, has a gift for reminding everyone that horror movies are usually less about monsters than the deeply bizarre choices humans make while near monsters. Together, they’ve stumbled into that rare territory where criticism still has a pulse, humor still has a brain, and loving movies means occasionally putting them, and yourself, on trial.
This week on Episode #158 of Fear and Loathing in Cinema, the gang wades into the warm, cursed waters of Jaws 4: The Revenge, the film that effectively harpooned the Jaws franchise into the bottom of the ocean nearly four decades ago. The episode plays less like a review and more like a marine investigation conducted by four people who cannot believe what they are seeing but are nevertheless delighted by it to a certain degree. Bryan, Preston, Dan, and Chelsea attempt to locate anything resembling a coherent narrative inside a movie where a shark appears to possess not only a vendetta, but apparently GPS coordinates, emotional memory, and the reasoning skills of a mid-level slasher villain.
They discuss the shark’s astonishing ability to roar, stalk specific family members across international waters, and operate with what can only be described as supernatural union benefits. There are conversations about grief, baffling Jamaican accents, the glorious presence of Mario Van Peebles, and the immortal fact that Michael Caine once accepted an Academy Award while publicly admitting he had never actually seen the film because he was too busy enjoying the house it bought him. It is a hilarious descent into cinematic madness. It’s also the sort of joyous over-analysis that only true movie lovers can provide. The podcast tears into bad movies with affection rather than cruelty, like old friends roasting someone who once wore a trench coat to a beach party, well at least Bryan does.
And somewhere beneath the roaring sharks, psychic fish telepathy, and exploding boats, Fear and Loathing in Cinema pulls off its favorite trick yet again. It reminds us that talking about terrible movies with the right people can sometimes be more fun than watching great ones alone.
