Depot Devoid: A Movie Podcast for Dead People

The Fagan brothers revisit CLOAK & DAGGER, a staple of their childhoods that neither had seen in many, many years. Henry Thomas (E.T.) plays Davy Osborne, an insane 12-year-old who listens to the voices in his head and goes on a murder spree across San Antonio, because his dad won't let him play his favorite video game! Weirdly, that is not a complete misrepresentation of the story. CLOAK & DAGGER is a family film about Davy, whose Dad works a lot and whose mom recently passed away. He and his best friend Kim become accidentally embroiled in what amounts to a children's version of a spy thriller. While the responsible adults ignore literally everything Davy tells them, he finds his way through the plot with the help of Jack Flack, his super-spy imaginary friend. Dabney Coleman (9 to 5) plays Davy's dad, and also Jack Flack, which obviously sets up the opportunity for some totally-expected personal growth and emotional resolution. Except... that's not exactly what happened. Some third-act revelations muddy the waters, and make Matt literally lose his mind. What is Jack Flack? What is he?!?

Desperate to find a terrible introduction to the themes and stories of H.P. Lovecraft? Look no further than BATMAN: THE DOOM THAT CAME TO GOTHAM - a lushly animated, lazily written pastiche of Lovecraftian themes, splattered across the Batman mythos without inspiration or reason. Guest voice Jeffrey Combs (an actor whose association with Lovecraft adaptations goes back to Re-Animator in the mid-1980s) is pretty much the only reason to be here, but here we are! The terrible men of the Depot Devoid have sat through THE DOOM THAT CAME TO GOTHAM so you won't have to.

In 1982, PANDEMONIUM tried to be a horror comedy, and couldn't. Put into production as THURSDAY THE 12th, but then beaten to the gag by Roger Corman's SATURDAY THE 14th, this misbegotten movie lost its way and never quite figured out what to be. In spite of a dozen familiar faces (Tommy Smothers, Carol Kane, Paul Reubens, Eileen Brennan, Eve Arden, Judge Reinhold, Phil Hartman, John Paragon, it just goes on!) most of the comedy falls pretty flat. But every once in a while, PANDEMONIUM serves up something truly strange and interesting, making you wonder what this movie might have been, in an alternate universe where SATURDAY THE 14th never happened.

"So that was a Hellraiser?"Matt has been reading and watching the Hellraiser franchise for nearly forty years, but his brother Ted was an innocent. For this week's experiment, Ted had to start with the 2022 reboot starring Jamie Clayton as the hell priest. With nothing to compare it to, would Ted like the new Pinhead? Would he think the Cenobites were cool? Would he even know what the (ahem) Hell was going on?Join us in the Depot for Ted's first look at Hellraiser. As for Matt? He didn't open the box. But what was it last time? Didn't know what the box was? And yet we do seem to keep finding each other, don't we.

A man murders his wife, is recruited as a spy, and enters a drug-fueled world of literature, homosexuality, and deeply erogenous typewriters! NAKED LUNCH attempted, in 1991, to adapt the wild nonlinear narrative of William S Burroughs' novel into a surprisingly coherent film. Ted's audio is weird for the first two minutes, but after that, the Fagan brothers are able to make complete and utter sense of every single thing that happens in the movie. Especially the typewriter sex robots.

Audiences think of Ghostbusters as one of the classic comedy films of the 1980s, but you know what they forget? Ghosts are people who used to be alive, so Ghostbusters is all about death! Matt Fagan and Ted Fagan started the Depot Devoid Podcast after they lost their brother Ian. And they recorded this episode just three weeks after Matt lost his dog to bone cancer. Not for the first time, the brothers find themselves revisiting a pivotal comedy from their youth with fresh eyes, and raw hearts. Sometimes, the Depot Devoid is all fun and games – but sometimes it's grief counseling. And sometimes it's a bit of both. This episode was a strange emotional space for us. We are looking back at a movie we love – one of those movies that shaped us – and seeing it for what it really is. We are adults stepping outside of our own childhoods, and we are haunted by ghosts both literal and metaphorical. Sound fun? Join us for a unique conversation that is as much about Ghostbusters as it is about processing the death of a loved one who passes right in front of you. A conversation about nostalgia, and how comedy is not evergreen, and how we all grew up in an actual haunted house. And Ted uses “Pet Sematary” as a verb.

The Goonies is turning forty years old, and our brother Ian should have turned 45 this week. Growing up on the Oregon coast in the 1980s, The Goonies was an indelible part of our childhoods! Puzzles, treasure, friends with bicycles and dangerous ideas: The Goonies was everything a kid could want. For us - Matt Fagan, Ian Fagan, and Ted Fagan - it gave shape to fantasies we played out every day.Today we are, for better or worse, adults, and we are looking back at The Goonies as grown men who have lost the brother in between them. This episode is part nostalgia and part eulogy; we laugh a lot, but we shed a lot of fucking tears for Ian too. We are not the same people that we were in 1985, and we are not the same people that we were when there were three of us. We watched The Goonies for the first time since Ian's death, and then we recorded this episode on what would have been his 45th birthday. Of all the childhood favorites Ted and I have revisited on Depot Devoid, this was definitely the most emotionally challenging. There will be a lot of new podcast episodes about The Goonies this week, but I bet ours is the only one with an actual eulogy in it, and probably the most crying too. That's the Depot Devoid difference!Full video for this episode is on our YouTube channel.

Full video episode available on our YouTube channel! We love you, Canada, but "Space Vegetarians Conquer the World!" is not your best work. This convoluted mess of a sci-fi thriller fell into the Depot Devoid almost by mistake. In fact, it accidentally became the first episode of the "O Canada" run that we recorded, but wound up as chapter four because it came out the same year as CUBE. Some of the worst movies are the most fun to talk about, and in a time where a lot of stuff in America isn't very fun, the Fagan brothers had a really good time talking about Laserhawk. It's sloppy, weird, and has a secret hard-core vegetarian agenda that was sadly dropped partway through the flick. It's not as Canadian as some of the other movies on this list, but Laserhawk is a welcome addition to the collection. We didn't invite you, but we're glad you came.