Depot Devoid: A Movie Podcast for Dead People

Matt Fagan does a dramatic reading of his children's poem, Up A Hippopotamus' Bottom.

We are no strangers to the works of Charles Band and Full Moon Entertainment, so when MANDROID pulled into the Depot Devoid, we thought we knew what was coming. But Mandroid was more than just underdeveloped or inept, with actors who can't deliver, all of which would be fully expected. No, Mandroid was different, because it also had a script that nobody involved in its production seemed to care about, even though it was obviously trying to be the first entry in a franchise. But Mandroid is so thin on story that it found time to act as a backdoor pilot, for a second franchise about an invisible man! A curious combination of craven and dull, Mandroid plopped onto video store shelves in 1993 with a big stanky thud, and there it sat. Until now.

Once upon a time, we watched the movie 'Ravenous', a 1999 cannibal superhero comedy (?) set in 1847. Then we recorded this episode, without watching it again. The result was... funnier than it was accurate.For extra fun, check out the full video episode on the Depot Devoid Podcast channel on YouTube!

It's destruction and disorder in the Depot when the boys face their biggest challenge yet: Godzilla himself! Preschool-aged Ted watched Godzilla 1985 every week for a year, but will middle-aged Ted be able to make it through even once? It's a sequel to Godzilla that ignores about fourteen movies in between, and brings back Raymond Burr to reprise his role from the bowdlerized American version of the film. Yes, having now defeated Hamilton Burger almost 270 times, Perry Mason now sets his sights on taking down the King of the Monsters. We wanted to like this movie, and it wasn't easy.Find the full video episode on the Depot Devoid Youtube Channel!

Note: some parts of this episode make more sense if you watch the full video version (available on the Depot Devoid YouTube channel), but those parts are mostly dog-related and not strictly relevant to the movie.THE COMPLEAT AL brought the music videos of "Weird Al" Yankovic into our homes back in 1985, but was also a significant and often-overlooked entry in the nascent mockumentary genre. For the terrible gentlemen of the Depot Devoid, and their dead brother Ian, THE COMPLEAT AL was a formative childhood experience, one that ultimately paved the way for the much-better-known WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY.Spend one more minute in the Depot with us, grab yourself a kiwi, and get ready for some nostalgic talk about a beloved cultural icon. Plus a lot of stuff about our dogs.

Ted was excited because he'd never even heard of Repo! The Genetic Opera. Matt had uncertain memories of a single viewing 17 years ago. Join the meandering Fagan brothers for a lively discussion about this musical - and other musicals! Is it true that the dystopian world of 2056 that we see in Repo! is actually the same world from The Apple, after all the good people got raptured in 1998? Will Ted learn horrifying truths about Sweeney Todd? Will Matt say some things about Stephen Sondheim that he can't take back?The answers to these questions and more, should you choose to accept them, can be found right here in DEPOT! THE GENETIC OPERA.

Recorded three years ago, and only now dragged screaming from the vault, the meandering Fagan brothers are here to discuss THEY LIVE! John Carpenter's unabashedly anti-Reagan science fiction picture is, sadly, even more relevant now. Laugh to keep from crying as we revisit one of our favorite flicks from the eighties.

Matt wanted to reassess this movie he watched thirty years ago, and decided to inflict it on Ted along the way. The debut film from Jennifer Lynch, BOXING HELENA is plagued with problems. Uneven pacing. An indecisive relationship with reality. Julian Sands' haircut. But beneath all of that is a fascinating idea that could have worked, and it's an idea worth talking about.

Who better to discuss GHOST WORLD - a movie about teenage girls navigating life after high school - than two middle aged men? Matt has loved it for over 20 years, but Ted requires some convincing.

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.

1979's "LOVE AT FIRST BITE" proved to be so aggressively forgettable that we completely forgot recording this episode a year and a half ago! But it's a perfect complement to our recent offerings, which featured Saturday the 14th and Pandemonium. Like those films, Love at First Bite seems to be something like a horror comedy, but never truly fulfills either mandate. An absurd Dracula in the form of George Hamilton, and a bumbling Van Helsing provided by Richard Benjamin, prove to be capable foils for the normal person (Susan St. James, as a human woman). It's a love triangle but who cares? Who was this movie for? The jokes are hackneyed, the performances baffling, and the box office success a stain on our collective human experience.

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.

Saturday the 14th was the very first horror comedy movie Matt ever watched, way back in the early eighties. Maybe not the most sophisticated film, but strangely influential to an impressionable youngster with a love of monsters! Matt drags this 1981 Roger Corman production into the Depot Devoid this week, and makes his little brother Ted watch it - something he hasn't done for about thirty years. It's a movie PACKED with jokes, and we appreciate it differently now than we did as children, but for all its many (many!) flaws, Saturday the 14th is still a pretty good time. Bonus: woke political discussion, because that's who we are, and this is our show!

"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.

It's rare enough that the Depot brings us a movie neither of the brothers has ever seen, but a genuine 1980s slasher movie? Unprecedented! Famously written as a parody of the slasher genre by Rita Mae Brown, but then rewritten and directed by Amy Jones as a mostly straight slasher, The Slumber Party Massacre is a curiously uneven Dead Teenager movie. Ted is not convinced that the murderer made the best choice of weapon, even though it was metaphorically necessary. Matt, being immune to the power of breasts, is able to assess the film with a clear head and a cold heart. But will that be enough to help them survive the Massacre?

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.

Happy Anniversary! In this 40th episode, the Depot Devoid Podcast looks back on our first year of publication. We're a movie podcast, but the Depot Devoid has always actually been about the death of our brother Ian. It's a show about nostalgia and grief, and the ways we find to heal. While barely discussing Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, we talk about the lives that are changing around us, and how something as simple as recording this podcast can keep us sane in an insane world. Ted has a lot to say about his recent dealings with the Social Security Administration, Matt goes into a bit of detail about his upcoming gallery show, and both brothers share a little too much about scary dental visits. But perhaps the weirdest highlight of the episode is Matt's dramatic reading of his new children's poem, “Up a Hippopotamus' Bottom.”

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.

We've got a whole Depot full of Pride this week! And you can watch the full video version of this episode on YouTube. Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the queer redemption story we all need right now: messy, cruel, and challenging, but also transformative, inspiring, and filled with love. Bursting at the seams with amazing music, performed by a truly complicated leading lady, Hedwig gets under your skin in the best possible way.Host Matt Fagan is an unabashed fan, and is clearly excited to share this movie with his little brother, co-host Ted Fagan, for the very first time! During Pride 2025, when the general vibe in America is not exactly upbeat, it's nice to just have a really good time watching a movie like Hedwig. It left us feeling better than when we started. Maybe you should watch it too.