Hello Redshirt team!
We're in the midst of our 1985 season and it's time to find our community pick - the film that you choose, that we will watch and then discuss in an upcoming bonus episode.
Have a thorough read of the options below, consider everything with extraordinary care and attention, and then make your choice. We'll be closing the poll at midnight on Saturday 22nd Nove...
Your kids are gonna love it...
Back To The Future! Our 1985 season begins in earnest this week with Dave's pick of the year, Robert Zemeckis' layered, heartfelt time-travelling adventure (although do go and listen to our Goonies bonus episode if you can...)
BTTF is a perfect fit with several films the pod has already absorbed, a "Spielberg-ing" of early 1980s life that like ET (and...
2025-11-17 12:16:16 +0000 UTC View PostHey you guys! 1985 season is upon us, and you know what that means? It means it's our time. Our time to watch The Goonies.
This is a film that Rob and Dave love so much that they couldn't risk its inclusion on a public vote. A film about friendships, childhood, and adventure, and plugged in to a specific nostalgia for a specific time, when no adults seemed to be watching, and w...
Morning all,
Two quick messages this morning! Our bonus episode has been hit by sickness, so we'll be rescheduling that to later this week. We're not sure exactly when this will be, but we'll have it out before the weekend. Apologies for the delay!
But, I hear you ask, what is the bonus episode? Well, the answer to that and other admittedly quite limited questions about ...
By Nathan Ditum
Hello dear Redshirts to this, the 12th edition of the Civilian Observer. It’s the latest edition, in both senses - we have become irregular in putting these out during a busy few months, which we’ll remedy either with several Civilian Observers, or a bonus something for the Ensign tier (do you want a livestream of the Return Of The King game? Gollum off in th...
We're taking a long overdue look inside the Redshirt Cinema Club mailbag this week (please keep emailing us, we do read them, promise) before kicking off our new mini season by each selecting our favourite movie of 1985, in celebration of the year Dave was born. This has caused alarm for a couple of reasons: firstly it's made us realise a number of our favourite movies are now, like Dave, 40 ye...
2025-11-10 09:42:20 +0000 UTC View PostMan is the warmest place to hide this week, as our John Carpenter mini-season comes to a spectacular, gushing climax with 1982’s The Thing. Is Jed the dog the best dog actor ever? Could speaking Norwegian have solved this whole business in 5 minutes? And who - if anyone - is human by the end? Let’s find out
Also for those interested, links to a couple of Thing-related videos we menti...
Hello and welcome to Redshirt Cinema Club, a weekly podcast transmitting from the year 1999...
Commanders, this week’s bonus episode features a movie just waiting to inflict existential trauma, with the conventions of science and religion overturned, an eerie atmosphere of the unknowable, and something ancient materialising in the basement…
Let’s discuss Prince of Dark...
2025-10-29 06:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostSnake? Snaaaaaaake!
Hello and welcome to Redshirt Cinema Club, a weekly podcast about smoking, apparently.
In the distant future of the year 1997, Manhattan has become a super prison, the president of the USA has crash landed inside, and only one man has tight enough trousers and good enough arms to break him out again. This is John Carpenter’s Escape From New York…...
2025-10-27 06:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostDeath has come to your little podcast, Redshirts...
Halloween has come early, which is only fair as two of us are coming very late to Halloween, John Carpenter's genre-setting 1978 teen slasher classic.
The adults are all busy at boring grown-up parties, the teens are constantly on the phone and swapping houses, and Michael Myers - inscrutable killer, embodiment of evil, and provid...
2025-10-20 06:21:31 +0000 UTC View Post“How can weather be scary?” is the question posed by today’s film, John Carpenter’s 1980 West-coast horror, The Fog. Luckily the film also provides the answer, which is to fill the weather with pirate zombie lepers. No, really.
It turns out we basically love John Carpenter movies.
Also included: ex-lepers, evil trucks, and discussions of the worst things we've ever done....
Welcome to Los Angeles in 1976, setting for John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13, a tale of bad gangs, good guys, and a tragically mishandled ice cream order. This is America and Hollywood as we remember it growing up - a scary, magnetic clash of morals and modernity. And also lots of shooting.
Yes, this week we're watching John Carpenter's second film, where a criminal gang lays sie...
2025-10-13 05:00:25 +0000 UTC View PostThe 100th episode special is never late, it arrives precisely when it means to. In this case, as the 101st episode thanks to a building alarm that WOULD NOT STOP GOING OFF in a neighbouring unit.
All of which is to bury the lead - the lead being that we've finally watched Stanley Kubrick's classic of classics, 2001: A Space Odyssey. For a podcast built on a foundation of Star Trek movie...
Hello Redshirt crew!
As of yesterday we have embarked upon a new series on the pod, watching the films of John Carpenter from Dark Star (1974) to The Prince of Darkness (1987).
We love it when as many of you get to watch along as possible, so this time we're sharing where (in the UK) you can watch the movies we have coming up on the pod.
Dark Star - 6/10/25 - Included in ...
A new dawn! A new day! A new Dark Star!
Welcome to a brand new series on Redshirt Cinema Club, as we embark upon a vaguely Halloween-timed viewing of the early films of John Carpenter.
There are so many reasons this run of films fits with what we've watched on the pod so far, not least the fact that several of these films are very good. We're starting this week with Carpenter's firs...
2025-10-06 11:03:50 +0000 UTC View PostThe kids are awry
We've reached the finale of Alien: Earth! This week we discuss episode 8, 'The Real Monsters'.
The journey has ended, and have we been walking in a circle this whole time? The hybrid kids use soft(ware) power to launch a coup, we finally get to see that Morrow vs Kirsh showdown, the orchid escapes, and Johnny Eyeball finds a new home. Are we happy? Nearly. How are...
2025-09-29 05:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostMorning all! A quick heads up from us - next week's 100th Episode Special on 2001: A Space Odyssey has been delayed by a week and will now arrive on Wednesday 8th October (which will mean it's actually the 101st episode, but everyone needs to ignore that).
We tried to record this morning, but arrived to find the fire alarm going off from a sensor in one of the restaurant units that neig...
Hello lovely Redshirt listeners, Nath here. I hope you're all doing well, sitting or floating in zero G comfortably.
As we approach the end of our Alien: Earth series (an experiment in following along with a show being aired week by week, which the three of us have enjoyed) we've started to plan what we'll be up to for the rest of the year. This we can reveal in a few stages, each one s...
This week - episode 7 of Alien: Earth, 'Emergence'.
Things are happening, Fletch - many of them bad, especially for any humans remaining on the Neverland island complex in possession of a moral compass. Slightly and Smee become body smugglers, Wendy and Nibs feel their humanity slipping away, and Morrow does an actual invasion. Oh, and the alien got out.
It's all a bit much for us, ...
2025-09-22 23:16:56 +0000 UTC View PostThis week's bonus episode has us climbing the walls here at Redshirt Cinema Club. Not in the idiomatic sense that we're feeling frustrated or anxious, but in the literal sense that we've altered our DNA through a teleportation accident and can now close our loft apartment windows without using a big stick.
All of which is to tortuously announce that we have watched David Cronenberg's 19...
Hello all - this is a heads up that tomorrow's bonus episode will be focused on David Cronenberg's '80s body horror, The Fly.
Why? WELL - it was Dave's idea, and it's one he might have had simply because last week's episode of Alien: Earth was also called 'The Fly'.
But it turned out to be an inspired thought. Cronenberg's film is an excellent fit with our journey on the pod so ...
After the brilliant episode 5 we return to Neverland for Alien: Earth episode 6 as events ramp up for the season finale.
Wendy is transfixed by a now-adolescent Xenomorph, Slightly is desperate for a human to get face-hugged and that sheep with an alien eye ball is definitely planning something.
Meanwhile Kirsh continues his observations while Boy Kavalier and Yutani enjoy an amicab...
2025-09-15 08:44:11 +0000 UTC View PostEpisode 5 of Alien: Earth takes us back to the beginning. We wondered when we'd see the crew of the Maginot again and here they are, revealed in all their flawed, incompetent glory. An episode that details how we got from the first 10 minutes of episode 1 (everyone wakes up and banters over breakfast) to 20 minutes later in episode 1 (everyone dies).
It's classic Alien basically - a crew ...
2025-09-08 05:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostIs collecting physical media still a thing for the Redshirt crew? And if so, what does that look like? In this episode, we're taking a nostalgic stroll through our days of collecting movies - the what and the why - before crashing into the realities of our collections today.
In particular, we're taking a look at Rob's collection - and look! Pictures! These snaps are what the crew were l...
I'm looking through you...
It's time for episode four of Alien: Earth, 'Observations'. Which is apt because there's a lot of observing going on: Wendy in the lab, Boy Kavalier watching Joe, Dame Cynthia watching Nibs (...fly across the room), and the eyeball squid monster watching everyone at once, from inside a sheep.
We also observe that the show is turning out to be less inter...
2025-09-01 09:49:55 +0000 UTC View PostCh ch ch ch chaaaaanges
It's time for episode three of Alien: Earth, and the title of the episode is 'Metamorphosis'. Which is a reference to our showgirl, of course, but also the Lost Boys, Morrow, and humanity itself in this show about making machines, becoming machines, putting children into machines ("this is fine" - the ethics board, distractedly), and sometimes thinking about machi...
Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold.
The mere anarchy loosed in this particular instance being a community poll to find the best genre movie made in the Marvel Era ("...before the dark times, before the Empire") in which we included options for actually properly good films alongside the 7/10 exploitation faves which this pod series was initially, kinda, sorta, about.
Anywa...
In a recent bonus episode of the podcast we lamented the death of the video rental store and the subsequent cultural hole left in our movie-watching lives. The absence of that physical place, that curated library of excitement and colour. We’d make plans to go there. The Friday evening tradition of selecting a film and cradling it in the car as we travelled home via the Chinese takeaway.
<...
This week we're beginning our series on Alien: Earth.
Having watched the Alien film series in its entirety at the end of last year, we are perfectly prepared, poised like an apex predator, and above all really bloody excited to embark upon a full, week-by-week viewing of the new FX series, Alien: Earth.
Alien: Earth has been created and overseen by Noah Hawley, the creator of TV sho...
2025-08-18 07:04:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello Redshirt Cinema Club! Because our movie this week is the FANTASTIC Edge of Tomorrow, as a little bonus here's something Nath wrote about...
2025-08-12 07:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post