Radiodrome is an Internet radio podcast series, presented by Josh Hadley and other guests. The show mainly discusses popular culture, namely films and TV series, usually of in the Exploitation Film genre. Sometimes it's semi documentary in its nature (the episodes about Video Nasties, 35mm film, Tony Scott, Joe Dante, John Carpenter, Oliver Stone, the rise and fall of video stores, ...), others times it's mainly discussing different opinions about various topics. The show's host Josh Hadley has both his fans and his detractors, who either find him too biased or just very opinionated.
Radiodrome was also well known to fans of The Cinema Snob, because Brad Jones used to be a regular guest on the show, along with friends of his, including Alex Jowski, aka the Marquis de Suede. On November 5th, 2013, Brad Jones announced his departure from the show. In his own words (posted on his Facebook profile): "There's no drama involved or anything like that, it was just time for me to move on." Since then Josh has continued making episodes, usually with Cecil Trachenberg of Good Bad Flicks.
In episode 212
Petar Gagic, known as Cine-Masochist joined to the show as the third regular member.
The show can be listened to on Jackalope Radio Thursday nights at 9 PM CST / 10 PM CST, but is also available on RT Gomer Productions, and The Cinema Snob site.
Radiodrome provides examples of:
- Accentuate the Negative: Josh tends to be the most critical. He often goes into a rant about stuff, while his co-guests are often more tongue-in-cheek and laidback about stuff they don't particularly like.
- Actually Pretty Funny: The only time Josh laughed during Deadpool (2016) was the "Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret" joke. And he was the only one in the theatre who laughed at it.
- Alter-Ego Acting: In contrast to the snobby character Brad plays on the The Cinema Snob his real life persona comes across as being far more sympathetic and less judgmental over stuff he dislikes, especially when contrasted with Josh.
- Berserk Button: Presenter Josh Hadley is the usually the most opinionated. He can really get steamed into ranting and nitpicking stuff he absolutely hates.
- For instance, he clearly doesn't like Quentin Tarantino, save for Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown. Though he keeps hammering in that Tarantino plagiarized large parts of City on Fire to make Reservoir Dogs.
- The hosts in general will hold spite for any director that hurts or kills animals on film.
- Big Word Shout and Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Josh has a tendency to ventilate his anger by shouting and emphasizing the final syllables by shouting them word for word. For instance: "The audience didn't like this film... BECAUSE...THEY...JUST...DIDN'T...UNDERSTAND!!"
- Butt-Monkey: Usually the third commentator present when Brad and Josh are discussing things.
- Though Josh himself is also frequently mocked by Brad and the other guest(s) for being so furiously opinionated about stuff.
- Catchphrase: The promo code for adamandeve.com which is promoted at the start of every episode, so much that Josh says: "Let's get the promo code out of the way", before starting the real topic.
- Censor Box: Swear words are regularly bleeped out.
- Christianity is Catholic: Cecil tends to associate any of his negative thoughts about Christianity (be they accurate, such as hating Bill Donahue or inaccurate like creating the Left Behind movies) to "The Catholics". The fact that he himself was raised Catholic may have something to do with it.
- Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Josh can often been heard doing this: namely, stuff he only saw a trailer or a commercial for. It has even become a Running Gag on the show and his co-guests often poke fun at him about this.
- Crossover: With other reviewers, most notably Diamanda Hagan.
- Derailed Train of Thought: Often the actual topic is interrupted by a lot of freeballing by Josh and his hosts. Sometimes they even decide to go off topic entirely.
- Especially Josh has a tendency to start telling anecdotes that don't always tie in well with the actual topic. In an episode about "cult movies" film director Ken Russell was mentioned. Out of nowhere Josh starts ventilating his anger over the fact that Russell doesn't belong on any kind of list and always made awful adaptations of the books he tried to film. Then he gives the example of the film Altered States and rants about this for a few minutes. As Brad immediately points out: all this really has nothing to do whether Russell was a cult movie director, or not.
- Embarrassing Nickname:
- Josh Hadley is named "Faggot Josh" in many of the comments for Radiodrome.
- Also, Alex Jowski is always nicknamed "Marquis de Suede", in reference to a character from the low-budget gay porn film Gayracula.
- Exploitation Film: Usually the most prominent subject of discussion, though they also often discuss more mainstream franchises, like Terminator, Alien, Predator, Highlander, Star Trek, Friday the 13th, Halloween, etc.
- Geek Reference Pool: You can basically swim into it!
- Hair-Trigger Temper/Hot-Blooded: When Josh gets riled up enough, he will rant and rave.
- Honor Before Reason: Tends to be a theme, from a filmmaking standpoint. Brad once said in one of the episodes, for example, that he'd rather have bad practical effects than good CGI.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: A not uncommon topic when discussing the exploitation genre.
- Jerkass: Josh can come across as one sometimes. Once, when discussing the cult classic Heavy Metal (1981) in an episode about animation he dismissed the cross-over review of the film by Diamanda Hagan and Doug Walker on an episode of the The Nostalgia Critic for not understanding what the movie was all about and that it did not fit an episode of the Nostalgia Critic seeing that the film was far too cult for the type of movies Doug usually reviews. He also called Diamanda a "clown-faced woman". A few episodes later, Diamanda was special guest on a Radiodrome episode, where Josh apologized for being so harsh. Since then she has become a regular guest.
- Josh once told Brad that he thought Demo Reel (a project by Doug Walker on Channel Awesome) was one of the worst things he ever saw in his life." Brad really sounded perplexed that Josh would be so blunt about one of Brad's friends and colleagues.
- Listeners Are Geniuses:
- Most of the topics and references are directed at fellow film buffs. The rest of us would do well to have the IMDB tab open while listening.
- References to mildly popular 80's TV abound, as well. Brad and Josh will both just casually drop references to shows like Manimal or Voyagers!, with little or no explanation.
- They also make a lot of inside jokes, most of which you can only understand if you watch all of Brad's other video's on The Cinema Snob site. Sometimes they even address personal matters, like the strain on Brad and Jerrid's friendship in the spring of 2012.
- Magic Versus Science: Josh said he prefers sci-fi to fantasy because he feels that while the science used is often made up, just saying it's magic is an outright
Ass Pull.Brad: "Then I take it you like the whole midichlorians thing?"Josh: "Not midichlorians! Why'd you have to go there? You're a son of a bitch!" - My Friends... and Zoidberg: Whenever Brad and Josh are present, the third co-guest usually lets them do most of the talking.
- Josh and Brad will often poke fun at the third person for not asserting themselves enough, as well.
- Never Heard That One Before:
- Subverted. When you listen to each episode you start to notice some repetitive topics of discussion, which usually occur when the hosts are freeballing about stuff that has nothing to do with the central topic of that episode. For instance: by know every Radiodrome listener knows that...
- Josh, Brad and company don't like the fact that modern day porn spoof films are simply called "Not The... [insert name of TV show here]" and would rather have Parallel Porn Titles like in the old days.
- Josh doesn't like Quentin Tarantino, because Tarantino supposedly ripped off the plot of Reservoir Dogs from City on Fire without admitting this. Still, Josh likes two Tarantino movies: Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown.
- Josh, Brad and company don't like the Scream franchise, because it wasn't funny, scary nor clever and completely destroyed the charm of the original slasher films.
- More accurately, Scream pointed out how dumb slasher films of the 80s were, and slasher films are targets not to be criticized.
- Opinion Myopia: Josh has made several In-Universe comments like this.
- Real-Person Cameo: Hadley once interviewed Uwe Boll. Yes, the real life one! And he actually felt more sympathy towards the director afterwards, because Boll flat out admitted with a lot of good humour that most of his films aren't very good.
- James Glickenhaus has also been interviewed on the show.
- Lloyd Kaufman did an interview as well. He did his by cell phone from a party, completely drunk. He was still able to answer all questions, though.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Josh has at least one every episode, luckily usually directed towards people who aren't present in the studio.
- Reference Overdosed: The presenters often refer to a lot of obscure pop culture stuff from older exploitation films, B-movies, failed TV pilots and other stuff that invites you to consult an encyclopaedia or surf the Internet for more background information. Most of it stems from The '70s and The '80s.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Sometimes a franchise is discussed because a remake is in the theaters at that moment, or a retrospective on a certain actor of film director who recently passed away is held.
- Speaks in Shout-Outs: Whenever a certain film or TV series is discussed, expect Josh to shout out all the possible memes associated with this film.
- Straw Critic: Josh tends to have very strong opinions on why something is great or not and seems to see mainstream audiences as idiots for not sharing his opinions.
- Suddenly Shouting: Josh has a tendency to rant about stuff, but even midway certain normal conversations he sometimes starts shouting and interrupting the others to make his point across. Often it's so loud that the microphone is almost blown out.
- Take That!: It's quite a list and most of it stems from Josh. Frequent targets are Michael Bay, Quentin Tarantino, dumb audiences, Ken Russell, Family Guy, Roger Ebert, Terrence Malick, remakes, reboots, prequels, sequels, CGI, inaccurate book adaptations, uninspired porn spoof parodies of films and TV shows, inaccurate "based on a true story" adaptations, films not considered to be cult movies, too ironic homages to a particular film genre (slasher movies for instance), the movie Death Proof, the movie Scream (1996), people who have a different opinion about stuff than Josh...
- Take That, Critics!: Josh (but other hosts often too) seem to hate mainstream critics for condemning many of the B-movies, horror movies and exploitation films they tend to like. Even though a lot of this films aren't exactly quality pictures, making general critics' opinions understandable at least. An entire Radiodrome episode was once devoted to a 1980 Siskel & Ebert review of a slasher movie that they at the time both gave a thumbs down. The duo then condemned the entire genre on both its artistic merit as well as their lack of ethics. Josh, Brad and other co-hosts reviewed every single quote from this (then) 30 year old review, that should be viewed in the context of its time anyway, only to simply disagree with all of the points that Siskel and Ebert raised.
- The Internet Is for Porn: The promo code for Radiodrome is for the porn site adamandeve.com.
- Theme Song: The opening theme of the song is the background music to a trailer for the 1983 cult classic Videodrome.
- Unstoppable Rage: When Josh starts ranting about something you're always glad that there are other people in the studio to calm him down or interrupt him at some point. Even if you agree with his opinion.
- Verbal Tic: Josh has several:
- "And then you also have/had..."
- "... and what not..."
- "I HATED... [INSERT any film or series after 1995]"
- "They just don't make movies like that anymore!"
- "Let's go back to..."
- "On that note..."
- "... And I'm not bashing Tarantino over this one..."
- "[INSERT NAME] is one of the worst [INSERT JOB/FILM/SERIES/ROLE] I have ever seen"
- "...wasn't it?"
- "...wouldn't you agree?"
- "Well, what about..."
- "NO, IT ISN'T!"
- Brad has one as well, usually in response to something Josh has just ranted about: "Well, I dunno about THAT..."
- Brad also has the word "anymore" in weird places, ie. in place of "nowadays".
- "Uh-huh yeah!"
- "I love that shit!"
- "That is one of my f-a-v-o-r-i-t-e movies of all time.''
- Video Nasties: One episode was dedicated to this topic.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Josh and, well, everybody, really.
