Your Stupid Minds

Grab your pan flute! Your Stupid Minds continues its tropical theme to visit South America with a Roger Corman environmental thriller. It's 1993's Fire on the Amazon, starring Sandra Bullock, Craig Sheffer, and basically no one else.
R.J. (Sheffer) is a magazine photojournalist who's traveled to Bolivia to report on... something about the rainforest. He's stomped into the continent to ask dumb questions to randos and snap 50 photos inches from their faces. Luckily for his story, a local rubber tapper and activist Santos (Eduardo Cesti) is murdered during a family shower prank gone wrong, so R.J. decides to solve the case (or was that what his story was about to begin with?).
He goes around harassing locals, as well as environmentalist Alyssa (Bullock). After being held hostage by the indigenous person the local police decided to frame for Santos's murder, they're both thrown in prison. R.J. is released, but the local "commits suicide" while in jail, which R.J. doesn't believe because he's really smart.
He starts harassing the indigenous tribe, occasionally forgetting about the hired hitman who keeps trying to kill him. He and Alyssa engage in a rainforest ayahuasca-fueled Cat People-style lovemaking session, then go to solve the murder.
Are R.J. and Alyssa meant to be? Will they solve the murder? Will R.J. get less annoying? You'll have to listen to find out!

In honor of the late, great Tim Curry, Your Stupid Minds covers 1995's Congo, also starring Laura Linney, Dylan Walsh, Ernie Hudson, and Joe Don Baker.
Charlie Travis (Bruce Campbell) discovers some magic diamonds in Zaire that they can use for satellite space lasers, but he's attacked by what may or may not be killer apes. His evil dad and TraviCom CEO R.B. Travis (Baker), who's a jerk and only cares about money, sends his ex-fiancee Karen (Linney) to go save him, but mostly to get those precious diamonds.
Karen hitches a ride with primatologist Peter Elliott (Walsh), who's traveling to Africa to release Amy (Lola Noh), his gorilla research subject, back into the wild. Dylan taught Amy sign language, which allows her to speak with the use of a talking robot glove thing. His expedition is funded by Romanian philanthropist Herkermer Homolka (Curry), who's using the ape to find the lost mine of King Solomon.
Upon arriving in Africa, an active coup causes the team to go on the run, led by mercenary Monroe Kelly (Hudson). The movie tries to figure out which plotline to pursue first, but luckily they all end up in the same place: the mines. It turns out Charlie WAS killed by apes. Not nice apes like Amy, but mean apes that the mine workers trained to guard the diamonds. Can the team survive? Does this magic laser have ape-cutting abilities? You'll have to listen to find out!

Your Stupid Minds returns from a brief summer sojourn to cover a movie that MGM had so little faith in, it premiered as an in-flight movie a month before theaters. It's 1999's Molly, starring Elisabeth Shue, Aaron Eckhart, Jill Hennessy, and Thomas Jane.
Molly (Shue) is a woman with what seems to be autism, but kind of presents as whatever the movie needs it to do. The institution where she's lived for decades is closing down, so her brother Buck (Eckhart) must take her home to his trendy '90s Venice Beach loft. He considers this a huge imposition, and after she ruins his big advertising presentation, he's determined to "fix" her.
A new institution has developed an experimental surgery. They can't diagnose her exact condition, but they sure can try to fix it! The cause of autism, as this movie would assume, is a red blob in her brain. If they can make the blob smaller, then her brain can work better, or something.
With the help of another intellectually disabled orderly from her old institution Sam (Jane), as well as Drs. Brookes (Hennessy) and Trehare (Elizabeth Mitchell), the procedure is a success and Molly begins speaking and performing new tasks. She embraces her manic pixie dream girl status to start dating Sam, go to a Dodgers game, crash a cool vampire production of Romeo and Juliet, and generally start enjoying life.
But, since we are pulling a lot of the plot from Flowers for Algernon, something is wrong and she begins regressing. Are they able to reverse the regression? Can Buck stop being such a jerk? Will we all learn valuable lessons about ability and disability, family, and accepting yourself? You'll have to listen to find out!

Your Stupid Minds fulfills the Siskel and Ebert prophecy and reviews 1993's Cop & ½ (or Cop and a Half, if you prefer English). Starring Burt Reynolds, Norman D. Holden II, Ruby Dee, and Ray Sharkey. Directed by Henry Winkler.
Devon Butler (Golden) is an 8-year-old kid who's obsessed with being a cop. When he witnesses a mob execution, he negotiates the exchange of evidence for being a police officer for one day. The stupid chief assigns the babysitting role to the oldest and crankiest guy on the force: Nick McKenna (Reynolds).
The second act devotes its time mostly in search of a plot. Mob leader Vinnie Fountain (Sharkey) comes to Devon's home and forces the child into witness protection (i.e. Nick's disgusting apartment). Devon pulls over his jerk principal for speeding. A pair of homicidal teenage bullies menace an elementary school hoping to give Devon a swirly at a moment's notice. Nick has a bar fight with a street tough named Bobo. All standard stuff.
Eventually the movie settles on a child endangerment angle and Nick must rescue Devon from the mob. Is Nick up to the task? Will there be a boat chase? Was this worse than Carnosaur? You'll have to listen to find out!

Your Stupid Minds transitions seamlessly from Tammy and the T-Rex to the Roger Corman quickie dino picture Carnosaur, released mere weeks before Jurassic Park. This is the first in a double feature to answer the eternal question posed by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert: Carnosaur or Cop and a Half. Which is better?
Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd, yes, Laura Dern's mom) is an evil scientist who attempts to achieve the impossible dream we've all pondered from time to time: can a viral bioweapon developed from genetically modified chickens impregnate all women on the planet with dinosaur embryos in order to replace the human race?
She puts her plan into action in the small town of Climax, Nevada. Everyone starts getting sick with a high fever, but it's only the women who give birth to dinosaurs (and die in the process). The dino puppets emerge and immediately begin murdering everyone, mostly local yokels such as "Slim" Friar (Clint Howard, yes, Bryce Dallas Howard's uncle) and a group of tree-hugging hippies protesting environmental destruction. Sheriff Fowler (Harrison Page) and "Doc" Smith (Raphael Sbarge) all try to solve the mystery. Meanwhile, the government swoops in hell-bent on containing the damage, so guys in haz-mat suits blast every infected person with M-16s.
Can they find a cure? No. Even Tiptree puts her money where her mouth is and fatally delivers her own dino baby. Can they contain the virus? Also unclear, but I'm going to say no. But at least we get to see some fun dino puppets roaming around. And some locals kill a T-Rex with a forklift. So that's cool.
As mentioned above, Siskel and Ebert had a passionate disagreement over Carnosaur. Siskel gave it a thumbs up while Ebert called it one of the worst of the year. Inversely, the next episode's movie, Cop and a Half, had the opposite result. This disagreement comes up repeatedly throughout their 1993 season.