Genre specialist Jeremy Saulnier’s latest banger, REBEL RIDGE, owes an obvious debt to the film that kicked off Sylvester Stallone’s second long-running franchise, 1982’s FIRST BLOOD, but the two films are of very different eras with very different core concerns about policing in America. So this week we’re focusing on the shadow of Vietnam that falls over the Pacific Northwest in the form of John Rambo, digging into the deeper themes that lie beneath the proverbial pissing contest between FIRST BLOOD’s ticking time bomb of a protagonist and the antagonistic police chief who foolishly sets him off. And in Feedback we revisit our ALIENS discussion with a deep reference and some head-cannon fodder from our listeners.

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