I was recently invited to join in on an episode of Jean-Pod Van Damme, a podcast that, as you’d likely guess, is solely dedicated to the cinematic wonders of the Muscles from Brussels, JCVD. Hosted by Marcus Jones of the movie blog Crushed Celluloid (which has an eponymous flagship podcast as well), Jean-Pod Van Damme is a irony-free celebration of one of action cinema’s more unlikely stars, a meathead European martial arts expert who stumbles in convincingly delivering his laugh lines. Crushed Celluloid as a whole, including their two podcasts & periodic film articles, participates in the exact earnest approach to typically undervalued genre cinema that we strive to achieve here at Swampflix and I’m proud to have been asked to contribute to what they already do so well.

In this specific episode of JPVD, Marcus & I discussed the 1997 Van Damme/Dennis Rodman team-up action comedy Double Team.  In my own review of the film, I described it as “gloriously half-cooked” & “a mid-90s camp relic most notable for its inclusion of a gender-defiant fashion prankster with some highly questionable political affiliations who apparently used to play basketball or something.” It was a lot of fun, then, to dissect something so frivolous at length with someone who’s a huge fan of its top-billed star and, honestly, I was more than a little flattered to even be asked, since I had only ever guested on a podcast once before (when I discussed the Vincent Price version of The Fly with the folks at We Love to Watch).

Give a listen to Jean-Pod Van Damme’s episode on Double Team below! And if you like what you hear, you can find Crushed Celluloid on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and their regular ol’ homepage for more enthusiastic takes on fringe genre cinema.

-Brandon Ledet